353 réponses à ce sujet

[AlanC9]

Bioware may not want a repeat of ME3, but I haven't really seen any indication that they understand what went wrong in the first place. Their talks (before they decided to "look forward") all seemed to revolve around players being "confused" and "sad" like we were the ones at fault for not appreciating what they graciously gifted us with. Like we were too dumb to appreciate their craftsmanship.

In fairness to Bio, a lot of us were confused and sad. Some still are.

So yeah, they should keep in mind "Avoid ME3 ending. Repeat as needed" Funny thing is, though, it looks like they're "avoiding" it using the same methods that brought it about: Inexplicable space magic to rewrite the setting.

I'd guess Bio concluded that space magic is what people talk about when they're actually bothered by something else. (When did that start to be your go-to issue, anyway? For years you were all about the moral unacceptability of the endings.)

[Sylvius the Mad]

Uhm.. You should still fail for making bad in-character decisions? Even if you had no way of knowing it's bad, a bad decision is still bad.

Of course. The player succeeds by making in-character decisions. If those decisions lead to the character's death, then the player has had a short, but still successful, playthrough.

My favourite Warden in DAO didn't live to see the Landsmeet. He was great fun to play, and then he died when Sten killed him in a duel.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Sylvius's Ontological ruminations are fascinating. I suggest he make a game based on this premise. But all the RPGs I've ever seen, including every RPG from Bioware, have had optimal character builds, proper ways to play characters both in and out of combat, and win conditions.

They're only win conditions if you define then as such. Without that addition from the player, they're merely end conditions.

And there are several. Death is usually an end condition. Is that a win? If not, it's because the player doesn't perceive it as such.

But what we call something doesn't change what it is.

If you define winning conditions, then you can play them like games.

But you needn't.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Except you have objectives in a role-playing game.

Yes. To roleplay.

If you mean your character has objectives, that's just like when you play with a toy. And just like with toys, those objectives are defined by the player.

A winning condition that is set for you in video games easily, and by your GM on a tabletop, you just don't know what that objective is (or you might not care for it.) How you play between that is completely up to the player of course, what you do and how you improvise with the GM, but there are winning conditions, hence the end game of the story or area you are in.

That's not my experience. The only difference in tabletop is that it's a multiplayer game, so players' various objectives for their characters need not to conflict with each other. And the GM's objectives need not to conflict with those of the other players' characters either.

The benefit of a single-player RPG, like a CRPG, is that we don't need to accommodate other players.

[Ahglock]

I'm just going to go with I agree with sylvius's last 3 posts. 

[GalacticWolf5]

I hope Bioware has learned something from the end of the Shepard Trilogy.  In a game of choice.  Don't take the choice away.

 

''Don't take the choice away.''

 

''Don't take the choice away.''

 

Really? I'll never understand why people say that. How did they ''take the choice away'' ? They really didn't. I just don't understand how giving you choices is removing choices.

[Ahglock]

''Don't take the choice away.''

 

''Don't take the choice away.''

 

Really? I'll never understand when people said that. How did they ''take the choice away'' ? They really didn't. I just don't understand how giving you choices is removing choices.

 

Yeah the choices exist just like every other decision in the game save the rachni, kill them.  Pick RGB.  What people really want to say I think is don't end the game with a really lame forced choice from star brat style plot device where all 3 choices are so monumentally stupid it hard to take seriously.  I mean really magic colors that rewrite all life, or magically seek and destroy all AI in the galaxy. About the only one that was almost plausible given the setting was control and how turning someone into a god would ever be assumed to turn out anything other than spectacularly bad is beyond me.

[LinksOcarina]

Yes. To roleplay.

If you mean your character has objectives, that's just like when you play with a toy. And just like with toys, those objectives are defined by the player.
That's not my experience. The only difference in tabletop is that it's a multiplayer game, so players' various objectives for their characters need not to conflict with each other. And the GM's objectives need not to conflict with those of the other players' characters either.

The benefit of a single-player RPG, like a CRPG, is that we don't need to accommodate other players.

