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"Deciding who is wrong and who is right"

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Another reason why I never thought very highly of the whole concept of "choice and consequence", is that very rarely do the choices you make really matter, because they all have to "even out".

This means that in most RPGs that offer this feature, no faction is ever "right", because they are all hiding information and misdeeds from you. Very rarely can you uncover information that can make you think more objectively that one faction is "right", because usually the designers try to make a balanced gameplay experience for everyone.

Let me list you a few examples:

-In Vampires The Masquerade Bloodlines, every major faction or character ends up using you, plotting against you or betraying you. So is it all down to just whichever gang of assholes I think in the coolest?

-In Shin Megami Tensei, you have the church of Messian (who fights for God), and the church of Gaia (who fights for Satan). But as you explore the game, you discover that both factions have zealot/crazy disciples that have committed terrible deeds and which portray the other side as the "real evil ones".

-In AOD I despised everyone. Everyone was a self-serving, backstabbing fuck,that only deserved to be treated the same.

See why I don't think these choices mean much at all in the end? It would be different if you had enough distinct information about a faction that would allow you to make a more invested choice.
 

Wunderbar

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In FNV, NCR were the good guys with problems, while Legion were mustache-twirling assholes. Players didn't like it, Sawyer later stated that they should've made factions more balanced.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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I generally agree, just trying to accomplish a median of cynicism ultimately harms the story (even worse is if's used for pretentions of maturity), but honestly I think the problem isn't so much the level of cynicism but centering things too much around factions. This is generally heavily linked to the logistical problem that you cannot present a meaningful choice in a game that can last 20+ hours until the very final stretch because of the immutable realities of time and money.

I would say that the underlying narrative problem of the factions, and this especially peeks out in games based off a tabletop license, is slavish submission to maintaining the status quo. Bloodlines is kind of a posterchild of this, as the factions are representatives of the sacred and unalterable status quo. It's not just that your choice doesn't really matter beyond a popularity vote, it's that the whole story of the game doesn't actually matter even the tiniest tiny squat, nobody grows in the slightest, nobody learns absolutely anything (then again, these two are practically impossible to do with a genuinely freeform PC, since that PC exists as a vehicle for the player's imagination and facilitates that; but none of the NPCs learned or growed at all), there is only the status quo. New Vegas fares better in this respect since within its local context it intends for the status quo to break.

In FNV, NCR were the good guys with problems, while Legion were mustache-twirling assholes. Players didn't like it, Sawyer later stated that they should've made factions more balanced.
I think that just leaves us at the old problem of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Personally I would say it just highlights the utter inanity of the blatantly evil faction being joinable at all. Then again, moustache-twirlingly evil dialogue choices and whatnot have always been kind of stupid and existed solely because someone just had to include the entire alignment smorgasbord, even if the outcome would inevitably have a chunk that makes absolutely no goddamn sense. Everyone who runs d20 learns soon enough that you just need to learn to tell people "NO" when they want to play alignments that are incompatible with the story, which generally means one trio and without exception Chaotic Neutral because Chaotic Neutral fucking sucks and leads to nothing but problems.
 
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Repressed Homosexual
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I think another big reason that makes this suck is that no matter what you choose, in almost every game... YOU HAVE TO PLAY THROUGH ALL THE SAME LEVELS AND CONTENT... I know there are time and money constraints, but I'm like, are you fucking kidding me with your "choices" that make you think you are being so deep and clever, when in the end it's the exact same experience with another coat of paint?

And even something like AoD, where VD insists that you see the story from every point of view and you can never access all the content... ultimately ends up to one thing: you pay the same levels, but you are either side A or side B. Now that's deep!
 

Ocelot

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Elves are wrong, genocide of said species is right. Simple.

Pelinal, is that you?

In FNV, NCR were the good guys with problems, while Legion were mustache-twirling assholes. Players didn't like it, Sawyer later stated that they should've made factions more balanced.

I wanted to join the romans in NV for obvious reasons but I couldn't get past their psychopathic tendencies, low intelligence, primitivism and obsession with violence and pain. Romans in NV have all the bad qualities of the ancient empire without it's any of it's good qualities. Then again, a more rational and level-headed Roman Empire could end up eating everything and everyone in it's path.

One fan theory suggests that Caesar wanted to use these dumbed-down romans to unite the people of the wasteland against a common enemy, which makes sense but I doubt the writers actually thought of that when they created them.
 

