From a game design standpoint [including business factors] it's probably best to keep choices important in a "local" sense [FYI: in one game] without them having substantial impact on the overall story and how it progresses.
NOTE: I would have loved major logical [real] branches in a game but I'm not 100% convinced there would be enough short & long term ROI on such a decision 
Boy would I be HAPPY to be proven wrong some day!!
No game has ever made me wish I had never heard of the franchise like ME3's ending.
Yet here you are, two years later, still very active in the community talking every day about how much you hate it.
From a game design standpoint [including business factors] it's probably best to keep choices important in a "local" sense [FYI: in one game] without them having substantial impact on the overall story and how it progresses.
NOTE: I would have loved major logical [real] branches in a game but I'm not 100% convinced there would be enough short & long term ROI on such a decision
Personally I think we're at least a decade away from seeing anything that robust in an big AAA title.
Also to the hate getting tossed at Mass Effect's "import choices" - no, it wasn't perfect but its still a step in the right direction and, imo, revolutionary. You crawl before you walk. It's the only game I've played, personally, where a single character and multiple decisions carries over throughout multiple games. It's earned some respect for that, imo.
That's the problem with choices across games and save imports. They can't make our choices matter too much because too much divergence will make it impossible to continue the game. If they continue with this process, I'd get used to your decisions having minimal impact.
That's true, however maybe they should handle them differently. Idk maybe do it like TellTale does with their games. For ex if you complete one of their episodes(like say TWD or Wolf Among Us), at the end of the episode it shows you what percentage of players made so and so choice.
@Valmar: I think BW both earned and lost respect when it comes to the element of choice. While I absolutely LOVE the concept of creating a series of games whose universes are effected by choice I believe the lack of planning [and respect for player choices] has soured my experience. Honestly it's not HARD to design in [illusion of] choice over the course of three games if you believe in what you're doing AND you're smart about it.
In their last couple of games [ME3 & DA:I] I don't see the level of respect for choice that I came to expect. Leliana, plenty of ME3 examples, etc. basically just showed us that allowing choice just wasn't that high of a priority in the design & implementation of the games. When the devs allowed choices that got in the way of how they later decided they wanted to tell the story they just opted to ignore the complicating choice.
While seemingly ignoring choice once or twice would be forgivable the simple "fact" [well my opinion] is that a pattern of ignoring player choice has developed and I'm not willing to give BW a pass on it.
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Devil's Advocate: I believe you're right about one thing but may not have stated it in the manner you desired. I don't think that technology is our problem but it's how games are developed that's the problem. As far as I can tell even connected games are developed one at a time and [mostly] in isolation from each other with too little thought how the game you're making NOW will impact what needs to be done later.
What we need is a paradigm shift similar to how Peter Jackson made some of the Middle-Earth movies. To simplify my argument we need to make a series of games "all at once" so-to-speak so we can iron-out problems in one game before they make it "impossible" for the followup game(s) to build upon.
I will also give you the BW should ABSOLUTELY be given props for trying to do choice right. That was super important and was revolutionary in terms of setting expectations for what I want to see out of future series of games.
Only "ending we never got" I can think of was the dark energy outline, but it never made it through development and the writer change.
Otherwise, the game had an ending. You, me, or whoever might not like it, but it had an ending and there wasn't any other lost ending for them to produce.
Devil's Advocate: I believe you're right about one thing but may not have stated it in the manner you desired. I don't think that technology is our problem but it's how games are developed that's the problem. As far as I can tell even connected games are developed one at a time and [mostly] in isolation from each other with too little thought how the game you're making NOW will impact what needs to be done later.
I agree. Though its an understandable problem - even with Mass Effect. I mean it is asking a lot for someone to plot out an entire series with all these deep interconnecting elements and changes for a game that may not even take off. What if the first Mass Effect totally bombed? What if it was regarded as one of the worst games in history? What if all ME3 ending hate was instead "man I hated Mass Effect, what a **** game!"
