5 réponses à ce sujet

[zuluthrone]

First I need to say that playing mass effect was one of the most satisfying role playing experiences I've had. Typically in rpgs I would project myself onto the character, but here the vast choices let me step back and be a sort of proxy dungeon master to craft the kind of Shepard I wanted to see with his/her own agency and attitude that I felt would be interesting. It made me feel like a cowriter of the game, and I thank Bioware for such a unique and empowering experience.

I do have a gripe with the influence of the morality system. It bugs me that playing primarily as a paragon/renegade had very little impact on the missions and conversations beyond a charm/intimidate option. It also bugs me that Shepard's reputation was built more on the choice of origin story rather than how you'd acted so far in the game. Stop me, though, if you remember it differently. It has been a while since I last played. 

Judging from comments in these forums, it seems that players feel the need to be polarized in their choices, creating a pure renegade or pure paragon Shepard, but I think this kind of gameplay should be punished when taking the role of an epic hero. The best character stories tell of how their world view is challenged and how they are rewarded and punished for remaining steadfast or considering alternatives.

Consider the hardened bad ass who comes across a band of children desperately in need of a hero, or the former idealist who traded his humanity for power but gives a final moment of self sacrifice in penance for his sins. These kind of moments deserve more than a small blip of additional red or blue on the character profile page.

With the new settings and questionable status, Shepard may have an opportunity to travel as an unknown to some of the more backwoods planets. There he could need to develop a reputation with the locals before they warm up to him and reveal their mysteries. (I know this kind of stuff has is implemented in missions frequently, like "i won't help you unless you take care of this," i'm just proposing it be a subset of both a global and local reputation) This also works if the locals already heard stories of Shepard as a paragon, needing him to destroy that in order to infiltrate a less reputable organization and eventually bring it down from the inside.

Finally, players are already going through 3+ play-throughs in order to experience different dialog and situations. Perhaps it's safe to keep a lot more missions locked based purely on interactions, with bonuses for the kinds of dramatic character changes i mentioned above.

Of course, all what I've described may be the entire point of the sequel, and I convulse in excited anticipation for the second act. I also realize that some of what I've proposed is a massive pain for the writers who need to have material ready for every morality and reputation alignment and for the gamers who would get lost in all the the statistics shuffling and not knowing how or when it was possible to double cross or have a change of heart. I just believe that Shepard has the potential to rival Ender Wiggin, Anakin Skywalker, or any other awesome comic book, scifi, or fantasy hero or villain.

[Willowhugger]

I think it's important to remember that Shepard is already famous at the start of the game.  At this point, it's sunk in who the "Butcher of Torfan" is, who "The Survivor at Akuze" was, and so on.  The media has done a good job.  By the middle of the game, you're equally famous for Eden Prime and being the First Human Spectre.

The rest of the stuff probably hasn't been advertised yet, like if you slaughtered the Feros colony.

[Devos]

zuluthrone wrote...

Judging from comments in these forums, it seems that players feel the need to be polarized in their choices, creating a pure renegade or pure paragon Shepard, but I think this kind of gameplay should be punished when taking the role of an epic hero. The best character stories tell of how their world view is challenged and how they are rewarded and punished for remaining steadfast or considering alternatives.

I don't think this is really true of most people and the habit of certain forumites on the old board to label people as one or the other as soon as they showed an opinion on any decision really rubbed me the wrong way.

Something that did bug me was the idea intimidate is renegade and charm is paragon when you can use both to achieve the same objective. There were a few options that did nice job of decoupling the speech skills from morality. For example you don't get paragon points for extracting more money for completing tasks by using charm, or in BDTS if you use intimidate to convince Charn that is still paragon. Even on my uber paragon characters I use a fair few intimidate options, for example on the warehouse workers during Chora's Den or convincing Jeong to stand down. It seems really strange to me that any option that convinces Jeong to stand down should be more renegade than just shooting him. So I think it would have been neat if there were more out right renegade abuses of charm and paragon uses of intimidate.

[RyuKazuha]

I also felt it was not about "what has my char to do, to become paragon" but, "oh well, how would my char react based on his experiences. It was never the point to me, if I get paragon points or not.

I felt it was more like the bars showed me, how my actual actions where perceived, regardless of want my intentions had been.

A "hero of justice" may choose to kill balak to prevent further damage, thus gaining renegade points, despite of his high virtues. A more "darksided" Char may let go off balak, in hope of better rewards if he frees the hostages, thus gaining paragonratings despite of his morally questionable reasons.

And the End of the game, you may be seen as a paragon, whilst having chosen to free the rachni queen or the saving of the council in hope for personal gain, or be regarded a renegade, while actually being driven by altruistic reasons.

[Enoch VG]

This is why I dislike the system that ties your character's dialogue effectiveness into their P/R points. It clouds roleplaying decisions with meta-gaming character maximization concerns-- the player feels less free to respond as he or she choses when (s)he knows that future Charm/Intimidate checks will depend on maxing out one or the other of Paragon or Renegade points.

[kaff33nd]

Yes. The only reason for me to max out either Paragon or Renegade is to sway Wrex on Virmire - were it not for that I could play the whole game with 0 to either P or R. I like being a Paragon, but to the 'bad guys' I LOVE renegade! But the default John Shepard is meant to be pretty neutral I think. I mean, if you just choose the first (center/neutral) dialogue option given, without extra dialogue, the game finishes pretty much the same way. Pity there's no visual cue to the player's 'alignment' like in Jade Empire or KoTOR. Would be cool to have a blue aura or red glowing eyes (if unrealistic).