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Good idea, bad idea, how to make RPG choices better (TEXT WALL and spoilers people)
manwiththemachinegun
METAL GEAR?!Registered User regular
METAL GEAR?!Registered User regular
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJydcaI-I6E
I've noticed a common theme in several threads. While most people agree that RPGs are much better now than they were ten years ago, there is still a frustrating reliance on traditional mechanics. The worst part of this seems to be the game design itself, wherein you ONLY get the greatest benefits, bling, and equipment if you min/max good or evil choices. This is a huge mistake in my view. Yes, it is appropriate to reward players for their choices, but they can be done in a way that is not mutually exclusive, for example.
You have saved the villiage! You now get a sword that you can only use if you have +30 good points.
You have burned the villiage! You now get +5 to your strength that no other character can match!
This kind of choice punishes the good player that WANTS the plus five to strength, and also punishes the evil player who wants that awesome sword.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_u05kUx1WQ
Throwing the baby out with the bath water won't help either. Simply saying, "there is no such thing as good or evil, everything is relative" is as trite and mechanical as the alignment spectrum itself. Games exist very much as a canvas for people to influence. By saying your moral viewpoint is no different than that of Lord Carnage, you are denying the player a chance to give voice to their actions. Rather, I think games need to start asking better questions and be providing more interesting answers for both their characters and players. The same is true of sandbox games. More player freedom means less interesting dialog and narrative. There has to be a way to have stories in games while giving a player a chance to tailor their characters to their liking.
While what I'm talking about would be such choices as:
You have saved the village… so it can be used as fodder for the slavers who are coming over the hill. You now have the pick of the pillagers plunder.
You have destroyed the village but it had to be done. A warlock release a magic plague on the citizens. It would have been possible to make a cure… if you used the power of your father’s amulet. But by doing so you would have diminished your greatest weapon against evil. If you don’t defeat the wizard now, he will take many more lives later on. The King thanks you with a heavy heart and gives you a choice of bodyguards to take with you on your quest.
Granted, there will always be a pure good/ totally evil alignment scale in RPGs, as they should be. But there is room for so much more, both in the choices player makes and how games and narratives are given a satisfying conclusion. I don’t think, “but it would be too hard to code, voice act, etc” is an acceptable excuse any more. The examples I list are all games you can play, right now. It’s just up to designers to get the story, gameplay and setting up to par. With that in mind, here are a few RPGs I think have made big strides in advancing the medium.
Fallout 1 and 2. Really all that needs to be said. What is the point of morality in a system where law and order essentially no longer exists? That's up to you. You can be a goodie two shoes or depraved monster, but there are so, so many clever ways you can do it. You can be a brainiac, scientist who loves his laser Gatling and power armor, or a chess master villain who never, ever takes the 'inelegant' solution. By that I mean you can plant bombs on people, convince people to kill other people, and horribly screw up other people's lives by your silver tongue, all while never putting on anything more than a stylish leather jacket. Or you can be neutral and be completely focused on your quest, letting the world be. It's completely up to the player how the main story is finished. The storybook ending style also allows for each region you visit to have SEPERATE endings. No two players have to have exactly the same ending, and that is amazing. A more recent example of moral dilemma would be the Ashur/Werner quest. Do you destroy an emerging bastion of civilization? If you do, it comes at the cost of allowing the slavery and death of many, many innocent people. Do you free the slaves? If you do, you set back the recovery of the wasteland by decades, but have saved many lives as well. Which is more important? Short or long term recovery? That's up to the player to decide.
