Will there be branching paths for good and evil characters?

[Racker]

It's something I would like to see. I remember playing through Neverwinter Nights 2 with the nastiest, most insanely evil character I could muster, but at the end of the game I had still managed to win the favor of the king and the city and was granted my own castle. And many of the characters in the game had to make some pretty wacky decisions for that to happen.

 

What I'm saying is that I hope P:E has some actual paths for evil characters to take rather than just shoehorning them down the same paths as good characters, like so many RPGs in the past have done.

[Alexjh]

I think a bit of differentiation needs to be made about "evil" characters because I find the concept to be less nuanced than it could be, similarly with good characters, there is never really one reason for dealign with a situation one way that is good or one way that is evil.

 

To use an example, Imagine your character is handed a box of kittens by a peasant for completing a quest. You don't necessarily have any particular use for kittens but there are several optionals available:

 

1) Insist the Peasant keeps the Kittens, they are more useful to them than you

2) Keep the kittens and look after them

3) Give the kittens to a good home

4) Sell the kittens, but to good homes

5) Sell the kittens to a fur farm for lots of money

6) Stamp on the kittens.

 

Now in broad strokes, 1-3 are the "good" options, 4 is a good but mercenary option and 5 and 6 are the "evil" option, but they aren't all equivical, and different characters should make different choices. The issue here is that while option 6 is certainly an evil option, its also basically a cruel to psychopathic one - it's evil, but the act has literally no "merit" as a choice other than being evil or somehow (to an evil character) "entertaining". If you are Damien McBlackheart the evil rogue, this might be something you would consider, but practicality would dictate for 99.9% of evil characters would pick the fur-farm option - simply, its more profitable to you but a lot of games seem to assume evil is the same as psychopathic. Furthermore, you might be evil and decide to pick any of the first 4, either because it might somehow grant you some leverage later, or even, that despite being a nasty piece of work you are fond of cats.

 

Similarly with a good character, there is context involved - if you had Angela deLovely the virtuous wizard, she might in good conditions take options 1-3, but when she urgently needs to pay for portal use to the capital to stop an assassination she might take option 4 to raise the cash, she might even take option 5 if desperate and with no other options.

 

The problem with the infinity engine model of gaming is that it doesn't really account for context or motivations - in any CRPG if you did option 5 you'd probably get evil reputation/alignment points, but in real life if you did it in such a way as to achieve something important and good (like the prior mentioned assassination attempt prevention), most people would think it was a shame and an unpleasant business, but wouldn't hold it against you. Except, perhaps, the peasant who would be horrified their poor kitties got made into a rug when he thought he'd given them to a good home.

[PrimeJunta]

I would be very disappointed if your choices had no consequences and everything happened the same way regardless of what you did.

 

I would also be very disappointed if all there was to choices and consequences is a binary "good" and "evil" path.

 

I think it's going to be more nuanced than either of those.

[Ieo]

First of all, PE won't have any concept of 'alignment'.

 

....

 

And there you have it.

 

 

The paths and endings will differ based on faction and character choices, most likely.

[Umberlin]

I always like choice, consequence and the like but any brand of absolute, polarized, good or evil separation of paths tends to annoy me. Choice is more complex than that, and consequences easily go beyond that, and can differ wildly from intention. Luckily, from what we know, P:E won't be doing the 'good' or 'evil' alignment thing. Thank you Obsidian.

Edited January 5, 2013 by Umberlin

[Sacred_Path]

I'd take the ol' "Path of Light vs. Path of Darkness" over forgettable minor branches any day. Luckily, there are possibilities in between.

 

I'd love to get involved with PE's religious factions. That would offer some easily recognizable moral decisions for players who want that (altruistic cults vs. fascist-militaristic vs. economically thinking), while at the same time offering some streaks of grey (the cult that cares for the sick and poor is still questing for power, while the fascists are still more morally sound than monsters, bandits and necromancers).

[JOG]

in addition to Alexjh's kitten example:

 

- You might be in a country where cats are considered a pest and concluding deals and negotiations by stomping on kittens is an old custom promising luck and prosperity. Not stomping on a box of kittens offered to you may be considered a major insult, and if the person who gave you the kittens was not a peasant but the king this may even lead to a war... So if you are evil and want to provoke a war, you pet the kittens right there in the throne room where everyone can see it.

 

- Or more seriously: Damien might want to get into Angela's pants, and wants to impress her by helping to find a good home for the kittens.

 

- And don't forget that that psychopathic mass murderer might actually have a heart for kittens. Stranger things have happened.

 

 

"Good" and "evil" must be judged by intention, not action, otherwise "cowards" would be good pacifists, and "heroes" evil murderers. But the computer can't see intentions at all, so unless we get a 100+ pages multiple-choice form for every single action we made, there will never be enough options to cover all the intents our characters might have had for an action. (And often the character simply did it that way, because the player knew there would be a better reward.)

