Games that limits your "fun" options in order to stay in character or to get the "golden ending"

[Kopikatsu]

I disagree with the popular view on ME2, it doesn't force you to do anything, you guys are forcing yourselves because you wanted the super perfect happy ending where everyone lives and it's all hugs and kisses, the point of the series was (or it was marketed as) your decisions are important and can have dire consequences... and you guys are metagaming to get away from all those consequences.

There is no point to having a persuasion system if EVERYONE will be able to make the said persuasion, there has to be the possibility of failure.

I'm not saying it's a perfect system, Deus Ex "dialogue battle" persuasion system is way better than anything Mass Effect has to offer, but can you really blame the game for forcing you down one path when you are metagaming through it because you want a very specific result?

Not really, because Paragade points influence a lot more than just how the game ends. For example, if you're not enough of a dick or saint, then you can't get a neutral resolution to the Miranda/Jack conflict. It makes no sense that the game forces you to go to one extreme in order to be able to moderate an argument...

 

[Loonyyy]

Fuck Dishonored royally.

I thought of Corvo as an assassin. You know, the one that everyone kept calling you?

I thought of him as some sort of spirit of vengeance, out to reclaim his reputation, and take his vengeance on those who wronged him (And tortured the hell out of him).

But, should you kill more than 20% of the enemies (It doesn't matter how nice you are, the game is more calculating than I was whilst I stealthily butchered my foes, you get High Chaos, and a bad ending.

Spoiler

I despised Emily. I didn't care about her, she's yet another child included because children are innocent and whatnot. Why does she learn her behaviours from you? I never spoke to her, I listened to her a couple of times. I've heard people rag on about the kid from Mass Effect, and the fakeness of the depression Shepherd is depicted of experiencing at their loss. That's how Emily made me feel. I let her fall at the end. I played through letting her fall and saving her, and I still prefer the one where she dies.

My coconspirators after betrayl say that I'm a bloodthirsty monster. Sam the boatman says something similar, that I'm the worst of them all (I only killed bad people. I engineered the worst fates for those who wronged me, and let any guard who seemed good (Using the Heart), live). The game, in the interests of completion, forced me to poison a vat of potion which was not only used by the gang, but being sold to citizens. Yet that was fucking morally neutral. I actually agonised over that decision. But the game doesn't give a fuck.

To play through without hurting anyone would seem, in my mind, out of character, and it takes far less use of the game mechanics, which makes it less interesting.

 

[The Harkinator]

Mass Effect 2 anyone? Go in the middle and you fuck over your chances to make everyone happy, since the only way to talk down the rivalries is to either be a saint or throw the biggest tantrum in history to make them stop.

I always found it very ironic that a Shepard that spends every other conversation finding the middle ground didn't have the option to find the middle ground in crew disputes.

 

[Milanezi]

You know what i am talking about: An Action RPG game ala Deus Ex or System Shock 2 with TONS of options. If you play more on the offensive and murdering everything in your path, you get the bad ending even if you get the most fun doing what the game gave at your disposal. If you play nice (as in, you solve problems in non lethal ways) you get the good ending even if the process is tedious and its CLEAR that the developers wanted to shoehorn a moral of "dont sucumb to power" at the expense of 90% of the gameplay.

I think playing a game like Deus ex with stealth and non lethal take downs is much more enjoyable than simply killing everyone.

Yeah, that's my position exactly, I enjoyed both games because they worked so well in a stealth approach. It's why I enjoy Hitman and Metal Gear Solid so much. When I want to kill and destroy stuff, there are much better games, in my opinion, such as Call of Duty and Gears of War (after all, that's the sort of entertainment the game focus' on).

 

[DioWallachia]

Not really, because Paragade points influence a lot more than just how the game ends. For example, if you're not enough of a dick or saint, then you can't get a neutral resolution to the Miranda/Jack conflict. It makes no sense that the game forces you to go to one extreme in order to be able to moderate an argument...

