Refreshing Story

[Luma Akasha]

I don't think insanity is inevitable.  I think that if you are a balanced integrated personality, you will not wind up the sort of madperson Maerwald devolved into.  And that's exactly how I play the game:  that my PC is a mentally balanced person who is doing her best to integrate Watcherness into her emotional and mental selfhood.

Perhaps I misspoke if I implied that it is inevitable. I don't think that it is. I think that is the point of it all - to not just maintain your identity, but re-write it as you chose.

 

I should have said that I think the game should continue to test you, to simulate the interplay between the id, ego and superego. That may be asking too much of the medium, but I feel that the premise of the story is one that really lends itself to that journey.

[Oralaina]

 

I don't think insanity is inevitable.  I think that if you are a balanced integrated personality, you will not wind up the sort of madperson Maerwald devolved into.  And that's exactly how I play the game:  that my PC is a mentally balanced person who is doing her best to integrate Watcherness into her emotional and mental selfhood.

Perhaps I misspoke if I implied that it is inevitable. I don't think that it is. I think that is the point of it all - to not just maintain your identity, but re-write it as you chose.

 

I should have said that I think the game should continue to test you, to simulate the interplay between the id, ego and superego. That may be asking too much of the medium, but I feel that the premise of the story is one that really lends itself to that journey.

 

 

Yep, in that case, we're on the same page.  You stated it more gracefully than I did (blame it on too many glasses of wine maybe?) and thank you for that!

[gkathellar]

Yeah ... part of the reason the madness thing was so confusing was that Maerwald's circumstances were entirely unique, and his insanity seemed to stem from them directly. The game doesn't really give any sense of how or why. Is it your unique history with Thaos? Is it your Watcherness? Nobody knows, and companion conversations give you plenty of chances to deny any belief that you're going to be affected.

 

Then suddenly, you get to Twin Elms, and the delemgan sues sisters tell you you're going to go mad at any moment. It's just ... what?

[Oralaina]

Yeah ... part of the reason the madness thing was so confusing was that Maerwald's circumstances were entirely unique, and his insanity seemed to stem from them directly. The game doesn't really give any sense of how or why. Is it your unique history with Thaos? Is it your Watcherness? Nobody knows, and companion conversations give you plenty of chances to deny any belief that you're going to be affected.

 

Then suddenly, you get to Twin Elms, and the delemgan sues sisters tell you you're going to go mad at any moment. It's just ... what?

 

Hmm.  I don't remember the sues saying directly that I'd be going mad.  They didn't say it was inevitable, did they?  I've only got that far twice, and my goddess it's wordy and I read it fast so I could have missed it.

 

Then again, I wouldn't in any case take that as a given.  I do not EVER play one of these games as if the devs are the gods and I have no choice at all in how things go.  Call me reactionary.... or rebellious.... or whatever.  I buy these games to play them MY way.  Period.

[Luma Akasha]

Yeah ... part of the reason the madness thing was so confusing was that Maerwald's circumstances were entirely unique, and his insanity seemed to stem from them directly. The game doesn't really give any sense of how or why. Is it your unique history with Thaos? Is it your Watcherness? Nobody knows, and companion conversations give you plenty of chances to deny any belief that you're going to be affected.

 

Then suddenly, you get to Twin Elms, and the delemgan sues sisters tell you you're going to go mad at any moment. It's just ... what?

Indeed. That is exactly my issue. Maerwald was two sides of the same coin. If those two personalities and their memories washed over you in equal (and equally overwhelming) measure, then yes, one would be hard pressed in to integrate them into a fully functional whole.

 

The game does not really give you any sense that there is any internal conflict within the Watcher.

 

"To be, or not to be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them." -Hamlet, William Shakespeare

 

That would have made it much more compelling.

[Oralaina]

 

Yeah ... part of the reason the madness thing was so confusing was that Maerwald's circumstances were entirely unique, and his insanity seemed to stem from them directly. The game doesn't really give any sense of how or why. Is it your unique history with Thaos? Is it your Watcherness? Nobody knows, and companion conversations give you plenty of chances to deny any belief that you're going to be affected.

 

Then suddenly, you get to Twin Elms, and the delemgan sues sisters tell you you're going to go mad at any moment. It's just ... what?

Indeed. That is exactly my issue. Maerwald was two sides of the same coin. If those two personalities and their memories washed over you in equal (and equally overwhelming) measure, then yes, one would be hard pressed in to integrate them into a fully functional whole.