Knights of the Old Republic II I almost consider a type of philosophical experience. It makes the players confront some of the hard truths about both the Jedi and Sith as potrayed in the movies. What makes a good Jedi go bad? Is it something inherently wrong with Jedi core beliefs? If so, how does a Jedi trying to make a difference deal with concepts and problems that the Order has no answers for? And what of the Sith? Nihilus has the power of a god, but it is utterly meaningless. He exists soley for the sake of feeding himself, much like a child. His path has no future, only death for everyone and everything. There is a ton of deconstruction on both the Jedi and Sith way of life. BUT like the best deconstructions, it puts it all back together in the end. You're still a noble Jedi or evil Sith, but how you get there with Kreia throwing all sorts of moral curve balls at you is so much more satisfying. You can be a goodie two shoes Jedi, or you can tear Atris a new one by mocking her stance on the Mandalorian wars. Kreia verbally bitch slaps you as well for making seemingly benign or trite choices because you haven't considered the consequences of your actions. She actively belittles kick the dog type evil characters, as well as Dudley Do Rights. The choice is yours. That you ultimately defeat the unkillable badass Sion with words instead of sabers (or more accurately words and sabers), says a great deal about the power of belief in one's convictions. The same for dealing with Atris, you could redeem her... or you could leave her to the mercy of her precious holocrons. This is all done without repercussion to the player. And yet, again, to have the best abilities, you have to min and max good/evil choices.
Mass Effect also seems to have taken a step in the right direction in regards to Commander Shepard. They have flat out said Commander Shepard is not a villain, he would never do something so out of character as to betray Earth to the Reapers for example. That design choice allows for a greater flexibility in defining what the player can and cannot do. Many Paragon players noted they enjoyed getting more, 'badass' options like punching out Zaeed or by tearing the C-Sec officer a new one. Renegade players said much the same thing for head butting a Krogan or shooting up a bunch of mercs as they boast. You're basically giving the player to express themselves as Joe Friday or Dirty Harry. You are still set in a defined role, YOU are a space policeman. That is the story and role you have been given. But what kind of cop are you? What does it mean to be a cop? Do you execute all lawbreakers, even those who may have been indoctrinated like Shiala? Or do you never compromise your principles? Even if it means letting a dangerous alien terrorist like Balak get away with no guarantee of his return? These kinds of choices are much better than the typical RPG fare, and thus it's place on my list is well earned.
Jade Empire had a tantalizing hint of this as well. I essentially played the entire game in the Closed Fist (a sort of social Darwinism) style without kicking the dog too much. After all, someone needs to teach these fucking NPCs to fix their own problems once in a while. I saved the water dragon though, because the evil endings are morally horrifying. I like the idea too of a noble spirit monk who just so happens to enslave a mystic kung fu version of Darth Vader because he would make a good party character.
I then had this mental conversation: ”Oh my, my comrades oppose this choice? … TOO BAD! GUESS WHAT GUYS? I JUST ENLSAVED YOUR SPIRIT! Ha ha, but don't stress, I'll release you in a bit after I deal with the big bad.”
I mean, that's a kind of hero I've NEVER seen in any kind of media, but Jade Empire let me make one. Not another Wolverine anti-hero, but a nice, upstanding polite young monk who just so happens to enslave the spirits of his comrades when they disagree with him and his new ex-villian minion of death. Oh well, time for the happy ending!
What I want to hear from you all is, what were the choices in RPGs that had the biggest impact on you personally? Big choices? Little ones? Funny ones? Do you find yourself picking snarky answers just because they’re funny? What choices in games made you pause and REALLY think about what you had to do next? (No save/reload scumming)
I've noticed a common theme in several threads. While most people agree that RPGs are much better now than they were ten years ago, there is still a frustrating reliance on traditional mechanics. The worst part of this seems to be the game design itself, wherein you ONLY get the greatest benefits, bling, and equipment if you min/max good or evil choices. This is a huge mistake in my view. Yes, it is appropriate to reward players for their choices, but they can be done in a way that is not mutually exclusive, for example.
You have saved the villiage! You now get a sword that you can only use if you have +30 good points.
You have burned the villiage! You now get +5 to your strength that no other character can match!
