I mean..
I just finished a DA2 playthrough where my crit-mage hawke (Nightmare with 100 Magic and 60% crit chance) would firestorm/tempest/walking bomb a bunch of enemy mooks and get drenched in their blood as they screamed in agony. It felt satisfying.
If this happened in real life though, I'd probably be beyond traumatized.
If every human being treated the death of any other human being as that of a friend or loved one, we would not be able to function. We would all would be in a constant state of grief because hundreds of thousands of people die everyday.
In video games, if the player were forced to weigh the moral implications of every NPC death in a video game like this, it would impede the flow of the story and the pacing of the game. Of course, you could simply head-cannon these moral choices and choose to kill as little as possible, gimping yourself in the process. Ultimately, people play video games to have fun and escape reality. Moral choices ARE fun, but they have to be implemented carefully and specifically, in my opinion, otherwise those choices will start to lose meaning, and become a drag.
I mean..
I just finished a DA2 playthrough where my crit-mage hawke (Nightmare with 100 Magic and 60% crit chance) would firestorm/tempest/walking bomb a bunch of enemy mooks and get drenched in their blood as they screamed in agony. It felt satisfying.
If this happened in real life though, I'd probably be beyond traumatized.
That's why you need to stop thinking about is as "blood" and instead see it as "XP juice".
Bottom line is this: There's a reason why (most) movies and tv shows don't focus on the paperwork part of being cops. They don't focus on the aftermath of getting into gun battles with criminals on the streets of New York. They don't show the cops having to go in for mandatory counseling and taking their two week unpaid leave after shooting a suspect. Unless that's the PLOT of said movie or tv show.
It's because of escapism. We, the audience, don't give a flying **** about any of the paperwork ****. We want to see John McClane shooting the hell out of some terrorist assholes whilst making pithy oneliners.
"Die Hard 7: McClane Goes to Counseling" would be a terrible ****** movie.
I sure as hell don't want Dragon Age to become a hypocritical, moralisating navel-gazing story like Spec Ops: The Line was. The game forces you to gun down enemies if you want to progress, forces you to push forward, forces you to launch the attack on the civilians, so the entire ''it's all your fault!!'' message is so diluted as to be meaningless, unless the devs expect one to fork over 60$ for a game and then stop playing because pixels are guilt tripping them.
Dishonored or Deus Ex are a bit better, since you actually have a choice as to whenever you kill people or don't. But the entire game is designed with that freedom in mind. Pacifist runs in Dragon Age would be cool, if the game properly supports it. But the game attempting to guilt trip you for playing it? No way in hell.
You said everything I wanted to say but much better.
I had a long(ish) post where I was going to go into the thesis of video game interactivity, and how at this point violence is the best way to engage consumers, but...yea.
Anyway, I see what the OP is getting at and there is actually a game developed by Quantic Dream, the makers of Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls called Indigo Prophesy (or Fahrenheit for non North American audiences) that actively tracked the mental state of your characters. If during the course of the game, their mental state descended too far, they would commit suicide, or otherwise leave the game (or something, it's been forever since I played).
Anyway, basically comes down to, how do you demonstrate the re activity of the world to the PC in a game? I see it as the inverse to the romance issue, as in the better we get at depicted positive emotional content in a game the less we'll have to rely on violence to carry said game.
I think Bioware would have to take a complete 180 degrees in making RPGs and instead make point and click adventure games to make us have empathy on the threat of enemies by having much less enemies in the first place. IE. The Walking Dead.
Or make the game have limited lives like Insane Mode of Witcher 2 where your player life actually matters, and the decisions you make can risk ending the game premptively. Or take a lot of notes from horror games by making us players value survival first rather than bashing every enemy on the head.
That said, the usual Bioware formula won't make it happen. DA:I's plot is giving us three wars to fighting against, and in war, death is common enough that people soon become numbers very quickly.
It sounds like the upcoming Torment: Tides of Numenara may provide something closer to what you're looking for. Apparently there are a limited amount of combat encounters and most of them can be avoided through dialogue.
Bottom line is this: There's a reason why (most) movies and tv shows don't focus on the paperwork part of being cops. They don't focus on the aftermath of getting into gun battles with criminals on the streets of New York. They don't show the cops having to go in for mandatory counseling and taking their two week unpaid leave after shooting a suspect. Unless that's the PLOT of said movie or tv show.