 

The game does not really give you any sense that there is any internal conflict within the Watcher.

 

"To be, or not to be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them." -Hamlet, William Shakespeare

 

That would have made it much more compelling.

 

 

Two minds with but a single thought.  I just came back to post exactly that quote.  THAT is the quintessential "am I mad? or is it everyone else?" thing that we should be seeing.  We do see that in Maerwald, and in some measure in Gram (the poor man in the Sanitarium - and don't get me started on that whole part of the MQ....) - but it never happens to the PC (and in a way that's fine with me personally, since I play this as my PCs are strong enough to integrate the splintered personalities).

 

It would have been a stronger story (if less appealing to me personally) had the PC shown more extreme personality conflicts as the game goes on.

[AndreaColombo]

It is said in the game that the PC learned the truth about the gods, yet decided to stick with the Inquisition and saw Iovara's soul damned to an eternity in an adra pillar. This would have been inner conflict material but you only learn it from Iovara at the very end. It doesn't help that it is you who get to decide what Iovara was to you (friend, lover, sister, etc.) I mean—it's still inner conflict material but if she's your sister, the inner conflict is likely a lot deeper than it if she's just a friend.

 

Another inner conflict hook would be your learning that not just everything you believed, but everything you actively fought for was false and the person in whom you had put your trust up to that point (Thaos) had known all along.

 

I agree the game could've delved deeper into these points. But going mad as a Watcher is a slow process that takes years, rather than an immediate consequence that happens in a few months' time. Your journey starts from when you become a Watcher and doesn't last as long as one year, so it makes sense that you're not going mad just yet.

[Rosbjerg]

THAT is the quintessential "am I mad? or is it everyone else?" thing that we should be seeing.  

 

I always read Hamlet as the question is rather if it is more noble to endure than to fight / more wise to adapt than to resist. And concluding that a measure of both, is probably the way to go.

 

But yeah, I think Obsidian probably took from their experience with Mask of The Betrayer, how by and large the player base did not enjoy being saddled with disadvantages - so they had to tread very careful with how being Awakened and being a Watcher affected the player. I think they opted with letting the (role) players create their own motivation rather than present them with a mechanical incentive. Which is then scolded for being too weak of an approach.

 

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

But I agree, I would have liked a little more punishment from the game. But I'm sure that would've been a much more lamented approach, retrospectively however MoTB is seen as a hallmark of great RPGs, so sometimes you do need to take risks.

[AndreaColombo]

Motivation in the form of a mechanical penalty would have been poorly received. I'm glad they didn't go down that path.

 

But it is true that, playing POE, it can be easy to forget you have a problem. Then again, because the problem is one that builds up slowly, I guess it's fine for you to take your time resolving it?

[gkathellar]

But yeah, I think Obsidian probably took from their experience with Mask of The Betrayer, how by and large the player base did not enjoy being saddled with disadvantages - so they had to tread very careful with how being Awakened and being a Watcher affected the player. I think they opted with letting the (role) players create their own motivation rather than present them with a mechanical incentive. Which is then scolded for being too weak of an approach.

 

The thing is, for all my gripes about Dragon Age Origins, this is something it absolutely did right. There were no mechanical penalties for the mental stresses of being a Grey Warden, but the game did an excellent job of communicating the point simply by reminding you of it at relatively consistent intervals, and letting you actually see some of those stresses in action. Oh, the Watcher is having traumatic nightmares? Well, that's nice, but since I never get to see any, just knowing doesn't do much for me. I've entered walked into Ondra's Gift, a district that had its entire population drowned? Maybe the Watcher should be inundated by countless visions of suffering the first time they visit. Many of the phantom/shade fights could also have been replaced by dialogue and storytelling. There are lots of little things like that.

 

But instead, the Watcher thing lingers somewhere between "strictly advantageous" and "afterthought" from the time you leave Caed Nua to the time you visit Tier Nowneth. It's not the lack of mechanical incentives that bothers me, it's the lack of any serious in-game reference.

 

 

THAT is the quintessential "am I mad? or is it everyone else?" thing that we should be seeing.  

 

I always read Hamlet as the question is rather if it is more noble to endure than to fight / more wise to adapt than to resist. And concluding that a measure of both, is probably the way to go.

