ShadowPaladin V1.0

Its not really about preconceptions about an entire game (i certainly don't expect a game to be like other games i've played; we'd be screwed if that happened), but rather, how certain elements are handled. No doubt D&D is usually centered on heroic enterprises, but that doesn't mean that they should 1) always be about heroism (PS:T wasn't about heroism, it was very individualistic in that matter), and 2) that my character is given large control but little outcome. No doubt the game succeeded despite my problems with it, but its undeniable that roleplaying in the game was very poor (at least as far as meaningful decisions and dialogue choices). Well you cant really have it both ways. I think overall it was done better in IWD (the combat too) but it does its job in advancing the story and placing those NPC characters in it. If you take away the dialogue you then you will speed up things. But you will also reduce the NPC characters to things placed there simply to be killed. Dont get me wrong I'm not saying that the dialogue and interactions cant be improved on. Everything can be imporved on hopefully or there is little point playing anything new. But they are fundamental to the game. What levels of dialogue you give to minor vs major characters is probably a question for developers. Thats always going to be one of the things that is limited by scripting. On the other hand you have to remember that BG is 2e and is a ruleset without skills. With 3e , you can see it a little in IWD II more is made of the characters other abilities (in the case of 18 chr its bonus added to your social skills). I dont see anything wrong with bribing NPC's that makes more sense to me than simply talking them around to your point of view because you happen to have XX level of speech. Unless they are: Very dedicated to their purpose. Very rich Or overwhelmingly more powerful than you in which case why take a little when you can have the lot. What I like about bribery over speech is that bribery requires you to give something up. The money you spend on a bribe you may well miss later on and that makes bribing someone an important choice. On the hand simply choosing the non combat speech option is cheap and obvious and costs you nothing. You dont even have to think about it if you have a speech oriented character. The best use of speech would be to lower the level of bribe required. I never liked that about Sequels. Say what you like about consoles, but I think they have the right idea when it comes to episodes in many cases. The Shining Force games actually took the data from your save in each episode. If someone was dead they stayed dead and your suffered the consequences of their death. FFX-2 never refers to Tidus by name to keep the integrity of the character name you may have chosen for him in FFX. Forced motivation is never good. Like Gorian at the begining of BG yep hes dead and ? While my character may have known him for 16 years I'd known him for all of 5 minutes. On the other hand if you kill off a character which the player has used and grown used to. Even if they dont miss them emotionally. They will miss them as they will need to account for their loss in every combat from then on. Some players may well baulk at this. But its a roleplaying game your in a world you dont have the right to have that world bow to your whims. Just like in real life you have to find a way to deal with whatever the world tosses your way. D&D is a bit different because although it is bound by a common rules system each world works in a different way. So an FR game is going to be high fantasy. A Planescape game is going to be high powered and weird. Ravenloft is going to be dark and gothic and so on. Each world has its own individual "feel" despite all of them being D&D. Where as FO is very much an individual thing. If people can be convinced that the rewards for allowing the designer to determine everything for you before you start the game are worth the trade off of not being able to create your own character then games might go in that direction. Until someone has another crack at it, its not really going to be possible to tell. Which is probably why they would rather stick with something safer.

Nonsense. Twinsen and Beyond Good And Evil are both clearly cute, both clearly rad, and both clearly not trying to mimic an anime look. Same with the cow in Black and White, although I haven't actually played that game, and don't really plan to. Maybe , but its only when the Japanese do it that it seems to get wide term acceptance. Pokemon, Duel Monsters, Yugi Oh, Final Fantasy Crystal, Legend of Mana take your pick..

