891 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

So it was a console limitation.

That doesn't make it better.

I didn't mean to suggest it was better - only that it's a fiction to say there's a plot reason for it because there isn't. It's arbitrary and technology driven.

[Sylvius the Mad]

but they're still links to Saren. Even if you don't trust the council, taking something with even a 1% chance of having useful intel is far better odds than exploring random uncharted planets.

There are reports of Geth on some of those planets. That's a terrific lead.

Playing an unconventional character can be fun, but Mass Effect 1 completely fails at giving good reason to do the majority of the game's content from a RP perspective because the only reasons to go run off and do side quests in Mass Effect 1 involve Shep being an idiot about hunting down Saren.

My point that you seem to be ignoring is that I have to play a rather specific style of character in Mass Effect 1 if I want a RP reason to do 95% of the game's side content because of how everything is structured in that game.

That doesn't make for good roleplaying. I don't care if it can be rewarding, I want to play my character. I don't want to have to change my character's entire personality just because I want to do some side quests.

I have a standard character I try in my first playthrough of every new RPG. Mass Effect broke that character as soon as Shepard spoke. In that respect, all of Mass Effect was a compromise for me.

But if I'm unsatisfied with how the game plays with my first character, I try a different character. You could at least play through the critical path with yours.

And I don't think I'm ignoring your point, but following BioWare's paint-by-numbers plot doesn't make that problem go away. I had to play a very specific type of character for any of the ME games to make sense at all. That's a problem. A good RPG should allow us a much wider variety of viable character designs.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I didn't mean to suggest it was better - only that it's a fiction to say there's a plot reason for it because there isn't. It's arbitrary and technology driven.

I didn't mean to suggest that you had (further, I would argue that I didn't suggest such a thing, just as you didn't)

I think they should have just made player swap discs a lot.

I wouldn't consider a plot-related justification acceptable, either. They should avoid writing stories which limit player agency so much.

[UpUpAway]

No they don't. That's not at all what I have been saying.

 

Mass Effect 1 actively discourages you from doing side content if we're looking at it from a RP point of view because of how the main questline is set up and how the game tries to convey a sense of urgency in finding Saren and beating him to the conduit.

 

If it weren't for the urgency the main quest tries to convey, this would be a non issue.

 

Playing through Shadowrun Hong Kong the quests are laid out in a very similar fashion to Mass Effect 1 but without the game trying to tell me about how important it is that I race against time. Suddenly running off to do a side mission doesn't feel like a stupid move and I can headcanon my own reason as to why my character wanted to do that particular run.

 

I agree... but I don't think the urgency in ME1 can be alleviated simply by the game not mentioning it.  Even if the game had not have said anything or called it a "race against time" I would have naturally assumed that if I wasn't quick enough in chasing down Saren, he would succeed at his objective (bringing the Reapers back) and I would fail at mine.

 

 

I did a lot of the ME1 uncharted worlds looking for evidence against Saren, particularly early in the game when the scope of Saren's plan isn't known.

 

The side quests have no impact on the game and most are about cleaning up small merc messes for Hackett, other officers, and other "private" citizens and are expressly not about finding information on Saren,  (Did you ever read any of the computer screens or listen to the announcements about those side quests?)  I can better head canon that Hackett is a pain in the butt continually interfering in Shepard's mission... but that still doesn't really help me mold anything individual about my Shepard's character.  The side quests in ME1 are pure filler... in ME3, they tie into the main story much better, IMO and they have consequences that affect the main story as well... and that makes them more infinitely usable to me as a role-playing device than the side quests in ME1.  I'll gladly accept a story line that is a little more linear for side quests that actually mean something within the context of the main story.  Sorry.

[AlanC9]

I think they should have just made player swap discs a lot.

I'm pretty sure that would have been very bad for the game's reception.

[UpUpAway]

Roleplaying involves acting in accordance with your character's personality. Simply "going Paragon" or "going Renegade" seems like a much shallower approach.

If I have a character who, despite being primarily a Paragon to that point, understands that saving the Council doesn't benefit anyone if Sovereign wins, he should still be able to save the council.

This is supposed to be a roleplaying game, not a choose your own adventure story. It's not about having a branching narrative, it's about being able to play the character you designed within the narrative.

