sparklecat

If you have an important prisoner escape, will you get the chance to recapture them?

They didn't all have a similar difficulty level, though; there were certainly quests that were incredibly hard, if not impossible, to complete if you just wandered in and tried to take them on before gaining a couple of levels and improving your equipment. Which, speaking of things that make the world feel more real, I loved.

I liked the BG2 method of handing you a billion quests at once, and agree that it was only the journal/tracking system that was a problem. There's a reason I replay that game a few times a year, and having a couple dozen options for how I want to proceed when I start out isn't overwhelming, it's freeing, and awesome for immersion. Because the thing is, many of the initial "quests" in Athkatla were actually someone pointing you in the direction of a quest outside the city/in another district, rather than giving you the quest directly; you could just as easily go exploring and stumble upon them on your own. It was more about giving you information, and what pieces of information my character was interested in, what they took the time to seek out and learn more of (never mind what they ended up actually doing), was one of the best ways of not only making different playthroughs unique, but bringing the characters themselves to life for me.

I do like puzzles, but at the same time, if I'm in the mood for that I can fire up Portal. Or take an IQ test. When I'm playing an RPG (especially after my first playthrough), I don't want to spend two hours tracking back and forth between rooms, answering the same easy riddles, etc. So at the very least, let me skip them with skill/stat checks if I want. Ones that are based on lore or interacting with NPCs, that's a different matter because it feels like it's my character being tested, not me. The BGII temple in the Umar Hills and the Skinner murders were fine, and something where tossing in a dispel or detect evil is actually useful outside of combat situations is always awesome. Or if I'm being questioned by ghosts/genies/whatever, I'd prefer it if there isn't a "right" answer I need to progress, but rather if my different characters' answers change what I'm confronted with later on. Especially when it gives an additional opportunity for roleplaying. One that I rather liked was in KOTOR, where this one ancient machine was looking for some very specific, pragmatic/selfish responses to its hypotheticals. You could give those responses honestly, be a good Jedi who refused to compromise even in a hypothetical and fight some machines to move forward, or pay attention to the hints it had been giving about what it wanted and lie.

Then indeed you are being sexist. A man or woman should be treated equally for gender equality to work, you do not view or treat them as equals and express such in your own words. You want a woman making the decision is no better than someone demanding a man makes it. Either can make it but it becomes sexist when you believe one or the other cannot based on their gender. I'll be happy to take this discussion up with you again at a later date if you ever decide you feel like actually reading what I've written.

Possibly because on my part at least, there is such a lack of trust. I'm not happy to just automatically assume that the handling of gender issues is in safe hands when all those hands I'm aware of thus far are male. It can also be sexist to assume just because males might handle such a topic, that they cannot do it well. In fact though the reality is the team making this title is not comprised of all men in the first place. It is okay to want members of both sexes on the team for better perspective but it is not right to assume lack of one or the other would indicate a product would be flawed on gender issues. Like I said though, the point is moot as the team comprises of both genders. There is a difference between assuming they cannot do it well and not automatically trusting they will do it well; my point is that this discussion is entirely appropriate for us to be having. And I'm actually less interested in whether there's >0 women on the team than what sort of proportions exist and what positions they hold, in terms of whether I would feel comfortable provisionally trusting that their handling of the topic would take into account women's experiences of playing games and how they perceive sexism therein.

Possibly because on my part at least, there is such a lack of trust. I'm not happy to just automatically assume that the handling of gender issues is in safe hands when all those hands I'm aware of thus far are male.

My thoughts are that it's awesome you're all concerned about realism in this specific situation and roleplaying opportunities and such, but I'd kind of like it if I didn't have to have my entertainment shoving yet another reminder of just how many ways I'm prejudiced against and negatively viewed for being female every day of my life. Basically I'm saying that what's an interesting intellectual exercise for a guy is sort of depressing (and potentially upsetting, depending on how it's handled) for me. It's not fun. There are ways to explore themes of societal discrimination towards a large proportion of the population other than discrimination against women. It's possible to have a world that's internally consistent and realistic without that type of prejudice being necessary. I'd really like it if we could have that, spend less time talking about how obviously the way our world works is the only one that makes sense and we just have to mirror it to be realistic, and more time talking about what sort of worlds we can imagine that wouldn't be that way. I've seen a few suggestions in other threads like magical ability being biased in favour of women, but there are plenty of other possibilities. Different understandings, or different realisations in the world of gender altogether - unigender races, races where you naturally change, develop and/or decide upon a gender later in life. Situations like we had in our own society wherein the need for more women to work in factories during wartime eventually contributed to greater equality in general; what if that had happened much earlier? Magically transferrable pregnancies and surrogates as standard, no need to try and protect the woman bearing your child or try and keep her from being exposed to any risk. A society so constantly at war that doing anything except training up every able-bodied person to fight was just infeasible; let's see how disability discrimination is handled amongst those people. Whatever.