Just because you cant do something I dont think you should ignore the option of some dialogue before the fight. If nothing else it gives you an insight into the NPC's motivations. The dialogue is there for the character. Some characters will try to talk their way out and only fight as a last resort others will just ignore the dialogue and fight right away. I'm not sure about feeling fake. I mean I know subsequently that there is going to be a fight but the character still has to play his role. It really depends on the backgrounds. The ones you create once you have played the game are invariably better than the ones you create blind. Because much like the designer you can then personalise the game to the character and give them added motivation. Only in this case being personal it has no impact on anyone elses game unlike a game where you would have to have a set character to accomplist the same thing. Your the one who has to do the work and your the only one who will ever experience the results of it. Evil and good is a tough one. Evil people can do good things but for an evil reason. IE if you help someone out because it will further your own ends thats not really a good thing. It's not evil on the scale of things like murder and rape but its still not nice. So I tend not to think about what the character is doing so much as why they are doing it. That way you can take what is a potentially good act and twist it to your own ends. Like retrieve an item for someone get the experience and the reward and then pop back later that night and kill them in their sleep and/or steal it for yourself. The problem is that a computer is really awful at judging motivations unless you use the <lie> tag or something equally obvious in the dialogue. This is another one of those fill in the blanks but it makes playing evil characters far more entertaining. In both BG and KOTOR the designers were lucky enough to read my character. Since I had used the same character from BG I was very attached to Imoen.Seeing what happened to her was quite a shock. I felt quite gleeful when I turned into the slayer and tore Irenicus appart at the end. Likewise in KOTOR I would have rescued Bastila no matter what. Even if it wasnt part of the plot. Had Malek actually killed her rather than turn her I would have squeezed the life out of him and probably ended up on the darkside anyway. So even though those were very big restrictions at the time I never felt them and they actually added greatly to both characters motivations. In BG I flew through chapter II the first time as soon as I had the 20k gold I was off. Missed out on most of the side quests and the lower level made spellhold and the following areas much harder. I try not to bring preconceptions from one game to another (unless they are related). So I never expected a D&D game to be like a FO game because in FO its very much about people rather than an epic quest of self discovery and coming to terms with your heritage. Generally with story games it would depend entirely on the character whether I played them or not. How good they were or how deep they were wouldnt even be a consideration if I didnt want to find out about the protagonist anyway. And I think thats always going to be an issue with games like PST and FF where your character is fixed for you before you begin.

Once I play the game I really dont think like that. I might later when I analyse the game.But at the time I approach everything as if it were the character encountering it. As long as it makes sense then I dont feel restricted. For example in IWD. It took place in an area where exploration without a goal isnt the smartest idea anyway. The new areas open up logically and while the areas overall do follow a linear progression they are pretty large and non linear withing themselves. IE once you arrive in the main area where you go and what you do once there is really entirely upto you. Also because of the linear progression the combat was also pretty well balanced for the parties levels in each area. You can talk in all most all of the major encounters. That the NPC dosnt listen to you and fights you anyway is fine. They are individuals just like you. You cant force someone to negotiate if they have no desire to do so. In some cases you can settle things peacefully too but the NPC generally gets something out of the deal. I've only completely finished BG II twice. But I've played chapter II many times (chapter II being the one where you can explore everything inside and outside of the city).Just another example of making up your own game within a game a structure that is provided I suppose. Morrowind is very much the opposite. If you follow the main path of the game then you miss out on the point of Morrowind which is having the freedom to go anywhere and do anything (even if it is in somewhat generic way). However if you do go off and do your own thing. Exploring Daedric ruins was my particular interest. Then when you get back to the story line its no longer even the remotest challenge. Come to think of it. I couldnt even tell you what the story line was. Thats how non memorable it turned out. It depends on how you define the game really. For me the game isnt just about what dialogue choices you are given its about the whole experience. How the character chooses to fight, what tactics they choose to employ. How they choose to interact with the world, which quests to ignore and which one to take. In cases where you have no choice how that makes them feel towards those who put them in that posistion and so forth. Now this is a very interesting point actually one I have often pondered myself. And I've basically reached this conclusion. If you are the sort of person who can imagine your way around a game, then less is definately more. If you look at the effort people have put in to their IWD parties over at the IWD forum it shows a lot of creativity. Games like PST would rob them of that creativity. I found no use for my imagination in PST it was all pre done I just had to trigger it by clicking the next option. I'd get nothing more out of PST than I would from reading a book which was based around someones single playthrough of the game. If however you dont have the imagination or the inclination to do that , then IWD may well feel empty and devoid of roleplaying options. By far the most popular seems to be the middle ground of BG. Your character is yours but the game takes on some greater depth by having NPCs which are both detailed and have quests attached to them(making them part of the world). So you dont quite have the creative freedom of IWD , since you must accept some sort of restriction. Like being a child of Bhaal. But on the other hand you are not shoehorned into the role of a specific individual either. Not really sure why the FO model isnt copied more. The only thing I can think of is that it dosnt match what is the classical D&D approach. Although in PnP the game very much adapts to the desires of the players playing it. If you design something based on it, then its either likely to resemble the type of D&D you play. Or be designed to attract the largest market possible by having a little bit of everything.

