Souls as a stat / game mechanic

[Monte Carlo]

Do you think that Souls should be a game mechanic or a more prosaic / story-driven part of your character.

 

I loved MotB but found the soul-eating mechanic, if I'm honest, a bit of a bind. But I'm not opposed to the idea of a hard metric involving your soul. For example, I think Soul as a characteristic like Strength or Dexterity actually quite appealing.

 

Soul could be a combination of wisdom, power, presence, mana, luck and spiritual 'charisma' for a character. In RuneQuest this stat was called Power and meant you had a certain level of spiritual presence... to the extent that very high Power characters suffered a penalty to stealth!

 

In many games the 'soft skills' stats get min-maxed. Having Soul as a stat that helps every character irrelevant of class would make for interesting character building and hard choices --- would a medium strength but high power fighter enjoy certain benefits that impacted on fighting style, for example?

 

OTOH it might be that your soul is an externally tracked mechanic, like the MotB version. Or indeed a totally abstract under-the-hood thing.

 

I know we are speculating, but what do you think?

[Luckmann]

Well first, about that quip on the Soul-Eater mechanic in MotB; Great idea, terrible implementation. That really could've used some more polish, because - especially since it affected alignment in a relatively nonsensical manner - it was very easy to get into the situation where it just wasn't feasible to play with it at all, and you could die during a transition, because you didn't have anyone to eat anymore. It was likewise just as easy to completely ignore, once you had gotten your Hunger (or whatever it was called) down to zero.

 

That said, back to topic. No, I do not think that Soul should be an inherent statpoint or mechanic. But it depends heavily upon how souls are supposed to work. It's incredibly hard to say yet, but I can imagine that if souls were deeply tied to your race (which could make complete sense; "Godlikes" could have strong souls, elves or dwarves or dragonborn have old or ancient ones, while the lesser races like orcs, goblins, kobolds, etc, could have fractured souls. Humans, as per regular fantasy tropes, could have "young" souls. And so on.

 

So it really, really depends on how they want to twist the story. That being said, my immediate knee-jerk reaction is to not want it as a mechanic, since I just feel that it should, or seem to, have so much to do with the whole overreaching storyline, setting and lore.

 

If it is a game mechanic, I would prefer it if it either was entirely tied to race, or picked as a completely separate aspect on character creation; not something that increases (or decreases) arbitrarily as we play the game.

[Adhin]

Sounds like it'll be story based, but I would like it if it was some kind of background trait, perk, whatever you select on character creation. OR part of creation you select due to the event. Either way I'd rather it not turn into some weird soul harvesting game unless that's what the event does to you,g ive you the ability to consume souls. Though at that point I would say it would end up being character progression and.. not everyone would be doing that so wouldn't fit to well with companions I'd wager. Also, I'd imagine, you'd be viewed as a horrible monster to be destroys if your removing peoples souls from the whole cicle the world has going just cause you collect/devour them.

 

Basically no on stat, yes on background lore of your character and maybe some passive state stuff in relation to that. From what they've said (and of course, could change) looks like the different kind of souls aren't race dependant though (to what luckmann said). Otherwise wouldn't be as important as folks would just view that as a race thing not a soul thing.

 

Either way having that as some kind of character creation process I think would put an interesting take on things, kinda like birth signs in TES. Just... the kind of soul you have and any benefit/negatives that come with it. Could also tie into NPC behavior and generally how people view you. Just another fun hook.

[eimatshya]

I'm not really sure. It sometimes annoys me when your abilities in the story are different from your abilities in actual gameplay, although this is usually when you can't use gameplay abilities during story moments, rather than the other way around. For example, in Neverwinter Nights 2 (spoiler):

 

 

 

As a high level monk, I could run really fast and dish out a ton of damage. However, when Bishop betrays you during the siege of Crossroad Keep, the game forces you to watch him slowly run away, even though my character could have easily caught him before he made it through the gate and beaten him to a pulp. Knowing that this was the case made watching the cutscene in which I did none of these things extremely grating.