Who says they do? What evidence do you have that your random pirater with money and a moral compass doesn't end up buying the media later on? If this Kickstarter has taught us nothing else, it's that people will dig deep for a genuinely good product - even the anticipation of one. Someone doing the equivalent of trying out their friend's copy or a demo before buying (which nobody's ever going to go insane trying to prevent, like some companies do with piracy), I have no problem with.

That Icewind Dale 2 quest with the time loop.

I've got pretty severe arachnaphobia myself, to the point where an image of a spider does actually freak me out in itself, and I've never had any problem with spiders in IE games; the Baldur's Gates and Icewind Dales had them, I believe, and the isometric view kept it from being too bad. Try those out, OP, and if it is still an issue for you, then yeah, I'm sure there'll be an early mod to replace any spiders that make it in.

Yeah, this. I want a game where events have made it so that my character going into the final battle simply isn't the same person as they were at the beginning, and it is, in fact, completely believable now for them to make completely different decisions than they would have back then - and not simply because they have more information now. I want character evolution that feels natural over the course of the game. Big life-changing events (like death of loved ones, turning into the superpowered avatar of a god, finding out you're an amnesiac dark lord, etc.) can do that, but so can observing how other people react to the circumstances in their life. Observing how, say, long-term oppression of a group from a institution you once supported really does nothing but backfire and cause more harm than good in the end. Coming to see that is is oppression. That's what I think of when we talk mature themes - issues more analogous to what adults have to worry about with a lot of shades of grey and no easy answers.

Yeah, agreed. However, the sort of mature content I do like is the sort that makes the player question their own preconceptions and evaluate their own prejudices. My favourite games tend to be ones in which my character has their own worldview challenged via external events, because that generally leads to my aformentioned preference. But I don't think showing the sort of realism and inevitable consequence that we have in our own world does that in itself, which is why I'm not too bothered if we fail to stay strictly realistic in that sense; I like my contentious issues to be included for some narrative reason, not simply shock value (in the worst case) or as an appeal to realism.

I think I'm always going to feel a bit hesitant in regard to including mature themes and realistic depictions when they have the potential to actually hurt someone playing. I was talking in the recent thread on feminism and the depiction of women in PE about how arguments exist that sexism towards my female PCs might be more realistic, but it's at the cost of hurting my enjoyment of the game, because I get enough of that in real life. And that's... that's something that's annoying, but it's not likely to seriously upset me, even if that is the way the developers go. But something that could potentially trigger someone who's been raped themselves? I'm much less comfortable wanting to say that this is obviously a logical consequence of the world, this is realism, we're discussing mature themes here so let's put it in! I definitely think it can be handled sensitively, and I'd also be concerned if sexual violence was treated as something that's shameful for those who'd experienced it to talk about, but I don't think it can help but be something of a minefield, as well. One thing I've been thinking about recently is the way that you can draw comparisons, have oppression and violation in different forms than we see in our world, and use that to explore more sensitive issues - and how the whole souls device could act as a great vehicle there. Look at Dragon Age 2, which I think did this well - it had actual rape, both implied and pretty damn obvious, but it also had blood magic and possession, where the violation was to the people's wills (which is arguably more creepy, for that matter). There were some brief "is this gay thing too weird for you?" conversations, but there was also the entire mage rights issues, with lines about how (paraphrased from memory) "a hundred years from now, someone like me can love someone like you." So I think it's definitely possible to find a middle ground that lets you explore the emotionally charged issues, has in-universe realism, and lowers the risk of leaving anyone feeling like they've been punched in the gut with an unpleasant reminder of their traumatic experience. And moving away from taking our culture and its specific forms of prejudice as the default, as necessary, is a good step in doing so.

Baldur's Gate II. Oddly enough, the runner-up for me would be Dragon Age 2.

They did include it. Cook-Cook?

