Games in which your character matters

Merely trying to explain why Jemy might have got Bioware into his brain, Mo, not trying to say they are publishing it, though I would frankly rather see them doing it than Atari.

um, who is Adbobe? or is that Ad-booby? I think I've seen their influence in quite a few games.

magerette said:

um, who is Adbobe? or is that Ad-booby? I think I've seen their influence in quite a few games.

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Yes, that's them... though unfortunately [for us chauvi pigs] they still do not have enough influence .

bjon045 said:

If you want to roleplay a "fighter" in Oblivion you simply do not join the mages guild etc. If you pick a Khajit you cannot wear boots. I can't think of any other examples :lol:

I think Oblivion does allow choices, it's just if you want to create a character that can do everything you can do that.

Fallout has more restrictions and a far more sophisticated dialogue system which reflects these restrictions, but it is quite possible to build a character that can do everything. In Fallout 2 it is easier to create a character that can do everything, although if you make certain choices during the game you are precluded from doing certain things i.e. if you work as a slaver you cannot join the rangers. This is probably where Fallout 2 excels over a game like Oblivion in my opinion.

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True, although I do not consider "giving up things" and ignoring your quest journal a valid "choice". In Oblivion you do not even have the dialogue option to say no. Most simply inquiry will end up with another quest in your journal regardless if you feel it fits your character or not. I did leave a few of the quests in my quest journal like that, but I did not feel good about it.

JemyM said:

In Oblivion you do not even have the dialogue option to say no. Most simply inquiry will end up with another quest in your journal regardless if you feel it fits your character or not.

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I had forgotten about that aspect of Oblivion, certainly very annoying. I hope they have a much more sophisticated system for Fallout 3.

JemyM said:

In Oblivion you do not even have the dialogue option to say no.

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Kill everyone? Sure!
Save everyone? Sure!
Eat the villagers? Sure!
March against cannibalism? Sure!
...

I'm probably not going to win any popularity contests by admitting this but here goes ...

When I was preparing to play Fallout 2 I was looking at my 7 S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skills and I felt so restricted in terms of what I could do with my average skills and oh so very few allocatable points, and more importantly: what I couldn't do when spending points in one skill over another. After a long grueling and indecisive period I finally gave up and said to myself: "I'll be damned if I'm going to play a 75+ hour game based on 1 single choice". As a result I installed a trainer that allowed me to allocated as many points as I saw fit.

Now, does that make me a cheating lowlife? Absolutely. I suck. I'm scum. I'm the grime that makes the dirt beneath your shoes stick in the first place ... However, instead of playing a game with a ton of restrictions forced upon me due to my mediocre skills and abilities I got to play a game full of choices and opportunities. Instead of being thrown into the arms of one faction because I was to stupid, too weak or too uncharismatic to join the other alternative, I got to choose between the two.

One might go so far as to say that I got a better opportunity to actually roleplay my character than I would have gotten by limiting my choices at the very beginning of the game ... oh alright, even I can see that is stretching it a bit too far

I do think, however, that it is an interesting point to consider: Is it preferable to make a few important/preliminary choices that limit any available choices for the remainder of the game or is preferable to make the choices as they come during the course of the game?

I remember when I started playing NWN2 as a plain old fighter I was certain I was going to be replaying it as a mage, a monk, a dual wielding ranger, a cleric and as a warlock. When I was done with my chaotic good fighter, I started as a lawful evil warlock, got to the end of chapter 2 and stopped playing. I still want to play as all the other classes I mentioned, but the amount of game content that is identical no matter what class you play is far larger than the amount that varies depending on the class, sex, race and alignment you choice for your character. The same is the case with the vast majority of the games out there and when I'm basically playing the same game with only about a 10% difference over and over I get bored and want to play something else.

I think my point is that I prefer to be able to experience ALL (or at least most) of the game, if I so choose, in my first play through because chances are not good that I'm going to be playing it more than once (unless of course the gameplay is substantially different with another career choice). A limitation as severe as the one in the Fallout games tend to annoy me more than please me, but then again I'm probably just too easily distracted by shiny obj ... Ooooohhh, what's that?

