1638 réponses à ce sujet

[Iakus]

 

 

Well, except for what I wrote about this subject two pages ago:

 

"That is what ethical choices do, though. Doing what you believe to be the right answer, but seeing merit in both choices both before and after the fact. "

 

I'm no extreme relativist that says each choice is equally valid. Whenever I make a moral choice I'm choosing what I believe to be the best one, as any moral action entails.

 

 

 

 

Note that no-win situations are not simply a result of the difficulty of a moral choice. An example that illustrates this is the geth heretic mission: you unquestionably "win" no matter what you choose, but destroy or rewrite brings up interesting ethical questions that add nuance and debate to the topic.

 

Except thaat in teh case of ME3's final chcoie I see no ethical choice whatsoever.  All of them are horrible and without merit.  Even Refuse.  There is no "best" answer, it's all a matter of "choose your evil" 

 

What's the validity in that? Or as Jayne Cobb put it:  "Eating people alive?  Where does that get fun?"

 

Re: geth Heretic mission.  The only way I can justify it in my head is my own admittidly completely headcanoned explanation that the Heretics were already subjected to the virus by Sovereign, and I was "deprogramming" them rather than reprogramming. 

[Reorte]

Yes, but that doesn't mean their unhappiness has any correlation with the quality of the product, or more relevantly whether the product succeeds in what it sets out to do. An example would be Elder Scrolls, which I consider to be largely mediocre games. But the ways in which I would improve Elder Scrolls games would mean marginalizing many things which are intended by the game design, and which many other people enjoy. Therefore, while my ideal Elder Scrolls game is very different than the ones we get, I really have no grounds by which to criticize what it's trying to do, because it does what it's trying to do very well.

The faults with the Elder Scrolls games are (IMO) that we haven't got the technology to offer both openness and depth. What you end up with are quests that are just as linear in many ways but without the presentation you can get in something more controlled. On the other hand outside that you've got more scope to shape your character as you see fit.

 

 

Note that no-win situations are not simply a result of the difficulty of a moral choice. An example that illustrates this is the geth heretic mission: you unquestionably "win" no matter what you choose, but destroy or rewrite brings up interesting ethical questions that add nuance and debate to the topic.

 

The geth heretic choice is perhaps a good one to talk about and it's also the one that I agonised over the most (best choice in the game). It's also feels much less shoehorned in for the sake of making it into a difficult grey choice.

 

 

Besides the idea that it makes it relevant to our world where any conflict has within it an embedded moral conflict? Ethical quandaries force me to examine my beliefs and find solid ground for them. If no logical foundation can be discovered, then it may require me to admit bias or and re-examine why it is I feel this way. Doing so I may discover something about what priorities I have and whether I'm an emotional or logical creature. Many players feel that choice-based games are useful for expressing their morality, but I also find them useful for self-reflection, or even just reflection on the justification for action in general. Such is usually the usefulness of fictional tensions in any medium.

Sure, that's good. It was sounding like you were talking about "You're damned if you do, damned if you don't, so it makes little difference which you choose" choices. I still don't see why it being inevitable that you'll end up in that situation is good or necessary though.

[Reorte]

Re: geth Heretic mission.  The only way I can justify it in my head is my own admittidly completely headcanoned explanation that the Heretics were already subjected to the virus by Sovereign, and I was "deprogramming" them rather than reprogramming. 

With the geth consider their nature - individual programs are non-sapient and non-sentient. Whatever collection of them is sufficient to make up a self-aware intelligence will be shifting and changing all the time anyway. With no definable individual and a being that's constantly changing anyway is reprogramming such an unethical thing as it would be to an organic individual? Stil an unpleasant thing, but as much of one? With the geth we've got a completely alien type of intelligence that's also somewhat plausible sounding. The Heretic decision was the most interesting and the most difficult - it was genuintely intellectual.

[CronoDragoon]

Sure, that's good. It was sounding like you were talking about "You're damned if you do, damned if you don't, so it makes little difference which you choose" choices. I still don't see why it being inevitable that you'll end up in that situation is good or necessary though.

 

Nah, something I've repeatedly stated (and which Iakus apparently forgets quite a bit) is that I dislike how contrived the ME3's endings were, and I actually despised the original endings (and still a bit the EC) because I felt like I had saved everything EXCEPT the things I'd actually cared about, and sacrificed my new Rannoch allies to do it.