Human. For class, depends on how much lore we know by the time the game's out. I want to already have a pretty good understanding of the world before playing something like a priest or paladin, and I want to have played through it at least once before something like a cipher. Maybe a rogue or a chanter.

What it comes down to is good storytelling. What purpose does it serve in the story, pointing out that your female characters have to work harder than your males to be warriors? Is it being mentioned simply for the sake of "realism", or are you using it to drive the plot forward, to make a point or reveal more about the world to the player, like Sten's preconceptions about roles for men and women did to tell us more about Qunari societal structure? The former is what's frustrating and hurts my enjoyment, even if it is realistic in terms of the sort of pointless comments I run into regularly in my own life.

It's ok buddy, they've already promised they're not gonna ruin the game with full VO!

Actually, that paragraph I quoted also linked to this article: http://www.themarysue.com/the-hey-sweetheart-scenario-deconstructing-how-role-playing-games-talk-to-women/ It's a good read, not least because it looks at two examples of how that sort of thing can be done right and done wrong, from Dragon Age: Origins. In short, handling it as people who have a different idea of gender roles because of their cultural backgrounds questioning your female characters can be ok. Having the simple fact that you're female brought up in a way that adds nothing to the story isn't ok at all.

I'm not sure I'd say more important; they both matter, but if the cost of realism is frustration and ruining the fun for me, then I think that's taking it too far. For instance, realism in regard to inventory is not something that's often strictly adhered to, simply because it'd only annoy people and cut into their enjoyment. For something like gender roles, that's a consequence of how our own species and societies have developed, not an inevitability. I'd rather the game decided from the start that worldwide misogyny simply wasn't going to exist; if they want to put in pockets of both misogyny and misandry, existing in specific cultures you encounter (and can avoid, if you wish), where you can choose to have your character come from them, that's one thing. I just don't want my only option to be playing a character that's grown up surrounded by the idea that women are inferior to men. I play games to have fun, not have "you're a woman being competent, that's weird/good job overcoming your inherent limitations!" shoved into my face some more.

Does anyone here truly want this game to be a power fantasy? A game doesn't have to end with your character becoming a god/ruling the kingdom/whatever to be a power fantasy. RPGs in general do, however, provide you with the opportunity to roleplay people who have abilities and achieve goals that you simply wouldn't be able to, in real life. They're epics; some amount of struggling against enemies is necessary, of course, but the point is that you're going to win that struggle. Having systematic, engrained prejudice that hits really close to home for you, prejudice that you can maybe refuse to be held back by, but that you can't actually fight, isn't the same thing.

This is probably the singular element of your list that is the biggest challenge to implement. Good AI covering all of the potential events and contingencies across a multitude of characters can be a lot of work. The remainder just require some careful game design and clear thinking. I don't know, BG2 managed it; Cowled Wizards showing up if you cast magic in the streets, anyone? True. But that is just a small faction responding to a singular type of event. It's easier to code than a large population with diverse responses and complex institutions. Oh, definitely. But I think the OP was just talking about the most egregious ways that sort of thing could show up; how DA2 handled (or didn't handle) your mage characters and reactions to them was a travesty. There's a limit on how much reactivity you can put in a game, but for something that's very likely or basically a given (such as: there will be at least one mage in the party), you've got to consistently put in appropriate reactions. I imagine Obsidian's quite aware of how important this sort of thing is, though!

This is probably the singular element of your list that is the biggest challenge to implement. Good AI covering all of the potential events and contingencies across a multitude of characters can be a lot of work. The remainder just require some careful game design and clear thinking. I don't know, BG2 managed it; Cowled Wizards showing up if you cast magic in the streets, anyone?

Seems to me from my own experiences with developing characters in any work of fiction, that going at it from the perspective of "there will be romances, and now I am going to write romanceable character #1" is only going to hurt the development of good NPCs that are interesting in their own right. I'd like it if romances made it in, because they're one aspect of the range of relationships that can help define a person (i.e., the PC), but I'd prefer that they just write the NPCs and see how they turn out before deciding what roles they may be able to fill with our PCs. Have romances, sure, but don't have them exist simply because I'm a PC who wants one and they're a romanceable NPC. Have them exist because it turns out (once they've already been mostly created) that the NPC is open to the possibility of that kind of relationship with a PC of a personality type that my character fits. But don't put them in simply to fill some quota.