238 réponses à ce sujet

[BioWareM0d13]

What are your thoughts on squadmates dying during the course of ME:A, whether unavoidable like Thane's death in ME3, or as a consequence of player choices? Do you prefer the writers not put squadmates at risk?

 

 

[TheN7Penguin]

I'd prefer it to be down to actions for certain. Luckily I've never had my favourite ME squadmates die... but I certainly like to kill off the more annoying ones. Both Ashley and Kaidan are dead by the end of the trilogy for me.

 

So yeah, I'd like them to be able to die, but it'd have to be down to player choices. I wouldn't like it if I would start to like a character and they would unavoidably die.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

I'd prefer they not die, or at least limit it to as few as possible and have it be optional. Having too many characters who can die leads to issues further in the story when you have to account for characters either being alive or dead.

[KirkyX]

Exactly, One or two potentially-killable characters is fine, but if you overdo it - the Suicide Mission, basically - you start to run into trouble trying to work around potentially-dead characters in later games. They're frequently - though not always: see Garrus and Tali - underdeveloped compared to their definitely-alive contemporaries, and if they are dead, instead of the story branching in an interesting way, we tend to just get relatively bland filler characters that slot into what would otherwise have been their roles.

 

If you're prepared to go all the way, Witcher 2-style - where it's possible to play two entirely different second acts depending on a choice you make - then by all means, have a character potentially die... But if there isn't a great plan for dealing with that death going forward, then I'd say it's better avoided in the first place.

[Bear43]

Well said, KirkyX. I am okay with having the possibility of a couple squadmates dying but only so long as it is choice driven and not an unavoidable thing.

[10K]

Nay, especially if there are going to be sequels. EAware have already showed they don't know how to handle this sort of thing.

[wolfsite]

Risk gives decisions more weight giving more impact to a moment so the concept is great for building tension or getting an emotional moment.

 

 

The issue in the end is the execution as that means certain scenes in future games would need to be written with characters alive and dead which means more resources going into the same scenes rather than new scenes.

 

Plus this could also limit the characters involvement in future games if they are not major players in the series ( new Mass Effect 2 squad mates is a fine example of this as the cost and development time to give each one a major role or be a ME3 squad mate with full interactions would have been quite high and delayed the game for some time.)

 

But at the same time you will have people complaining about plot armour and that Bioware doesn't like taking risks with popular characters and such if they do not have moments where they could die.

 

So a damned if you do damned if you don't decision.

 

 

.....you know with the way people act online every decision Bioware makes is Damned if you do damned if you don't.....

 

......as you can see the Internet has destroyed any faith and hope I have in humanity.

[KirkyX]

Ah, I wouldn't necessarily mind a 'doomed' character, as it were, provided it were done well(obviously)--there's a lot of dramatic potential in character death, and if you make that death inevitable, it can be utilised in ways an optionally-dead character cannot be. For example, (Witcher 3 spoiler)

Spoiler

Vesemir's death in The Witcher 3

provides the impetus for a plot-critical quest, and while it could potentially have been written around, any other source of motivation just wouldn't have had the same power.

 

Now, if you're willing to invest the resources - as in the Witcher 2 example - to create two truly divergent branches for the story, an optional character death can be made almost as meaningful - and, in a sense more meaningful, since you actually had a say in it - to the plot as an inevitable one, but very, very few modern games do this--and with good reason.

 

When making games is as expensive as it is these days, it is justifiably difficult to devote resources to producing masses and masses of meaningful, developed content that a good number of players will never see without doing more than one playthough. This was much easier back when games relied more on text, and imagination - the old Infinity Engine games, more or less - to tell their stories.

 

(Which, as an aside, is why I'm so pleased that IE-style isometric RPGs seem to be on the rise again--Torment: Tides of Numenara, in particular, looks like just my sort of thing.)

[straykat]

I wish there was more death in general, but ME2 > ME3 showed how much it sucks on revisiting the impact it should have.

 

Two things that PnP does better, but Bioware doesn't: Death and lack of Chosen Ones.

[Fogg]

Sure. The only one I had a problem with was the first time in ME2 when I didn't have enough Paragon/Renegade points to solve the Jack/Miranda conflict in a good way and one of them died in de Suicide Mission. It should be an immediate consequence of something, not a cumulative of vagueness.

[Killroy]

In a game series like Mass Effect, where your choices are supposed to be key, unavoidable deaths always feel a little forced and hamfisted, like with Thane. On the other hand, a situation where your choice matters, a la Kaidan and Ashley, developing around that choice poses problems that make that choice more trouble than it's worth. It's tough to get character deaths right in any medium, but in this case it's almost impossible.

[Hazegurl]

What are your thoughts on squadmates dying during the course of ME:A, whether unavoidable like Thane's death in ME3, or as a consequence of player choices? Do you prefer the writers not put squadmates at risk?

