Mass Effect 3

[GreasyDogMeat]

really though how many games have this? just old adventure games from what I can remember

I'm trying to figure out where Ryu is going with 'you couldn't fail in AP'. That there is no 'death' ending in AP where you sacrifice yourself 'for the greater good' or something? Or where you make so many 'wrong' choices roleplaying that you are alienated and it is impossible to succeed?

 

I never experienced a moment in AP where I thought 'Gee, this game needs a moment where I can **** up so royally that there is no out and I'll have to reload my game from an earlier save and be nicer to that one character so he will aid me because now I can't continue! How awesome would that be!'.

Edited March 18, 2011 by GreasyDogMeat

[pmp10]

Why would a game even bother with a bunch of failure options? Most non-sadists like to feel a sense of accomplishment when they complete something.

 

If you really want a failure option, just let yourself get killed and then exit the game. Good job.

Because it builds a sense of accomplishment.

Otherwise you'll soon end up with "no game overs" gameplay and can't even die.

I'd rather see a sense of accomplishment built over seeing bad things happen to characters you care about and the story taking ugly turns you could have prevented as opposed to 'you picked the wrong choice, you die, reload and pick the right choice stupid!'.

 

Which AP actually does a good job with IMHO.

Not sure what you mean by that.

Failure scenarios rarely involved an instant game over (unless you did something spectacularly stupid when they are justified). Failing a quest or getting not the aimed-for ending used to be the common consequence of your actions.

 

And I could not see much storyline affecting choice in AP or any failure options.

AP storyline always demands a choice of lesser evil and leaves no room for screwing things up.

 

I never experienced a moment in AP where I thought 'Gee, this game needs a moment where I can **** up so royally that there is no out and I'll have to reload my game from an earlier save and be nicer to that one character so he will aid me because now I can't continue! How awesome would that be!'.

 

I certainly did.

The whole game I was supposed to save the world by stopping the plans of my enemy.

Eventually the game allowed you to either ignore or stop those activities but all that eventually came to naught.

Different voice-over during credits was far too little consequence for choices that were supposed to make monumental difference.

Edited March 18, 2011 by pmp10

[Crazy Tuvok]

Just to keep the derailment going...

 

And you can make choices that shut off paths altogether or have very bad endings for other characters (not to mention the state of the world).

 

If by failure you mean what others have mentioned than I guess I don't really see what is good about a game over - reload failure state. Failures with consequences but the game keeps playing? Hell yes. Because then the sense of accomplishment for success is greater and the tension derived from the possibility of having to live some nasty consequences makes the game more enjoyable.

 

AP had plenty of this.

 

And just to bring this back a bit... I really hope that this is an area of ME3 that is improved. It really is pretty difficult to fail at anything in ME2. I'm not talking ease of game but by design.

[Niten_Ryu]

Why would a game even bother with a bunch of failure options? Most non-sadists like to feel a sense of accomplishment when they complete something.

 

Because choices and consequences. We talk a lot of crap about mass Effect 2 but it allowed you to fail to certain degree. Based how you play, you might get all your squadmates killed (except Joker, unfortunately) and in the end, even get yourself killed. I absolutely loved that ending. I made a mess and now I pay for it. Harsh, but fair

 

In Bloodlines you can fail more then one way. One of my all time fav endings is when you get submerged into ocean because poor choices you made. In Torment, my character was doomed to fight in Blood Wars... well, untill 4th edition but at the time it felt more dramtic and final (Blood War never ends yadda yadda). In Fallout I got dipped in secret sauce because I played like idiot. Choices and consequences, it don't get much better then that.

 

I'm not criticizing Obsidian for what direction they took in Alpha Protocols storyline. Studies and sales show that players generally absolutely love positive reinforcement. The more the better like Modern Warfare has shown the gaming industry. But at the same time it really do diminish the effects of the choices and consequences.

[GreasyDogMeat]

And just to bring this back a bit... I really hope that this is an area of ME3 that is improved. It really is pretty difficult to fail at anything in ME2. I'm not talking ease of game but by design.