It's because of escapism. We, the audience, don't give a flying **** about any of the paperwork ****. We want to see John McClane shooting the hell out of some terrorist assholes whilst making pithy oneliners.
"Die Hard 7: McClane Goes to Counseling" would be a terrible ****** movie.
Not if McClane's counselor was Robert De Niro or Jack Nicholson...
Wishing violence was handled more...carefully(?)...is a valid concern. This always bugged me in Tomb Raider where Lara has that great horrified moment when she first kills and then proceeds to kill (albeit in self-defense) a TON of random enemies. It was quite jarring.
I think one of the chief limitations is gameplay mechanics - most games focus so much on combat there's little else to do to resolve situations. Don't get me wrong, I think combat is fun, and I enjoy it, but I also wouldn't mind more non-lethal options in battle. Games like inFamous are awesome - we get the fun excitement of combat but with capture options instead of solely killing.
I will say that this game seems big on spacing out encounters so there isn't so much mindless filler content based off what I've seen. I don't know if you've watched any of the Emerald Graves previews, OP, but there was definitely less filler combat, except, maybe, for the Fade rift fights where we fight demons exclusively. In one villa, for instance, there was probably 10 or so enemies in total. Compared to DA:O which would have had waves of enemies in every single room, it would have been at least triple that. They don't all have names or whatever, but still.
You said everything I wanted to say but much better.
To add to what I said; as a role-playing possibility, having the player character or NPCs be affected by how many people they kill and the atrocities they see is perfectly OK, so long as they are options that are well implemented in the game and not too crippling. Yes, in real life PTSD can leave you a human wreck, and I've seen firsthand how grief over the loss of a loved one can almost destroy a person. And a giant axe to the head can kill you instantly with no way to survive or heal, but that also wouldn't make for a very fun game would it? In the same way, psychological damage having an influence on characters could be cool to implement in some way, but if it becomes too crippling you risk just adding annoyance to what is and remains a video game. This is not mean meant to 100% reflect reality, in case the dragons, demons and nugs didn't make that clear enough.
What I absolutely would not stomach is the game unambiguously trying to guilt trip you for actions you are forced to commit (IE playing the damn game). That's just complete trash writing, and I'm pretty certain Bioware will never go that way.
I dont care for the vast majority of humans in the world you think I would care even more for digital ones? Also you are looking from the modern perspective , and Im pretty sure that in older times (were dead and killing was more common) most people wouln´t feel remorse for their actions. And to add in Dragon Age games ... you are fighting people who wants to MURDER you , so you defend yourself , excuse me if I dont feel empathy for people trying to harm my character and kill them before they do that to my party.
I can't agree for the simple fact that these games are entertainment and not meant to emulate or depict real life. If people began to feel bad and terrible for each and every individual they were to kill, the game would not sell very well as many would not buy it. The video game industry is very much like Hollywood. Most of the big box office films are going to have rather simplistic plots where the good guys and bad guys are plain and obvious. You won't have detailed knowledge on every villain, who their families are, how many children they have to support, etc. Try to force too much complexity and moral ambiguity on the audience and you begin changing what was meant to be pure entertainment into something many did not pay to see.
The same applies for games. As you said yourself, BioWare games are for the story and the characters. Anything else is an addition. Given the fact that DAI is also a game, having a fun and entertaining system to go along with it only makes sense. The last thing studios want to do is make their audiences feel bad for playing the game. That's counter-intuitive. The Inquisitor has bigger concerns about trying to save Thedas. The last thing he needs on his mind is worrying about accidentally slaughtering little Timmy's father because he launched him off the side of a cliff.
You're playing a combat-based game. By definition, the combat is a major part of the game. How is it gamey filler?
Do you want every encounter to be a meaningful? The game would be mostly talk and no play.
No thank you.
The way DA and ME do it is fine. You kill a bunch of bad guys, get to the boss, and win.
Feels good.
I like the approach they take in games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Alpha Protocol or Dishonored where you can choose to slaughter without care, you can choose to sneak around enemies or take them down non lethally (knock them out or tranquilize them) and talk your way around certain situations instead of fighting and the game recognizes it. I don't think they could really implement it with the current party based combat system but it would be cool if they did add some of those elements in. There was a part in Mass Effect 1 where you had these tranquilizer grenades you could use on the crazed colonists instead of killing them, stuff like that every so often as well as more chances to avoid combat through diplomacy would be nice.
