Maria Caliban

Role-Player: " But the outcome of selecting that carries a more abrasive and confrontational attitude not suggested in the short one. That kind of presents a schism in role-playing since the game may lead you into thinking you're going to act in a certain way - such as enforcing authority - but then act in the standard Bioware jerk model.' I don't think they're going for more intuitive as much as [buzzword]immersive and dynamic[/buzzword]. As I understand it: ! + [interrupt] = extreme. If Shepherd hadn't interrupted Garis, there wouldn't have been that extreme Jack Bauer collar grabbing action. The average player will have more than a few instances of saying, "That's not what I meant," when they see what their dialogue choice has netted them. The question is whether the overall experience is pleasant enough to make up for that discord.

If you want to see the dialogue system 'in action' the X06 Gameplay Video has some about two and a half minutes into the video. When you can talk, a little circle pops up with three to six actions. In the video I linked to, you and your teammates have just dropped on a planet where the Geth have overrun a mining facility. As they talk, three options appear: We'll save them. We'll try to help. They don't matter. If you pick 'We'll try to help,' then Shepherd says, "Eliminating the Geth is priority one, but keep an eye out for those miners." Garis, an alien teammate, argues that helping the miners isn't part of the mission. Alison, a human teammate, responds that he's only saying that because they're human. The two begin to argue, and three options appear: We're helping them! I gave you an order! He as a point. Picking an option in the middle of someone else speaking causes a slightly different action on Shepard's part. If you pick 'I gave you an order!' while Garis is talking, Shepherd grabs Garis' collar and says, "I'm in charge here Garis, not you. I gave you an order and you'd damn well better follow it," then pushes him away. As I understand it, when you choose to speak effects the body language and tone used by Shepherd, and NPCs may decide you're more hostile/thoughtful/strong/apathetic based on this.

Abstracted dialogue. That's not what he actually says; it's just the gist of it.

Jade Empire for PC. It's not as good as it was on X-Box.

There was an RPG where the princess would say she loved you, and ask if you loved her back. The dialogue pop up let you pick 'yes' or 'no,' but if you picked 'no' she would just repeat, "I love you! Do you love me?" I don't remember its name, but I give it the grand prize for the worst illusion of choice in a dialogue stream.

I'm a fan of BioWare, but the majority of their RPGs rely on at least one instance of the PC standing around like a baked potato while things happen.

Well, that just blows monkey b---s.

Llyranor: "I think it has more to do with the PC being a gibbering primate while it happens." As I understand it, the casting time of magic missile is four seconds, and the only way of stopping someone from casting is to whack them with a weapon. However, if the issue is the PC doing noting during that scene as opposed to Imoen casting, then I agree. samm, While I appreciate where you're coming from, please remember that people take joy from a large number of activities. One of mine is to take a work, whether it be film, poetry, prose, comics, games, or any form of art/entertainment, and analyze its components. No matter how you feel, Deus Ex is in first person, while Quest for Glory is not. When KotOR II came out, I believe I played it for 25 hours straight. Tired or not, its elements were effective on several levels. Yes, all of those elements work together, but that doesn't mean they can't be judged separately. No, all media or all works in a specific medium are the same, but they call all be compared and contrasted to one another. Both the similarities and differences are of interest.

Azakon: " This is actually an interesting point. I guess there's two ways you can look at it - either player actions are meta-game activities entirely outside of the game world, in which case the player is sort of a disembodied entity who "oversees" everything that's going on, or player actions are in fact abstract representations of giving commands in-game, where we might imagine taking control of a NPC to be the equivalent of the PC telling that NPC what to do." Or games like Black & White, it had role-playing aspects, that tried to incorporate the player into the game world. It's obvious which of those perspectives I prefer. However, it is a fluid boundary; they must be communicating something to one another, or they wouldn't work together so harmoniously in combat. " The former does, however, lend itself to the critique that it creates additional distance between the player and the PC (in the sense that the player is no longer restrained to the PC's POV, but can take on any POV), " If complete lack of distance between the PC and the player is wanted, then I'd start by making the game in the first person. That would remove the 'clicking on other party members' problem entirely. However, I don't believe that clicking on Keldorn and then clicking on a monster to attack is gaining his point of view, anymore than picking up a rook and using it to steal a knight gives me the rook's POV. From a gameplay perspective, Keldorn not attacking a friendly PC is much like the rook's inability to move diagonally. Only, there's an actual reason in-game for this limitation. To gain Keldorn's POV, in BG II, I'd expect to be able to influence his actual personality and character. In fact, thinking about it, I don't believe point-of-view is the best term for how the player relates to a PC. POV suggests, to me, either the physical viewpoint of a camera placement in a movie/game, or the mental viewpoint an author gives me in a book. The player doesn't gain the PCs point-of-view, but create it. On the other hand, I never create Keldorn's POV, his thoughts, wants, and desires are always separate from me, though my PC might influence them during the course of the story. I'm also critical of the notion that everything that puts distance between the player and the PC is bad. However, I covered that in my previous post.