In hindsight its easy to say it would work with Mass Effect but we see how hugely successful and popular the series is. Even people who do nothing but whine about it have to admit that - they wouldn't spend two years whining if they didn't love something about it. If you have no idea rather or not your game is going to be a hit-or-miss I can see why you'd want to hold off on making these huge scripts to a trilogy. One could even say it is arrogant because you're assuming right off the bat that your game will managed to survive long enough to tell the full story.
So I can understand why they tend to individualize it and see what way the rock rolls rather than make a huge commitment from the start, as it were.
I don't know much about Middle-Earth as I'm not really a fan of the movies but, from my understanding, isn't it roughly based off a old novel series? So it isn't exactly the same thing. There was already a base ground to assume it would be popular. It wasn't an entirely new IP, which Mass Effect was.
"The core of any Reaper is constructed in the image of the species that was harvested to create it, while the exterior follows a standardized design that is most efficient for their purpose."
Harvesting is a even bigger story plot element in ME3 then it is in ME2.
Incorrect. The motives provided in ME2 are very much in-line with their motives in Mass Effect 3.
The point still stands that there was more to the story of "why" only humans were being harvested and not any other species in the cycle. Was it because they felt that humans were more of a threat considering it was humans that destroyed Sovereign, or was it because of what Mordin said about humans being more diverse than any other species?
The point still stands that there was more to the story of "why" only humans were being harvested and not any other species in the cycle. Was it because they felt that humans were more of a threat considering it was humans that destroyed Sovereign, or was it because of what Mordin said about humans being more diverse than any other species?
Yes, there is more to the story. Which was revealed to us in ME3. The story was that humans are not the only ones being targeted, all advanced life is harvested. Yet only one race will be harvested into the form of a Capital reaper ship. The species of our cycle that earned that prestigious honor was humans.
@Valmar: I agree with your what you say but I'm still personally convinced that if you don't pre-plan out the whole series and EXACTLY how the interconnecting pieces are going to mesh together to tell the story you want to tell [or allow the player the illusion of creating their own story] then you're going to wind up with a result that's not nearly as satisfying.
The potential good thing about my idea is once you lay the technical groundwork [like getting a video, physics, and combat engine for example] you shouldn't really focus on tweaks to that while you're producing your other games. You can focus on just creating appropriate art, maps, etc. to implement the story you've already laid out. So while there are risks once you come out with the first game even if it "bombs" the follow up games can be made with significantly less cost than would otherwise be expected or even normal for the industry.
While the initial investment Is higher you might get away with lower overall costs for the trilogy so if the company is willing to take a risk then there's at least a chance.
Granted it will take serious stones to commit to this sort of thing up front but once it's done I think we could have a new model for the way to do things in the future.
@Valmar: I agree with your what you say but I'm still personally convinced that if you don't pre-plan out the whole series and EXACTLY how the interconnecting pieces are going to mesh together to tell the story you want to tell [or allow the player the illusion of creating their own story] then you're going to wind up with a result that's not nearly as satisfying.
Well, yeah, something that is explicitly and meticulously planned out from the start is going to be more satisfying then something that is working off only a general basic idea. That doesn't mean approaching the topic even 'lightly' isn't worthwhile, though. Mass Effect may not be perfect in its story incorporating player choice but at least it does it at all. I wish it was a more popular theme. The more attention it gets the sooner the crawl can turn to a walk.
Though given the amount of hate this approach tends to get I can see why companies might be hesitant to even try. There is literally no satisfying some people. You give a taste of choice and instead of getting responses like "This is an awesome concept, please focus more on it!" we mostly see waves upon waves of seething hatred complaining that what we got wasn't good enough to their high standards - high standards for a genre that barely even exists.
Point is, so many people spend all their time ridiculing the choices we do have that they tend to take for granted the fact that we have choice at all. Most games are completely linear and give the player no control over the direction the story goes in anyway. We should be celebrating that Bioware make and effort to break tradition rather than spit and hiss at how much it doesn't do. That being said... I'm still not going to forgive them for all their damn lying and false advertising. I'll be bitter to the end about that.