Because roleplaying is a game that is based for the most part in the imagination. By allowing people to tap into a part of that that they find appealing it makes them happy. How and what meaning they find will depend entirely on the individual. In BG and even more so in IWD the player finds their own meaning rather than being spoonfed it along some pre defined path. With the context of the games narative PST gave the player more freedom to express his her definition of TNO , or basically. The game gave you various choices to express an already pre generated path programmed into the game. But the important thing here is that as you said you are expressing definitions of TNO and TNO is an individual. Where as in BG you are expressing your definition of a child of Bhaal of your own creation. Using the game as a guideline to play within. As long as it isnt contradicted directly by the games narrative then there is nothing stopping you doing it. The difference here is it's not done for you. The general point of the thread was to discover if it was at all possible to create a PST type game without having to always use an amnesiac pre gen as the central character.

In that case it becomes which source material ? In EP V a jedi was someone trained to draw on the force which existed in all living things. In EP I a jedi is someone with a large ammount of alien bacteria living in their bloodstream. If KOTOR is set 4000 years before EP I then there is no source material to be loyal too (at least from the movies).

Thats the distant future. I'm talking about the pre cog abilities that Anakin has which the Jedi learn as part of their traing which makes them appear to move and react faster.

Put very simply if someone isnt interested in playing the character you have created for the game then they wont buy the game. Thats a pretty big gamble to take. In the case of PST one that didnt pay off. On the other hand you give them the tools to create a character from their imagination and they will. All those millions of people playing BG and NWN must be seeing something in the ability to create their own characters that you are missing. All games need a start point being a member of the republic fleet was nothing more than that.No different from having to start in a vault, or in Candlekeep. Inherently it wasnt restrictive. Where as the character being Darth Revan was because it would overwrite your previous character with a new identity. Though in the case of KOTOR as I said above the character who Revan had become trying to come to terms with who he had been was rather a high point of the game for me. A predefined character is one you dont create yourself. Tidus from FFX is a pre defined character. Yuna from FFX-2 is a pre defined character. TNO from PST is a pre defined character. The only difference is that in TNO's case they yanked his memory for you to find in the course of the game but hes very much pre defined as who he is. And if you dont have any interest in the characrter then you have no interest in the game.

I tend to agree. I really enjoyed the exploration for a time but I never bothered much with the story because by the time I got around to it my character was just to powerful for it and I got bored.

It's an interesting concept not sure how well received it would be or how you would actually translate it into a story. Not sure TNO was driven by a fear of his own mortality or something wasnt he? Actually it reminds me a bit of Blade Runner you know with Rutgers character? An artifical lifeform coming to terms with its nature and its own mortality. I'm not overly familiar with the story but didnt they all have some sort of link to TNO ? Or at least aware of who he was. It would appear though that in order to have that experience you have to let the character be created by someone else. At least in a story based game. Not quite sure why more people havnt gone for the FO model really because it seems to be one that very few people dislike even if they didnt like the setting. By basing events in the now you really dont need to deprive the player of character freedom beyond giving them a recognised starting point (like a vault). Probably in the same way that I felt giving a pre generated character orders was a bit pointless. But this was way back before my GF got me into all those story based JRPGs and long before the explosion of popularity of the FF games. So its quite possible that a game like PST (only less weird) would be well received KOTOR was , though KOTOR hid its twist very well from the casual observer.