 

But by the games design your objective is not defined by the player, it is designed by the game in that case. A RPG video game has pre-determined objectives like that. How you play with it is fine, whatever goals you set for your character in-character is fine to motivate you, but the objectives are stated for you to go through, otherwise you wouldn't play the game. 

 

So it can accommodates you but like everyone else, you are playing the same game through that design. Much like how you need to follows the rules of chess to complete a game of chess, you are following the games design to complete the game proper. You just have control over aspects of the game because it allows you to have control, like moving pieces on a chessboard. See role-playing is not your only objective in a role-playing game, regardless what you think of the matter. 

 

Now you can argue that is not how it works because it's not role-playing properly, and to that I say it doesn't matter. It's they way these games are made. I will go through a similar experience by playing the same game- that experience is my own yes, but it's still the same framework we all share. So role-playing the game differently compared to someone else makes the experience unique, but the game the same. We are going through the same objectives still.

 

So no, RPG video games are not toys in that regard.

[WillieStyle]

They're only win conditions if you define then as such. Without that addition from the player, they're merely end conditions.

And there are several. Death is usually an end condition. Is that a win? If not, it's because the player doesn't perceive it as such.

But what we call something doesn't change what it is.

If you define winning conditions, then you can play them like games.

But you needn't.

 

In order to ground this rather philosophical discussion in something relevant to ME:A, let us ask ourselves the following questions:

-What percentage of potential ME:A purchasers would view their character's dying in Act 1 as a win?

-Would a game designed by developers who viewed such character deaths as wins sell 1,000 copies?

[GalacticWolf5]

Yeah the choices exist just like every other decision in the game save the rachni, kill them.  Pick RGB.  What people really want to say I think is don't end the game with a really lame forced choice from star brat style plot device where all 3 choices are so monumentally stupid it hard to take seriously.  I mean really magic colors that rewrite all life, or magically seek and destroy all AI in the galaxy. About the only one that was almost plausible given the setting was control and how turning someone into a god would ever be assumed to turn out anything other than spectacularly bad is beyond me.

 

But aren't every choice forced on you? It's a choice based game, you have to make a choice. Having to chose betwween Control, Synthesis, Destroy or Refusal is no different then having to chose between Kaidan or Ashley on Virmire. They're choices and you have to pick one.

 

Saying that the ending choices are ''monumentally stupid'' is only your opinion. I personally like them and don't think they're stupid.

 

As for the energy wave/beam released from the Crucible, it's science-fiction, a little bit of space-magic isn't a crime. Control turns you into a Synthetic and the energy wave is (probably, because there's nothing that explicitly say it) sent to apply the change of Master Consciousness to the Reapers. The energy in Synthesis is indeed very much space magic, or not completely, It could very well be nanites sent to Organics and Synthetics. Destroy makes sense, the energy targets Synthetic life and perhaps overloads them or whatever.

 

Also, Control doesn't turn you into an actual god. You don't get supernatural powers,omnipotence or whatever else. You only get a vast amount of knowledge, power and influence.

[Ahglock]

But aren't every choice forced on you? It's a choice based game, you have to make a choice. Having to chose betwween Control, Synthesis, Destroy or Refusal is no different then having to chose between Kaidan or Ashley on Virmire. They're choices and you have to pick one.

 

Saying that the ending choices are ''monumentally stupid'' is only your opinion. I personally like them and don't think they're stupid.

 

As for the energy wave/beam released from the Crucible, it's science-fiction, a little bit of space-magic isn't a crime. Control turns you into a Synthetic and the energy wave is (probably, because there's nothing that explicitly say it) sent to apply the change of Master Consciousness to the Reapers. The energy in Synthesis is indeed very much space magic, or not completely, It could very well be nanites sent to Organics and Synthetics. Destroy makes sense, the energy targets Synthetic life and perhaps overloads them or whatever.

 

Also, Control doesn't turn you into an actual god. You don't get supernatural powers,omnipotence or whatever else. You only get a vast amount of knowledge, power and influence.

