mcmanusaur

I kinda feel that way sometimes. That weird in-between world of novel and film, fitting neither. Or something. I'd probably prefer a method more like: The woman approaches, glancing aggressively around at you and your party as she speaks: "You'll have to pay for that!" 1. Ok, we'll pay 2. (Attack her) 3. (Run away) ....mostly because it feels like a more natural reading rhythm than a dialogue-line followed by separated [ action ] text. (edit) I refer to the set up line - the 1,2,3 choices don't matter to me since I consider them the given player options. Worked for me in Torment. Yeah, I was actually specifically referring to the dialogue options, rather than the narration of other characters' speech and action, which I do believe can be handled with third person in the manner that LadyCrimson suggests. I guess that actually shares some similarities with scripts: Conventional prose method The man casually waves to his acquaintance. "Yo dawg." Script method [The man casually waves to his acquaintance.] Man: "Yo dawg." 1. [wave back] "Holla!" 2. [nod once] "Sup!" Re: brackets to parentheses I'm not decided, but I think presenting dialogue in script format is acceptable.

The issue with pure narrative style for me is that it doesn't feel like a character's actions should be narrated in first person or third person, unless that narration is present through the whole game.

Quotes for character speech, and parentheses for character actions, methinks, with meta-game text (like interface tooltips or description of mechanics) using neither.

I'm not sure why I feel inclined to mention this example over any other, but I'm thinking something along the lines of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath; there's a whole lot of narrative potential in the plights of pioneers and refugees, and I think RPG mechanics could fit in decently well. Non-moralized political conflicts also work fairly well in this regard, in addition to both of the other options I mentioned in my last post. Given how progression seems to be an essential part of RPG mechanics, it's probably true that RPG narratives must also share that sense of progression (rather than being some kind of static screenshot, which seems to be true of your example). However, there are many kinds of challenges that can be overcome besides evil intent on destroying the world, which necessitates a high level of urgency conflicting with freedom and exploration. It seems that somewhere down the line RPGs were designated as the go-to genre for epic heroism, and that other narrative forms were left for other genres to explore, which is very unfortunate in my opinion.

First, that's not what I was saying, but good job further demonstrating your expertise with social phenomena. Is rape treated as more evil than torture, or as more difficult to depict acceptably than torture (for reasons that I've already mentioned)? The point that I've been trying to make is that the former by itself is entirely irrelevant, and there are valid reasons for the latter that have nothing to do with the former. It seems that you are justifying this "discussion" via a giant straw man argument, when the real reason that you find yourself spewing such opinions is because you made a huge assumption and ran with it. You are correct, and that is another fact that makes it even more difficult to try to make any sort of evaluative judgment about just how evil rape is in comparison to other acts. I'm not claiming anything about whether one grave evil is greater than another grave evil; rather, I'm saying that there's little to be gained by discussing that in this context. And what is the relevance of this dubious conclusion of yours to video games? You quite evidently have no idea what "illusion" really means, or else you are purposely contradicting yourself. Now that I mention it, you're doing a lot of that by flip-flopping between unsubstantiated moral absolutism and moral relativism ad absurdum. Reference what I said about a straw man argument above. No one is going to feel that they now have the license to tackle rape in a video game just because some guy on a forum with ostensibly no authority on the matter gave his hypothetical opinion about how it compares to other acts. Perhaps the reason why rape is treated as difficult for games to depict is for some reason other than the sheer "quantity" of evil or suffering involved, and discussing the latter has been as pointless as others and I have said it was?

There are indeed many stories that rely on urgency, and that is probably one of them. As far as possible alternatives, there are really too many to mention, given how much literature there is about things other than saving the world (journeys of personal growth, pursuing relationships, etc.). I'll grant that exploration can be presented in a way that is incongruent with the specific kind of narrative that many RPGs happen to use, but I think if we really want to be all gung ho about literary value- as the narrativist/"story" camp seems to wish- we might reach some surprising realizations. Namely, the "story" that is espoused in this context is often extremely direct and of extremely limited sophistication, if not emotionally shallow (be hero, conquer challenge, feel good). Personally I don't think that RPGs have to be about saving the world from evil, and I think that the true potential of the video game medium lies in alternative approaches. The traditional linear hero narrative is certainly a proven formula, but I'm always a bit surprised to see those who supposedly stand for rich storytelling present it as the holy grail of narrative. It just seems so cliched and unimaginative. At any rate, if we really want to stick to that approach, perhaps it is best that freedom remains limited, but I do think there are forms of narrative that accommodate and are facilitated by themes of exploration and choice. I guess my larger point is simply that sacrificing "story" or "freedom" doesn't necessarily lead to more of the other; they're independent elements that both require effort to succeed, and that can seem incompatible in some but not all configurations. An extremely standard trope indeed, albeit a quite successful one. Perhaps many traditional RPGs' implementation of exploratory freedom didn't mesh in some way with the gameplay or narrative, but I still think it's a huge leap of logic to identify the freedom itself as the problem.