This kind of choice punishes the good player that WANTS the plus five to strength, and also punishes the evil player who wants that awesome sword.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_u05kUx1WQ
Throwing the baby out with the bath water won't help either. Simply saying, "there is no such thing as good or evil, everything is relative" is as trite and mechanical as the alignment spectrum itself. Games exist very much as a canvas for people to influence. By saying your moral viewpoint is no different than that of Lord Carnage, you are denying the player a chance to give voice to their actions. Rather, I think games need to start asking better questions and be providing more interesting answers for both their characters and players. The same is true of sandbox games. More player freedom means less interesting dialog and narrative. There has to be a way to have stories in games while giving a player a chance to tailor their characters to their liking.
While what I'm talking about would be such choices as:
You have saved the village… so it can be used as fodder for the slavers who are coming over the hill. You now have the pick of the pillagers plunder.
You have destroyed the village but it had to be done. A warlock release a magic plague on the citizens. It would have been possible to make a cure… if you used the power of your father’s amulet. But by doing so you would have diminished your greatest weapon against evil. If you don’t defeat the wizard now, he will take many more lives later on. The King thanks you with a heavy heart and gives you a choice of bodyguards to take with you on your quest.
Granted, there will always be a pure good/ totally evil alignment scale in RPGs, as they should be. But there is room for so much more, both in the choices player makes and how games and narratives are given a satisfying conclusion. I don’t think, “but it would be too hard to code, voice act, etc” is an acceptable excuse any more. The examples I list are all games you can play, right now. It’s just up to designers to get the story, gameplay and setting up to par. With that in mind, here are a few RPGs I think have made big strides in advancing the medium.
Fallout 1 and 2. Really all that needs to be said. What is the point of morality in a system where law and order essentially no longer exists? That's up to you. You can be a goodie two shoes or depraved monster, but there are so, so many clever ways you can do it. You can be a brainiac, scientist who loves his laser Gatling and power armor, or a chess master villain who never, ever takes the 'inelegant' solution. By that I mean you can plant bombs on people, convince people to kill other people, and horribly screw up other people's lives by your silver tongue, all while never putting on anything more than a stylish leather jacket. Or you can be neutral and be completely focused on your quest, letting the world be. It's completely up to the player how the main story is finished. The storybook ending style also allows for each region you visit to have SEPERATE endings. No two players have to have exactly the same ending, and that is amazing. A more recent example of moral dilemma would be the Ashur/Werner quest. Do you destroy an emerging bastion of civilization? If you do, it comes at the cost of allowing the slavery and death of many, many innocent people. Do you free the slaves? If you do, you set back the recovery of the wasteland by decades, but have saved many lives as well. Which is more important? Short or long term recovery? That's up to the player to decide.
Knights of the Old Republic II I almost consider a type of philosophical experience. It makes the players confront some of the hard truths about both the Jedi and Sith as potrayed in the movies. What makes a good Jedi go bad? Is it something inherently wrong with Jedi core beliefs? If so, how does a Jedi trying to make a difference deal with concepts and problems that the Order has no answers for? And what of the Sith? Nihilus has the power of a god, but it is utterly meaningless. He exists soley for the sake of feeding himself, much like a child. His path has no future, only death for everyone and everything. There is a ton of deconstruction on both the Jedi and Sith way of life. BUT like the best deconstructions, it puts it all back together in the end. You're still a noble Jedi or evil Sith, but how you get there with Kreia throwing all sorts of moral curve balls at you is so much more satisfying. You can be a goodie two shoes Jedi, or you can tear Atris a new one by mocking her stance on the Mandalorian wars. Kreia verbally bitch slaps you as well for making seemingly benign or trite choices because you haven't considered the consequences of your actions. She actively belittles kick the dog type evil characters, as well as Dudley Do Rights. The choice is yours. That you ultimately defeat the unkillable badass Sion with words instead of sabers (or more accurately words and sabers), says a great deal about the power of belief in one's convictions. The same for dealing with Atris, you could redeem her... or you could leave her to the mercy of her precious holocrons. This is all done without repercussion to the player. And yet, again, to have the best abilities, you have to min and max good/evil choices.