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again that ME3 should not have ended on the tone it did, suddenly deciding it was going to be about tough moral decisions after ME2's Suicide Mission pretty much cemented Mass Effect as a series with copious "get-out-of-jail-free" cards, not to mention the Rannoch peace which just happened and was based off your previous decisions (I consider the Rannoch choice to be the pinnacle of the ME series, doing well to incorporate your previous decisions into the final one. Even besides the points towards peace, the situation feels much different with the geth VI than Legion. Ditto for Wrex and Wreav). 

 

I would have been perfectly satisfied with a destroy-Reapers happy ending. However, I don't want all decisions in games to be like the Suicide Mission, nor do I want all of them to be like ME3's ending. Nor do I feel scripted tragedy devalues my experience with the game. That's largely been my issue here.

[Argolas]

With the geth consider their nature - individual programs are non-sapient and non-sentient. Whatever collection of them is sufficient to make up a self-aware intelligence will be shifting and changing all the time anyway. With no definable individual and a being that's constantly changing anyway is reprogramming such an unethical thing as it would be to an organic individual? Stil an unpleasant thing, but as much of one? With the geth we've got a completely alien type of intelligence that's also somewhat plausible sounding. The Heretic decision was the most interesting and the most difficult - it was genuintely intellectual.

 

A natural change of your personality and views can always occur, but that doesn't justify a forced change. There is a huge difference here, and I don't think it matters whether we are talking about an organic or synthetic here. The Heretics made a free choice to join Souvereign while the Geth chose otherwise. Forcing the Heretics to become Geth is brainwashing and that is unethical. Of course, killing is generally unethical as well which makes the question difficult.

 

A real-world analogy would be this: If you had the power to either kill or brainwash all terrorists in the world, what would you do? I personally answer kill since that would be my choice if I were on the other side in that conflict, but there is no clear right and wrong here.

[Iakus]

 

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again that ME3 should not have ended on the tone it did, suddenly deciding it was going to be about tough moral decisions after ME2's Suicide Mission pretty much cemented Mass Effect as a series with copious "get-out-of-jail-free" cards, not to mention the Rannoch peace which just happened and was based off your previous decisions (I consider the Rannoch choice to be the pinnacle of the ME series, doing well to incorporate your previous decisions into the final one. Even besides the points towards peace, the situation feels much different with the geth VI than Legion. Ditto for Wrex and Wreav). 

 

Calling the SM "copious get out of jail free cards" is doing it somethiing of a disservice.  You do, after all, have to put in some effort to get the optimal results.  You could argue, and I'd probably agree, that the player doesn't have to put enough effort into it.  Getting loyalty was stupid-easy, not much more than marking time.  And the jobs were pretty easy to figure out , and there weren't enough of those challenges.  But overall, it had the right idea:  Go in prepared, make smart choices, and get rewarded.

 

Which is the exact opposite of ME3's end, where Shepard is screwed no matter what.

[CronoDragoon]

Go in prepared, make smart choices, and get rewarded.

 

Again I have to reiterate that I don't mind the Suicide Mission at all: it's only a problem when sat next to ME3's ending. Or ME3's ending is a problem when sat next to the Suicide Mission rather, since the latter came first.

[Reorte]

...

Then I think that our differences of opinion aren't actually all that massive; certainly not worth carrying on arguing about when it might get unpleasant.

[Iakus]

Again I have to reiterate that I don't mind the Suicide Mission at all: it's only a problem when sat next to ME3's ending. Or ME3's ending is a problem when sat next to the Suicide Mission rather, since the latter came first.

The last part of your quote is the important part.

 

It seems to some people think that it was only in the end when Mass Effect stopped Doing It Wrong.

[CronoDragoon]

Then again Virmire was before the Suicide Mission, so who the hell knows.

[Iakus]

As I said before, Virimire is far smaller scale than the Crucible.  We're talking about the fate of one, not all life in the galaxy that exists or will exist.

 

You also get to clearly see and react to the consequences.

 

Scope matters.

 

Edit:  Also, you get to say goodbye to the one who gets left behind.  In fact, I think Virmire was written by someone who actually cared about the characters.  I cannot say the same about whoever wrote ME3's end.

[CronoDragoon]

Scope matters.

 

It does, but Virmire's choice principle is still the same as ME3, certainly much closer than it is to SM.

 

 

 

Edit:  Also, you get to say goodbye to the one who gets left behind.  In fact, I think Virmire was written by someone who actually cared about the characters.  I cannot say the same about whoever wrote ME3's end.

 

I won't argue this, especially since Patrick Weekes had to push hard to even get the Priority Earth squad dialogues we got.

[AlanC9]

Scope matters.... but exactly how?

[voteDC]

Scope matters.... but exactly how?