 

Yes all choices are forced on you, but how they are forced is the difference.  The narrative difference of the plot device used in this end vs you have a fleet in reserve how do you use them is different.  Its a game so you are only going to get a finite number of choices, but how they decide to deliver the package makes a difference.

 

As for the monumentally stupid part, of course its just my opinion.  But there is a vast difference between a little bit of space magic and the endings which are massive amounts of space magic which don't fit the established space magic.

 

I've said it in a different thread, but I mean very literally Toad suddenly appearing when you make your RGB choice and telling you the princess is in another castle would actually make more sense in setting than synthesis or destroy.  Because at least then you'd go, ah I've gone insane, I'm hallucinating or was indoctrinated.  And not actually are supposed to believe rays of energy go throughout the entire galaxy and rewrite everyone into synthetic beings.

 

Its why I think IT got so much traction. Not because IT is a great ending, or makes perfect sense, but because it actually makes some sense out of a ending which makes no sense at all.(again opinion, nothing is objective in how a person takes a story)

[Antmarch456]

Irrelevant but I'm seeing all the liked posts are saying "x, y, and 69 others like this"

[GalacticWolf5]

Yes all choices are forced on you, but how they are forced is the difference.  The narrative difference of the plot device used in this end vs you have a fleet in reserve how do you use them is different.  Its a game so you are only going to get a finite number of choices, but how they decide to deliver the package makes a difference.

 

The Crucible was well delivered IMO. For the entire game, no one knew how it worked or what it would do, we only knew that it was some sort of energy source and that it exploited the technology of Mass Relays. They don't have to tell you earlier in the game that you'll have to pick between Control, Synthesis or Destroy.

 

As for the monumentally stupid part, of course its just my opinion.  But there is a vast difference between a little bit of space magic and the endings which are massive amounts of space magic which don't fit the established space magic.

 

Isn't a game series allowed to introduce things to the players in a later game? Just because you didn't know something before, doesn't mean it's not possible. The Crucible/Catalyst (not the Intelligence, the actual Catalyst aka the Citadel) is technology that we don't fully understand because our cycle doesn't have that kind of technology. Well, I could even say that we actually do have that kind of tech but in a smaller way.

 

In Control, Shepard's corporeal form is destroyed, but his mind is uploaded as the new Reaper master consciousness. The Virtual Alien were able to upload their minds in a virtual world (in supercomputers) and that was about 8 000 years ago (from 2185).

 

For Synthesis, we can't achieve it any other way, so we don't have that technology.

 

In Destroy, if the energy from the Crucible actually works by overloading Synthetics like I said earlier, then we also have that technology but on a way smaller scale. The Crucible connected with the Mass Relay network allows it to be galactic wide.

[Rez275]

I think the real big issue, is that not just Bioware, but with the vast majority of games like this, the devs just can't restrain themselves, and have to go the route with BIG, EPIC, world/universe changing events rather than smaller, more personal or self-contained stories that allow more room to maneuver around. You can be the protagonist, the hero, without having to be the center of the universe. You can have a grand, amazing adventure, with it still being something largely unremarkable in the grand scheme of the entire setting. It felt to me like they were almost trying to do that with DA2, but again fell into the trap of making everything far reaching, and "epic".

[Dean_the_Young]

I think the real big issue, is that not just Bioware, but with the vast majority of games like this, the devs just can't restrain themselves, and have to go the route with BIG, EPIC, world/universe changing events rather than smaller, more personal or self-contained stories that allow more room to maneuver around. You can be the protagonist, the hero, without having to be the center of the universe. You can have a grand, amazing adventure, with it still being something largely unremarkable in the grand scheme of the entire setting. It felt to me like they were almost trying to do that with DA2, but again fell into the trap of making everything far reaching, and "epic".

 

Bit late for that, considering how ME1 kicked the franchise off: first Human specter, fate of species, even the question of who rules the galaxy. ME2 took that, added more Big Decisions that were foreshadowed as galaxy-impacting, just as a lead-up to a galactic war and imminent universal genocide.