Mass Effect also seems to have taken a step in the right direction in regards to Commander Shepard. They have flat out said Commander Shepard is not a villain, he would never do something so out of character as to betray Earth to the Reapers for example. That design choice allows for a greater flexibility in defining what the player can and cannot do. Many Paragon players noted they enjoyed getting more, 'badass' options like punching out Zaeed or by tearing the C-Sec officer a new one. Renegade players said much the same thing for head butting a Krogan or shooting up a bunch of mercs as they boast. You're basically giving the player to express themselves as Joe Friday or Dirty Harry. You are still set in a defined role, YOU are a space policeman. That is the story and role you have been given. But what kind of cop are you? What does it mean to be a cop? Do you execute all lawbreakers, even those who may have been indoctrinated like Shiala? Or do you never compromise your principles? Even if it means letting a dangerous alien terrorist like Balak get away with no guarantee of his return? These kinds of choices are much better than the typical RPG fare, and thus it's place on my list is well earned.
Jade Empire had a tantalizing hint of this as well. I essentially played the entire game in the Closed Fist (a sort of social Darwinism) style without kicking the dog too much. After all, someone needs to teach these fucking NPCs to fix their own problems once in a while. I saved the water dragon though, because the evil endings are morally horrifying. I like the idea too of a noble spirit monk who just so happens to enslave a mystic kung fu version of Darth Vader because he would make a good party character.
I then had this mental conversation: ”Oh my, my comrades oppose this choice? … TOO BAD! GUESS WHAT GUYS? I JUST ENLSAVED YOUR SPIRIT! Ha ha, but don't stress, I'll release you in a bit after I deal with the big bad.”
I mean, that's a kind of hero I've NEVER seen in any kind of media, but Jade Empire let me make one. Not another Wolverine anti-hero, but a nice, upstanding polite young monk who just so happens to enslave the spirits of his comrades when they disagree with him and his new ex-villian minion of death. Oh well, time for the happy ending!
What I want to hear from you all is, what were the choices in RPGs that had the biggest impact on you personally? Big choices? Little ones? Funny ones? Do you find yourself picking snarky answers just because they’re funny? What choices in games made you pause and REALLY think about what you had to do next? (No save/reload scumming)
manwiththemachinegun on
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Posts
-I'm going to assume you haven't played The Witcher. Because you described The Witcher and did not name drop it. V:tM - Bloodlines as well, to a lesser extent.
-We should have this discussion after Alpha Protocol releases.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
This happened to me in Deus Ex
I realised I had been killing human beings at that point and decided to throw away my gun and stick to tranquilisers and knocking people uncincious. They may be terrorists but they are real people (in the game world anyway)
Deus Ex has some awesome moments as Junkie pointed out. There are a great number of characters sympathetic enough to warrent a no-kill playthrough. For a story on that end, when I first played the game I did the Tong ending. Global shut down. Then I watched the Earth grow cold and silent and I realized I had completely fucked up the planet. I eventually ended up with Illuminti since I felt the secret government was better than either godlike AIs or shutting down the world.
You see this? This right here is where The Witcher calls bullshit. The game has no metric of morality, nor does it attempt to assert a morality upon you in the process of offering its choices. It really doesn't even deal in questions of morality so much as questions of character. It simply asks you to dig into your core beliefs and make some very tricky decisions based on often sketchy information.
And this shit? Happens every chapter. Except you made that decision 7 hours before anything came of it and there's no taking it back. Dragon Age does this as well, but not as thoroughly or elegantly.
Basically, go here. Then come back and rewrite your OP.
edit: This is also relevant to the discussion at hand.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
Some games are trying to remove the binary good/bad thing.
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Character morality is more what I meant when I said games shouldn't get rid of 'pure good' and 'pure evil' choices, because there are people like that in the world.
Seriously, the entire game is based around exactly this topic.
-Brainwash everyone into orderly behavior
-Kill everyone weaker than you
-Put things back to normal
That's pretty much the biggest moral decision there is.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
After a certain point you can see the shape and pattern of things. This isnt a troper thing (mostly), its a "After six choices of that type, I can see that the game-dev thinks THIS way about it."
