Well it's whichever options nets you the most exp.Skyrim is honestly almost Super Mario, I mean what are the differences between joining the Thief's guild, attacking the thief's guild, killing all the guards in Riften,. doing half the quests, then killing all the thieves, as a Dark Elf? Or doing the same thing as a nord?
Well nothing.
I was thinking about this in the context of The Witcher, but also something like Shadow of the Colossus (um spoilers) has pretty good ambiguity, your girlfriend is dead, so you basically violate every sacred law and slowly destroy your body in the vain hope it'll save her, but you end up resurrecting an ancient demon god anyway who is killed by the people trying to protect the land and the guardians you are basically ripping apart the whole land.
There's no choice in anything, the protagonist, the order in which you kill bosses, but it seems to me the story inherently possesses more kind of gray area, no matter how many 'choices' Skyrim offers. I think a similar logic applies to something like DA:I, you can either A) Join the Inquisition, gather companions, kill the big bad boss 
Join the Inquisition, gather companions, kill the big bad boss, or C) Join the inquisition, gather companions, kill the big bad boss.
We can be similarly reductive about any game. The Witcher 2 ultimately has you find the guy who killed the king. That's it. Everything else is about the journey to that point, and for some people (myself included) character creation is as intrinsic and vital a part of that journey as whether to side with faction x or faction y.
I would say creating your own kind of character is interesting and fun but to be honest I do that a lot in something like Second Life or a free to play MMO where it's like the whole point. If I want to experience something exciting and be invited into a dramatic new world I want the people making the game to be have strong opinions and feelings about where things should end up going in the end.
I think that I'm kind of just repeating the same thing, but I kind of get the idea of making your own character, I just kind of feel like that's a separate thing.
You feel like it is yes, and that's fine, and there are game,s, plenty of them both within and outside the RPG genre that don't include character creation. But plenty of us don't see it as a separate process at all - it's part of the role-playing experience, and without which that experience is less rich, regardless of whether the narrative is more 'personal'. Surely it's good for games that cater to both tastes?
I don't know I think the Roche/Iorveth decisions was a pretty big difference. Geralt is either loyal to his original association, or considerably more willing to be rebellious and break the rules and boundaries. Plus, I mean, I don't think "no personality" is the solution to not liking someone, DA:O and DA:I PCs are a blank slate basically.
I could say the same about the Inquisitor. My Trevelyan sided with the mages because she wanted to see the world become something new and more free. My Lavellan sided with the Templars because she didn't trust Fiona to do the right thing and is somewhat ambivalent about magic. I've got others, whose motivations and personalities are different still - and I get to roleplay all of them, because of this 'blank slate'. My imagination fills in those blanks, and that imaginative process is a massive part of role-playing for me. When can my imagination come into play as Geralt? Hardly ever due to his being so pre-defined, which is partly why I find him so boring. Honestly (and without wishing offence) I tend to think that people who dislike 'blank slate' characters don't have a very vivid imagination, perhaps, and need more pre-definition for the character to come to life. But for people who do have a vivid imagination, such pre-definition is nothng but restrictive and unnecessary.
You know another thing is how infrequently people play those other options, most people play Nord or human or something like that anyway. A lot of the time they also play like mage or warrior or something...
I mean more than 50% of the people in WoW play Blood Elves, Humans, or Night Elves.
Less than 30% of people typically finish games at all, especially long ones, so what? Should devs only make 10 hour long games? CRPGs are a pretty niche market to begin with, they have nowhere near the popularity of GTA or COD, for example. Following the 'majority rules' logic CRPGs should stop existing as a genre altogether ...
I would agree that games like Morrowind, and Baldur's Gate 2, and MotB, etc, have your own character created as well as pretty interesting worlds to play with them, but I think the problem is one being sacrificed for the other.
But I've given you a (not exhaustive) list where narrative quality has not been sacrificed for the sake of pretty worlds/character customisation. And even where there is a trade-off, (and yes, I agree that the more heavily defined a character, the more personal a narrative can be told) there are plenty (like myself) who find the trade-off not only acceptable, but preferable. Skyrim is one of the most popular CRPGs ever released, Fallout 3 also extremely successful. Neither have outstanding narratives, but both offer customisation and open world, so clearly those things have appeal.
So, we have games like Skyrim which offer very open worlds and tons of customisation, games like TW which offer less customisation abd a very tight narrative, and games like the ones Bioware does which offer an experience that occupies the middle ground (my favourite). Surely it's good for all of us to have games that offer what we want? I think we'd both be pretty bored if each other's preference was the only thing on the table 
Retour en haut
), but from what i've read and seen in many reviews, they say the "open-world" is only alive if you stick to following the quests handed out to you. If you go offtrack to explore à lá Skyrim, all you get is vistas and the ocasional treasure. Which one is true then? 
why cant people just enjoy both games and appreciate them for what they are? Cause in the end, during a "RPG Titans War" who wins are the players, we! Cause we get great titles and we can certainly enjoy them all.... And going on praising one while bashing the other makes no sense at all, its like having 2 toys and destroying one of them cause you like the other better, instead of keeping and playing with both whenever you want...