 

So let's skip the alignment completely. People that don't know you judge you by your actions, and that should be enough. When there is no karma-meter the player is free to make up his own reasoning, it's actually better for roleplaying to be able to slaugther ghouls in the hundreds and not become a "saint" just because a developer thought it's a good act to put them out of their misery; some of our characters may simply slaughter them for the giggles.

Edited January 5, 2013 by JOG

[Umberlin]

Can you really judge by intent if you don't know a person? The random person on the street, if they don't know you, isn't going to judge the intent of your action but the consequence. Something to keep in mind in regard to have a 'party member' views you by an intent, versus how a person who has just 'heard of you' judges on the consequence of an action, regardless of intent. It's most notable that intent of an action, and consequence of that action, don't always match up, nor should they.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Umberlin

[Frenetic Pony]

Will there be branching paths?

 

Ehhhh.... the only games I've seen do branching paths well are things like Alpha Protocol and The Walking Dead. But that requires a lot of time and effort, and a rather linear gameplay scenario.

 

Since it seems Project Eternity will be more open ended, I'd rather see multiple endings (if anything) for subquests rather than any truly branching path, which might necessitate a lot of work on the main quest that could be going to side quests instead.

[JOG]

Can you really judge by intent if you don't know a person? The random person on the street, if they don't know you, isn't going to judge the intent of your action but the consequence.

 

You cannot, but "good" and "evil" as universal concepts need to be judged by intent not action and certainly not consequences.

 

Is killing evil? Even animals you want to eat? Animals that one day might attack you or your livestock ? Mercy killing? Self defence? Protecting another? What about the policeman? The soldier? Is the police-sniper evil when he kills the hostage-taker? What if the hostage taker had just a toy-gun and the hostage never was in imminent danger? In wartimes usually good news for one group means great harm for the other, and sometimes things done with good intentions can have very bad consequences, or good things an can be done out of evil intentions.

 

IMO good and evil are too abstract concepts for us humans to judge objectively, usually we identify as good as what we think is good for us and ours at the moment, and if we can't be trusted to judge fairly, we shouldn't trust a computer to do so either. All you can tell is whether a decision is good for one faction or the other.

 

That said, branching paths? Yes, but on faction reputation (good or bad) rather than the abstract concept of good and evil.

Edited January 6, 2013 by JOG

[Umberlin]

I still think any polarized good/evil system in a game, but it a a darkside/lightside or paragon/renegade or any other example one could come up with is inherently flawed beyond hope and repair. Sure, a game can be good despite such systems, but the systems themselves always could have been more adaptable to individual morality and the perception differences between stranger, friend, ally, foe, villain and so on - recognizing that an intent is one thing. A consequence another. And the viewpoint of such things variable based on context, individual observer or individual who has simply heard of an intent/action/consequence.

Edited January 8, 2013 by Umberlin

[Alexjh]

Can you really judge by intent if you don't know a person? The random person on the street, if they don't know you, isn't going to judge the intent of your action but the consequence. Something to keep in mind in regard to have a 'party member' views you by an intent, versus how a person who has just 'heard of you' judges on the consequence of an action, regardless of intent. It's most notable that intent of an action, and consequence of that action, don't always match up, nor should they.

 

The thing is though, that reality doesn't work in self contained bubbles of reputation in the same way as a game has to. A game will tend to measure incremental changes through every single action you do but that doesn't really work like that except for people you know personally. If you know someone by reputation or loosely, chances are you only know that person by a very short list of things.

 

To pick a real world example off the top of my head, to a layperson, someone like Lady Gaga would be summed up as famous singer, eccentric fashion obsessed, had a meat dress. This is of course a vast simplification, but I honestly don't know (and am not interested in knowing) some convoluted oppinion which includes small changes of oppionions from that time she helped an old lady across the road or if she once cheated on her boyfriend or whatever. If I knew her personally those might matter, but to a general outsider it wouldn't.

 

So, what I would propose would be the game has two or three layers of reputation.

 

An personal layer which would track specific characters oppinions.

 

A reputation layer which tracks oppinions within specific factions.

 

A fame layer which tracks thigns that everyone hears about.

 

Ambient is nested within reputation and reputation within fame. So, if you annoy the wizards guild and have a party member who is a member of said guild their oppinions will be altered, but the broader population of people won't be effected. Conversely, the layers can't effect those above them except in specific circumstances (annoy/please a ruler/leader and it might affect your reputation or even fame). Fame could only be achieved by specific acts that almost everyone would hear of, and wouldn't account for minor day to day things - slaying a dragon would give you fame, but rounding up a farmers goats would only give you personal points, or at best, a reputation bump in that village.

[Frisk]

"Good" and "evil" is far, far to simplistic, and I am happy to hear that PE is not using a single "alignment" number, but more like a set of numbers, corresponding to reputation with various "factions" (where a "faction" might be an organization, a race, inhabitants in a particular area, or whatever).

 

This allows every action to have a set of consequences - it allows players to create more complex characters and is simply more realistic than an arbitrary "alignment" number.