From there its just a matter of gaming the system for intended response. KOTOR, Mass Effect, Fallout, Dragon Age, The Witcher, all of them follow this sort of habit.
So to me, the interesting choices are the ones that DEMAND that you pay-the-fuck-attention, not just get better at instinctively predicting the system.
Theres one particular choice I'd like to highlight with this. One of the enemy factions in Mass Effect is the Eclipse mercenaries. All female, all biotic weilding types. As you progressively deal with them, a few things become obvious. A, they dont play up their gender at all. B, they use a kill as your rite of passage before you get to wear the uniform.
Given that you've been running around and very pointedly killing everything in your path (Regardless of Paragon/Renegade choices), this seems a fairly small time deal. One of the sub-plots on the planet in question is that there was a merchant murdered in somewhat inexplicable motivation recently.
Now, laid out like that, with the facts right next to each other, its pretty simple to see where this is going.
You plow through one of the Eclipse merc posts, and eventually come acrost an Asari Eclipse, who essentially stops, makes with a heavy amount of water works, and begs for her life. "I didnt know it would be like this, I wanted to be heroic, fighting bad guys, etc etc".
Here's the fun part. You can let her go, to no real negative consequence. Or you can kill her. It turns out, she was the one who killed that merchant, of course, and the "right" choice is to shoot the loudly weeping pretty-pretty in the face.
For me, the fascinating part is that the "correct" choice is very obvious, especially if you're paying attention. Theres almost no real effect on gameplay or plot one way or the other. And yet, its a very telling event, for the Eclipse, for the player, for the Asari in quesiton all. After I made the "wrong" choice the first go around, cold no less, ( I always have a hard time killing pretty things in games...) I found myself paying a hell of a lot more attention to the rest of the game's choices, and felt pretty good about my outcomes from there on out.
Not enough games give you choices like that. Choices that matter, but arent about choosing to be a bastard in order to get the +5 sword of shinyness or a nice guy in order to not piss off the king. Choices that you can reasonably be expected to "get" enough information beforehand, without analyzing every pixel twice.
Uh, sorry Bioware. Maybe I'm still a little bitter. I mean, you're cool now and all.
I also don't really understand how one can game the choices in The Witcher, seeing as there are no correct or intended responses in it. Excluding the prologue choice, I guess, which is a tutorial about consequences. Most of those decisions are just as interesting when you're fully aware of how things will eventually turn out.
*edit: Oh, duh. I can see how that scene would work. I have seen how that scene would work. That's, like, the entirety of V:tM - Bloodlines.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
Recently I've dug into F3, which handles bad guy horribly. As a bad guy, or even a neutral cat, it'd be nice to have the option to just steal the intended reward or kill the guy for it. The game, however, will not allow this. The item in question does not exist. It is not in their inventory, it does not exist until you complete the good guy part and initiate conversation.
It'd be great if I could nick the item, then abandon the quest. It'd be nice if I could abandon quests, some RPGs don't even allow that. I'd like to nick the item, turn to the guy, and verbally abandon the quest. Tell the quest giver the deal is off and he can fuck himself.
Admittedly, my experience with RPGs is... limited, at best. On a basic level, the above is my issue with morality systems, they one always precludes the other in ways that aren't logical. Content always seems lacking on one side of the fence.
I do have Mass Effect, Gothic 3, Risen, Oblivion, The Witcher and KOTOR1 all waiting for me, though.
I loved that part as well, and it's nice to have a ruthless disposition actually accomplish something positive for once. Not everyone is a Jedi.
I can't see how it was overwrought since in 99% percent of RPGs, the pretty young thing begging for a second chance is NOT in fact just a lying, murdering whore. You were clearly informed that all Eclipse sisters commit a murder for their initiation, and so the decision to cap her when she twitched for her gun was perfectly fair.