Kind of like how Tcheky Karyo said in "The Core". I know I am paraphrasing but saving the world is too big a thing to think about but saving one person, that's easy to understand.

[AlanC9]

One death is a tragedy, a million are a statistic, eh?

[BaladasDemnevanni]

1) Then you have failed to understand most of what I've written due to over-simplifying yourself. I said if two options present equally unpleasant outcomes then there is no morality, NOT if there wasn't a perfect option. What I have argued about is the liklihood and (from a game point of view) the desirability of ending up in a situation where all of the choices look bad.

 

2) It sound like you're taking it far too literally by labelling "good" as "perfect" and "bad" as "awful". "Good and bad" don't have to be "perfect" and "awful", just not entirely equal. I have read the earlier posts where you were being rather dismissive of any choice that could offer a better solution if you made the right one.

 

1) And since it's absolutely impossible to determine for any and all players what is equally unpleasant, that is where the question of judgments enters the picture. Again, trolleys thought experiment. Someone can sit there and say the idea of killing one person vs allowing one person to die are equally bad. That is a potential result. The thought experiment does not suddenly lose merit because of it.

 

The purpose, as Crono points out, is to force people to consider their own values and whether they can hold up under scrutiny. It's easy to run into any fool who says the ends justify the means and that it's always better to sacrifice one to save ten. What the game, by being interactive, allows is the possibility to explore the question of: what happens when you actually have an emotional investment to said character? Perfect solutions, especially as Bioware has implemented, make this impossible by introducing the way out. "Is it better to kill one person, allow five to die, or press the magic button to make everybody get out alive?" The third solution is the exact opposite of what thought experiments are designed to consider.

 

2) And if you read my posts, you'd also note that I pointed out not every decision in every game need be super dark, grey, and morally complicated. Heavy Rain was a great game. It had moments of genuine pleasure where the protagonist got out alive. It also had some difficult moral questions for the player, in the context of which your claim of "any tragedy can be circumvented" would never be feasible within the confines of the narrative.
 

[BaladasDemnevanni]

1) WWII is the sort of thing I've already discussed, about the larger tragedies requiring going further back but their individual impacts don't. Cancer boils down to simply bad luck at some point (although obviously influenced by other things).

 

2) Because we never have all the information available. If you could metagame life then you probably could.

Now that is a weak argument.

 

3) If you've got a morally ambiguous situation that truly is ambiguous then it's no choice. If you think that's what's needed for intellectual consideration then there's no hope at all. The intellectual consideration comes from trying to work out which is the best option, even if none of them are perfect. That's why for me the ME2 Geth Heretics decision was the most interesting in the entire game - it combined consideration of which would have the biggest impact (good or bad) on the rest of the galaxy with which would be considered the worst intrusion on a form of intelligence completely different to ours (does the nature of the geth mean that they're effectively reprogramming themselves fundamentally all the time anyway, so doing so might not be quite as reprehensible as it would be to us?)

 

4) All this talk about easy cop-out solutions entirely misses the point I've made a few times where I say that they need to be very hard to achieve - just like life. Are you not just shying away from wanting to have to take responsibility for your failures?

 

5) I'd definitely argue that the player doesn't feel quite the same in Virmire because they know there's nothing they could've done to prevent it. Are you really trying to suggest that there wouldn't be a bigger impact on the player if they were left with a dead squadmate they were responsible for, wondering what they could've done to avoid that?

 

6) That is it's huge strength and one that you are for some reason blinding yourself to.

 

 

1) It also boils down to your average adult not having the time or energy to produce a viable solution. Again, you want to talk about your ability to prevent conflict. You're 18 years old and decide to spend your life curing cancer, in case you or your loved ones contracts the disease. Instead, your loved one comes down with a completely different disease you weren't expecting. Solve this conflict, feasibly. It's utterly impossible for one tragedy. Now tack on infinite more on top.

 

2) You can't metagame life, so your point fails. In ME2, you meet Thane after diagnosed with a deadly disease, having only one year to live. If you want to play a Shepard who spends his mission curing Thane, go for it. But you're also playing Shepard who isn't solving about a million and one other, higher priority conflicts. All conflicts cannot be simultaneously prevented without also generating (or neglecting) other conflicts. I'm not sure if you actually think such a thing is possible.

 

3) Morally ambiguous as in, no perfect outcomes where the player gets everything. It does not mean the player will not prefer one solution to another. Clearly the topic is worthy of intellectual consideration. People have debated this exact topic since Ancient Greece, to the point of writing books, films, and even games where it's the focus.