*runs off chasing a rolling coin*

JemyM said:

In the whole Fallout 3 controversy, the talk about the S.P.E.C.I.A.L system (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck) I came to the conclusion that the last two games beyond Obsidian/Bioware, that pays any kind of attention to social skills and personality traits, was Fable (2005) and Vampire: Bloodlines (2004), the latter can be understood since it's actually produced by ex Black Isle staff.

Most "roleplaying games" still do not care at all about who you play. It's all about combat statistics. As far as I remember, the Gothic series did not have any social skills, nor a place where Intelligence had a function beyond boosting magic damage. In Oblivion, nobody cared about who you were. You could be the leader of every guild on the map, it did not matter. You could be a great wizard or a barbarian, and dialogue was the same. The Final Fantasy series are the same... you often have no way to effect your characters personality except swapping inventory.

I came to the conclusion that in most well known roleplaying games, there are no roleplaying.

With the return of the SPECIAL system in Fallout 3, I have some faint hope that Bethesda can put the Roleplaying back in Roleplaying Games. I do realise that's an absolutely crazy idea though considering the lack of roleplaying there was in their earlier games.

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Ok, how does your character matter in Morrowind:
- When having completed the main quest your character is treated as the saviour of Vvardenfell/Morrowind/Tamriel. Nearly every sentence is begun with an acclaim of the work the main character has done. So Morrowind does recognize your character and your character have an "impact" on the world.
- When speaking with people they often do not want to share information or give you a quest if you haven't gained their trust. This can be done in many ways in Morrowind including a dialogue system to raise your reputation at the current character. So Morrowind does indeed also have personality traits and it does have an importance in the game. A very good example of this is when you barter with people, and you sell goods to a merchant to a price he/she isn't entirely fond of and afterwards the merchant holds a lower esteem of you. This does even affect the prices.

How can you say Bethesda's former games lack roleplaying. If they lack roleplaying then the whole genre lacks roleplaying.
Personality traits have nothing to do with roleplaying. If you defeat an opponent through diplomacy or violence doesn't make the game more or less a roleplaying game.
And that is exactly the purpose personality traits have had in other games such as Bloodlines. Diplomacy or violence as a means of reaching a certain goal decided by the developers and perhaps with a couple of different endings. Is that roleplaying?

Asbjoern said:

Ok, how does your character matter in Morrowind:
- When having completed the main quest your character is treated as the saviour of Vvardenfell/Morrowind/Tamriel. Nearly every sentence is begun with an acclaim of the work the main character has done. So Morrowind does recognize your character and your character have an "impact" on the world.

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Wikipedia upgrade!

That's really all there was to Morrowind. Speaking to NPC's was as fun as sitting on wikipedia, clicking back and forth between different links. In a game as beautiful as Morrowind, simply exchaning greeting.txt felt really cheap. How advanced is Morrowind, exactly, when every single person on the Island, say exactly the same thing, even when they are key NPC's? The fact that everybody had something new to say wasnt that spectacular when you realise that every NPC uses the same data.

Asbjoern said:

- When speaking with people they often do not want to share information or give you a quest if you haven't gained their trust. This can be done in many ways in Morrowind including a dialogue system to raise your reputation at the current character. So Morrowind does indeed also have personality traits and it does have an importance in the game. A very good example of this is when you barter with people, and you sell goods to a merchant to a price he/she isn't entirely fond of and afterwards the merchant holds a lower esteem of you. This does even affect the prices.

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Wasnt that just an universal fame rating with the option to boost it further with speechcraft or money? The NPC's didnt really have any opinion about who you are and what you did, they just check your universal famerating. Nobody cared if you were leader of the Fighters Guild or the Mages Guild really. The code was childsplay. IF FAME > # THEN...

Asbjoern said:

How can you say Bethesda's former games lack roleplaying. If they lack roleplaying then the whole genre lacks roleplaying.
Personality traits have nothing to do with roleplaying. If you defeat an opponent through diplomacy or violence doesn't make the game more or less a roleplaying game. And that is exactly the purpose personality traits have had in other games such as Bloodlines. Diplomacy or violence as a means of reaching a certain goal decided by the developers and perhaps with a couple of different endings. Is that roleplaying?

