14 réponses à ce sujet

[Karlone123]

(CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SPEC OPS: THE LINE!)

 

What I mean by the title is, Spec Ops: The line has a very morally complexed narrative where the "heroes" of the game may not be doing anything morally good. The heroes and the bad guys are almost impossible to tell apart. I have been reading an article on this.

http://www.polygon.c...ec-ops-the-line

 

"Konrad comes to rescue these people [in Dubai] because he wants to be a good person. He wants to be a hero and again the sands and the desert turn it back on him and it changes him and it breaks him in a way. And then you have Walker come in following Konrad's footsteps trying to do something good, trying to be the hero."

 

Casey Hudson prior to Mass Effect 3 release, said in an article (which I could not locate), that we would never play the role of the bad guy in Mass Effect. Either he means while playing as Shepard or in general. I found this to be quite disappointing as thrusting the player into a "rogue" character role could open up new areas to telling stories outside of the "hero's journey". Less of the hero vs bad guy and more of a moral ambigious situation where it can be hard to justify the player's actions to the point of the player being the villain in retrospect.

 

It would also come with fighting an enemy who can feel like an actual person (who isn't controlled by a higher power), the enemy has their own ideals and morals who believes what they are doing is right as the player does the same. The protagonist mental state should also be open to interpretation as the character faces choices that could deepy affect them having the player question the choices they have made as being the right one.

[SporkFu]

To my mind big-ass reaper invasions don't allow for a great deal of moral ambiguity. Not saying there is none, because both the Rannoch and tuchanka arcs offer opportunities ... From a role-playing POV anyway. Reducing the consequences to war asset numbers kinda lessens the impact.

[Karlone123]

To my mind big-ass reaper invasions don't allow for a great deal of moral ambiguity. Not saying there is none, because both the Rannoch and tuchanka arcs offer opportunities ... From a role-playing POV anyway. Reducing the consequences to war asset numbers kinda lessens the impact.

 

Which makes me think now that we hopefully will not fight Reapers anymore, a more "human" enemy can be introduced that can bring in moral implications. And I do hope the war asset system does not make a return.

[Excella Gionne]

This kind of sounds like those movies where the protagonist thinks he/she's doing the right thing until he/she learns they've been working for wrong people, and then they join the side that they were fighting. Sounds familiar enough. 

 

Well, for something like this to work, the antagonist(s) must have a set of morals and ethics that are generally acceptable to the player and to the universe. Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Rogue is an example of playing a character that fights alongside with the enemy as opposed to the character fighting along side the "good people" of the series. The game should give a clear example of why the Templars are not as bad as they're assumed to be.

[KaiserShep]

This kind of sounds like those movies where the protagonist thinks he/she's doing the right thing until he/she learns they've been working for wrong people, and then they join the side that they were fighting. Sounds familiar enough. 

 

It's fairly common, but I admit that I kind of enjoy it. Oblivion is the most recent film I can recall that does this.

[ImaginaryMatter]

This kind of sounds like those movies where the protagonist thinks he/she's doing the right thing until he/she learns they've been working for wrong people, and then they join the side that they were fighting. Sounds familiar enough. 

 

Well, for something like this to work, the antagonist(s) must have a set of morals and ethics that are generally acceptable to the player and to the universe. Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed: Rogue is an example of playing a character that fights alongside with the enemy as opposed to the character fighting along side the "good people" of the series. The game should give a clear example of why the Templars are not as bad as they're assumed to be.

 

Spec Ops is largely a commentary on AAA shooters (broshooters). It's basically an exploration (or condemnation) of the moral absolutism in those games; where the main characters can mow through hundreds, if not thousands of "bad guys" with no repercussions or consequence, all while still being the "hero". The point is there are no clear bad guys (except for maybe the player character) and there are definitely no good guys, it's just a moral quagmire, and...

 

you should go play the game. Seriously. It may not be an enjoyable game (arguably that may be the point), but it is a deep one and it does make you think.

 

...must resist urge to.. drone on... about game.

[Iakus]

 

Casey Hudson prior to Mass Effect 3 release, said in an article (which I could not locate), that we would never play the role of the bad guy in Mass Effect. Either he means while playing as Shepard or in general. I found this to be quite disappointing as thrusting the player into a "rogue" character role could open up new areas to telling stories outside of the "hero's journey". Less of the hero vs bad guy and more of a moral ambigious situation where it can be hard to justify the player's actions to the point of the player being the villain in retrospect.

 

It would also come with fighting an enemy who can feel like an actual person (who isn't controlled by a higher power), the enemy has their own ideals and morals who believes what they are doing is right as the player does the same. The protagonist mental state should also be open to interpretation as the character faces choices that could deepy affect them having the player question the choices they have made as being the right one.

Yeah well, by the end of ME3 I feel like I'm playing the bad guy no matter what I do. What Shepard fought for and believed in ultimately meant nothing.