Spider: " Heh, I forgot to write about that in my last post. I do loathe cut scenes that take away control from the player, and I'm not a huge fan of the other type either. While I can tolerate those I'd prefer to be without them. Mostly I don't like to have information that my character doesn't. This is my PnP background coming into play, I think." In PnP, I constantly overheard conversations and events that my character did not. Depending on the information, I like it when I see and know things my character does not. The 'surprise' in KotOR was one example of me having information and being irritated that my character had not. It would have been nice if the PC had access to verbal responses other than "ZOMG! What you say?!" On the other hand, tension between what I know and what my character knows can be pleasant. It can create anticipation on my part, as I wait for the situation in to resolve. As we're talking about 'cinematic storytelling,' I'll use a famous example - Jaws. In Jaws, you hardly ever see the shark and the swimmers don't know it's there until it's attacked. In order to create tension, the filmmakers would play the 'dah-dum' score over a relatively benign, even boring, scene of people swimming. It's effective because of the discord between what the audience knows and the character knows. When a person role-plays, they are simultaneously a character in a game (Ser Hippokrene the noble), the audience of the game (I bet this thief will betray the PC), and player of the game (3 def and 4 dex bonus, or 5 def and 1 dex bonus?). The notion that *any* experience that caters to the audience portion of that triune always takes away from the character portion is, I believe, flawed.

Spider: " I'm actually starting to dislike cinematic storytelling in CRPGs more and more. It was kinda cool in Kotor where it felt new and fresh (not to mention very appropriate given the license). But I am not a huge fan of the technique. So I can certainly see where RP is coming from. Might I enquire as to what 'cinematic storytelling' means to you? " I just think it's unfortunate that both bigger devhouses that produce CRPGS (Obsidian and Bioware) are both leaning more and more towards that style. I mostly wish they'd mix it up a little." Given that KotOR II and NWN 2 were both sequels, I think it makes sense that they'd have the same style as their predecessor. I don't know enough about Aliens to guess if they'd use that style, though it might make sense given that it's based on a set of films. Sand: " Imoen casting magic missile in the beginning of BG2." I agree with what you're saying but not the specific example. Imoen is not the PC; therefore, her acting independently of the player is not authorial intrusion.

For me, the best use of cut scenes is to give players information on events that the character is unaware of. For instance, in Hordes of the Underdark, we have in-engine cinematics that introduce us to the drow queen and her schemes against the player. Much of it was classic villain ranting, but it fleshed out her character and let dramatic tension to the game. I agree that cut scenes which pull the PC's actions out of the players had are a bad idea. A KotOR spoiler here: This is a great example of a horrible cut scene. An NPC that you've been beating suddenly becomes so powerful another character has to leap to protect you. Moreover, the PC stands as still as a rock throughout all of this. I've yet to hear any player say they found the event believable or in-character for their PC. Azarkon, I think it's simpler to not let Keldorn attack a friendly NPC. A party companion reacting to the actions of a player, as opposed to the PC seems odd. If you click on Keldorn, pick an attack icon, and click an NPC, nothing has happened in the game world, so there's nothing for Keldorn to get upset about. Your Aerie example is a bit different. In D&D, every character has combat skills. No matter how shy, withdrawn, and sweet she is, at 10 cleric/10 wizard, Aerie will bash your head in with a mace. If BG II were less of a combat oriented game, I might say a no melee party companion or even a pacifist one is an okay idea, but given the nature of the game, it's a reasonable leap of logic for the sake of gameplay.