Actually the whole precog thing was to account for the Jedi's speed or reaction. Bit irresponsible to push a rookie into a war zone like that isnt it. Not the sort of thing that would be in character for a Jedi at all. Dont you mean Dooku ? (Christopher Lee) He's the one who kicked Obi Wan and Anakins collective butts. Yes but again these are films. They are played for dramatic effect not by a rules system. Prior to EP II and in all the rules systems Jedi have been very much above your comon mortal in ability. Jango shouldnt have been able to suprise a Jedi in that way. He should have seen it coming unless he was completely untrained. The purpose of the sequence is to make Jango look badass. And to further emphasise how much more badass Mace is probably to overcome that whole pink lightsaber thing. If you can recall the colour of the lightsaber you can plot the mininum level he would have had to have been to go down from one blaster hit.

Yep but a half decent Jedi would have seen it coming. They are supposed to be pre cognative after all. Even Anakin who wasnt trained had that ability. George often forgets things if it makes for good drama. I think that was the sequence inXS were supposed to appear in too so It dosnt suprise me he wanted them killed off.

Freedom to create your own character not be given a pre generated character to play. Yes but only PST has a pre defined character. Thats very true about Candlekeep but thats one of the prices you pay for creating your own character and its easy to overlook as it has little impact on the game. On the other hand in PST you have the choice of one character that will be with you to the end as the game tells his story. Well lets see. Game A: You can play the story of a scarred human male with amnesia - Umm no dont think I want to play that role next please. You see it dosnt matter about any supposed depth beyond that if the player has no interest in the character. The same has been said about FFX too. "I'm not playing a boy band surfer reject who looks gay" So its not unique to PST by any means. Or more recently in FFX-2 A girl band !! shock horror no chance. Although a lot more probably played it for the costume change sequences Game B: You can play a variety of races classes and both sexes as long as you accept you are a child of Bhaal. Umm I've always wondered what its like to be a dwarf so game B sounds great. Of course you later discover that the game is somewhat generic. But you get to play the character you imagine. Not one that someone else has created. Of course people who have roleplaying experience can easily fill in the blanks in games like BG and IWD and many prefer it that way anyway rather than having someone elses character concept.

Actually the concept is pretty intruiging but I dont see how your getting the supposed advantages of a story based game from the contruct any more than if you just let the player create their own character. In PST and KOTOR who you were , were very central to the game. I'm not quite seeing how you would get that from a construct because it wouldnt have previous relationships. I suppose it would depend how many people would want to play the role of a construct as the become more and more sentient. I've seen games where they are NPCs. TI0 in Grandia II springs to mind a humanoid warbot that learns to feel. Yes but in the case of FF I'm not actually being asked to decide anything for them so the artificiality of always having to remove the protagonists memory for the sake of allowing the player to control them dosnt occur. Its done for story purposes rather than to artificially facilitate gameplay. There wasnt any self discovery in fallout though was there ? The only revelation really was the one that you were not the first choice to go out there and they expected you to fail anyway. It did. But the trick is could it have without actually knowing everything about TNO's relationship to the NPC's in advance. There were also far fewer NPCs in PST which is a limit on freedom. Fewer NPCs vs Less detailed NPCs. Your basically asking them to make a huge sacrifice in hopes that you (the designer) will make a game they will connect with using a character you created for them. Its a very hit and miss affair though with the popularity of the Final Fantasy games in the time following PST it may well be a concept that is more readily embraced today. Ive never really said otherwise only that the freedom there comes with a price and if the person has no interest in the character you have created for them then regardless of what freedoms you offer them in the game itself it wont matter. Because they will take one look at the character and say "nope not interested I wanted to be a Dwarf". BG does , but its very much more personal and in the mind. How the character feels about what they are encountering. Heres one of my personal experiences from KOTOR. I figured out who I was before the game did. I also figured out that Bastila must have been in on it all along. Because of this my character took to wandering off alone leaving everyone on the ship. He made a point of not talking to Bastila. Got into pod racing big time and generally became a master of procrastination. Its hard to explain but this just sort of happened. That was his way of coming to terms to with his crimes. Which were all the worse because he was glowing like a beacon. In KOTOR there is no real game mechanic for the big revelation on a psychological level. The game didnt validate or reward it. Yet my character struggling to come to terms with his own past is what I remember most fondly about KOTOR. Its a high point of roleplaying moments but has nothing to do with the game directly only what the game has provided. In PST that never happened because hey if you have been everything at some point then it must have balanced out overall.

