[quote]Mendelevosa wrote...
Mass Effect 2 is classified as an ARPG (Action Role-Playing Game).[/quote]
By whom?
An action RPG is an RPG where combat makes up most of the gameplay. Dungeon Siege was an action-RPG, and it was a click-and-wait combat system.
To be an action-RPG, a game first needs to be an RPG. Mass Effect is neither.
[quote]Lusitanum wrote...
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]
What the core features are doesn't change over time.
If you want different core features, define a new genre.
[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]
Again, you're just assuming that the authored narrative is paramount. Why do you think that?
The emergent narrative matters in an RPG. There's a reason "emergent narrative" has a name. I didn't just make it up.
[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.[/quote]
That's considerably better than being stuck to the limitations of dialogue options you're not even allowed to choose between.
Mass Effect may as well never offer you choice at all and just be a movie. It would be the game amount of roleplaying.
[quote]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]
You had plenty of opportunities to choose to do things differently in DAO. It just didn't have a simply good/evil meter to tell you how you were doing.
Look at Redcliffe. I think an altruistic character saves the town. I think an evil character saves the town. I think a duty-driven character leaves the town to die.
BioWare explicitly told you in advance that your character in DAO was the hero. But what sort of hero you were was entirely up to you, and you had the ability to play a coherent character from start to finish with only minor issues here and there.
Mass Effect, on the other hand, denied you obvious choices (like responding negatively to Ashley's religion) and never let you know what sort of person you were playing until after you'd done something.
[quote]See, it's that kind of specific that will make people ignore you. I mean, seriously...[/quote]
It's that kind of empty response that will make people reaslise your position is baseless.
[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]
Why would I need to revise the lines after the fact? Why not accept that people can misunderstand me?
Communication isn't a thing. I can't control how people react to what I say or do. But I can control what I say or do.
Unless I'm Commander Shepard. Then I'm an out-of-control lunatic.
[quote]I know my character isn't supposed to be a mute[/quote]
So your insistence that he is is your own fault. Stop blaming the game for your own lack of imagination.
[quote]if you need to pause constantly in ME just in order to aim[/quote]
I choose to pause constantly to aim in Mass Effect because it improves the game.
I was really annoyed that I couldn't do that with the sniper scope. And why couldn't I fire while puased? I got trigger biotic while paused. Why not my weapon?
ME was just inconsistently assembled. The more I talk about it the less good I think it was.
[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.[/quote]
Sure. The problem with ME is that it forces you to ruin the game by acting out of character. The only way to avoid acting out of character is not to have a personality at all. Let Shepard be nothing more than a puppet, and only then can the game make any sense.
[quote]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]
That sort of system rewards you for having people skills. You tell people what they want to hear, and they like you.
Some games require that your character actually believe all the things he says, and that can easily break a character in the way you describe. But a good RPG doesn't do that. Those dialogue options are simply things you can say, and there's nothing more to them than that. Your character might be lying; only you would know.
[quote]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]
Yes, the difference is that you can't create a character that you find compelling. There's something wrong with you.
[quote]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).[/quote]
There were several facial expressions in DAO, and I actually didn't like them. I played a terribly stoic Dalish archer, and during the joining he got this entirely out-of-character look of dismay on his face when someone else died. That wasn't like him at all.
The only one I liked was the grimace that accompanied being shot with an arrow. That was good.
If you missed all the facial expressions in the game, I daresay you didn't pause enough.
[quote]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.[/quote]
I'm cleraly not the target audience of Mass Effect. What I'm trying to do here is demonstrate that the target audience for Mass Effect doesn't really exist, is much smaller than it thinks it is, and would rather play a game with more roleplaying in it.
You are an outlier.
[quote]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]
But it's more interactive, and I don't have to design the setting myself.
What do you mean by "more real"?
[quote]I would expect you to realize that "nobody" doesn't mean the absolute 100% of the world[/quote]
That would be silly, because that's how universal slaims work.
[quote]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."[/quote]
We are if we want to be strictly accurate.
[quote]It's called "common sense".[/quote]
If someone could ever enumerate the contents of "common sense", I'd give it a shot.
[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.[/quote]
Yes, but I don't believe that, and neither do you.
Based on the wheel options alone (and their relative position), you would need to be able to describe, in advance, exactly what Shepard is going to do (is he going to pull his gun, punsh somebody, walk away, shake his head?) and what he's going to say - word for word.
But you can't do that. I guarantee you can't. No one can without having played through the dialogue previously.
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