 

 

 

As such, I tend to say that I would prefer for story and gameplay to operate according to the same rules. However, in Mask of the Betrayer, the spirit eating mechanic definitely reduced the scope of the game (at least for me). Since I was constantly worrying about feeding, I rushed ahead with the main plot with complete abandon. I didn't do any sidequests and hardly spoke with my companions. I had one very specific goal, and I dedicated myself to accomplishing it. As such, the inclusion of a story mechanic in the gameplay made me truly connected to the story. This was great for increasing my immersion but made the game very linear since it was essentially one long charge towards the end. In the case of MotB, this fit the story, so I would call it a success. However, if P:E is supposed to be more like the IE games with lots of exploration and questing, then such a mechanic might impede the gameplay.

 

But then again, it might not. There is a Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines mod called the Camarilla Edition (and another one called the Final Nights that uses the same mechanic) that introduces the need to feed (i.e. drink blood) regularly. The way it works is that you lose one point of blood every x number of seconds (x is determined by your stamina). As such, you need to periodically find a pedestrian to eat (in the vanilla version of the game you only lose blood when you use your vampiric abilities, so you don't need to feed much outside of combat). This mechanic brings the story element of you needing to drink blood into the gameplay. You are always aware of your need for blood. It is always on your mind to some extent (the way the story claims it should be). Unlike MotB, however, it is usually fairly easy to find sources of blood. You can find people in alleyways, pay prostitutes, seduce people in clubs (if your seduction skill is high enough), buy blood from the blood bank, or go down into the sewers and eat some rats. As such, the mechanic strikes a good balance: it guarantees that your need for blood is constantly on your mind (in keeping with the story), but the ease with which you can sate this need insures that the mechanic isn't so intrusive that you can't wander around doing random stuff.

 

I'm not sure if any sort of spirit eating or blood drinking type thing would actually be in P:E's story, but if Obsidian were to try to implement a mechanic that was tied to a story ability, I would not be immediately opposed to the idea. I would have to see how it would actually work and what effect it would have on player behavior before I could say whether it would be a good idea or not.

[Tigranes]

I liked the Spirit Meter, but Dead Money did a much better job of it for me. It used a variety of mechanisms that interlocked in an isolated setting to create that sense of desperate survival and hunger, whereas MOTB took a standard, sprawling, take-your-time RPG world then tacked on a meter.

 

Of courfse, we can't equate PE's souls with MOTB at all - I imagine it will be very different, and I'd like to see it bled into all the features and mechanisms in game design.

[Nonek]

I liked the spirit eater mechanic in Mask, maybe i'm a sadist but I just studied it and then learned how to control it, same as any other game system.

 

Anyway, to make the soul have more of a bearing in the flesh (so to speak) why don't we do just that. Strong souls can overcome an exhausted body or a shattered mind, they can be called upon in times of crisis as an emergency mechanic. Somewhat like Arcanums fate points or the voice whispering in the Nameless Ones head in Torment. Of course there should be a downside to this, so it's not open to abuse and cheesing.

 

Got it, this is how undead are made in Eternity, souls that are too strong will not give up their bodies. They will not accept death or the tyrannous tread of the wheel, determined to stand strong against fate they have lost themselves.

 

Bit too cheesy?

Edited October 1, 2012 by Nonek

[Tigranes]

It would certainly make a difference from 'please kill me i'm sorry i have to eat your brains boo hoo' zombies, or 'I linger in this world because I have Freudian issues with my former life and am actually really jealous of you' ghosts.

[Ieo]

In my weirdity, when I first heard about souls, power, and fragmentation, I visualized every person to be a lava lamp and the blubby stuff inside to be the soul... able to fragment and even come together.

 

With the fragmentation bit, however, it works, I hope there is a way, perhaps story-driven, to allow those fragments to, uh, heal. Or something. I haven't played other games with particularly strong, overarching soul mechanics, though, so I'm very interested to see what Obsidian will do with this.

[Orogun01]

I'm good with souls as mechanics but only if they're Demon's Souls or Dark Souls, accept no substitutes.

[Umberlin]

Here's a random thought:

 

What if it's something you have to develop and augment much like the character itself, toward the functions you want it to fulfill/power?