[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
That's a good idea. The characteristic I enjoy is the ability to roleplay.
You know, the core feature of roleplaying games.
Games that don't accommodate roleplaying are not fun for me.[/quote]
The core feature of RPGs has been levels, equipment and XP for a while now. Lately, it's starting to become synonym with choices and gripping storylines, while role-playing has been dying for a
loong time now. So, what was that about being the core feature?
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Exactly, because books are different in kind from RPGs.[/quote]
Not when they're trying to tell you a story, they aren't. RPGs, just like any other games in general, have the benefit of being able to show you a story in a diffferent way, using gameplay to move, show and even alter the story but otherwise, there are some rules that remain the same if you want to convey a good plot.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
That's exactly what RPGs do.[/quote]
Not it isn't. <_<
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
There are a handful of big decisions to be made in ME, but not in a way that is consistent with roleplaying. Subtle distinctions are denied you entirely. Anything that doesn't fit neatly into BioWare's Paragon/Renegade dichotomy (which isn't well defined, so there's no way to know what falls in each group) is impossible.[/quote]
And the same could be said of every "subtle" decision I've tried to convey through my characters who were always stuck to what the plot and the dialogue options demanded. At least ME has a reason for its limitations, you're always the same character that, despite the fact that his methods may vary from player to player, always has the same goals and motivations to do what he does: he's a soldier of the Alliance that's out to stop a threat to the galaxy, though the player is given some choice on how to do so, depending on their choices.
Still beats all my characters who were complete bastards but still had to save the world and kittens stuck on trees because
THE ALMIGHTY PLOT DEMANDS IT![quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
As long as you play it like it's a videogame, it will never be a decent roleplaying experience.
It should never feel like a game. This is why I complain when the UI disappears during conversations in every BioWare game after NWN. By removing and restoring the UI, they're drawing attention to it, and that serves to remove me from the game.
Give me a UI (ideally in a frame so none of it in in front of the in-setting action) and leave it there.[/quote]
See, it's that kind of specific that will make people ignore you. I mean, seriously...
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Yes. By selecting keywords rather than full dialogue options, it's then very clear that the options I choose are only abstractions of the lines being uttered by my PC. Again, my PC isn't just shouting keywords at people; he asks coherent questions based on those keywords. Those questions simply aren't featured in the game (just like eating and sleeping aren't featured in Mass Effect - that doesn't mean our characters never do them).[/quote]
And he feels like a complete puppet that who you're just pulling his strings, unless you constantly remind yourself that you've said this sentence (which will be shaped by the answer you get
after you've said it, if you want to keep some kind of coherence in your dialog), and
that will keep reminding you that you're just playing a game because you have to fill in the gaps that are everywhere around you, pulling you out of the game.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
The game doesn't present every aspect of the characters' lives, so why should we believe that it is always presenting us with every aspect of our characters' speech? I see no reason to conclude that my DAO characters are mute, because the game never tells me they're mute. It never tells me they're not, either, but when you go and decide they are (and in doing so, diminishing your own fun), you're incorrectly assuming an excluded middle. Just because the game doesn't show us our characters speaking does not mean they never speak. It means that we never see our characters speak; that's all it means. Everything beyond that is you irrationally jumping to conclusions.[/quote]
I know my character isn't supposed to be a mute, but it just looks like it when
he never speaks! Hell, he even seems like an emotional vacuum when I see everyone gesturing and adopting different facial expressions and vocal tones while he just stares with his humongous eyes into a given direction, ocasionaly folding his arms when he feels like it. Hell, I remember when Wynn fainted and my charcter made this really awkard "surprised" expression (with his mouth waaay too open) and I thought "What's that PC? A genuine, human reaction to an event around you? Are you sure you're feeling well?"
Or what about the sex scenes, where he'd make such goofy faces I just kept laughing and getting this mental image of his thoughts going "Duuuuhr... boobies!" but at least it was
something.[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I understand the VATS ssytem mostly eliminates that.[/quote]
Mostly, for the first moments of a fight, but then the points used need some time to regenerate so you have to actually (*shock*)
aim and shoot stuff. Nothing big, I've managed to do it while getting used for the first time to playing with a XBox controller (as a PC gamer used to the keyboard and mouse, using the controler made the intial baby steps section in the game feel like
actual baby steps), but if you need to pause constantly in ME just in order to aim, then you're screwed with this game.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Yes it does. Good according to whom? By what standard are things judges good, bad, or neutral?
If that standard is not made explicit, it is not useful.[/quote]
According to the game, of course. Top actions give you Good Karma, neutrals usually give you nothing, and the ones at the bottom give you Bad Karma.
Again, is it familiar?
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
That's part of my complaint. If I could pause and queue up the attacks in advance, I probably would have played the game for more than 3 hours.[/quote]
So that the game would consist of even
more tedious waiting until the next time you could click in order to continue fighting. Great.
Why does suddenly the inclusion of quick-time-events in The Witcher 2 becomes a lot more appealing that I thought at first?