[Karlone123]

Spec Ops is largely a commentary on AAA shooters (broshooters). It's basically an exploration (or condemnation) of the moral absolutism in those games; where the main characters can mow through hundreds, if not thousands of "bad guys" with no repercussions or consequence, all while still being the "hero". The point is there are no clear bad guys (except for maybe the player character) and there are definitely no good guys, it's just a moral quagmire, and...

 

you should go play the game. Seriously. It may not be an enjoyable game (arguably that may be the point), but it is a deep one and it does make you think.

 

...must resist urge to.. drone on... about game.

 

Mass Effect can be one of those games that can be deep and make you think, I'd like to see it take some inspiration from Spec Ops.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Mass Effect can be one of those games that can be deep and make you think, I'd like to see it take some inspiration from Spec Ops.

 

It does have those moments, the end of Legion's LM comes to mind; although it would be interesting to see the entire main story arc strongly revolve around a single theme.

[von uber]

Highly relevant:

[KaiserShep]

Yeah well, by the end of ME3 I feel like I'm playing the bad guy no matter what I do. What Shepard fought for and believed in ultimately meant nothing.

 

In principle, I'm not really opposed to this sort of thing. In fact, I can find it rather satisfying to do something horrible to save civilization as I know it. It's just the execution that could use a lot of work.

[AlanC9]

Yeah well, by the end of ME3 I feel like I'm playing the bad guy no matter what I do. What Shepard fought for and believed in ultimately meant nothing.

So the proposed feature has already been delivered, eh?

[Jorji Costava]

I actually didn't love Spec Ops: The Line the way a lot of people seemed to. The whole conceit of holding the player complicit for the mere act of playing the game just seems like a non-starter to me; to borrow a phrasing from The Wire's Bodie Broadus, you could even call it contrapment. Spec Ops needs some big time railroading of the player avatar in order to generate its moral quandaries regarding the relative moral virtue of its protagonist (i.e. the white phosphorus sequence, etc.). That's not necessarily the way to go in a game that is ostensibly an RPG.

I think a better approach would be to just move away from galaxy-shaping decisions and wars of extinction towards smaller-scale stories. The Reaper motivations, for instance, were pretty clearly constructed as a way of getting the player to oppose them no matter how sociopathic one's playing style, and it's this element of the story that pretty much forces you to be the 'hero.' Without the presence of that existential threat to everything, there's no narrative justification for forcing the player's hand to be either 'good' or 'bad.' Plus, if you want to deal with morality and politics in a more 'grown up' way, it just seems better to treat the major social and political conflicts of the game world as things that can't be solved by the willpower and charisma of one person.

[ImaginaryMatter]

I actually didn't love Spec Ops: The Line the way a lot of people seemed to. The whole conceit of holding the player complicit for the mere act of playing the game just seems like a non-starter to me; to borrow a phrasing from The Wire's Bodie Broadus, you could even call it contrapment. Spec Ops needs some big time railroading of the player avatar in order to generate its moral quandaries regarding the relative moral virtue of its protagonist (i.e. the white phosphorus sequence, etc.). That's not necessarily the way to go in a game that is ostensibly an RPG.

I think a better approach would be to just move away from galaxy-shaping decisions and wars of extinction towards smaller-scale stories. The Reaper motivations, for instance, were pretty clearly constructed as a way of getting the player to oppose them no matter how sociopathic one's playing style, and it's this element of the story that pretty much forces you to be the 'hero.' Without the presence of that existential threat to everything, there's no narrative justification for forcing the player's hand to be either 'good' or 'bad.' Plus, if you want to deal with morality and politics in a more 'grown up' way, it just seems better to treat the major social and political conflicts of the game world as things that can't be solved by the willpower and charisma of one person.

 

I think everyone who plays the game shouts at the white phosphorus scene for being unfair, which it is (although putting down the controller is an option); but the game is a critique of the bro-shooter genre and since the overhead bombardment thing is a trope in those games it sort of has to be there. Although, ya, a story like Specs Ops wouldn't work in a space opera setting that has frequent dialogue prompts. However, I do think the context sensitive choices would be a cool implementation, like instead of choosing [Kill him] on the dialogue wheel you can just open fire on the guy during TPS mode without pressing A to talk.

 

Yes, a little less Charm/Intimidate-your-way-out-of-choices-card would be nice. Smaller scale would be nice. I think what they should avoid any large scale decisions, it's not like these can't be bad (Legion LM mission) but I think they are easier to screw up and can be bogged down in contrivances.

[Iakus]

So the proposed feature has already been delivered, eh?

 

I haven't played Spec Ops: The Line so I can't compare the two, but yeah, sounds like it.

 

Of course, I never got the impression that Mass Effect was supposed to be a deconstruction of anything