 

While there's certainly many valid interpretations, from a literal perspective the famous soliloquy in question centers largely around suicide. "To be or not to be?" reads pretty literally in the language of its time as "is existence preferable to nonexistence?"

Edited September 24, 2015 by gkathellar

[Rosbjerg]

 

But yeah, I think Obsidian probably took from their experience with Mask of The Betrayer, how by and large the player base did not enjoy being saddled with disadvantages - so they had to tread very careful with how being Awakened and being a Watcher affected the player. I think they opted with letting the (role) players create their own motivation rather than present them with a mechanical incentive. Which is then scolded for being too weak of an approach.

 

The thing is, for all my gripes about Dragon Age Origins, this is something it absolutely did right. There were no mechanical penalties for the mental stresses of being a Grey Warden, but the game did an excellent job of communicating the point simply by reminding you of it at relatively consistent intervals, and letting you actually see some of those stresses in action. Oh, the Watcher is having traumatic nightmares? Well, that's nice, but since I never get to see any, just knowing doesn't do much for me. I've entered walked into Ondra's Gift, a district that had its entire population drowned? Maybe the Watcher should be inundated by countless visions of suffering the first time they visit. Many of the phantom/shade fights could also have been replaced by dialogue and storytelling. There are lots of little things like that.

 

But instead, the Watcher thing lingers somewhere between "strictly advantageous" and "afterthought" from the time you leave Caed Nua to the time you visit Tier Nowneth. It's not the lack of mechanical incentives that bothers me, it's the lack of any serious in-game reference.

 

I agree it could've been handled a lot better. The thing is however that imho Obsidian is simply not very good at making their protagonists extremely special (like Bioware are, to a fault at times), they try to tell their stories of the world and you/the PC through their companions, like Durance and Kreia and even more often the antagonist, like Kreia again.

 

So I don't think they really could've pulled it off much better than they did to be honest. I think it stems from the fact that both Avellone and Sawyer have become pretty anti-establishment in their writing style and seem to loathe "The Chosen One" trope. To the point that they will sometimes sacrifice story and player agency to take a wack at it. To the point where, when they do a Chosen One PC, it's often pretty much a hit or miss.

 

Edit: What I'm trying to say is, that it would probably have been a lot better if the player had simply Awakened or had become a Watcher and not both. Somewhat special, but not the Seer-Of-All-Things. 

 

Of course most players seem to hate games where they aren't snowflakes, so that's also a risk.

[Teioh_White]

I didn't get special snow-flake syndrome (or lack of) being much of an issue with the game. More just the story in general is told very poorly overall. Individual bits are fine, the dialogue, lore, even the plot, but it's all connected with a haphazard presentation with little weight or drama attached to anything. I'm not sure why, maybe too many cooks in the kitchen, kept trying to switch or add things as time went on, just caring more about getting a rough system in place first, or something else. But it all comes off for a very unsatisfying experience, so if the gameplays not clicking for someone, can make it hard to soldier on.

[panjshirlion]

I'm only just heading to Dyrford, so my knowledge of the plot is pretty limited, and I can only really speak on some of the core premises. Of course, these could all be overturned at any point in the game; if that's the case, just smile and shake your head at my naivete.

 

I can't tell if this is a hang-up specific to me or not, but for as much as I love POE, it's actually in spite of its premise. For some reason, I've always found the idea of reincarnation and past lives to be a particularly poor narrative tool (and kind of an unsatisfying belief system, but that's a whole other thread for another forum).

 

That the cycle of souls is demonstrably proven to exist in POE (again, as far as I know) means that death does not exist in this world. You can liken the erasure of past memory to a kind of death, yes, but no one in this world must ever fear oblivion or wonder at what an uncertain afterlife might hold. True, fantasy is often about imagining a wholly different cosmology, but the thought that true mortality need never concern anyone I meet makes it extremely difficult for me to empathize with any of them or imagine what it would be like to inhabit the world. Plus, the premise of past lives tends to lend itself to some railroading. No matter how you design your character, the writers can always (and probably will) make your past selves whatever the narrative calls for, which feels kind of contrary to the spirit of blank slate CRPG characters (Torment being the successful exception to the rule).

 

Like I said, this might all be part of a long con that I'm not aware of yet; if not, it might just be a problem with me and not the game. I was just wondering if anyone else felt similarly.