True, in ME 2 you really had to put your mind to sucking to get the 'bad' ending. Its nice that it was included, but really, how many people are going to see it unless they are actually trying to suck?

 

Bio has already announced that this ending will not function with ME 3 so it pretty much is just an extended game over play.

 

The Fallout 'ending' where you get dipped is one of the 'you made the wrong choice stupid!' moments I've been talking about. Its just a fancier version of getting shot to death. Reload and choose the other dialogue option. Just because AP doesn't have a 'cinematic' version of Mike's death doesn't mean that it doesn't have 'bad' endings.

 

The best example so far has been Bloodlines as you could play the whole game to the very end doing your best up to that point, side with the 'wrong' faction and get an true ending where you died during it. ME 2 'bad' ending takes real effort.

Edited March 18, 2011 by GreasyDogMeat

[Niten_Ryu]

I'm trying to figure out where Ryu is going with 'you couldn't fail in AP'.

 

Let's take one of the more known missions from Alpha Protocol. The museum. The way it's build now is just your basic forced sacrifice. By that I mean no matter what you do, some are saved or killed. There ain't no option for failure, nor option for success. There's just 2 choices - Do you go left or do you go right.

 

What I'm after is that based on your actions, there would be both the left and the right option, but also success and failure. You play your cards right and you might have a tiny chance to save everyone. Or if you totally mess up, whole museum is blown to dust. Bonus option would be of course that you blow up the museum and thus kill all the terrorist inside (I call it Chotic Stupid option, my all time fav).

[GreasyDogMeat]

I'm trying to figure out where Ryu is going with 'you couldn't fail in AP'.

 

Let's take one of the more known missions from Alpha Protocol. The museum. The way it's build now is just your basic forced sacrifice. By that I mean no matter what you do, some are saved or killed. There ain't no option for failure, nor option for success. There's just 2 choices - Do you go left or do you go right.

 

What I'm after is that based on your actions, there would be both the left and the right option, but also success and failure. You play your cards right and you might have a tiny chance to save everyone. Or if you totally mess up, whole museum is blown to dust. Bonus option would be of course that you blow up the museum and thus kill all the terrorist inside (I call it Chotic Stupid option, my all time fav).

Or the Ronald Sung mission? I didn't mind myself, as it added replayability and it was refreshing that not every mission had a perfect solution. Extra choices like those would not have hurt, but most RPGs do have to tighten certain moments a bit to keep the game flowing.

[Hassat Hunter]

What I'm after is that based on your actions, there would be both the left and the right option, but also success and failure. You play your cards right and you might have a tiny chance to save everyone. Or if you totally mess up, whole museum is blown to dust. Bonus option would be of course that you blow up the museum and thus kill all the terrorist inside (I call it Chotic Stupid option, my all time fav).

So you don't want A and B, you want A, B, C and D. And neither of them are a failure, as all continue on the game with the choice you made.

 

Gee, just like AP. What a surprise...

Where was the failure again? (actually you can fail if you take too long to disarm the bombs, but that's just game over ).

[Volourn]

"ME 2 'bad' ending takes real effort."

 

Don't you mean poor effort? You got a screw up to have all your allies die. Some I could udnersatnd but all. That's the reverse of impressive. Sadly, i saw a few people talking about ME2 who pretty got as close to the 'worst ending' as possible.

[Orogun01]

I'm trying to figure out where Ryu is going with 'you couldn't fail in AP'.

 

Let's take one of the more known missions from Alpha Protocol. The museum. The way it's build now is just your basic forced sacrifice. By that I mean no matter what you do, some are saved or killed. There ain't no option for failure, nor option for success. There's just 2 choices - Do you go left or do you go right.

 

What I'm after is that based on your actions, there would be both the left and the right option, but also success and failure. You play your cards right and you might have a tiny chance to save everyone. Or if you totally mess up, whole museum is blown to dust. Bonus option would be of course that you blow up the museum and thus kill all the terrorist inside (I call it Chotic Stupid option, my all time fav).

