Character-less PCs

[4too]

Fill In The Blanks

Fill In The Blanks

Per, your response is borderline 4too-esque. Though you need to chop it up and toss in some oddly apt mixed metaphors to complete the illusion. ...

Per is a communicator, and in the running, 1989's competition for Ronald Reagan's empty pigeon plagued pedestal.
[A Glory, always fraught with dubious, flighty, implications...]
Any spin in Per's above imagery is the spiral of a rifled trajectory. Definitive head shot.




Repeating this for emphasis ....

... Anyway.... The real issue here seems to be the general lack of consequences for PC action. If there were results for actions that actually meant something, we probably wouldn't have the random Internet guy saying "DO SOMETHING, YOU SONOVABITCH!" The game wouldn't seem so lifeless, pointless, even, and we wouldn't be talking about things that seem entirely too much like *shiver* emoticons to me.

A lack of consequences ... the plot line punctuated with hilariously exploding heads(tm) ... the only reward this nex gen needs!


Believe that others have suggested cutscenes, a face still, with differing dialogue .. a cinematic -- effect some how related to diverging ... karmic flags? Flags akin to the FO intelligence checks, expanding the dialogue options, or for the stupid - a whole new terse sentence set and story. Would have worked 10 years ago because gamers would / could fill in the blanks.

In this high powered hardware age?
No, too many and / or, nand / nor. Too many delta streams to code. TOO RELIANT ON TEXT, and the silly children that direct the voice acting. The slide show -- the power point presentation is too much of a challenge -- for the accountants in charge.

Now we gamer's won't get the chance to use our pow-ahs to fill in the blanks.
The conceptually challenged are the accountants that copy-paste their accountant peers. The challenged are their 'good enough' - 'go with it' lead hacking scribblers, that are now contenders for a writing prize for ---> plot holes!!!!!!

Guess that's where we can fill in the blanks ... the plot holes.

Fill in the blanks ...
No immediate financial pay back, only a 'good idea' to fire and forget. Shot in the dark. Collateral 'damage' will have to wait ... 11 o'clock news .





4too

 

[Dead Guy]

I always thought 4toos messages should be read by the guy that does Max Paynes voice in the games...

It was a bad line and a prank call, someone spouting insane babble, I couldn't make sense of it.

The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. Weapon statistics hanging in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. Endless repetition of the act of shooting, time slowing down to show off my moves, the paranoid feel of someone controlling my every step. I was in a computer game. Funny as Hell, it was the the most horrible thing I could think of.

Guess he was in Fallout 3?

 

[Sander]

Well, make it "the outcome of your actions isn't reflected in the characters' dialogues and their emotional responses." I mean, take a close look at GTA's Nico Bellic. "Predefined" or not, I'll play him over Fallout 3's emotionlessly generic what-his-name any time of day. What does an insipid, expressionless robot have to do with the principles of roleplaying? If you want me to assume the role of your imaginary character, you better come up with something a little bit more exciting than that.

I don't think you understand the point of a roleplaying game.

The point is that you choose how to play your character. This means that if you want to play an unfeeling asshole, you don't want your character to start crying when he kills someone's father, let alone when he does it indirectly. Which is why in a roleplaying game, you do *not* want a character to do this kind of stuff.

GTA 4 is not a roleplaying game, but has a set narrative and wants to portray a certain kind of set character. This is not what Fallout should be about, Fallout should be about letting you choose your own character and creating your own narrative.

This doesn't mean that the rest of the world doesn't react to your choices, it just means that the game does not choose your character's response for you.

 

[Public]

It was a bad line and a prank call, someone spouting insane babble, I couldn't make sense of it.

The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. Weapon statistics hanging in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. Endless repetition of the act of shooting, time slowing down to show off my moves, the paranoid feel of someone controlling my every step. I was in a computer game. Funny as Hell, it was the the most horrible thing I could think of.

That's a nice writing. I saved it for the time when I will be drunk enough and feel good enough, to simulate Max's voice and record it.

The point is that you choose how to play your character. This means that if you want to play an unfeeling asshole, you don't want your character to start crying when he kills someone's father, let alone when he does it indirectly. Which is why in a roleplaying game, you do *not* want a character to do this kind of stuff.

GTA 4 is not a roleplaying game, but has a set narrative and wants to portray a certain kind of set character. This is not what Fallout should be about, Fallout should be about letting you choose your own character and creating your own narrative.

Examples:

Not RPG (which is like kinda telling the story of somoene who is already designed and written)

Your girlfriend: I hate you and never loved you! And BTW! I faked every orgasm!

Your character: <crying>

RPG (which is kinda like playing in a story, using different characters, made by your own design)

Your girlfriend: I hate you and never loved you! And BTW! I faked every orgasm!

Your character:

1. You're a bitch! I'm gonna kill you!
2. Heh, yea whatever. I just wanted to have someone to fuck, so I don't have to masturbate every night!
3. But hunny! We spent so many beatutiful times together!
4. Are you being honest? Or you are just mad at me and trying to indult me?
5. <crying>
6. Oh, goodbye then...

 

[Ranne]

Maybe I don't want to give that kid my condolences, maybe I just want to say "too bad you're dad...

