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I was playing Mass Effect Andromeda and I was doing some quest where a fanatic anti alien group of enemies are fighting you.
So i kill em all, go up to their leader who is all like "you killed my men and now you'll kill me"
and i'm like nah, i need you to guide me to that place and he's completely ok with it and half an hour later he's like my best friend telling me I opened his eyes.
WTF ?
Please stop making that kind of character that change their mind about you after you've killed everyone they know. I don't care about facial animations being mediocre, I want believable characters. I'd rather have him guide me around because i'm holding him at gunpoint/commit suicide rather than help me and force me to find some other way around instead of having these shit "moral choices that impact the story" when I just killed half the population of an ethnic group only to find their leader now loves me.
 
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That doesn't make much sense now that I read it again. Oh well
/rant
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Stockholm Syndrome is very real, and I'm glad ME:A covers this issue.
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At least that's better than the SC2 story which literally made me laugh at several points because of how inept it was. But, yeah, its corporate overlords and programmers being in charge and not prioritising writing that is causing so much of this shit plot that exists in so many computer games today.
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United States24493 Posts
The title of the thread, "Characters in (most) videogames suck" was bold and interesting. The example was fine but hardly sufficient to support the claim.
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On April 08 2017 22:12 Korakys wrote:
At least that's better than the SC2 story which literally made me laugh at several points because of how inept it was. But, yeah, its corporate overlords and programmers being in charge and not prioritising writing that is causing so much of this shit plot that exists in so many computer games today.
Can you give an example?
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On April 08 2017 22:39 micronesia wrote:
The title of the thread, "Characters in (most) videogames suck" was bold and interesting. The example was fine but hardly sufficient to support the claim.
The thing is this happens in a lot of RPGs. I don't know if it's Bioware thing but I can clearly remember this happening in kotor 1 where (spoiler alert) you are the bad guy that almost destroyed the galaxy, but since you don't remember, it's fine.
I'll make another blog post someday detailing this.
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On April 08 2017 22:56 Jerubaal wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2017 22:12 Korakys wrote:
At least that's better than the SC2 story which literally made me laugh at several points because of how inept it was. But, yeah, its corporate overlords and programmers being in charge and not prioritising writing that is causing so much of this shit plot that exists in so many computer games today. Can you give an example?
the Terran dominion / confederation is in a life & death struggle against the zerg, protoss have been basically destroyed.
Kerrigan gets poked by some magic, now they're all friends.
Zeratul dies, and everyone decides to team up and ride off into the sunset.
I really enjoyed the original story, where basically everyone was a 'bad guy' in some way (loosely, in some instances).
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On April 09 2017 02:08 reneg wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2017 22:56 Jerubaal wrote:On April 08 2017 22:12 Korakys wrote:
At least that's better than the SC2 story which literally made me laugh at several points because of how inept it was. But, yeah, its corporate overlords and programmers being in charge and not prioritising writing that is causing so much of this shit plot that exists in so many computer games today. Can you give an example? the Terran dominion / confederation is in a life & death struggle against the zerg, protoss have been basically destroyed. Kerrigan gets poked by some magic, now they're all friends. Zeratul dies, and everyone decides to team up and ride off into the sunset. I really enjoyed the original story, where basically everyone was a 'bad guy' in some way (loosely, in some instances).
I agree. I know it's made to forward the plot in some way but cmon, I can't make my own friends change their mind that fast.
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On April 08 2017 12:27 loginn wrote:
I was playing Mass Effect Andromeda and I was doing some quest where a fanatic anti alien group of enemies are fighting you.
So i kill em all, go up to their leader who is all like "you killed my men and now you'll kill me"
and i'm like nah, i need you to guide me to that place and he's completely ok with it and half an hour later he's like my best friend telling me I opened his eyes.
WTF ?
Please stop making that kind of character that change their mind about you after you've killed everyone they know. I don't care about facial animations being mediocre, I want believable characters. I'd rather have him guide me around because i'm holding him at gunpoint/commit suicide rather than help me and force me to find some other way around instead of having these shit "moral choices that impact the story" when I just killed half the population of an ethnic group only to find their leader now loves me.
I mean... I'm not trying to say that this story event was great or anything... but you're leaving out the entire reason the guy shifts his perspective toward you. -.-
You literally merge his consciousness with that of another being... if that doesn't explain a sudden shift in his perspective and behavior I dunno what would...
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On April 08 2017 22:56 Jerubaal wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2017 22:12 Korakys wrote:
At least that's better than the SC2 story which literally made me laugh at several points because of how inept it was. But, yeah, its corporate overlords and programmers being in charge and not prioritising writing that is causing so much of this shit plot that exists in so many computer games today. Can you give an example?