[abaris]

All good arguments, but I like my games with some character backstory. Something you can relate to as a player. That's why I think they handled it best in DA:O. It's about the only problem I have storywise, since, as I already said, your origin doesn't play any role other than upping some stats or skills. You virtually don't relate to your past and in the many playthroughs I have been doing, I even tend to forget what my chosen profession or origin actually was.

[panjshirlion]

All good arguments, but I like my games with some character backstory. Something you can relate to as a player. That's why I think they handled it best in DA:O. It's about the only problem I have storywise, since, as I already said, your origin doesn't play any role other than upping some stats or skills. You virtually don't relate to your past and in the many playthroughs I have been doing, I even tend to forget what my chosen profession or origin actually was.

That's fair. Now that I think of it, I actually quite preferred the prefab backgrounds in DA:O. I'll retract that point and just leave it as my general distaste for metempsychosis in fictional settings.

[DrakenKin]

If you haven't played Knights of The Old Republic 2 - The Sith Lords, then get it (and the restored content mod) and enjoy one of the better RPG stories since Planescape. Obz is thankfully not afraid to throw ambiguity in your face and Chris Avellone's general approach of "what story clichés annoy me the most in this setting - and how can I turn it on its head". Especially the ever so black and white morality of Star Wars really shines when critically and intelligently criticized.

Oh yes !! KOTOR!!

 

I was sitting at the end of the game, reading the dialogs around the existence of gods and such and thinking "wow it has been such a long time since a game went all philosophical on my like this". I could not put my finger on which game it kinda reminded me of, but that's it, it was Kotor. It takes a special kind of game writer to do things like this, love this stuff.

[DrakenKin]

The hallmark of good writing in RPGs is when you have a choice to make and sit there literally 5 minutes staring at the screen trying to make up your mind because there is no clear cut answer. 

 

Too many games are still stuck in the black and white, do good or do bad mentality. When you get more complex choices than that, and it is backed by philosophical reaching questions such as [spoiler ALERT!!!] if gods didn't exist should we create them? and if they have been created and have all the marks of true gods are they true or false gods? should they be respected or fought? would a world without gods be chaotic or a better world? especially when answering such questions is basicly trying to know if human nature fundamentally good or bad, and if it needs gods as watchers and punisher and balancers or not...

 

You have to reach way back to find a game that asks questions at this level. 

[gkathellar]

The hallmark of good writing in RPGs is when you have a choice to make and sit there literally 5 minutes staring at the screen trying to make up your mind because there is no clear cut answer. -snip- You have to reach way back to find a game that asks questions at this level. 

 

Hey, man, don't undersell modern RPGs. I have my gripes with them too, but when you get to, "What do I do with the Geth in Mass Effect?" the correct answer is to turn off the TV, get a sandwich, spend the next twelve hours agonizing over the ethics of free will in war.

Edited September 28, 2015 by gkathellar

[DrakenKin]

Haha, well it has been a while, but i think i didn't have to make that decision because much earlier on in the story i did something that enabled me to have my cake and eat it.

 

But yes I love Mass effect too. The only thing is, those decisions were few and far between, and they were not philosophical just emotional. Which is also a good way to build meaningful choices too.

[Luma Akasha]

 

The hallmark of good writing in RPGs is when you have a choice to make and sit there literally 5 minutes staring at the screen trying to make up your mind because there is no clear cut answer. -snip- You have to reach way back to find a game that asks questions at this level. 

 

Hey, man, don't undersell modern RPGs. I have my gripes with them too, but when you get to, "What do I do with the Geth in Mass Effect?" the correct answer is to turn off the TV, get a sandwich, spend the next twelve hours agonizing over the ethics of free will in war.

 

 

That was such a good one.

 

Trying to decide what to do with the Geth as a whole, while loving Legion as an individual.  Well, as much as 1,183 individuals can be a single individual.  Now that was difficult decision.

 

That was a philosophical decision.  Consider.  You are trying to decide the validity of the thought processes of an entire sentient species.  Just think about that...  

 

Also:

 

Shepard: "I'm offering to be your friend.  You don't want to be my enemy."

Legion: "There is a high statistical probability of death by gunshot.  A punch to the face is also likely."

 

<3 Legion

Edited September 29, 2015 by Luma Akasha

[Rosbjerg]

It's a shame we're all so jaded though heh, that it has to be an entire sentient species on the line or the validity of an entire belief system and cultural root.