DDL on 20/8/2009 at 13:58
Well, he's a thief, certainly. I believe that lies to the south of most people's moral compasses, surely?
Re: staying with UNATCO, first time round you don't really know HOW fucked UNATCO are, you have conjecture, but that's it (you don't even find out about manderley's corruption until you're already off to betray UNATCO). Given the option, I would've preferred to stay with UNATCO and do some behind the scene digging until I was certain.
Of course in hindsight it's a no-brainer, but initially..not so clear cut.
Papy on 20/8/2009 at 15:48
Quote Posted by DDL
Well, he's a thief, certainly. I believe that lies to the south of most people's moral compasses, surely?
I guess it depends on your culture. I had no problems with romantic heroes like Robin Hood, so a Thief is not necessarily a villain to me. BTW, if I remember correctly, the first mission of Thief 2 is about rescuing a captive maid so she can get married (or something like that).
Also, two days ago I helped someone with her computer. I didn't ask for anything but she still gave me a bit of cash. Will I declare it in my next income tax filing? Absolutely not. This is clearly fraud. Does that makes me a "villain"?
Quote Posted by DDL
staying with UNATCO, first time round you don't really know HOW fucked UNATCO are, you have conjecture, but that's it (you don't even find out about manderley's corruption until you're already off to betray UNATCO). Given the option, I would've preferred to stay with UNATCO and do some behind the scene digging until I was certain.
Of course in hindsight it's a no-brainer, but initially..not so clear cut.
Your first goal was only to investigate. The player already knew some people in UNATCO were involved in what could be called, at the very least, high treason (do you remember the intro of the game?), so the investigation was a no-brainer.
During the investigation, you learn that Manderley is also clearly involved in this and you are then asked to send a signal to help some people. It's only a message, you are not ask if you want to leave UNATCO. At that time, you have no idea anyone will know about this. Are you telling me you didn't want to send the signal?
Personally, my last doubt about UNATCO was when Navarre was pleased because I turned "the place into a graveyard". I remember I slowly turned and looked at her. I then looked at Manderley and realize he was also please. From that moment, I was on my brother and NSF side.
Chade on 20/8/2009 at 22:56
Damnit guys, I can't keep arguing with all of you at once .. it's too much! :p
Quote Posted by Ostriig
Branching story models are not something new to videogames, albeit they are a rare occurrence ... Sacrifice, an action/RPG/RTS hybrid from 2001, did exactly what IW should've done - offered a number of available factions, with conflicting goals, of which you could freely choose any one for each of the first couple of missions, but afterwards your new choices started narrowing down based on your previous ones. Important choices with appropriate consequences. It made sense from a narrative perspective, and it worked superbly as a gameplay and plot-driving mechanic.
Ok, this is an interesting path to go down, because while I have played a friends copy of Sacrifice (and it is an incredible game which I would love to buy one day), I have never owned the game and hence only played through it once. So please correct me if I get my facts wrong ...
My memory is that the quest choices are carefully chosen such that they are not mutually exclusive. So when you choose one quest, other avatars will complete the other quests. Surely this is just as meaningless in any real sense as DX2?
What's more, didn't the various quests take place on different maps (or perhaps the same map set up in a different way)? This makes it easy for Sacrifice to stop you from doing favours for the other gods. But how exactly would this work in DX2? Typically there are some objects in a DX2 map, which you are free to interact with as you please, and the factions have mutually exclusive desires regarding how you interact with those items. Let's say you pissed one faction off: what is to stop you from meeting their goals in the next map anyway? How should the factions react to that? Should they not explicitly give you a goal in the next map, but then grudgingly contact you and thank you for helping them out after the fact? That would be a minor change to the dialog, but structurally the game would not have changed.
Quote Posted by Papy
As for what Harvey Smith said, it really depends on what he meant with "narrative". If he meant choosing the shotgun or a grenade, then I agree. If he meant interactions between the player and and NPC (other than fighting), then he was obviously on crack when he said that. ... I'd like to know, on your part, what do you mean with the word "narrative"?
I've been using the word pretty loosely in this discussion. In general though, especially when discussing deus ex (but also lots of other games, definately including thief), you can't cleanly separate between strategic decisions and narrative decisions.
Most items in the DX world have both a gameplay function and a narrative function. You have the oppurtunity to choose strategies both from a tactical pov and a narrative pov. Do you want to kill members of this faction? Do you want to damage their machines? Etc ... these are both tactical and narrative decisions, you can't cleanly separate the two.
Even in thief, there are different factions and you as the player may have sympathies for different ones. When playing T3 for the first time, in the first pagan mission, I switched from being an elite ghoster (which itself was both a tactical and narrative decision), to being a murderous bastard, after reading about how the pagans had infiltrated the household. That was a narrative decision with large tactical consequences.