Well I was taking to a guy who did some writing for Path of Exile earlier in the day. He noted that PoE was run by programmers and that the story they started with was poor; having to graft on dialogue to that story was not an inspiring moment for him and turned him off the gaming industry.
As to the other I'm thinking of BioWare and how the original company managers, who were two doctors (hence bio-ware), left the company after Mass Effect 3. Now, presumably, corporate suits are in charge (edit: this guy).
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On April 09 2017 03:36 imJealous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2017 12:27 loginn wrote:
I was playing Mass Effect Andromeda and I was doing some quest where a fanatic anti alien group of enemies are fighting you.
So i kill em all, go up to their leader who is all like "you killed my men and now you'll kill me"
and i'm like nah, i need you to guide me to that place and he's completely ok with it and half an hour later he's like my best friend telling me I opened his eyes.
WTF ?
Please stop making that kind of character that change their mind about you after you've killed everyone they know. I don't care about facial animations being mediocre, I want believable characters. I'd rather have him guide me around because i'm holding him at gunpoint/commit suicide rather than help me and force me to find some other way around instead of having these shit "moral choices that impact the story" when I just killed half the population of an ethnic group only to find their leader now loves me. I mean... I'm not trying to say that this story event was great or anything... but you're leaving out the entire reason the guy shifts his perspective toward you. -.- You literally merge his consciousness with that of another being... if that doesn't explain a sudden shift in his perspective and behavior I dunno what would...
I don't really see how that changes anything about his relationship with you. That other being didn't know you and probably had no particular feelings about aliens given that they were not present at the time of her death
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On April 09 2017 01:37 loginn wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2017 22:39 micronesia wrote:
The title of the thread, "Characters in (most) videogames suck" was bold and interesting. The example was fine but hardly sufficient to support the claim. The thing is this happens in a lot of RPGs. I don't know if it's Bioware thing but I can clearly remember this happening in kotor 1 where (spoiler alert) you are the bad guy that almost destroyed the galaxy, but since you don't remember, it's fine. I'll make another blog post someday detailing this.
Imo Kotor did a good job with that, + Show Spoiler +-everyone who knows the truth hates or mistrusts you. Look at the Jedi.
-Your alter ego is portrayed as morally grey in many aspects. Despite starting the war they multiple times go out of their way to say that Revan was less evil than his commanders and that he might have had a reason.
-Also the guy was wearing a mask for forever and nobody knew his face.
-Once you proclaim yourself as Sith, half of your party leaves or tries to fight you.
Btw I'd add spoiler tags to your spoiler.
There are some wonky moments in KotoR though. But ToR f.e. is way worse and there are a lot of games much worse than that.
Blizzard games in recent times f.e.. Holy shit Heart of the swarm and d3 storywriting. HotS is mainly swarming with plotholes and out of character-actions.
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Reminds me of when i was playing star wars the old republic; at every turn you have the chance to do things that will bring you to the dark side or to the light side, and the idea of it was great, but the dialogue and action of it was something like, weird pauses before you choose, and then great! You choosed the dark side or, great! You choosed the light side. It seemed to make no difference at all what you choosed.
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There is an increasing number of story-focused games that are being popular i think now, though, like Soma, Firewatch, Life is Strange and Until Dawn.
I think more kids are wising up to the fact that fetchquest games are trash and we are slowly but surely leaving that era and entering an era of quality over quantity.
So, if you're interested in this, support these games. They are out there (see my list above)
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I have played and enjoyed most of these games. It's just that these guys spend hundreds of millions on these AAA games and can't even get half of their characters to be believable.
It probably has to do with the "no past" status of the main character i.e. whatever happened in his past is pretty much irrelevant. That's why you get a characters in his 20s or 30s that feels completely bland.
And why these games you mentioned carry a lot more emotions (if you can connect with the main character)
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to be fair AAA RPGs usually have a lot of characters and most of the main plot in bioware games is well written (can't speak for anything after ME1 though).
Games like Life is Strange have a good plot but a very limited scale, it's much easier to write 5-10 good characters and make them interact in a small scale scenario with limited options than writing 100 good characters and make them react to your multiple possible reputations while offering quests.
That's why Diablo 3 and HotS get so much flag from me, because their main story blows at times. Kerrigan having schizophrenia or the archdemon of war telling you all his plans beforehand shouldn't happen in games where you have 0 influence on the story.
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Generally speaking, video game story lines and pro wrestling story lines are equal in quality. Stories so bad they are comically good. This is because the guys at the top of pro wrestling companies and video game companies are not fiction writers or in any way vaguely connected to the fiction writing profession.
Its very difficult to have good characters inside a lousy story.
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Avernum has a great presence as a game.
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EPT
