319 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

This is true for moral systems which produce clear answers in all circumstances. I'm not certain that describes a majority of extant systems.

Why would someone abide by a system that doesn't produce useful results? What good would such a system be?

[AlanC9]

Makes you think about how bad of an RPG the Mass Effect trilogy actually is:
Bioware: "You should save the rachni queen." *wink *wink
"You should destroy the Collector base." *wink *wink
"You should cure the genophage." *wink *wink

Huh? The genophage cure and the rachni lead to very different worldstates, and the Collector base may determine your ending choice.

No big changes in gameplay, but that's the same as, for instance, every choice in KotOR.

[AlanC9]

Why would someone abide by a system that doesn't produce useful results? What good would such a system be?

What people actually do and what they should do aren't all that closely related.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Even with that line of thinking, it's a far more interesting setup to give us Legion's loyalty mission as a moral choice rather than standard black and white choices.

Choosing between "good to a fault hero" or "Saturday morning cartoon villain" is boring.

I would argue that all moral choices are black and white. Though which is black and which is white is largely arbitrary.

I'd also argue that Legion's mission gives you enough information about the choices themselves. What it doesn't do is tell you what the consequences of rewrite will be, but it shouldn't be telling you that. Any good RP setting isn't going to spell out all the consequences of your actions for you.

I was trying to make the choice from an individual liberty perspective. If the geth were individuals, then reprogramming them would be wrong. But, if they weren't individuals, then neither choice would be wrong. I didn't think I understood the nature of the geth well enough.

[Sylvius the Mad]

What people actually do and what they should do aren't all that closely related.

But they've chosen that moral system, no? How could they possibly justify that to themselves?

You're doing a fine job of lowering my opinion of people, Alan.

[In Exile]

Why would someone abide by a system that doesn't produce useful results? What good would such a system be?

That a system does arithmetically produce answers to all situations isn't necessarily a useful result. An RGN would do that, but that's not a useful moral calculator.

I'm not persuaded there is a moral system that doesn't give rise to conflicting moral duties in many situations. That's the moral dilemma.

[Cyonan]

I would argue that all moral choices are black and white. Though which is black and which is white is largely arbitrary.

 

The term black and white is used to describe when one outcome is pure good and one is pure evil. It's boring because everything is just "do you want to be evil or good?".

 

For me Legion's mission isn't that because I consider both options to be more bad than good. However that also doesn't make it a "black and black" choice because they have good aspects to them, just not ones that I view as outweighing the bad enough for me to think of them as morally good choices.

 

but I still have to pick one in the end.

 

I was trying to make the choice from an individual liberty perspective. If the geth were individuals, then reprogramming them would be wrong. But, if they weren't individuals, then neither choice would be wrong. I didn't think I understood the nature of the geth well enough.

 

The Geth are another example of a pretty standard sci-fi trope of "are AI considered a machine or an individual?", only they're more of a hive mind rather than a single unit like most other sci-fi does.

 

Enough information is given about the nature of the Geth up until that point, but it's up to you to decide if you think they're individuals or not. The game by design isn't going to make that call for you.

[Blueblood]

I'm usually jealous of villains and antagonists. I wanna be them so bad. So if my Ryder can't be evil, then no one can, which is why I'll end up killing the bad guys, and that can sort of be seen as Ryder killing out of jealousy. And you know, jealousy is ugly and all that.

[iM3GTR]

Huh? The genophage cure and the rachni lead to very different worldstates, and the Collector base may determine your ending choice.

What I meant was that the game tries to get you to agree with the paragon perspective:
For example, there is no option to kill the queen out of fear of another war, and the game makes Shepard seem like an evil jerk if you choose to kill the queen.

In ME2, there was no proper arguement for keeping the collector base, as it just showed TIM being evil if you do save it, you are told it was a renegade decision, even if you wanted to RP a character who wants to keep the base because it'll help defeat the reapers without siding with the clearly evil Cerberus.

And for the third decision, there were no relatable arguements or sympathetic characters in support of sabotaging the genophage that were presented in the game. And you, as in Shepard, weren't able to justify the sabotage by thinking rationally about it in any conversations.

For a RPG series that wants you to make hard choices or sacrifices in order to keep the galaxy safer and prevent more deaths, this really says the opposite.

[veeia]

That's one thing I dislike about ME and Inquisition. It was hard to make a "good" character mess up. It would be much more interesting if sometimes making a choice because you think it's the right thing to do, even if it's not the most pragmatic, does lead to you getting a reduced outcome or failing on some level. It would also make the character's morality mean more, because they took the hit to stand for what they believed in. And it would give you reasons to look at decisions going forward, because now you know for sure that making the "right" choice could cost you. That's where you'd get more interesting moral dilemmas, imo.