 

You've completely missed my point with that post... and I'm too tired to go back to explain it to you.  Having a meaningless bunch of side quests does not give the player a platform to "design" any particular sort or character any better than having a completely defined character playing through a linear story.  It just means you've independently head canoned a character who is just going through a bunch of meaningless motions... the definition of which is ALL in your own head.  I expect an RPG to give me enough of the platform of meaningful activities so that I can show that, for example, my Paragon Shepard holds a different philosophy about problem resolution than my Renegade one... or my one Renagon one against a different Renagon one.  In the case of ME1... it didn't matter... they could all, in the end, use the exact same approach to taking down Saren and the options for rationalizing saving or destroying the council were the same for all of them as well.  It didn't matter what I had done to develop the character earlier in the game... the PC's character just didn't matter in the end... both P/R dialogue paths for Saran were about convincing him to commit suicide.  As wildly different I might have imagined by Paragon Shepard to be from my Renegade one... their reasoning in the end had to be very nearly identical to finish the game.  At least in ME3, the reasoning behind each choice was vastly different even if only the colors changed in the ending cinematic... and mid-game, the character of the Shepard who pointed a gun in Mordin's back was very different than the one who didn't... even though both of them decided to cure the genophage.  They were able to do it in very different ways consistent with the characterization I had built for them previously.

[AlanC9]

I have a standard character I try in my first playthrough of every new RPG. Mass Effect broke that character as soon as Shepard spoke. In that respect, all of Mass Effect was a compromise for me.

But if I'm unsatisfied with how the game plays with my first character, I try a different character. You could at least play through the critical path with yours.

What's that standard character, why do you use it, and how did Bio break it?

[capn233]

No they don't. That's not at all what I have been saying.

 

Mass Effect 1 actively discourages you from doing side content if we're looking at it from a RP point of view because of how the main questline is set up and how the game tries to convey a sense of urgency in finding Saren and beating him to the conduit.

 

If it weren't for the urgency the main quest tries to convey, this would be a non issue.

 

Playing through Shadowrun Hong Kong the quests are laid out in a very similar fashion to Mass Effect 1 but without the game trying to tell me about how important it is that I race against time. Suddenly running off to do a side mission doesn't feel like a stupid move and I can headcanon my own reason as to why my character wanted to do that particular run.

 

I know what you were saying, and actually I agree with your larger point.  ME1 did not encourage anybody to do the side missions and the race against time actually made it seem like you should avoid them altogether since barely any of them had to do with the hunt for Saren, and only a couple arced missions had anything to do with the main plot even tangentially.

 

But some seem to be suggesting in this thread that for the game to be a proper role playing game then you need a bunch of options like "what if I was roleplaying a guy who was a pacifist and wouldn't use a weapon or hurt anybody?" "What if I want to role-play random villager number 2 instead of the main character?"  Hence I quoted your "what if I wanted to play a moron."

 

My point was really that to be a role playing game you do not need to allow everyone to play whatever person they want.  It isn't an "any role playing game."

[Khrystyn]

I have a standard character I try in my first playthrough of every new RPG. Mass Effect broke that character as soon as Shepard spoke. In that respect, all of Mass Effect was a compromise for me.

...following BioWare's paint-by-numbers plot doesn't make that problem go away. I had to play a very specific type of character for any of the ME games to make sense at all. That's a problem. A good RPG should allow us a much wider variety of viable character designs.

 

I have a question, not a criticism.

 

How does a rpg offer a wider variety of viable character designs without bloating the game and risk creating more inconsistencies? 

 

Wouldn't this require the quantity of optional dialog to jump from 40,000 to 60,000+ possible lines to accommodate a wider variety of optional roles?  The dialog wheel is limited in options, and on top of that are the investigative topics and romance conversations. It's a balancing act given that the story has to draw down to the singular conclusion. If there were several very different outcomes (not like ME-3's), that would create problems for canon ending, wouldn't it? Forget about a sequel that can cohesively pull together very different endings.

 

I'd really like to hear your ideas for how wider character designs (for wider role-play variations) can be done without causing more problems.

[UpUpAway]

I have a question, not a criticism.

 

How does a rpg offer a wider variety of viable character designs without bloating the game and risk creating more inconsistencies? 

 

Wouldn't this require the quantity of optional dialog to jump from 40,000 to 60,000+ possible lines to accommodate a wider variety of optional roles?  The dialog wheel is limited in options, and on top of that are the investigative topics and romance conversations. It's a balancing act given that the story has to draw down to the singular conclusion. If there were several very different outcomes (not like ME-3's), that would create problems for canon ending, wouldn't it? Forget about a sequel that can cohesively pull together very different endings.

 

I'd really like to hear your ideas for how wider character designs (for wider role-play variations) can be done without causing more problems.