Wunderbar

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I think another big reason that makes this suck is that no matter what you choose, in almost every game... YOU HAVE TO PLAY THROUGH ALL THE SAME LEVELS AND CONTENT... I know there are time and money constraints, but I'm like, are you fucking kidding me with your "choices" that make you think you are being so deep and clever, when in the end it's the exact same experience with another coat of paint?
In Witcher 2, you get two different chapters depending on your choice. And those choices are not even: on one hand you have a likable spy dude Vernon Broche, on the other - smug assholish elf-terrorist.
These chapters are so different, you'll better play the game twice.
 
Repressed Homosexual
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If this is true, then I guess it is done right. But you have to admit that you almost never see this happening.

I guess I just don't like the emphasis on personal player choices (that aren't really personal player choices).

Something I haven't seen Western games do, is systems where the story is determined both by personal choices, AND by the minute, selfish, or accidental actions of the player.

I don't think a game like Ultima IV counts, because it is only about the latter.

Again, SMT implemented this very well. I remember one time I was going for a law playthrough, I picked all the choices for law and did all the law quests.

But one time, after grinding in a dungeon for hours, I went to heal my party in a Messian church, and I was told "You are using the power of chaos! You will not be admitted into our church!"

I was stunned as to why they suddenly hated me and I had a chaos character. Then I discovered why: you get "chaos" points when you kill demons of the same species as those which are already in your party. So I had become a chaotic character by accident.

I still think that game was very, very in advance upon its time (released in 1992, full of CNC and NPCs attempting to make you join their side).
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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In general, there aren't many Western games that attempt to connect gameplay and narrative in a meaningful way. This I think is a considerably more desirable thing to master than simply seeing how much you ape a Choose Your Own Adventure book. The gameplay itself can be a part of the story, if you grasp how the two can connect.

It's the same reason why WRPGs so consistently fail at the attempted EPIC BATTLES because of the inability to look at how to work with the limits of their tech rather than just letting the tech limit their work. Best example of this is always when Bethesda tries to do this, since it just comes off as pathetic and embarrassing in how misguided the fundamental design for creating their EPIC BATTLE is.

I think another big reason that makes this suck is that no matter what you choose, in almost every game... YOU HAVE TO PLAY THROUGH ALL THE SAME LEVELS AND CONTENT... I know there are time and money constraints, but I'm like, are you fucking kidding me with your "choices" that make you think you are being so deep and clever, when in the end it's the exact same experience with another coat of paint?

And even something like AoD, where VD insists that you see the story from every point of view and you can never access all the content... ultimately ends up to one thing: you pay the same levels, but you are either side A or side B. Now that's deep!
This I feel is part of the genius in the structure of Way Of The Samurai, since it goes for wide instead of long as its way of designing the game paths. It works notably better to have a very short game you replay many times in very different ways than a long game with minimal variation. It's also important that thanks to focusing their real-world based setting within a single location, they can build the story around ending the status quo at the start of the game through player action. Though it is noteworthy all of these games, similar to as I understand visual noves, also feature a True Ending path. The other paths are more about working towards the ending where the PC succesfully saves the day for everyone.
 

Mark Richard

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In Bloodlines vampire society is little more than a pyramid scheme, and going independent is by far the most satisfying ending. In Age of Decadence the world is dying, and nothing in it is designed to sway you from the notion that it deserves to. Being screwed at every turn is thematically appropriate for both these games.

The motivations of characters within the game don't concern me so much as the motivations of the player. What I hate is when a game containing good and evil options is obsessed with balancing rewards, to the point where players never feel pressured to go one way or the other. Either the good option has an equal reward, or the resources the game provides are so generous that you never feel compelled to commit evil deeds for any other reason than roleplaying purposes. Games hardly ever reach outside the confines of their space and tempt you, the player, directly. I've previously mentioned in an Eisenwald thread how novel it was to be slowly corrupted by the game as it gradually swayed me into believing I needed to commit dark acts in order to survive through both the gameplay and the story.
 

