PedroSteckecilo said:
While choice is important to prevent linearity and claustrophobia, so is narrative and a truly great RPG should have an appropriate balance between the two. Par Example, in Oblivion you are certainly given the illusion of choice, you can go anywhere and kill anyone. But None of those choices MEAN anything. You don't have wronged family members hunting you down, you don't become wracked with guilt for murdering an innocent man etc. One can't draw out emotion with "pure choice", the player is too detatched. For that you need narrative and some measure of control. As well in games like Oblivion and Fallout I rarely feel like my character actually exists in the world, I feel more like I'm just watching it go by. Especially since Fallout 3 offers remarkably less "roleplaying" than the first two did (For more info see Stolen Pixels, it extrapolates on this point nicely).
What I'm getting at is that most of these choice games don't allow you to "create" a story, they just allow you to kill anyone you want and go anywhere you want. Most of these choice games are just several stories sectioned off into different areas that allow you to progress at your own pace. Think about it, every Guild in Oblivion has its own linear storyline that doesn't change. You have NO control over the outcome of most of these, you can just progress at them at your own pace.
That's why I didn't mention Oblivion, or Bethesda games in general, as doing this open-world thing particularly well. Fundamentally, your character is detached in games like Oblivion, Morrowind, and Fallout 3. Part of it is that there's no real social system or expectation. Take being an "evil" character. There shouldn't really be much recourse for this, because in real life, being evil has consequences. Granted, games aren't real life, but I think the argument stands that people in a game aren't going to ignore you murdering and stealing from everyone. Especially if, as is the case in Oblivion and Morrowind, there's an established system for dealing with that. Bethesda games often give too much power to the player in this regard, because you're exempted from a lot of the reprecussions of evil acts in order to allow you to be evil. That's lame, and it makes everything feel stiff and detached.
There are other reasons I have problems with Bethesda games, but I'll try to simply draw up an example of some games I think do the freedom-to-choose thing well. I've already mentioned Ultima games, but Baldur's Gate and its sequel also had a good bead on things. Ultima 7 and the Baldur's Gate games aren't all that similar, but they do a good job of weaving your role into a greater picture. One of the things that I find very useful in this regard is the ability to form parties. Another thing these games do very well - and that Bethesda games are terrible at - is making your character both heroically strong and relatively fragile. Sure, you SHOULD be able to clobber normal people and town guards, but (going back to the social structure thing) you always have to imagine there's someone stronger out there. This allows you to win by being clever, not just by levelling up. It also means you can't just blast townsfolk because the archwizard or elite guard will show up and trounce you.
PedroSteckecilo said:
As well you say "I" a lot, as in "I would never do something that stipid". The point of a videogame isn't to be yourself, it's to be someone else and experience things you can't in real life. Who cares if that's what "you" would do, your character shouldn't necessarily be "you", they should be a character YOU created and YOU made choices for, but they shouldn't be "you". I am frequently annoyed at "choice" in games because frankly it's really hard to escape myself and really craft a character with their own personality. They have no pasts, memories or experiences that I don't bring to the table, and frankly, that's kind of boring.
This is kind of where I don't understand where you're coming from. I like to be myself in games. If at all possible, I try to make choices in line with my own feelings on a subject. I like being me, so there's no need to be someone else for the sake of a game. There's no need for me to craft a character with its own personality - for me the fun is being a version of me but in a different world. I don't want to be other people.
Even then, if I do want to make other people, I usually want them to be party members, not the main character. This allows me to play me in my own way, and then I can play the other characters in their own ways, too. This way there's never a conflict in how to deal with a situation, because I don't have to choose between what I want to do and what another "character" wants to do. A good example, though not from an RPG, is Fight Night. I create myself, of course, and go through the rankings. On top of that, I create other boxers (also having them go through the rankings), then assign them some sort of story. Maybe they're friends, maybe rivals, maybe both (like Apollo and Rocky!). The game gives me that freedom, and I love it for that.