Ok, let's take your argument and compare it to real life. Does life stop because you made a mistake?

What you describe are just choices, failure is not a choice and in the case of life and death situation it ends with you dead and unable to continue your playthrough.

 

In AP there was a greater objective the circumstances of which were determined by the sum of all the choices made through your playthrough. How hard the enemies are, who comes to your rescue (if any) Allies turning into foes. Failure would be losing and reloading

I mean, how would you implement failure in a game?

[Gorth]

I mean, how would you implement failure in a game?

It starts uninstalling itself without asking you?

[pmp10]

I mean, how would you implement failure in a game?

It has been done before.

Old origin games allowed you to lose the war if you failed at too many battles.

Only thing you really need is a scenario where the player can survive the screw-up.

[Niten_Ryu]

So you don't want A and B, you want A, B, C and D. And neither of them are a failure, as all continue on the game with the choice you made.

 

Gee, just like AP. What a surprise...

Where was the failure again? (actually you can fail if you take too long to disarm the bombs, but that's just game over ).

 

Increased options are always good, but in context of the development time and budget, sometimes it's better to reduce options and number of choices and consequences (or diminish their effects).

 

A, B, C and D options are not needed. Game could be complitely linear. But if we speak about consequences, success or failure would have been perfectly fine options for me and tier above forced sacrifice (generally I dislike it in all games, like in Dragon Age 2 where you choose mage and NPC mage is killed because of that). Failure don't have to happen only at the end of the game or to end the game prematurely, but it can be mission or event based. In the case of Alpha Protocol, mission structure was extemely clear so mission based failure could have been relatively easy to design into greater storyline.

 

In strategy games it's common to fail in objectives. You lost a battle, you didn't (necessarily) lose the war. It has consequences but you can bounce back.. or maybe it's first step on the long road to your defeat.

 

I only have one Alpha Protocol run recorded for the Youtube but in that run I generally play like a douche (hard / veteran difficulty). Make as stupid choices as I can, don't upgrade my weapons or armor, often melee when I could be shooting, don't read emails or chat any longer then bare minium and get negative rep. But that run is about the same as any other run I've done. I'm not punished or rewarded. Like I said in earlier post, from RPG (and financial) point of view this is totally fine. I make choices, but consequences are rather diluted.

[Orogun01]

I mean, how would you implement failure in a game?

It has been done before.

Old origin games allowed you to lose the war if you failed at too many battles.

Only thing you really need is a scenario where the player can survive the screw-up.

Let's recap AP

 

Museum: Mission success, save the hostages. Mission fail, save the girl

 

Ronald Sung: Mission success, save Sung. Mission fail, stop the riots

 

Brako: Mission success, get the data. Mission fail save Albatross.

 

I think those are lots of times the player survives the screw-up.

[pmp10]

And total consequence is few mentions by NPCs, slight difference in few e-mails and possibly 1 reputation point gained/lost.

The problem is that if AP allows player to fail at a major parts of the storyline then the failure is almost meaningless.

 

Perhaps we derailed this thread enough?

Could a moderator move the "failure and consequence in games" discussion to a new topic?

Edited March 19, 2011 by pmp10

[Enoch]

I mean, how would you implement failure in a game?

It has been done before.

Old origin games allowed you to lose the war if you failed at too many battles.

Only thing you really need is a scenario where the player can survive the screw-up.

Let's recap AP

 

Museum: Mission success, save the hostages. Mission fail, save the girl

 

Ronald Sung: Mission success, save Sung. Mission fail, stop the riots

 

Brako: Mission success, get the data. Mission fail save Albatross.

 

I think those are lots of times the player survives the screw-up.

Eh. The real "success" in the museum mission is getting Marburg to either

hate you enough that he loses his cool and you can kill him, or respect you enough that he walks away from Leland in the endgame

. Those two accomplishments were, IMO, the most satisfying parts of the game.