Strange Fellow

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I agree with this. One of my pet peeves in games is when they make you choose between faction A and faction B. Faction A has good side X, but, to make supporting them less of a no brainer, they also have bad side Y. Faction B, on the other hand, has good side Z, which mirrors the other faction's issues, only they've gotten it right. Unfortunately, they have issues all their own, bad side C, which faction A does not. It adds up to make a Balanced™ and Ambiguous™ choice with Shades of Gray™. It's formulaic and boring as fuck.
 

DalekFlay

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Dragon Age 2 was the funniest, if you ask me. Mages or Templars is the choice they give you all game, then at the end you find out the leaders of both are nuts and there's a boss battle against each of them no matter the choices you made. Fucking hilarious.

Anyway, C&C is a difficult thing. Most players don't want to be punished for "bad" choices, writing nuanced moral greys is hard and developing new content for a different choice is time consuming and expensive. Witcher 2 was mentioned above and it has to be one of the best examples out there. A whole other middle chapter, it's like an entirely different game, and I disagree the choice had no dilemma to it. Iorveth is a terrorist sure, but Elves are treated so bad in that world you can see why he does what he does. Also the man you're chasing was hiding with Iorveth, meaning his route would theoretically be more bankable. Even Witcher 2 does have issues though, such as not knowing who the fuck the dragon lady was at all since I went with Roach's path the first time. The ending made almost zero sense until I played the alternate path.

Anyway, it comes down to money, time and talent; same as everything. Give a talented designer the time they need to do it right and you'll get something cool. Otherwise, not so much.
 

Oracsbox

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The Fable games had a noticeable difference in choice and consequences and you were the one that decided right or wrong in the world.You could very easily do only good or Evil seldom would you be led up a path to hidden motivations and rewards were equal for either.

Yes they are simple and never realised their true potential but being a bastard early on and actually seeing a town become a dark dirty mess was fairly interesting likewise a town flourishing under good.
Only light and dark but still a change happend.

The choices of decision on how to raise money to save your kingdom in Fable 3 were also attempted in a different way from the norm,do you attempt to find it through good moral choices but poor financial/practical decisions and end up with a wasted kingdom which if I remember caused enormous butthurt with players at the time it was released,or attempt a sound economy and take time to build it or just do what needs to be done for the greater good in not a particularly nice but at least successful way.

There were a lot of small dynamic changes in the game's like being fat,thin,tall,short,angelic,demonic depending on diet and lifestyle.

Your children could die from disease which is a rarity in a game.
Divorce,kill the wife !

Sacrifice people at the temple including the wife,always enjoyable,the consequence being everyone feared and hated you, especially if you did it on a industrial scale.
Do it in Skyrim does anyone really give a shit ? Braith will still tell you to go fuck yourself whenever you enter Whiterun,now watch the reaction in Fable from children when they see a 7ft Demonic killing machine walk into town.

Those around you acted differently depending how you were with them it was your decision and they reacted to it.

There were a lot of other ideas and mechanisms in the game's that were fun to play around with but I'll get too many tldr's.

As I say all fairly simple maybe a little too obvious Good/Evil but the effort was made to make a dynamic world certainly more so than many other rpgs and I would have liked to have seen this greatly expanded upon but alas that was not to be.

I'm not sure any of this addresses what the topic is about but I just felt like mentioning fable.
 

DalekFlay

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The choices of decision on how to raise money to save your kingdom in Fable 3 were also attempted in a different way from the norm,do you attempt to find it through good moral choices but poor financial/practical decisions and end up with a wasted kingdom which if I remember caused enormous butthurt with players at the time it was released

That's a great example of "mainstream players want good guy choices to lead to good guy outcomes." Publishers want their money.
 

Cross

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If this is true, then I guess it is done right. But you have to admit that you almost never see this happening.

I guess I just don't like the emphasis on personal player choices (that aren't really personal player choices).

Something I haven't seen Western games do, is systems where the story is determined both by personal choices, AND by the minute, selfish, or accidental actions of the player.

I don't think a game like Ultima IV counts, because it is only about the latter.

Again, SMT implemented this very well. I remember one time I was going for a law playthrough, I picked all the choices for law and did all the law quests.

But one time, after grinding in a dungeon for hours, I went to heal my party in a Messian church, and I was told "You are using the power of chaos! You will not be admitted into our church!"