Yes but they gave those choices for one specific individual so the choices could be tailored to that one specific individual. BG on the other hand needed choices that could fit an almost infinite number of character concepts. Consequence being they are less individual. Call it the price of freedom if you like. In PST you surrender the freedom of making your own character in return for a game that is specifically for that one character. With the proviso that the character has its memory erased as thats the only way you would be able to make choices for a developed character. I was killed lots of times by the shadows so many of them it almost locked out my system. Never lost my memory though.

/singsong voice on SomeOne Didn'T watCH AttacK of the Clones! /singsong voice off Yeah.. lethal... Jango Fett took out a Jedi with a blaster shot at close range Now that's lethal B) Thats a movie not a system. Movies do whatever they want for dramatic effect not because of a rules system. How many Sith did you manage to mow down with a blaster on later levels ? The Jedi in Attack of the Clones animated are much more interesting anyway. It also never would have happened in the rules unless they really scraped the bottom of the barrel for novice Jedi.

UO had a virtual eco system until you added the players. Then it was soon discovered that everything became extinct and they went back to spawning things.

Your not really defining a character though your simply choosing the next pre defined page. The character has already been written to the n'th degree by someone else. Your simply playing one of the possible permitations. On the other hand the designer has had absolutely no influence on my character aside from my having to accept the destiny of being a Bhaal Spawn. That it works isnt really in dispute. What is in dispute is unless you removed TNO's memories you wouldnt be able to play him in the first place. Quite what the game logic reason for him not continuining to lose his memory on death after you start the game Im not sure. But its a rather glaring inconsistancy wouldnt you say? Both BG and FO allow far more character freedom as long as you are willing to accept the game not validating it directly. KOTOR worked but if KOTOR II or any other game of that types comes along with an amnesiac PC its just going to be lame.

See thats your problem right there. Your seeing what you want to see not what is said. You admit I have never said it (which I havnt) only that you think I have impied it. In other circumstances that sort of thing can lead to legal action you know. Well a construct like you describe wouldnt have a past either. It wouldnt be responsible for anything because its just been created. So how would your construct have a past to unravel ? Which was the whole point of KOTOR and PST wasnt it? How would it have a personality to rediscover. How is it any different from just letting the player make up the character. Unless you have a particular urge to force them to be a non human construct or something. Have you ever seen memento ? Very similiar to the tatoo concept only a bit more extreme. In either case its a way to try to piece together the puzzle of who you are each day. There are plenty of real life case studies of this. You dont even need to look to fiction. In both PST and KOTOR who the main character was linked them very strongly to the plot in a way that a player created character could never be. I really dont see the point in going for the whole blank slate approach over the freeform character generation if that isnt going to mean anything during the game. Well my previous post took 6 clicks of the scroll wheel from top to bottom. Yours (before this one) took 19 clicks. The more respond in quote form the longer the post gets. Its gets quite ridiculous. Yes but the result (amnesia) was the same. Which pretty much comes to the conclusion that its the only way to do PST KOTOR style games. Same difference <shrug> The point being that unless you can actually come up various ways of making blank slate characters to play story type games through. You are either going to have to accept that they will all be amnesiacs or its just not possible to do it. I accept some contraints. Being a vaultdweller. Being a Child of Bhaal. What I dont accept is having the identity of my character chosen for me having its memory artificially removed and then guiding it around till it figures out who it is. If its going to be a pre gen then I would much rather watch the story in the same way I would read a book. Well Morrowind dosnt even have dialogue from your characters side of things. Morrowind also relies on the fact for the plot of you being the chosen one or some other such thing. If wandering around doing your own thing is someones idea of fun they will love it. Morrowind however is not a story based game. Fallout has a very simple story go find a water chip before we all dehydrate. That pretty much sums it up. The character dosnt discover anything about themselves over the course of the game so its not story based either. No one the character meets outside of the vault knows them from before. Because all the events are in the now you dont need to remove the characters memories and the "baggage of being a vaultdweller can be shook off unlike being a child of Bhaal. Fallout is probably my "ideal" balance between interactive game and character freedom. Games like FO generally work better outside of a fantasy setting. Monsters are not generally inclined to talk as much as they are inclined to eat you. The one thing I disliked about both FO games is the NPCs were not as forceful as they should have been and were there more to be manipulated by the player rather than as individuals. J If your talking about a recognised system then you have to abide by its rules or WOTC wont let you use them. Local reputation is far superior to alignment. But alignment is a tool that helps begining players know how their character should be acting. Each alignment comes with an explained ethos that the player can build on. People do like making characters though everyone has their own favourite race and or class. Thats another advantage of FO everyone is human so no one worries about it. If you do a D&D game then people are upset because they cant be a dwarf or elf or whatever else they like. Well in order to turn BG into PST you would first have to get rid of all the races except the chosen race. Then you have to choose a specific sex.Then you would need to create a specific Child of Bhaal. I have little doubt it would tell a better story if you did that. However while BG might not be as validating it does let people be what they want to be and I think you will find that to most people that matters a lot more. The imagine they create for their little imagined Dark Elf (or even if they are simply copying Drizzt) is stronger and more meaningful for them than any number of TNO's which someone else created. Maybe it was someone else with your avatar. In any case if you havnt said that KOTOR is restrictive and the combat is bad you have my appology.