The point is that you choose how to play your character. This means that if you want to play an unfeeling asshole, you don't want your character to start crying when he kills someone's father, let alone when he does it indirectly.

Guys, pay some attention, please:

You make a choice between what is "good" (dismantling the bomb for the township's sake) and what is "evil" (detonating the bomb for personal gain). Then you remove any possible ambiguity from your actions by informing the sheriff about the mentioned conspiracy. Consequently, the good sheriff gets shot by the bad guys and you make yet another conscious decision to express your condolences to his grieving son.

So, in light of your personal actions and choices, how exactly would it be wrong for your character to occasionally "stop outside that boy's empty house, and weep a little, even utter a few profanities in shock of what's taken place"? Not only that, but how exactly does "cackling maniacally" fit into all this?

Once again, it has little to do with limiting anybody's choices. It's about seeing the consequences of your own actions, realistic character behavior and more immersive gameplay.

Let just go of GTA 4 and Fallout 3 for a second. Would Mass Effect be a better RPG if they removed all facial expressions and body language from its main protagonist? Would it really help to make the game more immersive? Choices or no choices, what adds more depth and provides richer role-playing experience, forming a strong emotional bond with your humanlike character or manipulating a lifeless puppet with a handful of basic movement and combat animations? Say what you will, I really don't think it's the latter.

 

[whirlingdervish]

wait.. so Role playing is about forming emotional bonds with fictional avatars?

I could have sworn it had more to do with having various choices than it does with having your character emote what some writer thinks they should be feeling about the consequences of every action performed in the game world.

 

[Sander]

You make a choice between what is "good" (dismantling the bomb for the township's sake) and what is "evil" (detonating the bomb for personal gain). Then you remove any possible ambiguity from your actions by informing the sheriff about the mentioned conspiracy. Consequently, the good sheriff gets shot by the bad guys and you make yet another conscious decision to express your condolences to his grieving son.

So, in light of your personal actions and choices, how exactly would it be wrong for your character to occasionally "stop outside that boy's empty house, and weep a little, even utter a few profanities in shock of what's taken place"? Not only that, but how exactly does "cackling maniacally" fit into all this?

Once again, it has little to do with limiting anybody's choices. It's about seeing the consequences of your own actions, realistic character behavior and more immersive gameplay.

Let just go of GTA 4 and Fallout 3 for a second. Would Mass Effect be a better RPG if they removed all facial expressions and body language from its main protagonist? Would it really help to make the game more immersive? Choices or no choices, what adds more depth and provides richer role-playing experience, forming a strong emotional bond with your humanlike character or manipulating a lifeless puppet with a handful of basic movement and combat animations? Say what you will, I really don't think it's the latter.

You need to make a clear distinction between a game that relies a lot on a more cinematic experience and showing the player an emotional character where also your choices are made as clear-cut emotional choices (which is what that stupid little circular dialogue thingie was for), and a game where you are supposed to play your own, entirely seperate character that doesn't rely on a cinematic feel and a more emotional narrative.

Also, again, these conscious decisions you're making aren't that clear-cut. That you're unwilling to let someone get away with wanting to murder an entre town doesn't reflect on whether or not you actually care about the kid whose father got shot. Even when you do go into his home and then find the kid and console him, that doesn't mean that your character is actually emotionally hit by this, it just means that he's consoling the kid.

Besides that, how do you want to do this? Do you want to enforce small emotional cutscenes throughout the game? That only gets ridiculously annoying, especially considering the fact that you only see your character when you use the rather badly implemented 3rd person camera.

If you need the game to show you how *you* respond to its events, then a game like Fallout isn't for you.

 

[Ranne]

Do you want to enforce small emotional cutscenes throughout the game?

To quote myself once more:

So, controlling a (predefined) lifeless character who has less than a handful of (predefined) possible solutions for every single (predefined) problem he may encounter is called role-playing, but controlling a responsive and reactive character who shows an occasional sign of emotion in his replies (say, an ambiguous smirk after saying or hearing a joke) is limiting and detrimental to role-play?

If you don't want to overdramatize things with over-the-top cutscenes (not a fan of those myself), small, inconspicuous reactions and responses will do the trick just as effectively.

Even when you do go into his home and then find the kid and console him, that doesn't mean that your character is actually emotionally hit by this, it just means that he's consoling the kid.
...
If you need the game to show you how *you* respond to its events, then a game like Fallout isn't for you.

According to this logic, a dialog selection window is just as much deficient as any type of an emotional response. After all, you don't need the game to show you how you respond to its events, right?

Realistically speaking, your entire communication with the game's world consists of three or four options. You can either shoot any given NPC, ignore it, occasionally perform some kind of predefined interactive action on it, or "speak" with it by choosing from a highly limited selection of identically predetermined dialog options. The freedom of modern role-playing? It's hardly a freedom at all. I think that if you choose to see a handful of prewritten responses as something liberating, you really should be okay with hearing an unauthorized chuckle from your character from time to time.


And to those who strongly believe that their character must only act as some sort of an emotionless, inanimate "window" into the game's world, shouldn't you stick with the first-person perspective, really? You want to be a firsthand partaker, not an observant puppeteer.