I was stunned as to why they suddenly hated me and I had a chaos character. Then I discovered why: you get "chaos" points when you kill demons of the same species as those which are already in your party. So I had become a chaotic character by accident.
So you get 'chaos' points for killing enemies in self-defense (and since it's a game with invisible random encounters, such encounters are unavoidable)? How does that even begin to make sense? How is defending yourself chaotic? Even Ultima IV's system is far more sophisticated, since its virtues take into account not just killing your enemy and what their alignment is, but also letting them flee, or fleeing yourself, as well as where you fight enemies, as well as various non-combat actions. And alignment-gated content has been a thing since the first Wizardry, how is that anything mindblowing to you?

Anyway, you seem to be using the modern definition of C&C, as popularized by cinematic games like Kotor, Mass Effect and console games in general, where it's all about picking one of (usually) two binary choices the game presents you, while the game restricts you from doing anything else. But that was never what C&C in cRPGs was originally about. What was special about Fallout wasn't choosing between different sides or faction, it was the extent to which your character's attributes, skills and your gameplay decisions changed how you experienced the game. For instance, there are at least three ways to reach the Master (disguise, fighting your way in, or letting Morpheus lead you to him), as well as at least three ways to deal with him (killing him, talking him into suicide or activating the self-destruct sequence). These are never presented as important story choices, you make these decisions naturally as you play through the game.

Unfortunately, most developers nowadays seem more interested in the modern definition of C&C.
 
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almondblight

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-In Vampires The Masquerade Bloodlines, every major faction or character ends up using you, plotting against you or betraying you. So is it all down to just whichever gang of assholes I think in the coolest?

Strauss and the (downtown) Anarchs aren't really (Jack's not working with the Anarchs). Though the Anarchs do try really hard to annoy the hell out of you.
 

Grampy_Bone

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I agree, this is an issue with "choose your faction" games. My problem is factions need to have some kind of presence in game and need to feel distinct from one another. In Pillars 2, the only faction that felt unique were the Principi, because they had their own bases. Everyone else was one house of questgivers and none of them really mattered.

In New Vegas, NCR and the Legion sure feel distinct from each other, even if the Legion is criminally underdeveloped. Bethesda had the right idea with Skyrim's Imperials and Stormcloaks, even if the storyline is a hollow lie that goes nowhere. Best examples would be most Piranha Bytes games.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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The problem with making failstate C&C is that games insist on being hugely long, which makes these incompatible occurances. You cannot have something lead to something bad 20+ hours down the road. Again, this is something that you need to design wide instead of long with, Way of the Samurai games being the best example. There are paths in those games where you can end up executed or betrayed or otherwise wind up dead as a doornail in the story, but it doesn't matter to anyone playing because each playthrough takes two or three hours at best and the purpose is to discover the many ways in which the story can play out.

The choices of decision on how to raise money to save your kingdom in Fable 3 were also attempted in a different way from the norm,do you attempt to find it through good moral choices but poor financial/practical decisions and end up with a wasted kingdom which if I remember caused enormous butthurt with players at the time it was released

That's a great example of "mainstream players want good guy choices to lead to good guy outcomes." Publishers want their money.
The general clash of this is that you cannot create this manner of "morally grey" situation in a fictional fantasy world in a game which is essentially power fantasy driven by player agency (well, suppposed player agency; Shamus Young for example has a lot of lashing for Fable series in this regard but I've never played those games so I have no idea). Point is, the story and core gameplay must reach a synergy for the desired theme to not fall flat on its face and irritate the audience.

Best way to approach this were one to write a more downbeat game would be to limit or eliminate personal combat, and tell a very grounded and mundane manner of story. It's very hard to make a game story about utilitarianism when you also include wizards and dragons and shit (this is also why ice monsters were always the delayed action mine that had potential to wreck Game of Thrones). The more power you have present, the more implicit the connection to player agency (as in, the player's ability to defeat obstacles and assumption of doing so). This is why a story in a game like the Yakuza series will for instance pit moral idealism against amoral cynicism, and moral idealism will always triumph because these are games at the root of which is more-than-human battle and the connection between moral fiber and physical strength is instinctively made.

This is not to say it cannot be done, it's just that level of difficulty is quite far above your average video game designer's level of talent. Especially a Western one, who is habituated to not see the connection between narrative and gameplay. Or specifically in case of RPGs, is so weaned on Tolkien clone cliches it addles their mind.