Jedi have always been lethal though regardless of system. They dont even suffer from the attrition that D&D mages did in 2e (where you are crap for the first levels and that tends to kill a lot them off). Aside from having to follow the code and the threat of darkside points making your character an NPC bit like the fallen Paladin in D&D (west end games version) there wasnt much of a downside to playing one unless it was during the time of the purge where it wasnt to healthy to show any kind of force aptitude. If you can skip around the darkside as PC then there are no negatives at all really. Which might make for a good titanic movie struggle as rival titans meet. Just not for a very varied game.

I know what you mean. The 3 Jedi combo was lethal. The problem with having blaster users on your side is that they are constantly getting them reflected back as well (and needing healing). Also they dont measure up to a Sith in close combat. We mostly ended up using sonic weapons. Energy shields made most damage types a bit non threatening. I played an armoured Jedi so I had an pretty nutty AC anyway. Even if they do balance things up you will still get complaints about how the Jedi are now crap. Heck some people complained they were crap in KOTOR despite them decimating anything else.

i've no idea how this matters to your argument - i can barely figure out who is arguing what any more - but fyi a child 'raised' in complete isolation wouldn't be a blank slate - they'd be a complete and utter vegetable that would be incapable of having a personality in the first place. not exactly what you'd call great roleplaying material. just a thought. Well my arguement is basically that you cant have a game like PST without using the same devices PST used (which seems to be confirmed by KOTOR). So games with different types of character freedom should always have that taken into account when you compare them. IE Its unrealistic to expect BG to validate your characters actions to the same degree. Except when those actions are based on being a child of Bhaal. And its unrealistic to expect even that level of validation from IWD because the designers know nothing in advance about your character. The more freedom you have to create your own character. The less the game is able to validate it on a personal level. And the other bit is that unless you remove a characters previous memories then they would be perfectly capable of making their own choices the way you and I do (*and the way its portrayed in the FF games). Unless of course you started your character at the age of 1 when they are just developing motor skills. Then you really would have a blank slate. It just seems a pretty odd start for a game...Rugrats the roleplaying game anyone ?? :D To be honest I'm not sure what Z is trying to conclude.

Umm no never has. The recuring theme for PST is that you are always TNO and the only reason you get to choose what he does is because he cant remember anything. But the character wouldnt be aware that something was blocking their memories. Which kind of defeats the purpose. To all intents and purposes the character would be an amnesiac. I wasnt refering to your TTO example but the one of the indoctrinated child. They would still have a personality based on those surroundings in the same was someone who is raised by wolves has one based on theirs. It may not be one you would recognise and you would probably be talking about a fair bit of mental illness along the way as well. People who are isolated for long periods are pretty easy to look up. Exactly and the mental block is causing them to not remember or misremember. In the case of not being able to move someones legs it would depend on the cause. If the effect is a permenant one then they qualify. If its something dumb like their legs are tied together, well then their legs are tied together. Look how long your previous post is that should answer your question quite succintly. I'm not, your just not using my definition of the quotes game. Actually you didnt you just gave it another cause. There are many different ways to get amnesia. Blow to the head, traumatic event, electrical discharge, chemical abuse. But the end result is still the same. Thats hardly peronal, if you cant solve the route cause then it really dosnt matter what else you are saying. I'm assaulting your arguement not you. Because it's interesting. If people want the level of detail that PST offers then it would appear they have to accept the contraints of having a pre generated character with some form of amnesia and a story based around said character recovering his memories. Now there is nothing inherently wrong with that as long as there is a market for such games and the market is large enough to support them. Look at FF, it proves you dont even need character choice or player choice to make a successful game. I just find it kind of ironic that your criticising KOTOR for forcing you into a role and having poor combat when PST does both of those things in spades

