Edward_R_Murrow said:
With the city elf, can my character do something other than go Charles Bronson on the lord's ass? What if I'm a totally lawful guy, and just let him do it with her because it is the law? What if I don't want the likely violent revenge forced on me by Bioware, and would rather sleep with his wife? What about telling the bride to be to run away, and run she does?
the character you control, as the city elf, IS the wife who is going to be raped, not the husband. this is made clearer on the bioware site, which goes into greater detail on the characters and the societies they live in.
and, i'm sure you dont have the choices you mentioned (with a little rewording so it's you who submits to the lord, etc) - i also dont see this as necessarily bad. i think everyone knows perfectly well that this game is likely to have few choices/meaningful choices - rather, it will focus on telling a central story. and, frankly, i see nothing necessarily wrong with this, there's clearly a place in the video gaming world for games of this type, and it doesnt make them bad per se (what makes them bad is if they're done poorly). yes, having games which are much more free-form can be quite delightful, and, yes, we're in short supply of them, but i see no reason to get upset over the simple fact that a game is being made which is *not* the sort you're as interested in. they keep pumping out sports games and racing games, and, although i'm not particularly interested in these kinds of games, i see no reason to complain simply due to the fact that they exist.
as for the ability of the game to emotionally affect a person, i think it all depends on how it's done - the mere fact that it happens early in the story (precisely how early is uncertain - nobody here has played the game, there is altogether far too much conjecture being employed in judgement of this game) does not mean it cannot be done well. i also believe it's curious to assume that the focus of the drama of the game will be all in the opening (who is to say that the drama of the opening is not meant to simply develop the character and to be of import in later parts of the game? again, too many assumptions, too much conjecture). i also think it curious that people would attack, within video games, dramatic techniques which are used often enough, and often enough *effectively*, in cinema. i WONT argue that most games, frankly, dont screw it up, simply because most games arent written as well as many movies(something which is hardly a necessity of the medium). but this is not to say that they may not do well this time, and there are other games which did it effectively, i believe (though i'm sure many of the people here may disagree on examples, but that's fair enough).
so, yeah. summing up my point: judging a game before it's out, based on bare-bones information, is disingenuous (and, in this case, just the *summary* of the information, as the gamebanshee info only quotes a relatively small part of what we've been given, not that we've been given loads anyway). and, further, if one judges a game (or whatever) to be bad, they ought to judge it more on its own terms, rather than due to the simple fact that it is not the sort of thing they like (ie: as it's illogical to complain that a fps is not, say, a strategy game, to use an extreme example, it is similarly illogical to complain that a game which surely few people expect to be a freer rpg with numerous, meaningful choices doesnt live up to these non-expectations. clearly this game is, first and foremost, a "drama rpg" or whatever the term may be).