But it's a tall order to be someone good enough to make such a game. One could think of Miracleman as an example of a story about superhuman power where agency of the character and their ability to have positive effect is inverse to their omnipotence compared to the everyman. But it's difficult to create a commercial and expensive product about a story of how terrifying superhuman power is. Sure, you don't need to quite the level of master as Alan Moore is, but it's still a tall order, especially considering the fundamental nature of games as fantasies of control.

-In Vampires The Masquerade Bloodlines, every major faction or character ends up using you, plotting against you or betraying you. So is it all down to just whichever gang of assholes I think in the coolest?

Strauss and the (downtown) Anarchs aren't really (Jack's not working with the Anarchs). Though the Anarchs do try really hard to annoy the hell out of you.
Well at least Damsel is as hot as she is bitchy. Betcha she gives amazing apology head.
 

frajaq

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This means that in most RPGs that offer this feature, no faction is ever "right", because they are all hiding information and misdeeds from you. Very rarely can you uncover information that can make you think more objectively that one faction is "right", because usually the designers try to make a balanced gameplay experience for everyone.

That's... ok? I mean that's the part where the role playing part of the RPG comes it, where would your character position yourself towards these factions? Factions should have flaws too, just like the player.

Alternatively each faction just gives exclusive and tempting rewards to the player so he has to make choices "Hmmm that church of Eternal Destruction is full of assholes buuuuut that armor/sword they give you looks pretty nice!"
 

Serious_Business

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Elves are wrong, genocide of said species is right. Simple.

Elves in Tolkien they are generally supermen. Not sure why any other fantasy setting hasn't caught up to this. Anyone remembers this?

latest
 

Lurker47

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Another reason why I never thought very highly of the whole concept of "choice and consequence", is that very rarely do the choices you make really matter, because they all have to "even out".
That is really dumb. Just because something is morally subjective (even to the smallest degree), it doesn't mean choices don't matter. Factions still have their own unique goals. Rarely ever are they just completely interchangeable "ends justify the means durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr". Granted, I think striving towards a moral gray blob can cause some problems with the writing but it's nowhere near as fundamental as you make it out to be.
In FNV, NCR were the good guys with problems, while Legion were mustache-twirling assholes. Players didn't like it, Sawyer later stated that they should've made factions more balanced.
I strongly disagree with this. Everything that makes the NCR God-awful is in place but it's not given nearly enough attention to make them *seem* as bad. For instance, they're a thoroughly corrupt government that uses prisoners as slave labor... Hmmm.... Really makes you think.

There aren't nearly enough normal people who take a hard-line stance against the NCR in-game and I genuinely believe people get this impression from how the information is presented and not what was actually written.
One fan theory suggests that Caesar wanted to use these dumbed-down romans to unite the people of the wasteland against a common enemy, which makes sense but I doubt the writers actually thought of that when they created them.
This is thoroughly implied. It's everything but outright stated. Caesar's sole purpose of creating the Legion is essentially to destroy the NCR. All future reformations are put on the back-burner until the NCR is destroyed- the Legion will shift into a republic after they push out the NCR. The current state of the Legion in New Vegas is not a permanent political entity, it is a vessel to build cultural and personal strength that will transition into a new democratic society. One of the most important aspects of the Legion is its impermanence but that is completely glossed over by most people.

Sawyer had great ideas. They just weren't given the right amount of focus. Some of this was due to time but I think a lot of it came from poor planning. If the NCR's content was cut and the information involving or about them was even, New Vegas would have been a billion times better.
 

DalekFlay

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In New Vegas, NCR and the Legion sure feel distinct from each other, even if the Legion is criminally underdeveloped. Bethesda had the right idea with Skyrim's Imperials and Stormcloaks, even if the storyline is a hollow lie that goes nowhere. Best examples would be most Piranha Bytes games.

I feel Bethesda improved more with Fallout 4. The Brotherhood are fascists but order might be what the wasteland needs, the Institute might have the power to resurrect the world but have no moral compass, the Railroad has moral compass out the ass but come off as naive and derpy and have no real plan for the wasteland as a whole. Only the Minutemen are presented as pure white knights and they're basically a faction you build from the ground up, I believe (never got far in their questline due to annoying town mechanics). Whether you like the game or writing around it or not I think the general concepts and positions of the factions were pretty well done.

Also people forget the other two routes in New Vegas, Mr. House (pure mercenary basically) and independent (taking power for funsies).
 

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