So you would find a meter that says you can suffer this much more psych trauma before your character goes insane. . . Fun? It's a video game. Video games are meant to be fun. The moment they cease to be is the moment playing it becomes pointless. Game designers have to think about all these things.
Something that 99% of the industry is guilty of is the "Gamey" portrayal of the violence that the Player character engages in throughout the game & Bioware are no exception.
In Kotor it was faceless Storm troopers, droids & Sith.
In Mass effect it was faceless Cerberus goons, mercenaries, mecs & Reaper monsters
And In Dragon Age so far it has been Mindless Dark spawn, Faceless Bandits/templars/mages, a couple of random Dragons & now we have a plot that revolves around stopping Unanimously Evil Demons from Destroying the world.
Notice how the enemies in these games are not really all that sympathetic or morally complex. They are either Evil Monsters or Evil Faceless goons. So you as the player can feel 100% morally justified in mowing them down & having a body count high enough to fill a cemetery just 4 hours in.
The thing that absolutely drives me up the wall though is that Violence or death only matters in cut scenes & only when a main character is involved.
Hawke & friends kill about 400 people in game play, Lol who cares. Characters joke about it.
Hawke's mom dies, OMG THE FEEL'S!
Shepard Commits genocide & has a body count over 350'000. "What, you think I didn't feel bad? What ever bro party at my apartment YEAH!!!"
Shepard looses one team mate, OMG THE FEEL'S!
See the pattern here?
Literally NO ONE GIVES A SINGLE FLYING **** about the Violence that happens in gameplay. Hell you could it cut out & the Story would progress the same. It's practically filler content. Just Busy work for the player.
At least there is the Roleplaying mechanics (AKA the only relevant part) of the game to engage in MEANINGFULLY but the rest feels like its there just to be filler "Gamey" content.
The only relevance the violence has is "Kill the Bad Guys & gain points to progress the plot. Also its Fun!"
Nothing is strictly wrong with that approach but if your game is trying to be taken seriously, Mass Murder committed by the player should not be casually dismissed.
I know its a war game but Can we have the insane amount violence the player character commits actually affect them & their companions? I'm sure killing HUNDREDS of people MIGHT cause some psychological trauma.
We know that the carefully constructed moral Choices that we select form a list will affect the characters but the in game violence should as well.
Thoughts?
One idea would be to have randomly generated faces and names for all mooks and a stats page with a list of the names and ages of everyone you've killed so far.
A very long list.
Maybe you can even find dropped journals among the dead bodies,maybe some of the soldiers you kill were coerced,or joined in order to feed their family,or for the education,maybe they had aspirations and were reluctant to go out into the field.
Maybe the journal outlines their numerous attempts at avoiding combat.
*shrugs* just a few ideas
Anyway you probably won't get what you want in this game.
Sorry, war.
Soldiers kill. Sadly it's what they do. And while they can distance themselves from the enemy (to an extent), they can't distance themselves from their friends and comrades-in-arms. So yes, when a friend dies on the battlefield its 'FEEL'S', but when an enemy does, it's not. If soldiers felt empathy for every single enemy, they would not be able to kill. This is the way every single military conflict works. The death toll has to become abstract for soldiers, and even more so for commanders who don't necessarily even step on the battlefield.
The characters you play in every single ME/KOTOR and DA games are professional soldiers (either by trade like Shepard) or by the necessity. They literally have tokill to survive and learn to distance themselves from empathizing with enemies.
Do I think it's a good thing? No, I'd prefer life with no violence and conflict. But do the games give (semi)-accurate description of the battlefield antics? Yes they do. In DAO you only get to know the point of view of Loghain in detail, and suddenly, he can be sympathized with.
I would think that picking up something like Grim Fandango or some other similar classic would be more towards what you are looking for. But those are really not the games Bioware is known for.
"When you live by a code that compels you to harsh action, you learn the dangers of curiosity. If I must kill a man because he has done wrong, do I really wish to know that he is a devoted father?" (Samara, ME2)
A guy called Nyeredzi made threads about good plot enemies
Why are you posting about yourself in the third person?
I don't want it to be realistic. A person dying is a horrible thing to see.
I know its a war game but Can we have the insane amount violence the player character commits actually affect them & their companions? I'm sure killing HUNDREDS of people MIGHT cause some psychological trauma.
We know that the carefully constructed moral Choices that we select form a list will affect the characters but the in game violence should as well.
Thoughts?
First you start talking about taking away the violence... next to go is the sex.
.........
NO THANKS
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