At least my comments are about the article. Yours appear to be about what other posters should and shouldn't talk about. Are you arguing with either of those points? Other than the introduction, the first four pages were concerned with cut-scenes and how they hinder role-playing. And putting a 13 page article in 9 point font is a poor design decision. I admit, they lack the vitality of your comments. Perhaps you should post again about not wanting to drink your own urine in an RPG. You know, raise the level of commentary in this thread to a Cantousent worthy level.

After reading 13 pages of article, I'll be damned if I'm not going to comment on the ideas in it. If RP feels as though I'm attacking him, I am certain he can tell me himself.

Page 7: " Text can be assembled on the fly by the game system, instead of being hand placed by the writer; although text such as verbs or specific reactions would require some extra time, they wouldn

I'm to page four and basically I've picked up is, "Cut scenes are bad." Also, putting an article of that size in 9 point font is a poor design decision.

As for ME's dialogue, when its forum first went up, I made a thread suggesting they have a dialogue system like Indigo Prophecy or Bard's Tale, with abstracted conversation choices and full VO for the PC. Therefore, I don't think it sucks. I think it's a good decision and one that does help make the game feel more [buzzword]cinematic[/buzzword].

Background on this: A gamespy article was released a couple of days ago with 'new screenshots.' However, the BioWare employee that took them didn't use areas that were optimized, so they looked much poorer than previous screenshots. Today, Chris Priestly released a new screen shot to the forum crowd from an optimized area. I'm mostly indifferent to graphics, and prefer a stylized design approach like PoP: Sands of Time and Jade Empire. Still, the textures on the guy's back look nice, they've smoothed Shepard's face, and I also like the shadows.

I don't know about you, but I piss veuve clicquot ponsardin champagne, and that is never going into a Mountain Dew bottle.

That is what posting at 5 am gets me. Lemme edit that. ...And now I can't edit my post. I think I'll come back tomorrow. Today is not Maria-day.

As is STALKER. Your point?

When it comes to RPGs, you trade depth for breadth or breadth for depth. The reason a game like NWN is so shallow compared to PS:T is that it spends its time trying to give the player the panoply of choices they'd get in a PnP. If you limit those choices - say, to male, hideously scarred immortal who can only be one of three classes - you no longer have to sit down and make a druid/ranger sidequests, some elf specific reactions/dialogue, a female PC romance, and a story that 'works' no matter what your character's history. Likewise, if you allow the PC to be good, evil, or pragmatic, you have to have a motivation that's 'universal' or three different motivations. You have to either have NPCs react to your three possible alignments differently, or mostly ignore it. You have to have different quest endings for different actions taken (did he free the slaves? sell them? kill them? let a few go and planted others to spy on his enemies?). I prefer games like V:tM - Bloodlines, that doesn't spend its time trying to figure out how good or evil your actions are. Even as someone who almost always ends up on the 'so many lightside points sunshine is streaming out of their ass' side of the divide, the need to divide the PC actions into good/evil bores me. I don't see anything wrong with providing psychotic choices. I see something wrong with people using the psychotic choices, breaking the story line, and complaining. I see an RPG developer's job as providing you with meaning choices and realistic consequences, not allowing you to 'win' the game no matter what choice you make.

http://www.2-worlds.com/ I have no idea if this is worth looking forward to, but it's a fantasy RPG.

I'm fairly certain Dragon Age isn't coming out this year. Splinter Cell: Double Agent Genre: Adventure Platform: X-Box, PS3, PC Rating: Mature Why is this worth looking forward to?: I wonder who has more money, Steven King or Tom Clancy? The Splinter Cell series is well known for delivering polished, stealth-based action in a modern setting. Double Agent give more of the same, but adds slight RPG element in that certain choices you make effect later events.

Prince of Persia: Rival Swords: Genre: Action/Puzzle Platform: Wii Rating: Mature Why is this worth looking forward to?: The original Prince of Persia offered smooth scrolling graphics and complex environment puzzles with a classic story line: Vizier kidnaps princess and demands her hand in marriage. Prince saves Princess. Later games have all tried to stick to this formula, and with the last trio of games, they've done so admirably. Though the storyline and main character are joined, each game is slightly different in mood and emphasis. Rival Swords is a port of the excellent Two Thrones to the Wii, and I looking forward to seeing if this new interface improves and enhances gameplay. This is one series that would seem to be made for the wii.