Mask of the Betrayer reviewed by former QA tester

On that note, I can switch gears, because MotB tells an excellent story. Like I’ve said previously, I prefer PS:T to MotB, but the two games are similar. Both tell a personal story. However, the point of PS:T is to discover something about yourself. You must understand the things you’ve done in the past and decipher the activities of your previous “incarnations.” In MotB, the game is refreshingly centered on something (and someone) other than yourself. Sure, the game revolves around the PC and his actions, but the point of every endeavor is to understand something that happened in the far distant past. If PS:T were a story of self discovery, then MotB is a story of other discovery. The PC learns something of himself along the way, of course, but MotB serves as the final chapter in a very long book. It is an important chapter, to be sure, but most of the book was written well before the PC enters the story…

I’ve not seen a game that so thoroughly rewards the player for such an assortment of decisions. I’ve always hated the idea of alignment, but if we simply ignored the swinging pendulum of alignment scores and shifts, the story itself recognizes the impact of the PC’s decisions, and I don’t just mean the end game. I’m not prepared to cite an instance right now, but there are wonderful examples of how the design team made good use of a game mechanic I’ve always hated… alignment. Even better, a player truly dedicated to playing a particular role will be able to ignore the alignment information anyhow. I know whatever choices I make will virtually always keep me in the lawful good alignment…

MotB is not a perfect game. In all my years of gaming, I have not found such a game. However, it is a breath of fresh air. It’s not enough to have a lot of choices to make in the game world. In fact, choice without consequence amounts to no choice at all. MotB crafts a beautiful story for the player, and the player completes that story by decisions. Those decisions are meaningful…