 

That's the question... I believe Sylvius indicated in another thread that he wants text rather than dialogue as the solution to that.  (He also wants to be able to read everything his character will say before selecting his choice.)  I personally prefer dialogue and I'll trade off some of the range of PC personalities I can inject into the game to get that.  Of course, that still doesn't resolve the second issue.  If the game is to have a chance to logically produce a sequel, then I think they pretty much have to keep the characterization range narrow enough that they can draw the game to to a singular conclusion (something that wasn't well done in ME3, but I also think it's something that wasn't well done even in ME1 (for a different reason).  They could have supported more different characterizations of Shepard by adding some more varied approaches that could have all still resulted in Saren winding up dead.  They did a much better job with the dialogue choices and interrupt combinations in ME3 when concluding the genophage issue.

[In Exile]

What's that standard character, why do you use it, and how did Bio break it?

Bioware breaks my characters all the time. It's gone down with the addition of VO as we no longer have enforced passivity, but certainly Shepard's mouth frothing lunacy in ME1 was an issue. Or ME3 had Thessia. I was actually mostly okay with ME2 until the arble-garble if you pick to blow up the Reaper base.

[Khrystyn]

In terms of having different endings (a good rpg), I wonder if choices made during the game could cause the ending to occur on different planets in different circumstances with significantly different results. There could still be the showdown with the archenemy, but the potential endings could play out in different ways, such as making peace, destroying the boss, or the boss escapes causing a cliff-hanger, for example.

 

If dev efforts were not spent on useless quests, and instead spent in developing different ending circumstances, I think this would make role-play choices more interesting, more consequential, and more unique for the player. If you want a very different ending, you'd have to play your protagonist with very different choices.

 

A sequel probably couldn't account for three very different outcomes, but I'm okay with that (I think). What I like about sequels is that I can see each character's personality and attitudes get more fleshed-out, and even have their attitudes change over time (without a P/R penalty).

 

I'd much rather have different well-developed outcomes then spend 30 hours in mindless resource scavenging.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The side quests have no impact on the game and most are about cleaning up small merc messes for Hackett, other officers, and other "private" citizens and are expressly not about finding information on Saren, (Did you ever read any of the computer screens or listen to the announcements about those side quests?)

We don't know they have no impact until after we've done them, and by then it's too late.

And it's not the case that they expressly have nothing to do with Saren. Such a thing wouldn't even make sense unless we knew in advance exactly who was responsible for what was going on.

I can better head canon that Hackett is a pain in the butt continually interfering in Shepard's mission... but that still doesn't really help me mold anything individual about my Shepard's character.

Side quests (or any quests) never help me mould my character. I do that in advance. The quests help me express who the character is, but who the character is is 100% known to me when I start that playthrough.

The side quests in ME1 are pure filler... in ME3, they tie into the main story much better, IMO and they have consequences that affect the main story as well... and that makes them more infinitely usable to me as a role-playing device than the side quests in ME1.

What does one have to do with the other? The consequences of the quest have nothing to do with roleplaying, because roleplaying consists entirely of in-character decision-making. In-character, the player has no foreknowledge.

What the quests need to offer more roleplaying is to offer more opportunities to make decisions. Any kind of decisions.

I'll gladly accept a story line that is a little more linear for side quests that actually mean something within the context of the main story. Sorry.

A linear path necessarily offers fewer decision-making opportunities.

[MC117]

A mix of ME1 and 3, the great story and mystery of ME1 and some exploration plus the gameplay of ME3, I trust them to make the gameplay great but I really hope that they don't go full Inquisition on us with huge areas with nothing interesting in them, as pretty as DA:I was there was nothing interesting to do in that game outside the main quest and even that wasn't that great, but with ME:A being built from the ground up for current gen hopefully that's not a problem.

[Il Divo]

We don't know they have no impact until after we've done them, and by then it's too late.

And it's not the case that they expressly have nothing to do with Saren. Such a thing wouldn't even make sense unless we knew in advance exactly who was responsible for what was going on.

 

 

The argument isn't helped by the fact that, on none of those occasions are you even given the option of turning the storyline's direction towards finding Saren. If the shadowbroker asks what you want as a reward, there is no "help me track Saren" option, far as I recall. 

 

It might be true that the detective in the story doesn't know in advance what he's going to find in relation to his target. But the detective isn't going to move door to door in the futile hope that some random person knows what's going on, which pretty accurately sums up the unknown worlds. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

What's that standard character, why do you use it, and how did Bio break it?

