2503 réponses à ce sujet

[Hanako Ikezawa]

...is anyone?

For some, anyway. 

[Pasquale1234]

@ Hiemoth: There are ways to offer different combinations.

In ME1, we were cutscened into the comm room after some of the main quests, which was a great opportunity for squaddies to share their reactions to events. Ditto ME2, and the LMs in ME2 were stages for characters to share a lot about their backgrounds and what not - and they were separate from the individual conversations you could have with them on the Normandy.

But generally speaking, I need to be an active participant in creating the story. I really detest the enforced pacing in ME3, where they pile cutscene on top of cutscene on top of cutscene for some fairly lengthy segments during which they took complete control of Shepard and the way the story would unfold. No matter how many times you play through ME3, the exact same sequence of events will play out in the exact same order - the only variance is a few alternate dialogues, a few outcomes, and whether some sidequests were completed.

[Hiemoth]

@ Hiemoth: There are ways to offer different combinations.

In ME1, we were cutscened into the comm room after some of the main quests, which was a great opportunity for squaddies to share their reactions to events. Ditto ME2, and the LMs in ME2 were stages for characters to share a lot about their backgrounds and what not - and they were separate from the individual conversations you could have with them on the Normandy.

But generally speaking, I need to be an active participant in creating the story. I really detest the enforced pacing in ME3, where they pile cutscene on top of cutscene on top of cutscene for some fairly lengthy segments during which they took complete control of Shepard and the way the story would unfold. No matter how many times you play through ME3, the exact same sequence of events will play out in the exact same order - the only variance is a few alternate dialogues, a few outcomes, and whether some sidequests were completed.

 

In ME1, yeah the squad members reacted in those debriefs, but it was very short and didn't really tell much of the characters. As for ME2, I don't understand since those scenes didn't happen there aside from a few isolated reactions from usually Miranda or Jacob. It took me a while to figure out what you meant with the individual discussion/cut-scene division in ME2, and yeah that was there, but again, because the pacing was one mission passed, no matter what mission, it was completely independent from what actually happened unless it was the personal mission, which by the way nulls most of this discussion since ME2 was essentially built around the companions. And even there, all the conversations basically stopped advancing when you hit the romantic relationship choice. Hence the hilarious Garrus's eternal calibration stick.

 

As for your second comment, I don't get it, but then again I only need to as much as you need to get why some players enjoy actual story pacing. Yeah wandering around is awesome and thinking that you are somehow affecting the pace of the story, but its not really there. For example in DAO, the point of the story where you the Tower doesn't affect at all what happens at the Tower. The same with the forest and the same with Dwarves. The same is with ME1, with the slight difference being Liara's reaction. So I don't get any benefit from the free flow structure, I don't feel any player agency, because it doesn't matter at all. It doesn't affect anything. When you have a structure like in ME3, it allows to actively to build the story around what is happening and to have people react to that instead of everything being separate bubbles living in their own world.

[Tayah]

@ Hiemoth: There are ways to offer different combinations.

But generally speaking, I need to be an active participant in creating the story. I really detest the enforced pacing in ME3, where they pile cutscene on top of cutscene on top of cutscene for some fairly lengthy segments during which they took complete control of Shepard and the way the story would unfold. No matter how many times you play through ME3, the exact same sequence of events will play out in the exact same order - the only variance is a few alternate dialogues, a few outcomes, and whether some sidequests were completed.

Just jumping in here because I really hated this about ME3, I was playing a game not reading a book/watching a movie (now I love reading, watching movies and playing games but I get different things out of the different experiences and in games it's input into the environment/story/character in RPGs anyway) so I expect to have far more control of the protagonist I'm playing and how they react and what they say. ME3 takes a lot of agency away from the player and that's the problem to me.

In ME1, yeah the squad members reacted in those debriefs, but it was very short and didn't really tell much of the characters. As for ME2, I don't understand since those scenes didn't happen there aside from a few isolated reactions from usually Miranda or Jacob. It took me a while to figure out what you meant with the individual discussion/cut-scene division in ME2, and yeah that was there, but again, because the pacing was one mission passed, no matter what mission, it was completely independent from what actually happened unless it was the personal mission, which by the way nulls most of this discussion since ME2 was essentially built around the companions. And even there, all the conversations basically stopped advancing when you hit the romantic relationship choice. Hence the hilarious Garrus's eternal calibration stick.

 

As for your second comment, I don't get it, but then again I only need to as much as you need to get why some players enjoy actual story pacing. Yeah wandering around is awesome and thinking that you are somehow affecting the pace of the story, but its not really there. For example in DAO, the point of the story where you the Tower doesn't affect at all what happens at the Tower. The same with the forest and the same with Dwarves. The same is with ME1, with the slight difference being Liara's reaction. So I don't get any benefit from the free flow structure, I don't feel any player agency, because it doesn't matter at all. It doesn't affect anything. When you have a structure like in ME3, it allows to actively to build the story around what is happening and to have people react to that instead of everything being separate bubbles living in their own world.

I think you could still give players that agency in a story paced setting by simply letting the player pick their dialogue/reactions to the events rather than taking that characterisation away from them. Right now I can start up a new run of ME3, get it started, boil the kettle/jug pick the conversation choice before meeting the council, go away and make a hot chocolate, come back and pick an option with the council, wander off and get a snack and by the time I come back I'll be just about ready to play... that's not really how a game should start for me and it doesn't matter what I select there. For most of the game Shepard no longer feels like the Shepard I played in 1 and 2, she's a different character. If I had dialogue choices every time Shepard speaks in which I'm picking tone at the very least then Shepard is more my character again and not a movie character I just control in combat. I'm exaggerating maybe but sometimes it doesn't feel like it's by much  .

 

I'm not sure that conversations stopping at a romantic choice flag is a pacing issue either, more a content/resources issue. Friendship paths tend to get less/no content from that flag on and that may have more to do with the problem than where the conversations occur. You could still tie some conversations to story events and maybe have some generic conversations available any time that perhaps refresh/progress after a certain amount of missions be they side or main quest related that breaks up info dumps on a character's history while story event missions show a character's personality/reactions as would personal companion quests. Having said that resource allocation may be the problem with this idea and why it's not done and I really don't know if there would be technical issues as well.

 

Obviously the story is going to be the same for the most part regardless of the order you play whether it's DA or ME the difference is how you have your player drive or react to it, in some areas you had options for how to advance a story mission, how ruthless or not your character is and how your character responds to situations, motivates others and what motivates them can be decided by the player in games with player agency... in ME2 your choices affect who's alive among your crew (who gets turned into a smoothie and who doesn't) as well as who survives the suicide mission or not. In ME3 a lot of that agency is missing and you don't pick your reaction to events... Thessia is a really good example of this (And don't get me started on the plot armour protection of an inept villain) and having your character suddenly suck at hitting targets and master assassins suddenly forget how to as well in cutscenes when I've dominated actual combat isn't a good thing either  ... make the plot armour better not my character worse please. Sorry, tangent rant over.

 

TL:DR Story pacing and player agency aren't necessarily the same thing and aren't mutually exclusive.

 

Disclaimer: all in my personal opinion in case that's not clear and sometimes it's probably not so yeah.