Saint Proverbius wrote:
I agree with this also. You'd think they'd come up with something better, like teaching the player a skill or giving the player information about something that furthers the plot or ends up with a reward like the sword.
For example, "Thanks for the help, Bob. By the way, there's a cave near here that's rumored to have some kind of special item in it. It's too dangerous for me to check out, but perhaps you could handle it."
While this method is better than the “here’s a magic sword +5 for your troubles†deal, it is no less a cliché that SomethingAwful.com covered some time ago, about ungrateful townsfolk referring you to a really dangerous dungeon/island/secluded area as a reward for helping them. Gee, thanks a lot.
Personally, I’d prefer something with a bit of ‘lore’ involved. Pity this sort of thing wouldn’t really go with modern day ‘realistic setting’ games, or D&D in general. Here goes:
“Thanks for defeating the evil bandits, here’s a microchip for a laser gatling gun that my great-grandfather used to have in the Old World, for your troubles. It’s obviously of no use to me since I don’t have a gatling gun of my own or I would have killed those bandits myself, obviously… but maybe you’ll find some use for it.â€
That's one thing I thought was funny about the Lord of the Rings movie. Up until he destroys the bridge to stop the Balrog, Gandalf was basically just a walking, talking flashlight in the Moria area.
Don’t forget the part where Arwen destroys ubermonsters and becomes relatively useless later on, aside from being nice to look at. Where’s the consistency?
I HATE the farmer one day, huge powerful hero one month later. Come on, the whole chosen thing is bad enough, but why can't we have more royal heroes?
Come to think of it, I’d love to play a game like that. For once, it’d be nice to play a royal Prince who sets off into the world to bring peace throughout the lands, like those old Grimm’s Fairy Tales. And he doesn’t have to be a Moses character, either.
I’m so sick of Moses characters. Why does the Prince (if the protagonist is one) always have to be an orphan of a deposed Queen, left to be raised by a couple of nice old peasant folk or perhaps an old mage? The story always goes like this:
War rages over the land. The Evil Empire seizes the Good Throne. A Council of Nine Mage Advisors does their best to protect the Queen and her only child when the Good Castle comes under siege. The King dies defending the Queen and her child in battle.
The Council of Nine Mage Advisors defends the Queen and her child to escape. Two of the nine mages die. One mage is a traitor. One of them escorts the Queen and her child to safety. The other 5 survive, but no one knows what happens to them.
Cut to: The Queen is terribly injured from the attack. The Queen asks the wise old mage to take care of her son like it is his own. The mage (Let’s call him Ormus) swears he will, and the queen dies at that moment.
Cut to: Ormus is old as hell now, and the boy prince is in his teenage years (preferably 16-18) and one day the village that they live in is raided by a large horde of Orcs/Orogs/Orks/Ogres/etc and Ormus sends the boy on his way. For the first time, the boy prince sees Ormus casting spells and Ormus says “RUN! RUN! I may not survive this attack! If I can’t help you out, seek out my friends in the Friendly Arm Inn/Dwarven Bread Inn/any other place you can think of.
Ormus manages to slay the initial attackers but is terribly injured by a poison arrow/sword/etc of the BIG BAD GUY, or the BIG BAD GUY’s lieutenant.
The boy runs away to seek out the person Ormus referred to. This person can either be a helpful ranger, two adventurers who promised Ormus to look after the boy, or an old mage (one of the five Mage Advisors who escaped).
*Just supplement Ormus with ‘two old peasant folk’ who die defending the child if you want to. They themselves are quite ignorant and much like Ormus, they never tell the boy his destiny and his real origin.
**Another cliché is that the Evil Traitor Mage takes the boy into his custody and gets him to work for the evil empire. But as the boy grows up he realizes the evil plan of the mage and turns against him, destroying the evil empire from within and killing the evil mage at the very end of the game/story.
***Oh yeah, the evil mage wants to release an ancient evil. ALWAYS. Sometimes he wants the ancient evil to possess him through the use of a magical sword, staff or a spell that requires the sacrifice of a small boy… perhaps even you. Read the list below.
Remind you of anything?
Here’s some:
Arcanum
Diablo
Morrowind
The Wheel of Time
Baldur’s Gate
Some of the Shanarra books by Terry Brooks
Divine Divinity (minus the childhood part)
Star Wars (Ep 4)
Neverwinter Nights
Lord of the Rings
Summoner
Deus Ex (follows the Evil Mage storyline)
Fallout 2
God damn Moses characters.
Fallout is the only game that I can think of that didn’t use all of these fucking clichés.
Everyone always tells the truth, and your information never conflicts. "What’s that, someone stole your gold and you want me to get it back? Why sure I would be happy to do that for you, after all I am a hero." When in reality the peasant, hearing about the new people in town who want to help anyone, just had you rob some innocent person blind and murder them.
As far as I can tell, Divine Divinity is the only game that does this differently. At one point a merchant tells you that his cows are being stolen and wants you to find the culprit. The culprit turns out to be a poor peasant playing Robin Hood. He steals the cows, butchers them and gives their meat to the poor people in the poor section of Rivertown. To find this out you first have to find out where the meat is (in an underground cellar) and confront him with it. You can then choose to keep the information between yourselves or execute him, I think.
I decided to help him out but he got arrested anyway. You can choose to release him from prison later on. Neat eh?
Divine Divinity had shit loads of racism, too. Good way to stray from the norm, that.