I use it because I know it really well, so it doesn't require a ton of mental effort. This allows me to get to know the game while experiencing genuine in-character reactions to the events therein without getting too bogged down in the mental gymnastics required to roleplay a particularly unusual character, or one that thinks less like I do.

For example, I once played a character in DAO whose standard of evidence was different from mine, and I found that extremely difficult.

By getting to experience genuine in-character reactions, I can then use those reactions as a sort of baseline later when playing other characters. I find that helps me avoid unintended metagaming.

My standard character is a bookish 51 year old male who is largely indifferent to the welfare of others and routinely makes jokes solely for his own benefit, not particularly caring whether others enjoy them or even notice they've occurred. In ME he might have worked better if Shepard had been voiced by someone like Jeremy Irons.

He's explicitly not heroic. He always has his own agenda, but he's also extremely patient, so he'll go along with a plan he does not care about while he looks for opportunities to advance his own. But also won't hide his derision for basically all people. And he doesn't raise his voice, because why bother shouting at people? Rather than get angry at people, he just loses interest in interacting with them. He can be charming when he wants to be, but he rarely wants to be (and he doesn't trust charming people).

He was originally an AD&D character of mine (created in 1991), a Chaotic Good Thief (Swashbuckler) who had had his alignment magically changed to Lawful Evil and then secretly dual-classed to Necromancer without telling the rest of the party. He then feigned insanity to distract from the fact that he'd stopped using his Thief skills. His name was Sylvius. People said he was mad.

I played him in a regular weekly group for 4 years, until he died when a burning building collapsed on him.

This character worked pretty well in BioWare's D&D games, and exceptionally well in KotOR. It worked very well again in DAO (particularly since his real objective was to do magical research combining blood magic and the darkspawn taint to try to remove the taint and grant himself long life, and then he met Avernus who was basically doing the same thing, and explicitly got to keep him around to do that very research). He didn't work in DA2, but he headcanoned very well into DA2, and then the portrayal of Hawke in DAI was entirely consistent with the character. He worked fairly well in DAI, but it was hard to do the companion quests without coming across as too concerned with their feelings.

And the gruff delivery of the opening lines in ME made it clear that Shepard wouldn't work. So I switched to my backup character, who's basically the new Netflix version of Jessica Jones. That was compatible with the voice in ME, but I still couldn't navigate the terrible paraphrasing.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I have a question, not a criticism.

How does a rpg offer a wider variety of viable character designs without bloating the game and risk creating more inconsistencies?

Wouldn't this require the quantity of optional dialog to jump from 40,000 to 60,000+ possible lines to accommodate a wider variety of optional roles? The dialog wheel is limited in options, and on top of that are the investigative topics and romance conversations.

Don't voice the protagonist. The word budget goes way up if you don't voice the protagonist.

It's a balancing act given that the story has to draw down to the singular conclusion. If there were several very different outcomes (not like ME-3's), that would create problems for canon ending, wouldn't it? Forget about a sequel that can cohesively pull together very different endings.

I've long been a vocal opponent of save imports.

I'd really like to hear your ideas for how wider character designs (for wider role-play variations) can be done without causing more problems.

Look at older games. The less explicit the characterization in on the screen, the more space there is for a roleplayer to fill in the gaps.

Have the game operate not as an interactive story, but as a simulation. Let us break the game. Don't hold our hand or tell us where to go.

In fact, stop thinking about it as a game at all. Think about it as a toy. How you play with a toy is limited only by your creativity. How the toy was intended to be used doesn't matter; if you can find a way to use it that you think is fun, go ahead.

[Sylvius the Mad]

You've completely missed my point with that post... and I'm too tired to go back to explain it to you. Having a meaningless bunch of side quests does not give the player a platform to "design" any particular sort or character any better than having a completely defined character playing through a linear story. It just means you've independently head canoned a character who is just going through a bunch of meaningless motions... the definition of which is ALL in your own head.

All roleplaying happens in your head. All of it. It consists entirely of motives and reasoning and beliefs and goals. None of that is ever visible outside that person's head, so you can make it be whatever you'd like.

There are two big problems with ME that interfere with this, however:

1. There just aren't that many opportunities to make decisions.

2. The decisions that are available are largely hidden behind obfuscatory paraphrases.

When I play a CRPG, gameplay typically consists of me choosing from among the available options the the alternatives that are consistent with my character's personality. With the paraphrases, I couldn't tell which options were consistent with my character's personality, so those weren't opportunities to make decisions. Instead, they were opportunities to guess.