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In a well written RPG, Charisma (talking better to people) adds an extra axis to the game. Intelligence (better solving puzzles) another. Being recognized for personality traits like CHILDKILLER or HERO adds another. Being recognized as faction adds another. But you arent supposed to have it all, you should only be able to pick one or two advantages while the rest requires you to replay with another character. That gives an opportunity to replaying the game, trying something else. In Oblivion you could finish everything in the game and reach every place with just about every character config you could make.

I'm still waiting for the game that allows me to be a Professional cracker-salter.
Maybe even find the elusive "Icefire's salt shaker of the lawn flamingo +1"
Oh to dream.

JemyM said:

Wikipedia upgrade!

That's really all there was to Morrowind. Speaking to NPC's was as fun as sitting on wikipedia, clicking back and forth between different links. In a game as beautiful as Morrowind, simply exchaning greeting.txt felt really cheap. How advanced is Morrowind, exactly, when every single person on the Island, say exactly the same thing, even when they are key NPC's? The fact that everybody had something new to say wasnt that spectacular when you realise that every NPC uses the same data.

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Yes, and I love to just let myself drift when being at Wikipedia. To explore and gain knowledge. Morrowind was complexity, knowledge, an comprehensive game world/setting and originality. If there's not sufficient background information, for me, it just becomes uninteresting hacknslash. Which is also why Oblivion wasn't as good as Morrowind. Neither did it overall have any particular region history nor was there given specifically any reason to complete quests.

They didn't say the same. At least not compared to Oblivion and any other RPG in recent history also had some generic dialogues. Bloodlines etc. So to use that argument isn't to be fair towards Morrowind also taking into consideration the number of NPCs in Morrowind. It never felt repetitive for me at least. Every NPC doesn't use the same information. It is often restricted to the region.

Wasnt that just an universal fame rating with the option to boost it further with speechcraft or money? The NPC's didnt really have any opinion about who you are and what you did, they just check your universal famerating. Nobody cared if you were leader of the Fighters Guild or the Mages Guild really. The code was childsplay. IF FAME > # THEN...

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No, of course the universal fame rating had importance, which was also why you were recognized as a saviour. That is also how it functions to a certain degree in reality. But you did have a UNIQUE relationship to each character. If you didn't treat them ok, then they personally didn't like you. They cared if you had saved the world or not and then I don't see why it's that important to be recognized as a guild leader, even though that was some of the things Morrowind lacked. To be able to use your position as guild leader. It actually only counted as a diploma/credit.

In a well written RPG, Charisma (talking better to people) adds an extra axis to the game. Intelligence (better solving puzzles) another. Being recognized for personality traits like CHILDKILLER or HERO adds another. But you arent supposed to have it all, you should only be able to pick one or two advantages while the rest requires you to replay with another character. That gives an opportunity to replaying the game, trying something else. In Oblivion you could finish everything in the game and reach every place with just about every character config you could make.

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I understand you have a valid point there. To be limited by your choices. But I'm not the kind of person who likes to replay a game that takes countless of hours (like Morrowind did. I'm not even completely finished with it yet). I play RPGs through once, because of lack of time and perhaps especially the lack of will to devote so many hours in the same game twice/triple etc. and therefore limitations are more negative than positive. I actually despise to have to prioritize skills. Which to favour and which to don't.
But really, how many games out there are actually roleplaying games? I can't think of one that deserves the title without question. All RPGs are more or less inferior with the roleplaying element and I can't see any purpose to discuss which are more or less a roleplaying game. It only goes to personal preference what makes a good or bad roleplaying game.

And you were recognized as the HERO in Morrowind. I think it can't be sad more explicitly now.

JemyM said:

Black Isle & Bioware have often worked together. Troika consisted of ex Black Isle guys, so do Obsidian. They all shared the same philosophy in how to make RPG's.

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It can be said Arcanum and IWD 2 were made by some of the same people since Troika did consist of ex Black Isle personel but NWN was entirely Bioware.

I could be wrong but I believe Bioware only worked with Black Isle developing Baldur's Gate.