That old system of checking if you have enough "points" to even MAKE a decition is bullshit, even Planescape: Torment did it with is Wisdom and Intelligence check and i happen to love that game. Shouldn't the game ALLOW me to make a choice if my character learned certain info ASAP? why i CANT tell The Trascendent One about "What can change the nature of man" if i dont have enough points even when i already have enough evidence accomulated?

I wonder if there is a way to innovate on that by having some kind of minigame where, even if you dont have enough points, you can still play it and connects "facts" with one another to form a full ideal. I was about to mention that "Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth" did something like that, but it was so long ago since i saw the gameplay that i dont know if it could work.

 

[DioWallachia]

You know what i am talking about: An Action RPG game ala Deus Ex or System Shock 2 with TONS of options. If you play more on the offensive and murdering everything in your path, you get the bad ending even if you get the most fun doing what the game gave at your disposal. If you play nice (as in, you solve problems in non lethal ways) you get the good ending even if the process is tedious and its CLEAR that the developers wanted to shoehorn a moral of "dont sucumb to power" at the expense of 90% of the gameplay.

I think playing a game like Deus ex with stealth and non lethal take downs is much more enjoyable than simply killing everyone.

Yeah, that's my position exactly, I enjoyed both games because they worked so well in a stealth approach. It's why I enjoy Hitman and Metal Gear Solid so much. When I want to kill and destroy stuff, there are much better games, in my opinion, such as Call of Duty and Gears of War (after all, that's the sort of entertainment the game focus' on).

I said before that SS2 and DE1 were mentioned just to give you an idea of what an Action RPG is, if there is still any doubt of that.

 

[Tallim]

It only really affects you *if* you are trying to completely non-lethal the game (i.e. for the trophy/achievement) You can still get the "good" ending while killing in Dishonored. You can kill quite a bit in fact but you need to spread it between levels and it helps to do side missions.

I think one of the devs said that generally if you kill less than 20% of the people on a level it will be low chaos aand doing missions that are marked as (nonlethal) actually lowers the chaos rating a bit so technically you can kill more.

However I agree that none of this is particularly transparent and it heavily implies you need to be Mr Goody Two Shoes to get your "good" ending.

Personally I think the High Chaos endings are better.

But that is the thing, you see. If you are doing it because "whatever, at least i get a trophy" rather than AGREEING with the concept of "Power Corrupts so i better dont go under that direction" then the game failed.

My question is: It failed because it was badly written and the context of the story didnt provide a reason of WHY dispaching a few guards or more guards is evil? OR maybe is that gamers will NEVER sacrifice their Hedonistic pleasures and the catarsis factor just because the story saids so?

Let me fire the big gun and ask: If you are confronted with the option of removing you agency over your Player Avatar (as in, the game stops being a game from now on and becomes a movie for the rest of it, to the point that even the User Interfase dissapears) so the avatar stops being manipulated by you and retains its Free Will and its happyness

OR

Fuck this fictional being that has no reason nor say on what i should care for, and sure as HELL that it am not going to sit down and let YOU take all the fun. The mere idea of a FICTIONAL being asking the player itself for "please, dont brainwashme into a obedient tool" is already too stupid to believe since this creature was WRITTEN to be that way. It never had Free Will and never will.

Press X for ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL and the game plays as normal with all the fun still intact. Your Avatar however, no longer speaks, nor feels anything anymore, whatever personality it had it is now gone forever.

Personally from the impression I have formed of Dishonored after many many playthroughs (think I'm up to 6 or 7 now) is that the worst possible ending is in fact the correct one for the story.

The chaos rating in Dishonored is not actually a good/evil moral measure at all. It is a measure of the state of the city.

I'm not actually sure what you are trying to ask with your "big gun" question so I feel incapable of providing an answer to it.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

? I don't recall Deus Ex 1 or Human revolution punishing you for mass murder by changing the ending...