 

4) No, I'm simply pointing out the foolishness of your statements. The goal is to provide the player with a probable set of responses to a given situation. Simply saying "herp derp, go back in time!" isn't a solution. As Alan pointed out, you're not playing a sandbox. The game is only going to provide so many responses to a given situation. The only way your solution works (if at all) is for the game to allow the player access to extremely absurd actions or ideas, which don't work within the context of the narrative.

 

Perfect example: ME1, I can't play an omniscient Shepard who magically realizes on the Normandy that he needs to search the Mars Archive for Crucible plans which he doesn't even know exist yet. But that could theoretically meet your criteria of preventing all of ME1's subsequent tragedies. If that's the sort of solution Bioware needs to implement, I think the story is improved as a whole without their existence.

 

5) Well, beyond that Shepard has the ability to express guilt post-Virmire about the entire situation. As stated above, the game's job is to provide a realistic set of responses to a given situation.

 

6) I am completely aware of its strength, hence my Heavy Rain comparisons. I have purposely pointed out that this is not a game's only ability. Hence why I've stated that, just as a game doesn't always need to have good and bad outcomes, it doesn't always need morally ambiguous. The point was that morally ambiguous scenarios have certain advantages completely denied by the existence of good outcomes. The gaming medium can make players feel powerless just as it makes them feel powerful. Games like Half-Life 2 have done this very well and are extremely well-received.

[vallore]

I am completely aware of its strength, hence my Heavy Rain comparisons. I have purposely pointed out that this is not a game's only ability. Hence why I've stated that, just as a game doesn't always need to have good and bad outcomes, it doesn't always need morally ambiguous. The point was that morally ambiguous scenarios have certain advantages completely denied by the existence of good outcomes. The gaming medium can make players feel powerless just as it makes them feel powerful. Games like Half-Life 2 have done this very well and are extremely well-received.

 

Were half-life 2, or Heavy Rain RPGs ?

 

 I ask as I have not played them.

 

In my experience, there is a very fundamental difference between RPGs and other games, or movies, etc. (Concerning player perspective and control). What may work in a story, presented in, say, a movie, (or even in a non-RPG game), my not work that well, (if at all), if the same story is presented as an RPG.

[CronoDragoon]

Everyone has a different definition of what an RPG is. If we take the strict definition then every game is an RPG. If you mean a game where you can make choices that affect the story then Heavy Rain is, Half-Life 2 not so much. Both have pre-made characters as opposed to player-crafted main characters.

[clarkusdarkus]

Havent been here for awhile, But yes i do hate ME3 still, Not for the ending either, As i still only have 1 playthrough, But the game had so many problems.But i suppose hating it is unfair as i dont really hate anything, I guess i was just completely dissappointed in it and how the trilogy fared.

[themikefest]

Were half-life 2, or Heavy Rain RPGs ?

 

 I ask as I have not played them.

 

 

Can't speak for Half-Life 2, but Heavy Rain I enjoyed playing.

[Reorte]

1) It also boils down to your average adult not having the time or energy to produce a viable solution. Again, you want to talk about your ability to prevent conflict. You're 18 years old and decide to spend your life curing cancer, in case you or your loved ones contracts the disease. Instead, your loved one comes down with a completely different disease you weren't expecting. Solve this conflict, feasibly. It's utterly impossible for one tragedy. Now tack on infinite more on top.

Yet there was nothing that prevented you from making different decisions that, if you had known differently, means you could've got better results. Replaying a game though is doing just that. If it's possible I'd like the game to avoid being too hardcoded to be able to do that sort of metagaming (if your example was a game it might choose a random disease every time), but that's hard to pull off convincingly, depending upon the situation. However why then say "We're forcing you to be wrong"?

 

2) You can't metagame life, so your point fails. In ME2, you meet Thane after diagnosed with a deadly disease, having only one year to live. If you want to play a Shepard who spends his mission curing Thane, go for it. But you're also playing Shepard who isn't solving about a million and one other, higher priority conflicts. All conflicts cannot be simultaneously prevented without also generating (or neglecting) other conflicts. I'm not sure if you actually think such a thing is possible.

 

No, my point doesn't fail. If it did it would mean that you could only ever have one playthrough of a game.

 

The Thane example is a constraint due to the starting point of the game; the starting conditions impose some limitations for sure, but that's a world away from defending events that aren't inevitable for those conditions.

 

What evidence do you have that preventing one conflict just means you'll get another? History is full of conflicts that didn't happen, it's usually just hard to identify them. The fact that a lot did happen too doesn't mean that it was always one or the other.