Again, it's not so much the choices themselves, it's the whole, if you're good/evil you get exclusive content locked out. With a few exceptions like passive bonuses for certain lightside/darkside powers
A good example strikes me of Kyle Katarn in the Jedi Knight series. He's a bit of a maverick even by the standards of Luke's order. He goes so far to allow his students to use force lightening, which is of course a big no no for most people. He believes its all in how you USE the power, which I find somewhat reasonable.
Ultima V (and I think several other Ultimas) had a roomful of children that attacked you. Granted, you might be able to flee.
You're playing Shepard, no two ways about it, and he's a distinct character. He is not, however, static. I kinda dig it, tell you the truth. As opposed to say, The Nameless One, who is certainly both distinct, and static at the same time as he is changable. Or the KOTOR main guys, who arent so much characters as archetypes.
IMO anyone who wants to have interesting moral choices in a game should look at the TV series Deadwood, one of the most interesting narratives with respect to morality and the whole question of actions vs. outcomes, as far as I'm concerned.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Christ almighty.
So you look at it as a character choice. Shepard will either catch on to her bullshit or be played for a fool. The problem here is that there's nothing of thematic interest about letting her go unless we're dealing with a flawed Shepard. Even if it's obvious to the player, what flaw would Shepard be portraying here to ignore all this evidence in front of him and let her go? There's nothing in the writing of that scene that points to anything. It's a pretty offensive case of good is dumb, made doubly offensive by the fact that there is no 'good' in that game's morality system.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
If I remember right from that scene I did not even blink when she went for the gun because even though I had been killing her sister mercs for a good 20 minutes unless she was actively trying to hinder me, or kill me, I did not really have a problem with her. Plus I have a shield, she is not going to cut through it in the one shot she gets before the three of us turned her into tasty, tasty, calamari. I mean its not like its the first time I would have eaten Asari.
Oh hey you killed someone to join your merc group, grats, I've killed about several hundred of most known sentient species this week alone. I told her to leave, she left. Finding out she killed some guy means i can turn over the evidence for a reward and let them handle it.
Man there really needs to be an Easter Egg in MA3 where during some dramatic moment Shepard looks down and says "Can we hurry this along? You know I am only doing this side quest so you do not completely suck during the climax and get someone I like killed."
The girl that's into retro videogames also likes bad boys.
I immediately regretted being Mr. Hero throughout the whole game, and wondered how one could even PLAY Contact as a bad guy.
And that's a perfectly legitimate way to play through that Eclipse encounter. Those were YOUR choices and you stuck for them. What makes that situation stand out to me is you have the option to kill, esssentially in cold blood, and have it be justied for once. I'm not saying EVERY game should have a situation like this, but something similar.
Another outstanding example is the Tenpenny Towers quest you get from Roy Philips. Be honest, what did you do to him after you returned a few days after making peace with the humans and mutants?
Except that consciously allowing the murderer to leave because it isn't worth your time would be a decidedly renegade action as well, which would be another failure in the structure of that choice. Ratting her out would be a separate paragon action that comes later.
There is a mountain of precedent in Mass Effect that shields do not work on Cutscene Bullets. You have seen shields in a cutscene once over two full story arcs and loads of bitches getting capped.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
Shot him in the face, but to be fair I was rather a pinnacle of virtue in my Fallout game.
Not like I have the time to run her back to the police, or try and escort her through the entire mission so I can turn her in. Given the option of shooting someone in the face who is not trying to kill me and has done nothing to me, or let them run away I saw no reason to blast her. Sure other people have plenty of reason to blast her, not my issue. Besides at that point she is an alleged murder, while i can be judge, jury and executioner per the story it is not like i need to run around doing it willy nilly. Don't get me wrong though I'll kill a man in a fair fight. Or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight. Or if he bothers me. Or if there's a woman. Or if I'm gettin' paid. Mostly when I'm gettin' paid.
I remember at that point she just was not a threat to me.
Also, Avellone
Sorry for killing the thread
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
Also, there were several annoying characters who met their ends tied up on the train tracks. I was quite pleased with that.