[Hurlshort]

In AP -

 

 

I killed that one guy who was the senators son. If I could have found a way to take him out without killing him, I would have received a better ending. That seems like a failure option right there. There were a ton of those, basically everyone in the game was save-able based on your actions. Some weren't worth saving, but you had a lot of potential consequences.

 

[Jaesun]

SO should we just rename this to the AP Discussions thread?

[Volourn]

Nah. Call it the AlphaPHAIL thread. Even the Obsidian owners know AP was a failure. L0L

[Niten_Ryu]

Apologies for OT posts. Moving back to ME3.

 

In one of my Mass Effect 2 runs Shepard died in the end. If I understand this correctly, in Mass Effect 3 that means it never happend (or that Many-worlds interpretation possibility ain't covered by the Mass Effect 3 game). One interesting storyline machanic would be to allow choices from previous game matter, even if your main character would be someone else then default character from the previous game. Financially this is probably bit too risky nowadays as extra VO cost a lot (I don't see extra writing to be too big of a deal).

 

One could argue that Bioware did something like this in Dragon Age 2 or Obsidian in KotOR, but those games didn't offer a chance to continue playing with old character.

[Jaesun]

Apologies for OT posts. Moving back to ME3.

 

In one of my Mass Effect 2 runs Shepard died in the end. If I understand this correctly, in Mass Effect 3 that means it never happend (or that Many-worlds interpretation possibility ain't covered by the Mass Effect 3 game). One interesting storyline machanic would be to allow choices from previous game matter, even if your main character would be someone else then default character from the previous game. Financially this is probably bit too risky nowadays as extra VO cost a lot (I don't see extra writing to be too big of a deal).

 

One could argue that Bioware did something like this in Dragon Age 2 or Obsidian in KotOR, but those games didn't offer a chance to continue playing with old character.

 

Mass Effect 3 is the final game in the Sheperd trilogy, so no, you dying won't be considered.

 

I'm just hoping Bioware WILL stick to the choices and consequences you made in the final mission, and make them actually matter in the game for once.

 

Also if you need a little chuckle today:

. Edited March 19, 2011 by Jaesun

[greylord]

Also if you need a little chuckle today:

.

 

I hate my Little Ponies. Daughter wants to play them all the time...can't stand them.

 

But if a game came out like that advertisement...I might actually give it a shot. I want to breath fire....

[Volourn]

"One interesting storyline machanic would be to allow choices from previous game matter, even if your main character would be someone else then default character from the previous game."

 

Jaseun beat me to it, but the ME trilogy is Shepard's tale so if he dies the story is finished.

[Jaesun]

"One interesting storyline machanic would be to allow choices from previous game matter, even if your main character would be someone else then default character from the previous game."

 

Jaseun beat me to it, but the ME trilogy is Shepard's tale so if he dies the story is finished.

 

I kind of think they will end ME3 with a Shepard dies........ or did he? kind of end.

 

Still curious when the next series will take place (timeline wise).

[greylord]

I had a thought recently whilst playing over the ME series again.

 

What if you've been playing as the bad guys. I mean, the Council is responsible for Xenocide (Rachni), semi-Xenocide (Rogan), and seem to have an incredibly bad track record where every time they do technological innovation or research it backfires (if they aren't human, no wonder humans are catching up so quickily to races that have been technologically advanced for thousands of years previous...though human research seems to backfire half the time as well).

 

Perhaps the humans and the reapers are actually the good guys (though ME2 would make it harder to argue with the whole human DNA dissolution to make Baby reaper aspect) and it's a battle to keep them from being assimilated into the Council races/empire.

 

The only way the Reapers know how to do this is to make the Humans one of them...or maybe it's a choice of two evils, the Reapers who eradicate and commit xenocide...or the Council which also commits xenocide. Still haven't developed this line of thinking all the way through...but a thought that hit me as I was playing ME1 today and encountered the Rachni in this playthrough.