3) Morally ambiguous as in, no perfect outcomes where the player gets everything. It does not mean the player will not prefer one solution to another. Clearly the topic is worthy of intellectual consideration. People have debated this exact topic since Ancient Greece, to the point of writing books, films, and even games where it's the focus.

Are you seriosuly trying to suggest that it's morally ambiguous or perfect?

 

4) No, I'm simply pointing out the foolishness of your statements. The goal is to provide the player with a probable set of responses to a given situation. Simply saying "herp derp, go back in time!" isn't a solution. As Alan pointed out, you're not playing a sandbox. The game is only going to provide so many responses to a given situation. The only way your solution works (if at all) is for the game to allow the player access to extremely absurd actions or ideas, which don't work within the context of the narrative.

 

Perfect example: ME1, I can't play an omniscient Shepard who magically realizes on the Normandy that he needs to search the Mars Archive for Crucible plans which he doesn't even know exist yet. But that could theoretically meet your criteria of preventing all of ME1's subsequent tragedies. If that's the sort of solution Bioware needs to implement, I think the story is improved as a whole without their existence.

I seriously hope you didn't think I meant literally going back in time. If you did, and called my position "foolish"... Replaying the game though is essentially going back in time. Why should events have to turn out the same way?

 

Yes, a probable set. Most of the tragedy resolves in only taking a certain subset of those probable outcomes and just keeping those which give the tragedy the writers want. Even some improbable ones should be there every now and then, to cover equally improbable behaviour by the player (either unbelievably good or unbelievably bad), although clearly it's not worth putting too many resources in to those. Arrival had one for example, the clock could run down, although you need to be a pretty awful player for that to happen without deliberately letting it.

 

Why aren't I playing a sandbox? Is it for any reason other than it's impossible to get the depth for an engaging story and characters out of a sandbox, so numerous tradeoffs against player freedom have been made?

 

Your Mars Archives example illustrates my point - Shepard could've gone to Mars and found the plans. It is a possibility. A very remote one and therefore justifiable in leaving it out but that's not the same as saying "Couldn't ever happen."

6) I am completely aware of its strength, hence my Heavy Rain comparisons. I have purposely pointed out that this is not a game's only ability. Hence why I've stated that, just as a game doesn't always need to have good and bad outcomes, it doesn't always need morally ambiguous. The point was that morally ambiguous scenarios have certain advantages completely denied by the existence of good outcomes. The gaming medium can make players feel powerless just as it makes them feel powerful. Games like Half-Life 2 have done this very well and are extremely well-received.

OK, you're playing a game and have wound up in a situation where you've got to decide between "Not great solution A" and "Not great solution B". You're implying that that becomes worthless if you could've made a different decision about something else earlier in the game to avoid getting into the place you're in now. The simple fact is that you made the earlier choice you did, you're in that place now, you need to think about the choice you're facing now. I don't see how the fact that an unambiguously good outcome might've happened if earlier events had been different denies anything about the current choice.

 

The point you mentioned earlier about probabilities might mean that the chance of making the right choice earlier without metagaming would be so remote as to not be worth implementing of course, although you still need to be very careful about the specifics of the outcomes of what choices you do have if you don't want to get accused of contriving events.

[DesioPL]

I don't hate it anymore. Well i only hate that support for MP was over year ago.

 

I don't mind anylonger about ending, because... We can't do something to fix that, Bioware deciede Bioware did.

[vallore]

Everyone has a different definition of what an RPG is. If we take the strict definition then every game is an RPG. If you mean a game where you can make choices that affect the story then Heavy Rain is, Half-Life 2 not so much. Both have pre-made characters as opposed to player-crafted main characters.

 

Well, while there is plenty of room to discuss what exactly is an RPG, imo it is still a matter of blurry borders: aside a grey area, still some clearly fit into the category, but not everything fits into it.

 

Regardless, and for the sake of clarification, I’m using a rather narrow definition as opposed to a broad one. I’m arbitrarily restricting the term to games that focus in allowing the player to play a role of a fully, (more or less), developed individual, (and not merely a “profession,” say a soldier in battle), and where choice is not merely occasionally present, but is a fundamental part of the experience, (and a necessary tool to achieve this).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I guess the point I was trying to make in the earlier post was that I consider that, if we do consider games that fit the narrow “definition” of RPG, choices that force the player too chose between very similar kinds of “bad” outcome are far more likely to lose impact than those that don’t.

 

For instance, Vermire asks us to decide between a character dying and another surviving or a character dying and another surviving.

 

Sure the impact of a character dying remains as part of the story, but the impact as a choice seems significantly reduced, as no alternative is presented. And if there is no real alternative, is there a real choice? And if it is not, was there even need to present it as a choice?