That's an interesting graphic, but I still feel that you like others are conflating multiple variables. Whether or not player choices affect the ultimate outcome, and the degree to which narrative choice and gameplay choice are integrated with each other, are two separate factors (which therefore produces four permutations, more if you introduce other variables). While you might only be able to find examples of two of those permutations in most games, that doesn't mean there aren't any other options. In my experience, this is the case with just about every time something in games is construed as "you must do it this way or that way".

You just offended every person who has experienced torture on this board. As far as going off topic, this is spot on topic. We are discussing human psychology and ascertaining what is going too far and what is acceptable in games. If you and all those who liked your post have too weak of a stomach for these kind of discussions then, I would kindly ask you to leave this thread. Rape, torture, child killing, etc. is not something that should be avoided in a discussion, unfortunately all those things are part of the human condition and as such should be discussed and understood. As for your take on rape, power is an illusion (women rape men), there is no trust between strangers of the opposite or same gender. Rape is not locked to the opposite gender (men rape men, women rape women). Torture leaves physical and psychological long turn damage, death leaves nothing, what exactly was your point here? To add one more thing, everyone thinks that they have it the worst when something bad happens to them, people are egoistical creatures. But the fact is that how bad something is, is in the eye of the beholder, ie. not everyone would react the same to every scenario. I'm not sure how that can be the case when I haven't said anything about torture or its victims. If power is an illusion then why is just about every minority disadvantaged? Be careful about how you answer that question. I'm no expert on the subject myself, but I'm told by people who are closer to being such that the most common myth about rape is that it is committed by strangers, when in fact most cases of rape reportedly occur at the hands of people the victim knows pretty well. Also, as much as we might hate to admit it, the simple fact is that the vast majority of rape involves men targeting women; I'm pretty ashamed of that myself, but there's no good in denying it. My point was that hypothetical reasoning such as yours (making the likely safe assumption that you have never actually experienced these things yourself) really doesn't have a lot of weight on such issues. Most of these acts (including but not limited to those that violate trust in the manner I mentioned) entail a level of suffering that an average person simply isn't capable of imagining, and thus it's utterly pointless to make statements like "you know, torture just conceptually sounds worse than rape to me", which is essentially what is happening here. We don't need such judgments in order to discuss torture and/or rape in video games anyway, so let's leave those judgments to those who have actually experienced one or both of those. I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss rape or any other depraved acts, but the way that's currently proceeding is evocative of two fencers making blind stabs into the darkness between them. When you can't see where you're swinging, you can never be sure who you might end up hitting. I'm not really inclined to justify the last bit of your response with an argument other than saying that such absurd moral relativism and insensitivity toward victims are precisely what I'd like to avoid this discussion degenerating into.

I'm just going to politely suggest that we return on-topic here, since it seems that most of the people participating in this conversation like myself lack any real knowledge or experience regarding rape (which is something that we might consider ourselves thankful for). Seriously, I'm all for discussion of any range of topics we might consider ourselves experts in (gaming presumably being foremost among them), but I think this sort of directionless discussion has a lot of potential to just result in people sticking their foot in their mouth and possibly even offending those whose lives unfortunately have been affected by rape. If we must continue along this road, let's at least avoid too much hypothetical conjecture and try to reign things in a bit. Regarding what separates rape and child abuse from other evil acts, all I have to say is that it involves shattering the delicate trust that must exist in relationships of asymmetric power dynamics. This can have serious and long-lasting psychological consequences on an individual, which is something that I wouldn't think most games feel ready to present (and thus they probably shouldn't consider themselves ready to present rape or child abuse in the first place).

I can see some validity in the "incongruent urgency" argument, but I think it should be said that the myopic approach to narrative taken by most RPGs is responsible for this being a problem in the first place. While many of the most memorable stories are those in the tradition of heroic epics, there is thankfully quality literature within many other forms and modes, and altogether few video games explore narrative's diverse potential in this way. Though one could probably argue that RPG mechanics are conducive to stories of heroes overcoming epic challenges, there are many ways to present these concepts in such a way that doesn't rely on a constant sense of urgency to keep the audience's attention invested in the story. While good, old-fashioned linear narratives certainly have their advantages, it's among the many conventions of the RPG genre that I personally wouldn't mind seeing retired. I believe there are many other more versatile but equally narrative-centric options that have yet to be explored. As far as whether you could write a good book from a video game's narrative, that's a function of two factors other than "freedom" in my opinion. Obviously the quality-subjective as it may be- of the writing is one important factor independent of gameplay design, and the second factor is the implicit preference for a specific literary form/mode in that statement. In other words, by "good book" do we mean "conventional epic/heroic adventure novel"? I'm just going to say that this isn't the only valid narrative option for RPGs, or video games in general, even if it might be the most obvious. For me, identifying "freedom" as the root cause of poor narrative in video games is like stunting the growth of the medium, since the freedom inherent in interactivity is precisely what separates video games from other traditional media. I personally believe the future potential of video game narrative lies in exploiting this freedom to create memorable experiences, rather than confining freedom to facilitate formulaic attempts at imitating other media.

I don't really understand the "story" vs. "freedom" contrast (which to my knowledge is mostly invoked by those identifying more with the former). Their opportunity costs certainly compete over the same finite supply of resources (as is the case with any feature in a game), so perhaps one could argue that there is a tradeoff between depth/length vs. width. However, those aren't the same thing as "story" and "freedom". and I'm still not convinced that these two have an intrinsically inverse relationship as gameplay aesthetics. In fact, that contrast between "story" and "freedom" might be far better characterized in terms of (1) linear vs. open gameplay and (2) embedded vs. emergent narrative. While emergent narrative tends to take a lot of roleplaying effort on the part of the player- and thus I could understand arguments for the more traditional embedded narrative- I do personally think that open-ended gameplay is essential to the genre. That said, open-ended gameplay need not necessarily interfere with the enjoyment of embedded narrative, as far as I can tell, and this is where I don't really agree with a lot of the criticism directed toward games like Skyrim on this forum. As far as I know, in such games you're always able to forgo most if not all of the optional side material in favor of the main plot, and theoretically given equal quality of writing this shouldn't provide any less engaging of a narrative experience than a game lacking that optional side material. The thing with an open game is that it provides not only more ways to enjoy the game, but also more ways not to enjoy it, and I suspect that- for whatever reason, and whether they know it or not- the "story-oriented" folk are choosing to play Skyrim in a way that they won't enjoy; I'm not really sure that you can blame the game for that. People seem to present "freedom" as merely a different form of not-freedom, when perhaps they're just not utilizing the full potential of that freedom. It's true the sense of urgency in games like Skyrim can seem to have some discrepancies, but that's an issue that should be able to be fixed without giving up much freedom. TL;DR- I think that this "story" vs. "freedom" dichotomy is borne out of a lot of different things being confounded. Really we should be talking about those things individually rather than rolling them all up as somehow "anti-story".

Well, the "telling" bit is part of what bothers me, and I could see that being improved, but it's also the fact that weapon switching generally pertains to only the most shallow aspects of tactical combat. "See green-colored baddies? Don't I have a sword of +1 against greenies? Indeed I do!" Does anyone really get any sense of accomplishment from putting that together? Now, if it was a question of "do I equip my spear and hold up in this narrow corridor, or do I stand back from the corridor with a bow and shoot the enemies funneling through?", that's an interesting tactical choice. The notion of switching between functionally equivalent weapons (i.e. two swords or two bows) that happen to have bonuses against orcs and ogres simply isn't interesting in the same way. Tactics should require thinking about how the terrain and other nuances can be utilized, not matching bonuses to enemy types, which is something that any five year old could do. Fair enough. I agree with you that RPGs can do more with this stuff - I used a simplistic example in my original post simply to demonstrate my point about items with penalties. Yeah. I guess the thing to realize about "bonuses/penalties" is that they tend to be very situationally specific, or else they wouldn't be represented as such; instead the disadvantage would be systematically integrated into the item's core statistics. In fact, "penalties" can arguably often serve as an excuse to flesh out combat in a disconnected manner, rather than actually making the combat system more complex. In other words, arbitrarily adding a few external bonuses and penalties here and there is much easier than rewriting the way that the whole combat system works internally, but I think the second option (ex. generalized tradeoffs between certain weapon classes) is more rich tactically than the first (ex. situational bonuses/penalties for individual weapons).

Well, the "telling" bit is part of what bothers me, and I could see that being improved, but it's also the fact that weapon switching generally pertains to only the most shallow aspects of tactical combat. "See green-colored baddies? Don't I have a sword of +1 against greenies? Indeed I do!" Does anyone really get any sense of accomplishment from putting that together? Now, if it was a question of "do I equip my spear and hold up in this narrow corridor, or do I stand back from the corridor with a bow and shoot the enemies funneling through?", that's an interesting tactical choice. The notion of switching between functionally equivalent weapons (i.e. two swords or two bows) that happen to have bonuses against orcs and ogres simply isn't interesting in the same way. Tactics should require thinking about how the terrain and other nuances can be utilized, not matching bonuses to enemy types, which is something that any five year old could do.

Weapons excelling against certain kinds of armor is something that I could enjoy, because that's a little less transparent than the usual "this is the sword that I'm going to use because that's a spider and this sword's description says that it is good against spiders". Hmmm, I'm not sure how got to be so annoyed by a "trope" which barely any CRPG has historically required. I don't remember having to switch between weapons dozens of times over the course of a fight in the Infinity Engine games. In any case, Project Eternity is giving every character several item slots that he or she can switch between in the middle of combat, so I think it's reasonable to assume that we'll be expected to use them. While I'm not "required" to switch weapons in such a way in most cRPGs, since as you suggest in most games the bonuses and penalties are generally negligible, I can still find the rationale of the mechanic to be boring and cliched. How many RPGs (including MMOs) forgo the "armor of fire/ice/lightning/poison/etc. resistance", or the "weapon of undead/spider slaying"? It's certainly a trope of the genre. At best it's just a transparent attempt to further game-ify combat in an artificial and shallow manner, but then again I feel the same way about the general tendency to oversaturate weapons with magical enchantments. I'm not against the idea that a versatile warrior might switch between wielding a spear and shield, two short swords, and a bow as the situation dictates over the course of a dungeon (in fact I very much like that notion), but rather the notion that tactically advanced warriors carry around five otherwise identical suits of armor and five otherwise identical swords for equipping when they encounter a very specific kind of enemy. "Tactics" should involve more than directly telling the player when to use an item most effectively and lauding them for following directions, which is all this mechanic amounts to in most RPGs I've played.

Maybe I'm alone here, but I've always found weapons/armor with situational bonuses/penalties (vs. certain elements or kinds of enemies) to be one of the most dreadful tropes in this genre. Having to constantly switch items is not only annoying and inconvenient (and also probably unrealistic), but I also don't see how anyone gets any sense of accomplishment from utilizing this variable. Given that all it entails is matching items to particular enemy types (which isn't something that requires any tactical genius), I don't think it contributes to a game's tactical depth in any way, and instead it merely separates those who aren't too lazy to micromanage in this way from those who are. Personally I have never found this mechanic to be worth utilizing, even at times when I notice those spider webs and correctly assume that I'll be fighting spiders; it just seems like "tactical" combat at its most shallow. Now, different kinds of weapons (shortbow, longbow, crossbow, etc.) being viable in different situations is obviously a good thing.

I am surprised you think Genocide is a modern concept. Afterall the Romans committed the most comprehensive extermination of another culture. Genocide is a concept as old as war itself. If you are referring to the Celts, the Romans wanted to destroy them because they were rebellious, not because they were Celts. Alltogether the Romans were probably the most tolerant and culturally diverse conquerors the world has ever seen. There is a fundamental difference between fighting another culture to imbibe them into your own, or just kiling a large number of enemies and attacking another group just for the sake of destroying them. More specifically I believe he's referring to the Gauls, but it's generally a mistake to refer to "the Romans" being responsible for something, given how loose the Roman state was. In fact, the only reason for the genocide in Gaul was simply that- having already conquered most of Gaul and established his reputation as a capable general- Julius Caesar needed to acquire enough loot so that he could compete financially with his richer political rivals. As such, Rome's "central government", if you're feeling generous enough to call it that, did not authorize Caesar's genocidal actions in any way, and it was simply the result of one magistrate's personal ambitions; it didn't really have anything to do with the Gauls being particularly rebellious. However, it is true that the Romans believed in harsh punishments for such behavior; they had demolished two great cities- Carthage and Corinth- in the same year, prior to Caesar's campaigns (somewhat ironically he would later attempt to restore both of them by establishing colonies at their sites). Thus, rather than demonstrating any kind of coherent policy, the Roman way depended on single magistrates independently making case-by-case decisions about what suited their personal interests. Wait... what were we talking about?

Personally I think for the game to be considered "mature", it's not about recklessly empowering the player with the capability to perform greater acts of evil, which almost certainly lead to more immature playthroughs of the game. While "kill everything" playthroughs can be fun and I'm not denying that, they don't contribute to the game's maturity in any way (rather it often negatively affects the game's sense of maturity). This may sound strange, but for me NPCs are a different story; enemies whose crimes include rape and killing innocent children are fine and can be executed maturely. So I guess I'm fine with any level of evil present in the setting (as long as it's not senseless), but I do think that there should be a strict limit to the evil acts that a player character can perform. The game should focus on sound narrative and character development (if not actual roleplaying) over allowing players to live out their destructive fantasies. "But evil is my favorite way to roleplay..." Let's please try to be honest with ourselves here.

I don't mean to praise DnD-based systems at all (rather, many DnD conventions have my personal permission to die in a fire); rather I simply mention DnD as the example of a system where there are more concrete trade-offs between combat viability and non-combat viability, which at least hypothetically leads to more variation in gameplay experiences based off the details of attribute allocation in a given build. In such systems, allocating points to attributes such as intelligence and charisma tends to result in greater non-combat viability and a more different playthrough than would result if the only options were distributing points into more generalized abstractions like attack power, rate of attack, attack accuracy, etc. (which are along the lines of what I'm expecting due to the claims that all attributes will be equally viable for every class) that all just ultimately contribute to dps, and simply increasing dps via different avenues doesn't lead to adequately unique and interesting gameplay experiences to justify the inclusion of attribute allocation in my opinion. If the developers can figure out somehow to make the attributes generalized but not bland like those that I mention, or if they can ensure that attribute allocation affects both combat and non-combat sectors of player experience without creating a trade-off between the two (which they aspire to avoid), then perhaps this won't be an issue, but we have yet to see the specific solution that PE proposes.

Although- if magical abilities are to be included in the game- they must be coded in some kind of rules-based manner, I think that rules-based magic can be a bit of an enigma. For some people I suppose it may help their immersion to have some notion of magic's workings, but I suspect there are other people like me who have never encountered a sufficiently convincing explanation of magic for such attempts to have a positive effect on immersion. On top of that, there is a sense that the more that you explain it away the less magical it becomes; a fully rules-based system of magic might be more of an alternative physics scheme than anything else. While the scarcity of magic and magically gifted characters can certainly make it seem more special and therefore more rewarding, I don't think that necessarily makes it any more or less "magical". I'm by no means advocating a high-magic setting where magic is constantly interfering with the plot, but I do think that in too many RPGs and video games magic amounts to superpowers in a period context rather than the stuff of classic literary fantasy.

Hasn't Josh explicitly said that there will be no such thing as a purely non-combat skill? Has he? What are crafting, stealth skills, and so on, then? I should probably clarify what I meant by "unintegrated", which is a situation in which you have a comple and unified combat system (ex. combat-based classes and attributes that affect combat performance), and then non-combat skill points are something that you independently allocate on the side, implicitly relegating non-combat approaches to a secondary, comparatively simplistic role ("okay, now that you've spent the last twenty minutes defining your character's abilities in combat, just allocate some skill points and you're good to go!").

While I can see that a well-optimized build might give a sense of satisfaction, I don't think the prospect of failure is absolutely necessary for that, as long as the options are varied enough to produce different gameplay experiences. In other words, different builds can provide satisfactorily different experiences without necessarily providing "better" or "worse" experiences, so to speak. However, the question of how different builds lead to divergent experiences is a complex one. Ultimately the problems lies with combat outcomes, which are traditionally predicted in terms of "dps". If one attribute lets the player swing their sword harder, and one lets them swing it faster, the difference between putting points in either stat will be somewhat negligible, as they both improve dps. Now, you could say that this trade-off may lead to characters being more effective against certain kinds of enemies, which is true, but I'd still say that this kind of attribute system isn't the most rewarding. If you want to move toward further abstraction, you could represent the sum of combat viability as "ddps-dtps" (or damage dealt per second minus damage taken per second). In this way, even defensive stats begin to serve the same purpose of improving the "ddps-dtps" quantity, and to some extent which stat you choose to increase is inconsequential (improving any attribute just makes you better at killing things before you get killed), etc. This is indeed mitigated by other factors such as party synergy and support abilities, and whether builds align with personal playstyles, but even so it starts to feel a bit pointless and only changes the player's experience in a shallow way. In a traditional system (i.e. DnD-based), this is further mitigated by the inclusion of non-combat skills and abilities into the effects of various attributes, but we know that there will not be trade-offs between combat and non-combat effectiveness in PE. So- unless Obsidian can figure out a way to have each individual attribute possess equal relevance to combat and non-combat gameplay- that leaves two options for attributes (and I think we know which Obsidian is taking): either have the attributes exclusively affect combat abilities, or have them pertain exclusively to non-combat abilities. Personally if I had to choose, I would pick the latter since non-combat tends to be more holistic (and therefore more requiring of broad attribute trade-offs) and then have some kind of perk-based system for combat, but instead I think that we will get some variation of "attack power, attack speed, attack accuracy, evasive defense, and endurance defense" etc. That leaves me concerned that the attribute allocation step of character creation will be more cosmetic than actually influential on gameplay (which will still depend on ddps-dtps, whichever attributes you choose to increase), and that the non-combat skills will be left unintegrated with the rest of the system.

Hmmm... and the unwritten first rule of video games is that the player must win in the end, so that means no evil?

In my opinion, the 3D quest markers you see in Oblivion and Skyrim are the worst kind, and really the only thing I can think to compare it to is 3D spotting in the Battlefield series, which is equally controversial among the more old-school BF players. 3D markers/spotting is- in other words- when you have arrows in the actual 3D view, which is probably not too much of a concern for isometric RPGs, or when there's a compass that integrates some sort of distance component along with orientation. I actually prefer a combination of Morrowind's and ARMA's navigation systems. What I would like to see modern RPGs do (though this is mostly assuming 3D graphics), is allow you to place map markers on a map menu tab (i.e. not the mini-map) either manually or automatically (quest NPCs add them for you). On the same map, there would always be a marker for your current location (though perhaps with some degree of uncertainty in wilderness areas for more hardcore players), which would then allow you to obtain the compass heading that you need to travel to reach your objective. Once that is determined, you would exit the menu and pull out your compass in-game, and travel in the correct direction. No floating quest markers or omnipresent compass/mini-map in the HUD/UI, but you still have a map to fall back on and the only requirement is that you can ascertain the desired direction from the map and use the compass decently enough. For isometric games like PE, a small mini-map might be necessary to compensate for lack of freelook, but it may still be best if map markers didn't show up on the mini-map. And in terms of a character's pre-existing knowledge, I don't see why a certain portion of the map can't start off filled in (or without fog of war). I don't think 3D quest markers are needed to account for that, as long as we're not too attached to the idea of starting off with a blank map. For more specific directions that can't be represented on a large-scale map, like "his office is on the second floor", then I think you're best left on your own, as long as they're recorded in a journal somewhere. And if this is too hardcore for some people... I don't really know what to say; if you can't handle basic navigation then you simply may not be destined to be the best RPG player.

This sounds good to me, but then the huge problem that this runs into is that, while magic might be presented this way from a narrative perspective, from a system/rules standpoint its scope is quite necessarily limited and pre-defined (it has to be programmed into the game somehow, just like everything else). So this can lead to a great sense of disconnect in the manner that Kjaamor mentions. Any interesting ideas for how to account for that difficulty?