RPG protagonists and Mass Effect. And other things.
- Thread starter StarkRavingSane
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Mario 64 is a better platformer (way older too). MGS doesn't let you play and when you do it gets messed up with terrible controls. (Yes I gave up on MGS4 in 2 hours and MGS3 in 1 hour but even if the controls changed after that I'll stick to Splinter Cell)ElArabDeMagnifico said:
Eh... I really don't have a problem with voices for main characters in RPGs. If the game is going to be voice acted, the protagonist needs one too. The real problem with the male character's voice is that he sounded like a civilian. He certainly didn't read his lines poorly, but he didn't have that commanding presence that one would expect from a battle hardened officer. The female shepard did have that and it fit the character much better. The fact that default male Shepard looked like a shell-shocked marine didn't help much, but whatever.
You see, Mass Effect put the player in a box labeled 'career military'. While you could go anywhere you wanted inside the box getting into racism, what price you're willing to pay for victory, your respect for the law even if you aren't bound by it, callousness and humanitarianism, you could never really leave the box.
The background options you picked from at the beginning of the game also played into this by swapping out dialogue and quests making the game a slightly different experience for characters with different backgrounds (a really nice feature, but they didn't go anywhere near far enough with it).
If you don't like being restricted and partially defined in this way, thats fine. I however think that this kind of thing is definately a good thing in games in which your role in the story is well defined.
You see, Mass Effect put the player in a box labeled 'career military'. While you could go anywhere you wanted inside the box getting into racism, what price you're willing to pay for victory, your respect for the law even if you aren't bound by it, callousness and humanitarianism, you could never really leave the box.
The background options you picked from at the beginning of the game also played into this by swapping out dialogue and quests making the game a slightly different experience for characters with different backgrounds (a really nice feature, but they didn't go anywhere near far enough with it).
If you don't like being restricted and partially defined in this way, thats fine. I however think that this kind of thing is definately a good thing in games in which your role in the story is well defined.
ReepNeep said:
Oh yeah, speaking of the Racism, I felt like I was only allowed to be racist to Turians >_> While that makes sense because of the First Contact War and the already faulty relationship between Turians and Humans, I wanted an option to sound like I was racist to say...the Salarians or something, I guess it makes no sense at first so this could be something we'll see in ME2 since humans know a lot more about Turians than anyone else, but like a lot of the Turians in that game did I put the past behind me as well, but then I'd say some things that made it sound like I was actually racist to the Turians - but no one else!!! The game would say "Aliens" in the dialog option but it always brought up the Turians.
Also to the second "unsnipped" part - I pretty much agree with that for RPG's as well because I always liked the "Either or" approach to them, either you are playing the role of some other character, or you are playing the role of one you created - the gameplay is either somewhat restricted except for a lot of story sequences, or it's free to the point where you can go about and kill anyone you choose to because you just decided to choose to be a raving psychotic - yet still puts you on a "linear" path because if it didn't you may fuck up the whole game if you had "too much freedom" because it's a game, it can't predict everything you are going to do so there has to be some order.
I'm sure there is a way to reach some kind of middle ground to keep everyone happy but I don't see how it could work without forcing the character into a specific Role.
I will give morrowind this I loved the way you could ruin the story by killing one of the main characters.
Portal's main flaw is that the tutorial is longer then the actual game.
As for mass effect: The main reason i dislike it is because it doen't let me save for some retarded reason. The same applies to bioshock ever since i patched it(which failed roughly 50 times over the course of 3 months) so i either do 30 hour marathons or i replay Eden Prime alot.
As for mass effect: The main reason i dislike it is because it doen't let me save for some retarded reason. The same applies to bioshock ever since i patched it(which failed roughly 50 times over the course of 3 months) so i either do 30 hour marathons or i replay Eden Prime alot.
Portal's main advantage is that the tutorial is just as much a part of the game as the "actual" game, I'd say. The "tutorial" was extremely fun to play, just as much as the "real" game since it was a part of it. If it was a tutorial in the style of Strongholds, or the one in The guild I would understand, but dismissing half the game as a tutorial is a good way to ruin your experience. Did you think the same of GTA: San andreas? There's a tutorial message in the second to last mission, does that make the whole game a tutorial?Asehujiko said:
That was just really lazy quest writing. Fallout would likewise let you kill anyone, but would let you keep playing and even finish the game because there were many, many ways to complete all the quests.shatnershaman said:
There really were no 'plot critical NPCs' even though there seemed to be because of these crisscrossing threads. You will notice that Bethesda removed that from Oblivion and made all the critical NPCs invulnerable because they apparently know they suck at writing quest scripts.
The Turians bore the the most of it, yes, but the other races got a good bit of it too. Just look at the 'evil' ending. I really liked the moral ambiguity of Mass Effect and it was a huge step forward from Bioware's other games in this regard.ElArabDeMagnifico said:
Mass Effect I think walked a very good compromise between the extreme railroading of JRPGs and the total, often kinda bland freedom of WRPGs. The only things that a PC in a WRPG has are what you give them. The JRPG PC on the other hand gives you control over his gear and a bit of tweaking to his skills if you're lucky. Mass Effect gave you alot of control over both those areas and still managed to turn Shepard into a reasonably good character as well (although this seems to be debatable).
I don't think it's really much different from games like KOTOR, Jade Empire, or Torment. The voice-acting and not-quite-accurate summaries in place of actual selectable lines are interesting developments, but the basic structure is still the same: there's a set of pre-written lines (full of personality, if the writers are doing a good job) and you're picking which to apply.ReepNeep said:
-- Alex
Since your choice is no longer directly mapped to a bit of dialogue, I find it a little strange that Mass Effect still rigidly associates each choice with one set of lines. They could've just as easily taken out some of the "uh-huhs" and follow-up questions and just had each choice represent variously-sized chunks of conversation rather than just Shepard saying one thing and then waiting for a response.
-- Alex
-- Alex
Yeah if only we could have had different consequences to who we killed because I remember when you could just kill whoever and if you killed a crucial character, life would go on and of course you could still play but other than getting a bounty on your head (if you got caught anyway..) nothing more interesting would happen. Not every time of course but it still would have been cool.shatnershaman said:
That's why I liked Fallout so much, lots of outcomes and for a game that old it was surprising how much you could do, I always liked being able to be a dickhead to people and get something more than a "sad or angry face" from the recipient. Like when I was a dickhead to Lynette, I think that's the first "regretful choice" I made in a video game.
Also, get that oblivion mod that deletes that "unconcious" and "can't drop quest items" crap, half the fun is starting another game and throwing the amulet of kings in the lake, and then killing Geoffry after he tells you where Martin is, and getting martin killed in Kvatch.