[In Exile]

It would still be the same team, just with different members.
How? It could work just the same way BG did it, where the world views any character that's in your party equivalently.

New joinable companions wouldn't make any difference.
I did back them when they mentioned the create-your-own-party feature. I eveb publicly offered to double my support if they would have let any party member act as party spokesperson (like how Wasteland 2 and BG do it). Alas, Obsidian did not do that.

It wouldn't be the same team - the new members would only be liable for actions from the point they joined. Unless you have a world with retroactive criminality which would be cool in theory but goes to my point about complexity.

And that's the issue with BG. Well, apart from the fact your spokesperson theory doesn't actually bear out in practice. Characters in your party aren't equivalent. For the setting to do that you'd need to essentially ignore things like race. A general reputation meter doesn't really work.

Wasteland 2 is another game I've never bothered with for the create your own party reason. I don't care to play an amorphous hive-mind careening across an environment.

[In Exile]

I'm usually jealous of villains and antagonists. I wanna be them so bad. So if my Ryder can't be evil, then no one can, which is why I'll end up killing the bad guys, and that can sort of be seen as Ryder killing out of jealousy. And you know, jealousy is ugly and all that.

You can never be like an antagonist even if you are evil in a Bioware game, because the antagonist (and villains) get all the agency. The protagonist reacts. Even in KotOR and JE - you weren't in the driver's seat, but the villains by their nature are in the driver's seat.

[In Exile]

What I meant was that the game tries to get you to agree with the paragon perspective:
For example, there is no option to kill the queen out of fear of another war, and the game makes Shepard seem like an evil jerk if you choose to kill the queen.

In ME2, there was no proper arguement for keeping the collector base, as it just showed TIM being evil if you do save it, you are told it was a renegade decision, even if you wanted to RP a character who wants to keep the base because it'll help defeat the reapers without siding with the clearly evil Cerberus.

And for the third decision, there were no relatable arguements or sympathetic characters in support of sabotaging the genophage that were presented in the game. And you, as in Shepard, weren't able to justify the sabotage by thinking rationally about it in any conversations.

For a RPG series that wants you to make hard choices or sacrifices in order to keep the galaxy safer and prevent more deaths, this really says the opposite.

That's because the alternative perspective is often ridiculous. Killing the rachni because they might be violent in the future is insane - that logic justifies the mass extermination of every thinking being, who could potentially be dangerous in the future.

Keeping the Collector Base is also pretty crazy based on what we see with indoctrination, and Cerberus is so incredibly incompetent that they're liable to stab themselves in the face if you give them a fork. But in this case it's the paragon choice that's just plan stupid - Shepard goes on about some crazy "tainted technology" drivel instead of anything pragmatic.

I'm not sure I agree with the genophage. You get the argument you wanted to make about the rachni from the dalatress. And Shepard I think makes it to Mordin if Wreav is around (and I think Eve is dead?)

[Sylvius the Mad]

That a system does arithmetically produce answers to all situations isn't necessarily a useful result. An RGN would do that, but that's not a useful moral calculator.

In that it would produce useable results, yes it is.

Whether one's moral system actually conforms to moral truth (or if such a thing is even possible) is a different question, but it's one I'm assuming has been solved. Otherwise, one wouldn't be concerned about moral questions at all.

[Sylvius the Mad]

You can never be like an antagonist even if you are evil in a Bioware game, because the antagonist (and villains) get all the agency. The protagonist reacts. Even in KotOR and JE - you weren't in the driver's seat, but the villains by their nature are in the driver's seat.

That's common in fiction, as well, and I've never liked it. Why can't the protagonist be the one with ambition?

Maybe that's why I want a sandbox: so my character can have agency.

[Jedi Comedian]

That's common in fiction, as well, and I've never liked it. Why can't the protagonist be the one with ambition?

Maybe that's why I want a sandbox: so my character can have agency.

I prefer a smaller world, but with a wide array of RP options.

[In Exile]

That's common in fiction, as well, and I've never liked it. Why can't the protagonist be the one with ambition?

Maybe that's why I want a sandbox: so my character can have agency.

It's interesting you mention a sandbox, because in actually think those are worse from an agency perspective. While you can make choices, they're all consequence free - the world doesn't react to them except in the barest and simplest way. You can't actually do anything that would count (to me) as agency, and if you do broaden the definition enough to count what you can do as agency then even a Bioware CRPG marks you as an agent.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The term black and white is used to describe when one outcome is pure good and one is pure evil. It's boring because everything is just "do you want to be evil or good?".

For me Legion's mission isn't that because I consider both options to be more bad than good. However that also doesn't make it a "black and black" choice because they have good aspects to them, just not ones that I view as outweighing the bad enough for me to think of them as morally good choices.

but I still have to pick one in the end.