 

There certainly is space for good, well-written RPGs with a smaller scale. It's certainly never been a goal, let alone interested, of the ME trilogy's power fantasy.

 

It doesn't help that when Bioware has tried for more modest scope of stories- DA2 comes to mind- the reaction is mixed. Hence a lot of angst over Hawke being 'unimportant' and 'pathetic.'

[Mcfly616]

I think the real big issue, is that not just Bioware, but with the vast majority of games like this, the devs just can't restrain themselves, and have to go the route with BIG, EPIC, world/universe changing events rather than smaller, more personal or self-contained stories that allow more room to maneuver around. You can be the protagonist, the hero, without having to be the center of the universe. You can have a grand, amazing adventure, with it still being something largely unremarkable in the grand scheme of the entire setting. It felt to me like they were almost trying to do that with DA2, but again fell into the trap of making everything far reaching, and "epic".

 This is exactly why it was possible to continue the series whilst remaining in the Milky Way during the current timeline that embodies the fictional universe we have come to know and love. However, for whatever reason the majority of people here fail to see the logic in these words.

[Iakus]

 
I'd guess Bio concluded that space magic is what people talk about when they're actually bothered by something else. (When did that start to be your go-to issue, anyway? For years you were all about the moral unacceptability of the endings.)

I've despised inexplicable space magic for years.  Don't you recall all my railing against the Lazarus Project and such?  But yet in this case we are forced into a set of what I found to be morally unacceptable choices because, inexplicably, the inexplicable space magic doesn't offer anything else.

[Iakus]

Bit late for that, considering how ME1 kicked the franchise off: first Human specter, fate of species, even the question of who rules the galaxy. ME2 took that, added more Big Decisions that were foreshadowed as galaxy-impacting, just as a lead-up to a galactic war and imminent universal genocide.

 

There certainly is space for good, well-written RPGs with a smaller scale. It's certainly never been a goal, let alone interested, of the ME trilogy's power fantasy.

 

I would actually think that saving the galaxy from Immortal Space Cthulhu would be more about preventing galaxy-impacting events from happening.

 

Like, you know, the death of the galaxy.  

 

 

It doesn't help that when Bioware has tried for more modest scope of stories- DA2 comes to mind- the reaction is mixed. Hence a lot of angst over Hawke being 'unimportant' and 'pathetic.'

 

Hawke suffered from the exact opposite problem of Shepard.  Where Shepard decides the fate of entire worlds based on choice of toothpaste, Hawke literally couldn't keep his/her own house in order.

 

There really needs to be some sort of happy medium

[Felya87]

 

Hawke suffered from the exact opposite problem of Shepard.  Where Shepard decides the fate of entire worlds based on choice of toothpaste, Hawke literally couldn't keep his/her own house in order.

 

There really needs to be some sort of happy medium

 

Yep. In DA2 basically the mayority of the choices where just cosmetic, to hear a different sentence from Hawke's mouth. The result was basically always the same if non existent at all, and there were many stupidity-times outside player control that DA2 for me was a repeated facepalm.

 

There are times I as a player I'm fine not having the chance to win (see Ostagar, ot all the origins) but having basically the entire game making a fool of your character is quite unnerving. DA2 overdo the "fail" moments. Basically I was at half game asking myself if there was some kind of purpouse in the existence of Hawke at all, since it was the most inept character I have ever played.

[Gwydden]

Hawke suffered from the exact opposite problem of Shepard.  Where Shepard decides the fate of entire worlds based on choice of toothpaste, Hawke literally couldn't keep his/her own house in order.

 

There really needs to be some sort of happy medium

Some people are going to hate me for saying this, but I think Hawke was a step in the right direction. Almost all Bioware protagonist slip way too much into Sueish territory for my taste, Shepard being the worst offender. I'd rather the player character in MEA is more grounded.