It didn't so much change the ending as it altered one line out of Jensen's final monologue, depending on how aggressive you'd been. Being confrontational makes Jensen ultimately realize that being cruel or callous may have informed his final decision. It's not so much a condemnation as a sort of realization on his part - even though you might be tempted to interpret it as regret on his part.

It's not punishment, but it's taking your actions into consideration. I know the game's ending structure gets a lot of flak thanks to Mass Effect 3's own endings, but it was honestly the only way they could've ended the game satisfactorily.

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[burningdragoon]

I agree in the sense that "bad" endings shouldn't (necessarily) be "you failed" endings, and that games with multiple endings should not be separated into the good (satisfying, victory) ending and the bad (hollow, punished) ending. inFamous 2 is probably one of the better games in this way.

Howwwwever, sometimes playing the game the right way (as in not taking the easier, shooty way) is the fun part. Or rather, people can like the challenge that comes with restraint. Contrast can be good thing, so letting people choose to not be a psychopath by making being a psychopath easy.

The Ogre Battle/Tactics Ogre series traditionally have several variances to "you're a failure" endings and getting the "best" ending is very difficult and requires lot's planning and careful actions. But that's the point sometimes. If you're a monster or a poor leader, you don't get to be the hero whose tales are remembered throughout history. You are vilified (or maybe become an actual monster) or simply forgotten.

Basically, it can suck when you're punished for playing a certain way, but since when should your every whim need be catered to you? Some games are just better at not boosting your ego than others.

 

[Subscriptism]

DISHONOURED. DISHONOURED. DISHONOURED.

Sorry, but I want to be allowed to blithely murder people and get the good ending. It takes a lot of the fun out when you can't murder.

 

[Loonyyy]

Not really, because Paragade points influence a lot more than just how the game ends. For example, if you're not enough of a dick or saint, then you can't get a neutral resolution to the Miranda/Jack conflict. It makes no sense that the game forces you to go to one extreme in order to be able to moderate an argument...

That was exactly what i was talking about, you metagame because you want a "better" solution to that particular situation and you complain that the game is forcing you to do something.

The paragon/renegade bar was a persuasion system and a measure of personality strength, if you are paragon of truth and justice you are the kind of person able to talk down others, if you are a scary mother you... get to yell at people (i know, it's very stupid).
If you are neither...
Again there is no point in having a persuasion system if it never fails.

If anything i would complain about the easy way out that is having a blue/red option screaming "PICK ME, PICK ME" and solves all your problems automatically.

That's not what people want though: If you could solve problems with characters by understanding them and choosing relevant conversation options, it'd be an improvement (Like Deus Ex: HR, or potentially LA Noire). The conversation with the police officer at the entrance to the police centre in Deus Ex: HR was one of the high points of the game. And it didn't force me to have either Petted or kicked every dog up until that point.

By forcing you to choose all paragon or all renegade, you take out the roleplaying, for metagaming. You might add an interesting conflict between the metagame impulses of the player, and their roleplaying desires, but you've cripled both part of the gameplay, and the entire story, just to shoehorn in metagaming, which will always get slammed. Suddenly, choice barely matters. When games try to use consequences of choice, and a broken binary moral choice system like that, both systems lose.

If you look at the Miranda/Jack thing: To solve the situation properly, you have to make a ton of unrelated decisions which aren't relevant, or brought up in the conversation, which hurts the conversation. You want to solve the problem? Just press the magic button. That button? It'll only be available if you always choose Paragon or Renegade. It also relegates the system to a really boring levelling system: Press Paragon to level Paragon. Press Renegade to level Renegade. Increase one only, and be able to do things in the place of actual interesting gameplay.

 

[Rack]

Dishonoured is the poster child for this because it flubbed it up so badly, the high chaos ending was horribly written and low chaos rewarded a really tedious playstyle. You could just about walk the tightrope of fun gameplay and a halfway decent storyline but the game constantly tried to push you off.