The Geth are another example of a pretty standard sci-fi trope of "are AI considered a machine or an individual?", only they're more of a hive mind rather than a single unit like most other sci-fi does.

Enough information is given about the nature of the Geth up until that point, but it's up to you to decide if you think they're individuals or not. The game by design isn't going to make that call for you.

I didn't think the game had yet given us conclusive data on that point, so I was basically guessing.

[Blueblood]

You can never be like an antagonist even if you are evil in a Bioware game, because the antagonist (and villains) get all the agency. The protagonist reacts. Even in KotOR and JE - you weren't in the driver's seat, but the villains by their nature are in the driver's seat.

We should be able to take the wheel from time to time. Damn antags hogging it.

[Sylvius the Mad]

It wouldn't be the same team - the new members would only be liable for actions from the point they joined. Unless you have a world with retroactive criminality which would be cool in theory but goes to my point about complexity.

By joining the party the new members give tacit approval to the party's established body of work.

This is just like how sports fans develop instant enmity toward players who join a rival team.

And that's the issue with BG. Well, apart from the fact your spokesperson theory doesn't actually bear out in practice. Characters in your party aren't equivalent. For the setting to do that you'd need to essentially ignore things like race.

Those could also be applied party-wide. By tolerating the presence of a dwarf, the whole party is seen as dwarf-lovers.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I prefer a smaller world, but with a wide array of RP options.

It's the wide array of options that make it a sandbox. A sandbox doesn't have to be huge.

[Cyonan]

I didn't think the game had yet given us conclusive data on that point, so I was basically guessing.

 

The game wasn't trying to give us conclusive data. That's kind of the point of the trope.

 

It was trying to get us to think to determine what our opinion was. Not attempt to compile data like we're running an If...then statement in coding.

[Sylvius the Mad]

It's interesting you mention a sandbox, because in actually think those are worse from an agency perspective. While you can make choices, they're all consequence free - the world doesn't react to them except in the barest and simplest way. You can't actually do anything that would count (to me) as agency, and if you do broaden the definition enough to count what you can do as agency then even a Bioware CRPG marks you as an agent.

BioWare's CRPGs can offer quite a bit of agency for the character, but tend to offer less for the player.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The game wasn't trying to give us conclusive data. That's kind of the point of the trope.

It was trying to get us to think to determine what our opinion was. Not attempt to compile data like we're running an If...then statement in coding.

I already know my character's opinions. That's sort of the point of character creation.

And I'm always running If...then statements. Without a defined process I'd just be making up the answers as I go. That's not interesting. That's just Progress Quest.

[KirkyX]

That's because the alternative perspective is often ridiculous. Killing the rachni because they might be violent in the future is insane - that logic justifies the mass extermination of every thinking being, who could potentially be dangerous in the future.

Keeping the Collector Base is also pretty crazy based on what we see with indoctrination, and Cerberus is so incredibly incompetent that they're liable to stab themselves in the face if you give them a fork. But in this case it's the paragon choice that's just plan stupid - Shepard goes on about some crazy "tainted technology" drivel instead of anything pragmatic.

I'm not sure I agree with the genophage. You get the argument you wanted to make about the rachni from the dalatress. And Shepard I think makes it to Mordin if Wreav is around (and I think Eve is dead?)

I did desperately want to find the button that tells Shepard to say something to the effect of:

 

'Give Cerberus a treasure-trove of incredibly dangerous technology? Cerberus, the people who probably couldn't take apart a bicycle without getting the entire research team killed and unleashing some kind of ungodly-evil cyclist-Reaper on the galaxy? Hah. No.

 

Also, in case you hadn't somehow picked up on this with all the times I've basically told you to go **** yourself over the course of this game (which, as an aside, are actually a mix of renegade and paragon options, which kinda demonstrates another flaw of the P/R system in the inconsistency), go **** yourself, TIM. I ****** hate you. Hell, I hate you enough that, even if I thought Cerberus could be trusted with this base, I'd probably blow it up anyway, just for shits and giggles. **** off.'

 

(My favourite Shepard is a mix of 'Paragon' motivations - an utmost belief in the sanctity of all life, human, alien and synthetic, the value of galactic cooperation, and an absolute disdain for the idea of 'the ends justify the means' - with as much anger, spite and snide arseholery as I can make the dialogue wheel express without actually murdering - or beating on - anyone who isn't in a position to fight back, or pissing on the innocent and vulnerable (Veetor, for example). Mass Effect 1 and 2 support this kind of roleplaying surprisingly well. Mass Effect 3 doesn't, but then, I don't think I've ever made a Shepard who survived the transition to Mass Effect 3 with her characterisation intact--even my completely straight-forward true-blue Paragon didn't really manage it.)

 

Sorry, that got pretty off-topic... I just finished an ME2 playthrough - still my favourite - and it's all a little fresh in my mind.