Well, yeah, something that is explicitly and meticulously planned out from the start is going to be more satisfying then something that is working off only a general basic idea. That doesn't mean approaching the topic even 'lightly' isn't worthwhile, though. Mass Effect may not be perfect in its story incorporating player choice but at least it does it at all. I wish it was a more popular theme. The more attention it gets the sooner the crawl can turn to a walk.
Though given the amount of hate this approach tends to get I can see why companies might be hesitant to even try. There is literally no satisfying some people. You give a taste of choice and instead of getting responses like "This is an awesome concept, please focus more on it!" we mostly see waves upon waves of seething hatred complaining that what we got wasn't good enough to their high standards - high standards for a genre that barely even exists.
Point is, so many people spend all their time ridiculing the choices we do have that they tend to take for granted the fact that we have choice at all. Most games are completely linear and give the player no control over the direction the story goes in anyway. We should be celebrating that Bioware make and effort to break tradition rather than spit and hiss at how much it doesn't do. That being said... I'm still not going to forgive them for all their damn lying and false advertising. I'll be bitter to the end about that.
There are a lot of games that implement player choice, so much so that I think it's starting to become a somewhat overrated concept. We even have games that have discussions about choice in games. In 2012 alone we had Spec Ops: The Line, Hotline Miami, and Far Cry 3 (sort of).
There are a lot of games that implement player choice, so much so that I think it's starting to become a somewhat overrated concept. We even have games that have discussions about choice in games. In 2012 alone we had Spec Ops: The Line, Hotline Miami, and Far Cry 3 (sort of).
One, those games you used as an examples, best of my knowledge, released after the Mass Effect trilogy.
Two, I haven't played Hotline but I have played Spec Ops (great game, actually) and Far Cry 3 and, at least in my games, there was no choices being ported over from past titles. Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3 ported over your decisions and choices for each game into each title. Not many titles have done that, that I know of. Dragon Age I /think/ does something similar (only played DA2) and the Walking Dead series. It's a rather ambitious goal to have a series of games where your actions and choices carry over throughout. Mass Effect even incorporates the lore of the novels and, to a lesser degree, the portable iPhone games.
One, those games you used as an examples, best of my knowledge, released after the Mass Effect trilogy.
Two, I haven't played Hotline but I have played Spec Ops (great game, actually) and Far Cry 3 and, at least in my games, there was no choices being ported over from past titles. Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3 ported over your decisions and choices for each game into each title. Not many titles have done that, that I know of. Dragon Age I /think/ does something similar (only played DA2) and the Walking Dead series. It's a rather ambitious goal to have a series of games where your actions and choices carry over throughout. Mass Effect even incorporates the lore of the novels and, to a lesser degree, the portable iPhone games.
Ambitious it may be but I don't think it's necessarily a good thing for games. I think it puts so many constraints on developers that you either have to narrow down choices at the end of a game (like the The Walking Dead: Season One) or you have a bunch of railroady contrivances (like ME2&3), either of which undermine the exact purpose of importing a save state. In it's ideal state I would love to have, I just think that practically realizing that ideal is futile for now and doing so is ultimately going to damage the final project. At least for me my favorite parts of ME2, ME3, and DAII (haven't played DA:I yet) are those that are least affected by save state imports and have a certain amount of freedom to them.
As for the games I listed last I meant games that had some form of meta-commentary on choices in games.
I hear ya. The road won't be smooth but it has to begin somewhere. It's unreasonable to assume that they'll just perfect it instantly without any trail and error. At least games like Mass Effect got the ball rolling. I'm sure we all agree to wanting to see that 'ideal state' where everything flows naturally and we see huge intricate stories encompassing our choices. That isn't going to just come out of nowhere, though. Again, to reuse the metaphor, we have to crawl before we can walk. The process will be refined in the process. Improve, grow. Who knows, if it gets enough attention we may one day see an entirely new form of game writers who specialize in complex branching storylines.
As for the games I listed last I meant games that had some form of meta-commentary on choices in games.
Even in that context they still were released after ME3. My point was that there wasn't any standard to really base the game upon at the time. Still isn't much if you took in terms of having choices carry over throughout multiple titles in a series.
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