I would love it, just as long as it isn't done in a stupid way like in ME3.  Having Shepard and Co. just stand around while Thane fights alone was just stupid.  But if the scene is done well, then yeah.

[wright1978]

I don't want unavoidable deaths of individual squaddies. I don't mind the likes of virmire where the way to avoid that death results in the death of a different squadmate. Ideally though I think a refined version of the suicide mission would be good.

[Barquiel]

If ME:A is a stand alone title, I wouldn't mind some optional squadmate deaths in the end run. But I'm not really keen on unavoidable deaths, or another suicide mission if it's the start of a new triology (I would prefer most squadmates being mandatory if that makes them more relevant to the plot).

I'd rather not see mutually exclusive companions either. These characters usually end up sharing the word budget of a single companion which makes them rather underwhelming. The only exception I can think of is the Mira/Hanharr thing in Kotor2. They both had a lot of content...probably because Hanharr only makes Wookie noises and didn't need much voice acting 

[Silvery]

I like the Kaidan/Ashley choice in ME1 and would not mind something like that done again if it was executed well. 

[Prince Enigmatic]

Not sure about squadmate deaths, but why not deaths of other important key characters we come to interact with? Like a crew member in the same vein as Joker or Traynor, albeit one we may form a stronger attachment to.

 

Anderson's death, for me, was a good end to the character, even though we he wasn't a squadmate, and we hadn't spent as much time with him as other characters. 

 

I find squdmate deaths problematic because of how it can effect writing in future installments, or in the future of the story in general. But non-squadmate deaths, choice or no choice, can be resonant and arguably less strenuous on writing and development of character.

[MrBSN2017]

I want deaths to be a very real part of it. Life is so fragile, video games need to focus more on this for realism. Every time you go into combat, death is a very real possibility and not always avoidable.

[themikefest]

Kill them all. Let my main character do the missions by her/himself. Who needs squadmates anyways? ME3 was easy enough that I didn't need them. hahaha

 

I wouldn't have a problem if the squadmates could die in whatever situation that occurs.

[Felya87]

I don't like inavoidable death of the companions. I prefer having the death of characters being the consequence of playerìs choice. More replayablity for the players.

But it should be something destined or only for certain characters, or for the last game if th estory have more than one chapeter. ME2 suicide mission was fantastic with the variables of the survival of the companions, but in ME3 endend up being a bad decision, since ME2 team ended up almost forgotten.

[Draining Dragon]

I think everyone should die at the end. It should be unavoidable and entirely gratuitous, with no connection to the events that have occurred up to that point. Oh, and it should be presented via a slideshow epiloque with a half-assed narration from a random intern who couldn't care less.

For instance:

Spoiler

This is high quality writing, people.

[ZipZap2000]

If you don't like unavoidable deaths you're not gonna like real life much guys. It happens to everyone.

I don't like a candy, coated, sissy boy ride for a game. Give me death destruction heartache and pain intertwined with it's spiritual opposites, to build us up to an emotional crescendo; that shakes us to our very foundations and causes us to question who we are.

It reminds me I'm alive.......

[Dalinne]

I don't like inavoidable death of the companions. I prefer having the death of characters being the consequence of playerìs choice. More replayablity for the players.

But it should be something destined or only for certain characters, or for the last game if th estory have more than one chapeter. ME2 suicide mission was fantastic with the variables of the survival of the companions, but in ME3 endend up being a bad decision, since ME2 team ended up almost forgotten.

I think a Suicide Mission would be GREAT as the last mission for a theorical second Trilogy. But you are right that so many variables of the survival of companions limits their future appareance in the story.

[Dalinne]

If you don't like unavoidable deaths you're not gonna like real life much guys. It happens to everyone.

I don't like a candy, coated, sissy boy ride for a game. Give me death destruction heartache and pain intertwined with it's spiritual opposites, to build us up to an emotional crescendo; that shakes us to our very foundations and causes us to question who we are.

It reminds me I'm alive.......

 

That's so krogan...

I loved it!!!!

[Tempest_]

I have no real issue with scripted deaths for squadmates.

An issue with the Mass Effect trilogy was that squadmate deaths were largely lost in the narrative as they were mostly optional. There were too many different scenarios to write for and consequently squad losses rarely got the grandiose emotional reaction they deserved.

Lets have some melodramatic mourning, followed by a vow of revenge, followed by a training montage and concluded with a few giant nuclear explosions at an enemy base.

[JenMaxon]

Squadmate deaths have been done well in the games so far and - rather badly.  If people are going to die, I'd like it done well please.

 

 

I think everyone should die at the end. It should be unavoidable and entirely gratuitous, with no connection to the events that have occurred up to that point. Oh, and it should be presented via a slideshow epiloque with a half-assed narration from a random intern who couldn't care less.

I'd forgotten how bad that was.   Thanks.