 

Yep. In DA2 basically the mayority of the choices where just cosmetic, to hear a different sentence from Hawke's mouth. The result was basically always the same if non existent at all, and there were many stupidity-times outside player control that DA2 for me was a repeated facepalm.

 

There are times I as a player I'm fine not having the chance to win (see Ostagar, ot all the origins) but having basically the entire game making a fool of your character is quite unnerving. DA2 overdo the "fail" moments. Basically I was at half game asking myself if there was some kind of purpouse in the existence of Hawke at all, since it was the most inept character I have ever played.

I don't think Hawke was inept. On the contrary, I think this comes to show how spoiled Bioware has us. Hawke is a relatively normal person, all things considered. It's the other PCs who are unrealistic in how much they impact everything around them. I'll grant maybe DA2's approach was a bit too much, but given the choice I'd rather have that than another ME power trip.

[AlanC9]

I've despised inexplicable space magic for years. Don't you recall all my railing against the Lazarus Project and such? But yet in this case we are forced into a set of what I found to be morally unacceptable choices because, inexplicably, the inexplicable space magic doesn't offer anything else.

I recall you railing at it, sure, and rightly so (though I'm not personally bothered since I've always been in the "ME doesn't make sense" camp). I don't recall it actually being a serious problem for you -- you weren't doubting that you'd come back for ME3, as far as I recall. Though that was an awfully long time ago.

As for the rest, you've got the causality backwards. The desire to offer morally unacceptable choices is why the space magic worked the way it did. Even if they had decided not to use space magic, they still would have hurt you. They just would have had to work at it a bit harder.

[Iakus]

Some people are going to hate me for saying this, but I think Hawke was a step in the right direction. Almost all Bioware protagonist slip way too much into Sueish territory for my taste, Shepard being the worst offender. I'd rather the player character in MEA is more grounded.

 

There's nothing wrong with a more grounded character.  But like I said, Hawke couldn't seem to affect any change whatsoever.

 

I take that back.  Hawke can decided the fate of the sibling, and the Arishok confrontation can go a number of ways.  But in ten years, Hawke has very little impact on his/her surroundings, despite being a noble, the Champion, etc.  I'm not talking about big, sweeping, save the world changes.  I mean personally.  The Bone Pit is doomed to fail no matter how Hawke runs it.  Leandra always dies.  Meredith goes nuts.  Orsino goes nuts, The Arishok goes nuts.  etc.

[Iakus]

I recall you railing at it, sure, and rightly so (though I'm not personally bothered since I've always been in the "ME doesn't make sense" camp). I don't recall it actually being a serious problem for you -- you weren't doubting that you'd come back for ME3, as far as I recall. Though that was an awfully long time ago.

As for the rest, you've got the causality backwards. The desire to offer morally unacceptable choices is why the space magic worked the way it did. Even if they had decided not to use space magic, they still would have hurt you.

Eh, that I'd play ME3 at some point was a given.  I wanted to see how Shepard's story ends (ah, younger me, if only I could warn you...)

 

But yeah, it was a big problem for me.  I'd say pre-Catalyst, it was one of my biggest problems with the series.  I can't tell you how excited I was when Mac Walters tweeted that there'd be information on the Lazarus PRoject in ME3 (which turned out to be "It's all a matter of resources" and "the helmet kept the brain intact", again, if only I could warn younger me)

 

And yes, unacceptable choices like that ruined the game, nay, the series for me.  But that they were such arbitrary choices based entirely on nonsensical space magic made them even worse.  It's like they couldn't even be bothered to provide a logical reason why we are given the choices we are given

[Sylvius the Mad]

Much like how you need to follows the rules of chess to complete a game of chess, you are following the games design to complete the game proper.

I don't understand what you mean here. If you're referring to finishing a game (or beating a game) in the traditional sense, I don't always do that.

But I still play, and I still enjoy it, even though I'm not pursuing the objectives the designers set out for me.

Furthermore, completing those objectives is largely incidental. Again, my character might be trying to achieve those objectives, but I'm not. You're conflating the motives of the player and character.