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Post by Warhammer Gorvar on Oct 2, 2012 13:25:18 GMT 1
TOR has the same issues, it;s all very black and white with no shades of grey at all.
For example, a member of the Senate asks my Smuggler to deal with a crime cartel on Cisruscant. My guys flirts with her, gets w ink back and will get laods of money for it. Now after dealing with said cartel, i found out intel that said cartel sponsered her rise to power and would expose everything to the public. Now this Senate aldy is a good woman who used her station to actually help people. So I had two choices, either let this sldie and get evil points and tell the public and destroy ALL of her good work by exposing the truth.Sort of like Watchmen. So I get Dark side points because im willing to be Coruscant;s Dark Knight.
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 2, 2012 13:40:26 GMT 1
Oh I disagree there. In KotOR I had no problem whatsoever playing as Dark Side, because it was fun. A Sith Lord murdering people with magic is a world away from, say, a soldier threatening a civillian at gunpoint. Mass Effect 1-3 was to me at least, very different to BioWare's usual 'good vs evil' fantasy world morality. 'Paragon' is not good and 'renegade' is not evil - in both cases the character is trying to do the right thing, save the world - so both of them are shades of gray already. I say this is a great thing. It might not have fit in Star Wars or ancient china, but in this Blade Runner / Starship Troopers kind of world it's perfect.
But - I have a really hard time being consistently cruel to these adorable characters. That is wussiness, no doubt. I specifically remember feeling genuinely bad about myself when I had my paragon Shepard (distressed after Virmire) point a gun at Conrad Verner to make him shut up. I felt awful! That's not 'evil' - it's more of a human thing, something you can really imagine doing if you were at your worst - so it's more painful to command.
I will say though that Mass Effect 3 justified the renegade options more effectively. ME1 especially had the renegade Shepard as a selfish bully, which hardly seems like the ruthless anti-hero they seem to have had in mind. Threatening a guy to save his life would have been better than threatening him because he annoys you. You know? In the first game especially, renegade equates to 'jerk' too often. In the third game - and I'm ready to be told off for saying so - it's way better. The renegade actions are justified a great deal (and the paragon actions are tested) by the sheer weight of the situation and the fact that Shepard is shown to be exhausted and stressed in the narrative. It's easier to have a heroic character kill people if we know he's at war, and if we know he's trying his best.
Regarding grey areas between the two ideologies, I actually found KotOR 1 specifically good for this, and Mass Effect quite rigid. Because the Star Wars story was about redemption and temptation, I found it easy to have a character do horrible things, veer from one side to another, and end up good. S/he is being tempted by the Dark Side and has a horrible past - the story allows for a lot of narrative forgiveness.
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Post by Mr. Glow on Oct 2, 2012 13:45:37 GMT 1
Dragon Age did it best by having approval meters for your companions rather than a morality bar. Those combined with Fallout's faction reputation things would probably be the best system.
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 2, 2012 14:38:23 GMT 1
I hated the approval meters. I hated them in KotOR 2 as well. They're a good concept, but in execution in both games they were too hard to predict and too restrictive. So often I found myself reloading a decision over and over again, just trying to make a character go consistently one way in order to follow their personal story later. I found my decisions were made based on peer reactions rather than the story / character I wanted to play. That's not good.
Also it's unrealistic. Who is there in your life who is SO compatible with you that they either like or dislike everything you do? Most people - even friends and loved ones - are a mix of both.
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Post by jklinders on Oct 2, 2012 16:00:58 GMT 1
The approval meters in KotOR II especially came across as a sort of cynical manipulative minigame. A lot of it seemed to center on maintaining your chosen alignment while trying your collage best to tell them what they want to hear.
I kinda see it as a proving ground for what would become the far better social system in Alpha Protocol where your own alignment is far less important than how you want the world to see you. In KotOR II we have the universe knowing exactly where you personally stand and it effects you. In Alpha Protocol, even the player really does not know where Mike stands as he manipulates the whole game world and played right he is both the Chessmaster and
The utter lack of concern in game for good and evil and just looking for results makes any playstyle rather awesome. But tricking nearly everyone into being your friend and back stabbing the ones that you are really after right when it counts was a very awesome way of using influence. You could anger someone enough for instance to help you just so they can get a chance to kill you themselves. So negative as well as positive influence can be used to your sociopathic advantage in this game.
I just didn't get that vibe in DA II and especially in KotOR II.
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 2, 2012 22:21:49 GMT 1
That makes a lot of sense to me.
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Post by Knightfall on Oct 3, 2012 22:28:20 GMT 1
Agreed. I could be wrong, but I don't remember a game before KotOR 2 where their goal was for your choices to affect the alignment of your individual party members. Dragon Age took that a step further, and made it so that your party already had their alignment, and your choices prompted approval/disapproval. Personally, I thought that was awesome. It was kinda like a game of D&D, where you're always having to second-guess your choices if you have that lawful good prick in your group. And if you can't get along with them, sometimes you have to manipulate them. But DA:O also had the gift system, so even if a party member disagreed with your actions constantly, you could still appease them by, at least, "getting" them. And I agree x2, Alpha Protocol is probably the game that did it best: the whole alignment/party influence thingy. We need more Mike Thorton in the world. I am interested to see how Obsidian handles things with Project Eternity, since they're trying to make dialog as reactive as possible. Should be cooooool.
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Post by Lily Ariel Linders on Oct 28, 2012 13:45:54 GMT 1
I have a very strange bit of confusion happening now. I'm doing another playthrough of Mass Effect, and am now doing the Zhu's Hope / Thorian mission... and at the part where Shepard and her two cohorts come up the stairs behind a Krogan mercenary yelling verbal abuse at a VI that then says "Please step aside as a line is forming behind you" to the Krogan... I had thought that was a female VI during my first time playing the game, but yesterday when I got there, it was a male VI... is this changeable, or am I just massively confused? Since I don't recall any male VIs from my first trip through the trilogy... I thought they were all female like Avina...
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 28, 2012 13:51:02 GMT 1
That VI is always male. There is a female VI on Noveria, maybe you're thinking of her?
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Post by Lily Ariel Linders on Oct 28, 2012 14:08:25 GMT 1
Maybe. Probably. I guess I just got confused. Thanks for the clarification, my dear Mister Buch...
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Post by Mister Buch on Oct 28, 2012 14:12:20 GMT 1
It's weird how that happens - your memories can be very strong but totally inaccurate. It's happened to me with games too.
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Post by Lily Ariel Linders on Oct 28, 2012 14:23:38 GMT 1
Indeed...
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Post by Cali on Oct 29, 2012 8:54:19 GMT 1
If there's one thing the mind likes to do, that's to play tricks on people. Memories are no different.
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Post by jklinders on Jan 3, 2013 3:15:31 GMT 1
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Post by Lily Ariel Linders on Jan 3, 2013 3:41:46 GMT 1
I LOVE IT!!! ;D ;D ;D Gods bless Garrus Vakarian!
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