They did work in the same offices (during the Interplay days) and shared info/recources (Black Isle used Bioware's engine for Planescape and the IWD games) and Bioware recommended Obsidian (ex Black Isle) work on KOTOR 2 and NWN 2 but I think that's about it.

Asbjoern said:

But really, how many games out there are actually roleplaying games? I can't think of one that deserves the title without question.

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I've never understood this point of view. I've read posts expressing and explaining it many, many times, but I still don't get it.

Asbjoern said:

...It only goes to personal preference what makes a good or bad roleplaying game.

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But I agree completely with that.

About Morrowind, it's a good game, but its NPCs are pretty generic. Maybe that's why the LGNPC mods are so popular ("less-generic NPCs"). I have them all installed now, and I can assure you that they make a huge difference.

@ JemyM: A lot of your points speak to game balance; and others, on the kind of RPG being played. But overall, I think they're valid. The solution, IMO, is to approach CRPG very differently, putting enormous emphasis on creating amazing game-worlds whose complex alternatives are made available in accordance with the player's role and style.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

The Dark Eye RPG system 4th edition contains social attributes built-in. So, I expect Drakensang to do something with them.

(Or better: I hope they are used within the game.)

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I just hope they do it better than in the previous three games, where you have tonnes of skills and spells from the PnP game but the majority are useless (and some are necessary or you'll get stuck) without guidance on what to choose Making the game impossible for certain characters is a worse sin than the Bethesda method of opening up the entire game for all characters.

How could you create Characters that weren't able to solve the Northland-Triology ?! 6 Jesters with Strength 8 and all Skillpoints in dancing ???

In Star Trail there is a dungeon where you need a certain spell (to dispell a ghost?) or you'll get stuck in the dungeon. I think there was some similar point in Blade of Destiny.

Irregardless it is bad design to make a significant fraction of the skills and spells useless. Dancing was pretty obvious, but how would one know which spells to choose out of the 50 or so that are available.

Disclaimer: My numbers might be off as its been a while since I played the games.

There really are some Places where you need some Spells, but they are so easy to get... IIRC there is no Problem to skill all even a bit useful Magic Spells with only two Magic-Users in the Party (only missing some strange Spells like Witches Healing or Witches-View, and they were useless anyway...)

Now there is really a "suboptimal" Scene in Startrail, but IIRC even on the fly created first Level Druid could help you out - maybe except when you have no savegame before you entered the dungeon - can't remember exactly the situation... and I usually had always a Conjurer with me, so no problems with any supernatural Creatures

I thought it was only realistic, that you could use Skill-Points in Skills you never needed... you never know what you might need and what not... and that Spot, Discipline and Healing might be a bit more important for a foot-travelling adventurer than dancing or riding shouldn't be hard to figure out...


Edit:

6 Jesters with maxed dancing-Skill - a boy-group setting out to convince the orcs to lay down their weapons... this would be fun to watch

I'd say there is a difference between spending points on a skill that actually is used within the game but you might not need due to your playstyle and spending points on a skill that isnt used at all within the game I think I used about 6-7 of the spells. As for star trail I have no idea about whether a druid will do it. That part is close to the end of the game and I was fed up (with backtracking across half the map to repair weapons and some other issues) and for that reasoned I played with a walkthrough after the orc caves, so I had the spell

A boy band party might actually be feasible given that the game system is skill- rather than class based. But arent there key dungeons where you need teleporting?

IIRC not when you split your Party and let someone wait at the important Levers... though its a long time ago and my Partys were all magic-heavy...

I love Morrowind. Cant really explain it, the game just captivated me for two character run-thrus. Maybe it was the sandbox nature of the game and the exploration, it was the first game I'd played with such a framework. Then I got into the editor and started customizing things as I saw fit... I knew I was into something good then.

Definitely my deepest rpg experience thus far, but I made my own. Played my toons like it was life and death, it was great.

I think I could probably win the RoA trilogy with 6 Jesters with 8 str. I played with a gimp party and by the time they got to shadows over riva they were almost godlike.

EDIT: If I had to put all their skill into dancing and other social skills then no, I probably couldn't