Exqueeze me ? I've never said that. I said the reason why the characters personality wasnt there is because they removed it by using amnesia. Without amnesia the character already has a personality. No they dont have personalities because they have been erased. Really how many times do I have to say this before it sinks in for you? Actually I've claimed its impossible to have a pre made character with no defined personality unless you remove it. And the only thing that removes a defined personality is , yep you guesed it amnesia. I'm not denying anything. Nor am I trying to elavate myself. You really need to stop approaching these things so personaly because it blinds you to the obvious. Even so the character would have developed a personality. Children raised by wolves take on the characteristics of wolves you know. If the child has already been indoctrinated then it has a personality. It may well find out that everything it thinks it knows is a lie. That was done with Yuna in FFX by the way if you need a reference. The character you proposed maybe in unfamiliar surroundings but that has nothing at all to do with personality. If you stuck me in the Amazon I would be in unfamiliar surroundings but I wouldnt suddenly stop being who I was. Now if the crash caused the character to lose his memory. Then he would be a blank slate. But again your left with the old one trick pony. Actually I'm not after any specific system at all. Simply trying to conclude if its possible to have a game with the connections of PST but without using the "cheats". Blocking someones memory is just another form of amnesia. Because it dosnt take up page after page of long quoted posts. I only needed that one particular quote to kill your argument so the rest would have been a waste of time. Do you find something offensive about paragraphs? Like I said if you cant solve the how to make a character a blank slate without giving it amnesia. The rest of what you say is never going to matter anyway. If there is no solution, then your simply going to have to accept that in order for a game to allow character freedom it wont be PST and not buy it. Really dosnt matter to me.

"A pre generated character that already has a personality in place dosnt need anyone to make choices for them. So if Revan never lost his memory you couldnt have KOTOR. If TNO never lost his memory you couldnt have PST." Unfortunately, you fail to see beyond your own mentality. For someone who accuses others of not seeing the obvious, the obvious iluded you again. The Nameless One's personality is *not* set in place - he doesn't even have one. His previous personalities, traits, ways of being, are nullified everytime he dies, and everytime he comes to himself, he has no personality whatsoever. You get to define it during the time you play, as can be validated by the plethora of character-defining choices during the game, and the quite obvious change of self-awareness provided by the alignment tracking. Even without the loss of memory, any other plot device could be installed, because the amnesia was only a premise, and not defining of the character. When you begin the game, he's as empty and in need of being controlled by a player as any other CRPG character, be it PS:T, Fallout or BG2. Umm how is what you said different from what I said about you can only have a game like PST if you erase the characters memory ? How does that alter that in order to follow a PST style of game it must therefore follow that you would need to remove the characters memories every time? So congratulations on confirming what I've been saying all along. BTW It's not true that everytime he dies he comes back with no memory. Once the game starts it no longer occurs. Obviously because you cant erase the players memory each time he dies There is probably an explanation for that somewhere. But we all know the above is the real reason it has to be that way. So what other plot device is there that can turn a fully fuctional adult into a blank slate aside from memory loss? I cant wait to hear these marvelous alternate plot devices. I dont play the selective quotes game with anyone. You should know that by now. If you want a response to your whole post then use paragraphs not quoting each and every sentence or your never going to get a response.Not that I really needed to because until you come up with the alternatives to memory loss the rest of your post is pretty worthless. The other big issue is if someone dosnt like the particular character they may well not even give the game a second look. Lots of people feel that way about the current crop of FF heroes Tidus and Varn.