I expect an RPG to give me enough of the platform of meaningful activities so that I can show that, for example, my Paragon Shepard holds a different philosophy about problem resolution than my Renegade one... or my one Renagon one against a different Renagon one. In the case of ME1... it didn't matter... they could all, in the end, use the exact same approach to taking down Saren and the options for rationalizing saving or destroying the council were the same for all of them as well.

Rationalization is an unforgivable failing. Reasoning should come before the decision, not after.

It didn't matter what I had done to develop the character earlier in the game...

I don't even understand what this means. Why are you developingthe character's personality during the game?

At least in ME3, the reasoning behind each choice was vastly different even if only the colors changed in the ending cinematic... and mid-game, the character of the Shepard who pointed a gun in Mordin's back was very different than the one who didn't... even though both of them decided to cure the genophage. They were able to do it in very different ways consistent with the characterization I had built for them previously.

Wait, I have a question.

Wheb Shepard points his gun at Shepard's back, did you getto choose right then whether to do that? Or were you limited by the game to do it or not based on some previous decisions the devs thought were relevant?

What it they were wrong? Wouldn't it be better if you could choose right then, in that moment? What if Shepard's motives were something different from what the devs had anticipated?

I think it would be better (and obviously so) to maximize the player's choice moment-to-moment. If the animation to point the gun exists anyway, the player should get to choose right then whether Shepard will do it.

[AlanC9]

Well, Shepard can't shoot Mordin when witnesses are around, unless you want to pay the cost of the NPC reactions. But once you're both in the building, it's an interface issue if you want to shoot him at will, I guess.

I actually can't visualize playing a character who would shoot before Shepard does in the existing game, though -- most of mine don't shoot him at all. So this example isn't really selling me on the feature.

[Jaron Oberyn]

I think this falls under normal evolution of a game. The question i wonder is, is BioWare asking themselves what they want to make at the end of the day? It's one thing to make a shooter with RPG elements but it's another if it seems to be just another shooter. I expect quality up and beyond what companies like EA normally produce. If it's a shooter, it either should be the best damn shooter out there, or better still, like a Porsche, be a shooter with an obvious BioWare stamp on it. No matter how it evolves over time, it should still be unmistakenly a BioWare game.

Stripping away player control of a character over the course of a trilogy (so it could be like Uncharted according to Mac Walters) Isn't evolution, it's devolution.

[nfi42]

A mix of ME1 and 3, the great story and mystery of ME1 and some exploration plus the gameplay of ME3, I trust them to make the gameplay great but I really hope that they don't go full Inquisition on us with huge areas with nothing interesting in them, as pretty as DA:I was there was nothing interesting to do in that game outside the main quest and even that wasn't that great, but with ME:A being built from the ground up for current gen hopefully that's not a problem.

 

 

This to me would be ideal.  Got to fill the world with better sidequests then they've previously done.

[BloodyMares]

I'm not sure if that counts as RPG but I really hope that hub worlds (and uncharted worlds) would have many interesting things to do. In ME trilogy, hub worlds were always empty once you complete every sidequest and buy everything you need. I mean, in ME1 Citadel is a grand space station, opportunities should be limitless, yet there are only shops, a dance floor, some quasar stations and the strip-club. Noveria offered absolutely nothing, Feros was in ruins, uncharted worlds were very empty with little incentive to explore. Same thing with ME2 minus the exploration. Omega, Citadel and Illium had only shops and clubs with a couple of quests. ME3 made it slightly better with having your crew members hang around the Citadel so you could at least talk to them.

[Laughing_Man]

Stripping away player control of a character over the course of a trilogy (so it could be like Uncharted according to Mac Walters) Isn't evolution, it's devolution.

 

Yes, a hundred times.

 

Writers, even if you really want the character to have emotional moments, don't do it by striping away player agency.

 

Some amount of choice (at the very least) is paramount to the concept of RPG.

 

The ability to choose becomes even more crucial during character defining moments and possible emotional reactions.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Well, Shepard can't shoot Mordin when witnesses are around, unless you want to pay the cost of the NPC reactions. But once you're both in the building, it's an interface issue if you want to shoot him at will, I guess.

I actually can't visualize playing a character who would shoot before Shepard does in the existing game, though -- most of mine don't shoot him at all. So this example isn't really selling me on the feature.

I don't care when it happens. But when it happens, can any Shepard do it? Or is there a Shepard who never gets the option because of his previous choices?

If any Shepard can do it, then that's good design.

[Iakus]

I think all Shepard's have the chance to shoot Mordin.  It's just in certain circumstances, Shepard has a chance to convince Mordin to abandon the cure without shooting him.