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
By that reasoning, no dialogue option in ME can every contradict any other dialogue option in Mass Effect. Since you might choose any combination of options (excepting mutually exclusive responses to the same question), you're saying that whatever you do now can't conflict with any future action. That's absurd.
But more than that, when you do choose an option, and Shepard does whatever Shepard does, do you know why Shepard did that (keep in mind that knowledge requires certainty)? Why did you choose it on Shepard's behalf? What if some future uttereance from Shepard contradicts that reason? What then?
The designers can't write around your motives, because they can't know what your motives are going to be. So the way to prevent it from being a problem is to show you the full option so that you can avoid choosing those words and actions that will break Shepard's mind.[/quote]
Isn't that what you get in pretty much every game, RPG or not? You can have the most brilliant of games in front of you, but you can always ruin it by dicking around and acting out-of-character, like shooting people, messing with things or just plain looking at your feet while someone is making a big speech in Half-Life.
And this gets even worse in games where this lack of coherence is
rewarded. You know, like Dragon Age and that stupid influence system. "Why, yes Morrigan, drinking the still-warm blood of newborn babies under the canopies of swamp trees is
fun! (please kill me)"
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
There's no such thing as empathy. You're just projecting your own emotions onto others. If they're relevantly similar to you (as I suspect most people are - you seem pretty normal) then you'll be right a lot and it will look like you actually perceived something.[/quote]
Yes, there
is such a thing as empathy. You ever heard of feelings? They're the kind of things that make you
feel something for characters that aren't even real, especially when they're not like you. Hell, if a character is like me, I'll probably find them incredibly boring and lose interesst.
On the other hand, empathy is what made my
cry when I saw Sniper Wolf die in Metal Gear Solid, it's the thing that still brings a knot to my throat everytime I hear
her theme. Not because we have anything in common (except for the fact that I also love wolves, but my fascination came
years after I played this game) but because despite all her flaws (you know, like being a terrorist who reveled on killing her targets) she had emotions, she had a purporse, she had a very tragic and believable backstory, and, above all, she was
human!Sniper Wolf dies and I cry for her. My Fallout/Dragon Age/Oblivion characters can die all they want, because all I'll be able to say is a "aww, pity, there goes my character I've spent so much time levelling up and equiping" and move on. That's the difference.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
You're not supposed to connect with him. You're supposed to inhabit him. You create his reactions.
You're expecting the character to do perform for you. That's not the job of the PC in an RPG.[/quote]
OK, first off, this is a Survival Horror. Beyond serving as another example of how genre definitions mean so little anyway (aren't you basically
surviving in pretty much every single game in existence anyway?), the main character isn't supposed to be left to you. He's a character with his own motivations and goals, I'm even less supposed to make up for his shortcomings than on a RPG.
And I'm not in any way supposed to create his reactions, otherwise Isaac wouldn't have that
one moment where he slumps his shoulder and takes his hand to his face in dismay when faced with The Big Reveal of the game. I didn't make that emotion, I was actually pretty indiferent to the game at that point, so that moment was Isaac having his own reaction to something that affected him (as it should).
Meaning that your argument makes no sense whatsoever.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Then you're clearly not the target audience.[/quote]
Yes, because the target audience for a Survival Horror game where you have to fight monsters by bloodily decapitating them while solving puzzles really is the crowd that enjoys making up their own heroes. Oh wait,
no it isn't!And let's just use that idiotic logic to everything else, shall we? You don't like this aspect of the game? Well screw you, you're not our traget audience anyway!
Ergo, you have no right to complain about Mass Effect because you're clearly not the target audience. Seriously, that couldn't have sounded good even in your head.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Everyone who doesn't want to guess at his character's behaviour needs a manual to use that dialogue wheel.[/quote]
If you need to guess at your character's behaviour, then you probably need help dressing yourself.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
You have no internal monologue? I feel so sorry for you.[/quote]
I do, I even have internal monologues with another "me" in my head that sometimes reminds of things that my conscious self forgets. No, I have no idea how that's even possible, but there you go.
And that doesn't invalidate my point in any way: if it's all in your head, then it's as real playing with action figures.
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
You do realise that if I find a single contrary example then you'll be demonstrably incorrect, right?
Universal claims are dangerous.
[...]
And there it is. If you say "nobody", then the number of people doing it has to be zero. Otherwise you're wrong.
Absurdest Derivative just proved you wrong.
[/quote]
I would expect you to realize that "nobody" doesn't mean the absolute 100% of the world, it's what we like to call "a figure of speech" because you'll always find
somebody somewhere who'd agree with
something, even the aformentioned drinking of baby blood. That doesn't mean that we're going to use statements "the vast majority of a given populace farly outnumbers these small pocket of specimens, to the point where they appear to be seemingly insignificant."
It's called "common sense". Use it!
Oh, and by the way, need I remind you:
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Everyone who doesn't want to
guess at his character's behaviour needs a manual to use that dialogue
wheel.[/quote]
I could guess with 100% accuracy what my character's behaviour would be while using the dialogue wheel without needing to read the manual. Ha! take that and your "everybody"!
Inconsistency just proved you wrong. Again.
Retour en haut
) but so hopefully devs will see that the players want one of two things:
