Gamesetwatch Column on Obidz

[Pop]

yakkity schmakkity do

...Why would anyone be so content to be relegated to the background and how can they afford to put their lives on hold? No hero's that charismatic. Maybe in the future all RPG protagonists should be eccentric billionaires who hire random pedestrians to carry their bags; it would explain a lot.

 

The closer RPGs approximate our own reality, the less plausible this comes off. It's passable in fantasy worlds where nobody has a job other than tavern owner or blacksmith, but when placed against the near-future military backdrop of BioWare's Mass Effect, certain conventions become absurd.

 

The commander is required to buy munitions from his subordinates and, on a whim, appoints as his closest advisors and ground team foreign nationals and volunteers who never passed a security check and are happy not getting paid. If you're in line for a promotion on the good ship Mass Effect, twenty years of service doesn't cut it next to a mysterious alien with a past.

 

With every game they've made in the last six years, BioWare have moved closer towards a cinematic style of storytelling, an more immediate combat model and away from traditional CRPG artifice. Except they're still encouraging players to accumulate characters as extra abilities and then leave them in the engine room, forgotten.

 

Obsidian writer/designer Chris Avellone addressed this point ten years ago when he worked at Black Isle Studios. In Planescape: Torment, a disparate cast of characters, in the usual fashion, abandon their everyday routine to support a stern, violent and naked man with more tattoos than memory.

 

For once, this is remarked upon as odd. In a denouement equivalent to a detective gathering all the murder suspects in the parlour room, the Torment party members' motivations and histories are all revealed to be deeper than originally apparent. Given their specific, tragic circumstances, they had no choice but to follow him when he asked.

 

Knights of the Old Republic II echoed that scene. One of the game's principal features was its influence system. Players gained influence with their companions by performing actions that they endorsed, which unlocked additional dialogue options.

 

Avellone works this mechanic into the story, explaining that the main character is in fact so aberrantly charismatic that he exerts a metaphysical influence on people which compels them to do crazy things like join his party and fight on his behalf. He is therefore dangerous and must be stopped.

 

Neverwinter Nights 2 players don't have the same luck. In that game some party members will quit or switch sides based on the level of influence the player has with them. Most will leave over ideological disagreements, but at least one person will side with the enemy at a critical moment if the player didn't put her in the party enough or give her any cool armour or weapons.

 

It might not be convincing that she'd want to kill her former friend based on that grievance, but it's a pretty accurate indictment of typical RPG player behaviour. I never selected that character precisely because I did think she was useless, and games have conditioned me to think that she wouldn't have a problem with that.

...

 

The writer doesn't seem to relish the idea of going party-less in Alpha Protocol.

Alpha Protocol has one controllable character and no permanent party members. Maybe it's a deliberate change of pace for Obsidian, or maybe it's the best solution of all. Alpha Protocol will certainly be free from deadbeats and hangers-on who admonish you for acts of kindness but will still do whatever you say. The best way to deal with those plausibility issues is not to invite them into the design in the first place. It'll work, but because it's the safe option.

Edited February 23, 2009 by Pidesco

[Monte Carlo]

A good summary of why I've gone off of Bioware CRPGs.

 

And, as far as Alpha Protocol is concerned, the spy genre typically centres on the lone agent. Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer and James Bond have people hanging around to help them occasionally, but they often end up dead.

 

So that design decision is entirely consistent as far as I'm concerned.

 

Cheers

MC

[Slowtrain]

Is that article pro party, anti party, or what? I can't tell.

 

What point is being made?

[Pop]

The writer is pro-party, insofar as having a party makes sense. The writer does not like Bioware because they don't really provide justification for why a party member would decide to join the PC. In most all Bioware RPGs, CNPCs make spur-of-the-moment or momentarily necessitous decisions to join the PC's party and then form extraordinary loyalties in short order, for no reason or in the face of very good reasons not to permanently join the party. When thinking critically about the situations presented it all makes very little sense.

 

The writer likes parties the way MCA did them in times past, at least, he appreciates that MCA makes it a point to actually give a reason (any reason at all!) why your party members would deign to join you and stay with you through terrible danger and repeated death. And that's definitely one of the things you could point out as a strength in Avellone's style.

 

He does not like NWN2, though. Somebody ought to get him MotB. It meets his criteria of a "good party-centric game". He frets that AP, being a solo RPG, will not continue what he sees as Obsidz' admiral pursuit of rational party-based RPGs.

Edited February 23, 2009 by Pop

[Hurlshort]

I'm not a fan of being forced to carry an NPC.

 

Realistically, I think most NPC's should charge you a fee to hang out, unless they are a childhood friend or have some other decent background. NWN2 was fairly lousy about NPC's joining, whether you wanted them or not.

[Pop]

I'm interested in how Obsidz is going to go with parties into the future. KOTORII/MOTB/Torment all had well-established mystical universes that made it relatively easy to construct some grand device that made party members' seemingly irrational desire to stick with you into a halfway sensible, even tragic circumstance. Aliens (fingers crossed it's actually going to get made, heh) won't have that luxury.

Edited February 23, 2009 by Pop

[Maria Caliban]

Is that article pro party, anti party, or what? I can't tell.

 

What point is being made?

 

It's slightly anti-party, but really it's pro-plausibility.

 

Long ago, role-playing was something you did with a bunch of friends where almost everyone in the group was a PC. Everyone came up with a motivation for being an adventurer, or why they were all at that tavern tonight, and how they got together.

 

Plausibility was less important than getting the group together and starting the quest.

 

GM: You're in a dusky tavern. There's the bartender, a wench serving drinks, a group of mercenaries huddled by the fireplace, and a dusky skinned elven lass sipping a drink

Edited February 24, 2009 by Maria Caliban

[Tigranes]

In most all Bioware RPGs, CNPCs make spur-of-the-moment or momentarily necessitous decisions to join the PC's party and then form extraordinary loyalties in short order, for no reason or in the face of very good reasons not to permanently join the party.

 

It works really well when you name your guys Jesus.

[Niten_Ryu]

Person who wrote the article is stuck in the 90's. Game design has changed a lot from those days.

 

To make even single good NPC these days require a ton of work from the developers. Animations, dialogue and voice acting, reacting some way to various events, NPC reations towards PC or other NPCs ect ect. MotB had only few NPCs but that allowed developers to make each one of 'em relatively interesting and responsive. Of course there's no limit how much work could be put on some NPC, so in some ways they are always lacking.

 

Game first, everything else after that. If because of that it's not always 100% clear why some NPC want to join your adventure, I'm ok with it. As long as it's not forced to have 'em in your party. Or in optimal situations not even in your game... In ME you were forced to deal with all kinds of annoying NPCs but only few of 'em followed you thru the whole game. I'm talking about "The Joker" who had this wonderful line "whatever"when I tried to get some new info of him and then walking away. Not funny and if game would have given the chance to throw Joker into Mass Effect Core, he'd would have had the encounter with element zero before the ship left the citadel. Now we can't always get what we want because that would have required developers to write several events differently, use different dialogue and voice actor and maybe even have game flow different way in general because new pilot might not be as talented as Joker. Not worth it from the developers point of view - Too much work for too small audience.

 

It could be argued that none of the NPC should be mission / storyline critical and all could be killed but that also limits the depth of NPCs. Or increase developers workload and game budget too much.

[Pop]

See that all sounds like a copout to me. KOTORII was not made a thousand years ago. It's doable. It's just that developers expect that they can get away with bad characterization. Most gamers are more than willing to indulge them in their laziness.

[Slowtrain]

Is expecting plausability from party members really important in the context of a computer/video game though?

 

I'm not saying it isn't. I've just never though about it before.

 

Computer/video games are generally held to a pretty low standard of plausability in pretty much every facet. I know for myself I rarely blink an eye at anything, however ludicrous and contrived, in a video game, because, well, it's a video game. That's they way they're made.

 

Is it time now, as video game budgets start to rival those of medium budget movies, to expect more actual writing and stuff from game developers?

 

Pop posted an interesting article about the astronomical size of game budgets in the Aliens forum.

 

Maybe we should be holding games to a higher standard now?

[J.E. Sawyer]

I'm interested in how Obsidz is going to go with parties into the future. KOTORII/MOTB/Torment all had well-established mystical universes that made it relatively easy to construct some grand device that made party members' seemingly irrational desire to stick with you into a halfway sensible, even tragic circumstance. Aliens (fingers crossed it's actually going to get made, heh) won't have that luxury.

Characters in most Alien/s films, novels, comics, and graphic novels rarely have the luxury of turning each other down for support. And I think that all four films had compelling reasons for (most) of the folks to stay together. In Alien, the cast was a ship crew with nowhere to go. In Aliens, Ripley, Newt, and Burke were the outsiders among a (stranded) marine platoon. In Alien3, you had the inmates of the prison in a mutually-loathing bond of brotherhood. And in Alien: Resurrection, it went back to the ship crew.

 

Most of the characters don't have any practical alternative to helping each other. Even if they hate the guts of everyone around them, the best they can do is wait for an opportune moment to screw everyone else over and take off into the darkness of space.

[Calax]

I think plausibility of the party should be a concern to people. I mean I don't quite understand why people decide to follow you in half the adventures I've played. K1 I could understand Zalaabar, Bastila, Carth and HK/T3. But beyond that they all seemed to say "You've got a camera behind you, I must follow the camera!" Mass Effect had something similar with Garrus and to a degree Wrex. Garrus is following you because you can break the law without repurcussions (which would make my brain scream NO NO NO NO NO! if I were Shepard) and Wrex seems to just say "Eh, he found the evil man for me, I'll stick with him."

[Gorgon]

Yes, but you should still be able to get them the hell out of your party. No immortal superglue NPCs. It's the principle of the thing.

[Monte Carlo]

Sawyer's point makes the case though, doesn't it? The party is together for a reason. And the reason is central to the plot. The people-trapped-together device is a classic, from Das Boot to Red Dwarf.. It works and has all sorts of possibilities for dramatic characterization.

 

Compare and contrast with, say NWN2.

 

Even the plot-thin BG series had some NPC motivation, albeit in many cases a veneer. I suppose the difficulty is balancing the game with the NPC interaction - I don't want to play a NPC manager programme but I do want some sort of dynamic concerning the people around my character.

 

A military RPG like Mass Effect, where your officer-grade military guy buys stuff from stores is just lame. Why not a requisition point system ("You ain't cleared to take the MKV Plasma Blaster on this mission, Sir), or a bullying mechanic ("Give me the MKV Blaster, corporal, or I'll have you posted to latrine duty for the next ten cycles!") or just about anything else. Please. If I can think of it, then the elite team of Bioware creatives in the Master Brain can.

 

Cheers

MC

[J.E. Sawyer]

Yes, but you should still be able to get them the hell out of your party. No immortal superglue NPCs. It's the principle of the thing.

Sure, the player should be able to turn down their help, but when it comes to CNPCs in certain circumstances, being the C is the best option.

[Pop]

I'm interested in how Obsidz is going to go with parties into the future. KOTORII/MOTB/Torment all had well-established mystical universes that made it relatively easy to construct some grand device that made party members' seemingly irrational desire to stick with you into a halfway sensible, even tragic circumstance. Aliens (fingers crossed it's actually going to get made, heh) won't have that luxury.

Characters in most Alien/s films, novels, comics, and graphic novels rarely have the luxury of turning each other down for support. And I think that all four films had compelling reasons for (most) of the folks to stay together. In Alien, the cast was a ship crew with nowhere to go. In Aliens, Ripley, Newt, and Burke were the outsiders among a (stranded) marine platoon. In Alien3, you had the inmates of the prison in a mutually-loathing bond of brotherhood. And in Alien: Resurrection, it went back to the ship crew.

 

Most of the characters don't have any practical alternative to helping each other. Even if they hate the guts of everyone around them, the best they can do is wait for an opportune moment to screw everyone else over and take off into the darkness of space.

That occurred to me, but another interesting feature of the group dynamic in the Aliens movies (and in classic horror films in general, ala Night of the Living Dead) that sort of fouls up possibilities for Aliens and that I cannot get around is the fallibility of the characters. Ripley always keeps it together, and in Aliens / Alien 3 she had a few people with cool heads, but the other people in the group are freaked the **** out, like any actual person would be in their situation, and they make mistakes. Terrible, costly mistakes that only make their lot worse. Now, Obsidz has shown a certain willingness to let their characters have their own wills in the past but you'd be inviting a lot of griping from your average gamer if you follow the films in that regard. Players are used to having control. Horror is very much about having no control at all. I wonder if Obsidz would be willing to allow characters to die abrupt, passing deaths like they do in the films, despite all the player's best efforts. I admit I'm very excited by the prospect.

Edited February 24, 2009 by Pop

[Tigranes]

If Obs could kill party members in NWN2, sure they can do it in Aliens.

 

When I first heard about you being Shepard before ME came out, I was actually quite excited at the possibilities behind your character being a real army captain; you could really make a different and unique RPG by building the gameplay around that concept. You don't buy crap from shops, you requisition standard equipment - but you need to pull some strings for the best stuff, or even look in the black market. Your funds come from wars and battles rather than individual adventuring, so you can requisition costly research projects in the science team. On missions you decide what platoons do and how it all unfolds. It's not impossible - games like Final Fantasy have demonstrated such set pieces already where you tell people what to do, and depending on a variety of factors, the situation unfolds. I still hope they'll go for something like that in ME2/3, but it's not too likely.

[Monte Carlo]

^ Exactly. You could also choose what sort of leader you are as you build your character. Dump all your skill points into bullying and you might be able to get the best weapons from the armourer. Then again, dump them into marksmanship and you could be just as deadly with a standard issue weapon. Or, be a charismatic leader and watch your NPCs marksmanship and tactics improve as a result.

 

Personally, I've never liked being a 'hub' character, whose skills are all about making others better (i.e. your bard or cleric type) but in a military RPG it would be interesting.

[Slowtrain]

Isn't plausibility always a distant second to gameplay though? You develop the gameplay cincepts first and then hang them on only as much plausibility is needed to make the gameplay work.

 

Games are neither as tightly plotted as genre fiction; nor are they as charcter driven as mainstream fiction; games are gameplay driven.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

I love how in most RPGs you can select the answer "Go away, I don't want you in my party", and then have some conversation where the guy says something to try and convince you or one of your party members says something in favor of taking him with you. This is 99% of the time followed by an immediate choice where the option to not allow the party member to join you is absent.

 

They pull those kind of tricks in Zelda games, but why in RPGs...?

[Bos_hybrid]

[J.E. Sawyer]

I love how in most RPGs you can select the answer "Go away, I don't want you in my party", and then have some conversation where the guy says something to try and convince you or one of your party members says something in favor of taking him with you. This is 99% of the time followed by an immediate choice where the option to not allow the party member to join you is absent.

 

They pull those kind of tricks in Zelda games, but why in RPGs...?

I also hate that.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Even worse is when you're forced to take the character with you. Now that's just cruel.

[Gromnir]

Isn't plausibility always a distant second to gameplay though? You develop the gameplay cincepts first and then hang them on only as much plausibility is needed to make the gameplay work.

 

Games are neither as tightly plotted as genre fiction; nor are they as charcter driven as mainstream fiction; games are gameplay driven.

 

 

am gonna agree with you, save to note that there is some serious story reasons for ignoring iron-clad plausibility for npc joinability. consider josh's alien/aliens examples and then considers how to work as a crpg story. handful stuck on a ship? a small band o' humans confronted by a planet filled with monsters? unless you got an Us v. Them situation, where the "us" is overwhelming outnumbered, then you gots problem with assuming/presuming comradeship, no? not a particular deep well from which to draw ideas, and tends to be making for a relative stark and bleak crpg landscape.

 

in 100 pages of text Gromnir can come up with reasonable stories 'bout how an unlikely collection o' personalities became companions, but in a crpg...

 

stuck on a ship?

 

this party plausibility thing is not a particularly noteworthy concern for Gromnir.

 

HA! Good Fun!