Kotor is another good example of this but the dark force powers weren't exactly more fun than the light side ones because they ultimately lengthened the poor combats. Still it was offering fun prizes for acting like a dick. Fable tries to do this but is too badly written to pull it off.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Fuck Dishonored royally.

I thought of Corvo as an assassin. You know, the one that everyone kept calling you?

I thought of him as some sort of spirit of vengeance, out to reclaim his reputation, and take his vengeance on those who wronged him (And tortured the hell out of him).

A proper assassin would pride him or herself on killing the target and only the target, in as professional a way as possible.

Killing everyone you meet? That's not an assassin, that's a psychopath.

You want to play a game where you're a proper assassin, go and play Hitman: Blood Money again and make sure you get your Silent Assassin ratings. That's what being an assassin is about, killing the person you've been hired to kill, not anyone else.


The problem with Dishonoured, really, is that the gameplay pushes you towards carnage, all the upgrades for your character and powers are all about killing dudes, but the narrative pushes you towards precision.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I have a terrible problem where I am a bit of a perfectionist but at the same time would really like to actually play how I want to. Sadly, and maybe this is a problem of willpower, I don't care, but I will not miss an item for no alternative and I will strive for the best ending unless I've already resigned myself to multiple playthroughs. I am having this problem with Assassin's Creed 3 a bit. It's not a terrible case, like MGS4, but it is just enough that between the sections which are basically linear and thus that I hate, and the synchronisation options (that say optional but that contribute towards completion and are shoved in your face when not met, and worst of all, have to be completed in one playthrough to fully meet the requirements), I feel sometimes like I can't play the way I want. You have loads of different options in a game like AC3, and it effectively limits you to one. Want to run up, take out all the minions and fight the target in close combat? Want to call in your recruits and wage a little war, want to poison the target, want to waltz up, throw a smoke bomb and take the terrified target out want to shoot him from a distance want to lay a trap and wait for him to walk into it want to let him kill the native captives he's got because those guys were dicks anyway NO. No, you have to assassinate him from a tree without anyone noticing and not let him kill the captives.

MGS4 was even worse. I did a playthrough where I didn't care. I murdered almost everyone, going stealth as far as it took me but breaking out the machinegun when I got noticed. It was great. Then I did a playthrough that was all silent, no detection, and no kills, so I could get the infinite ammo bandana and the stealth camo. And I did it, completely. Then you know what I did? Bought the Tanegashima, tested it out on the last level one more time, never looked at the game again. Because I would have to have started from the first level, where you don't get your new toys yet, and I just. Couldn't. Bear. Playing. Any. More. I was so damn tired of it.

What I'm saying is, if you're going to have a game that has a multiple approach system please, for the sake of we poor, weak-willed players who still just want to have a good time but can't bear missing out on anything, don't make objectives that restrict your playstyle. Or give rewards for all sorts of different approaches, so it's not people who have the thing because they followed the objectives, it's different players have different things because they had different playthroughs. Or at the very least, make it gameplay-oriented. Instead of "do this a certain way to get this" make it "this can be gotten any way you want but if you use stealth you can just get it and go, and if the guards are alerted they might drive away with it" or something like that. But I really don't think it's entirely my fault for not controlling myself.

I'd love to be able to make a character and act according to that. But gameplay restrictions in general aside, if it's a choice between being a dick and getting a powerful item, and having NOTHING, some of us will have to break character and it's going to ruin our sense of that character. None of my Skyrim characters are well-defined. What, an orc with a two-handed weapon that runs with the Companions, but slaughters friendly NPCs where possible to power a stupid weapon that's useless to him, isn't averse to a bit of Thieve's Guild where it benefits the story, and will eat a person for a ring he'll never equip, doesn't take any s*** from anyone but will also go along with whimsical things and fetch people's bloody bread rolls or whatever, acts with honour but steals from shops, and would love to go to Sovngard but is going to be bound to several different Daedra instead when he dies? Ridiculous.