Indeed, I would say that in most good game, the gameplay has narrative meaning. Even for something like the linear shooter ... take Max Payne 2: they changed the bullet time rules so that the player is encouraged to rush forward straight into the middle of gunfights and not stop untill every enemy is dead. Does that improve the gameplay, or the narrative? It improves both, of course!
Quote Posted by Papy
Remember when you sent the signal in Hell's Kitchen? Remember what happened after? Of course the player didn't have a choice, but the impression of being seriously punished for your action was still there. That's something which was completely absent with IW (and I believe it was voluntary).
Err ... that moment when your actions really were completely meaningless? Where for the first time you didn't have any power to make any sort of decision? I remember that moment.
As opposed to earlier moments, where you had the freedom to act against unatco's wishes, but somehow unatco never found out (and alex had to have a personality such that he could witness all your various choices and not rat you out for any of them).
On the one hand, you had been accustomed to some choice without any repurcussions, then all of a sudden you had no choice but with a huge repurcussion. It was ... jarring.
Quote Posted by Papy
In the 80s, I didn't have years of "conditioning" and yet I had no problem with linear narrative. None of us had.
No? Storytelling in games was crap. Except for adventure games, and are you telling me that the "I don't understand" or "you can't do that" parser errors weren't jarring?
DX, and DX2, and every other game with a strong detailed story, jump through ridiculous hoops to stop the player from screwing up the story. Why can't you kill any of the main characters? So that you don't screw up the story. Why do books/movies/etc show the player interacting with the big boss all the time, but in games the villian never appears except either in cutscenes or right at the end. So that you don't screw up the story. Why in the final level was bob page insulated in a capsule, and the closest he gets to personally harming the player is those turretts next to his capsule? To ensure a climatic ending.
Naturally linear storytelling mediums can do linear stories much better.
Quote Posted by Thirith
I don't really agree with this, not as a rule. It all depends on the narrative and how it's told; e.g. in the first System Shock, I never felt that the game artificially restricted my options in ways that were inadequately explained by the story. The restrictions that were there and kept things linear came pretty organically from the setting, making SHODAN feel all the more powerful.
I think it depends a lot on the story you are trying to tell. Abstract stories can be told much better. Take something like Pirates!, for instance, where Sid actually went and abstracted out the story into a set of repeatable gameplay elements. The story never got in the way of the gameplay or the players freedom, but it was also a very impersonal story.
System shock is an example of a story that can be told very well in a game. But they had to live with a lot of restrictions in order to make the story work so well. Shodan really had to be a computer program. If she was anything else, they couldn't have safely put her in contact with the player all the time. All the humans were dead, etc ...
There's no way a DX story will ever be as natural a fit for a computer game as a system shock story is.
Pyrian on 21/8/2009 at 00:12
Quote Posted by Papy
Also, two days ago I helped someone with her computer. I didn't ask for anything but she still gave me a bit of cash. Will I declare it in my next income tax filing? Absolutely not. This is clearly fraud. Does that makes me a "villain"?
A bit petty for true villainy. Now, let's say you cleaned out an entire museum, for example, and indeed every other bank, dwelling, church, etc., you could get into, regardless of consequence.
Quote Posted by Papy
During the investigation, you learn that Manderley is also clearly involved in this and you are then asked to send a signal to help some people. It's only a message, you are not ask if you want to leave UNATCO. At that time, you have no idea anyone will know about this. Are you telling me you didn't want to send the signal?
Help terrorists, rather than rooting out corruption at the source? In my first playthrough I didn't even FIND that datacube. I only sent the message because there was clearly no other way to advance the game. It was patently obvious, as Savage mentions later, that UNATCO was basically decent with some bad apples concentrated at the top.
Quote Posted by Papy
Personally, my last doubt about UNATCO was when Navarre was pleased because I turned "the place into a graveyard". I remember I slowly turned and looked at her. I then looked at Manderley and realize he was also please. From that moment, I was on my brother and NSF side.
And yet that example is every bit as bad as mine. From that moment you went then went right on to screw over the NSF's operation completely.
Ostriig on 21/8/2009 at 03:15
Quote Posted by Chade
Ok, this is an interesting path to go down, because while I have played a friends copy of Sacrifice (and it is an incredible game which I would love to buy one day), I have never owned the game and hence only played through it once. So please correct me if I get my facts wrong ...
My memory is that the quest choices are carefully chosen such that they are not mutually exclusive. So when you choose one quest, other avatars will complete the other quests. Surely this is just as meaningless in any real sense as DX2?
I don't remember those details, granted, but no, it's most definitely not meaningless as in IW. The story itself may not be branching, but your experience through it does branch out. Your choices in masters at one point serve to influence your later possible choices in employers, and thus your experiences (i.e. missions) through the game are directly and significantly impacted by said previous choices.
Quote:
What's more, didn't the various quests take place on different maps (or perhaps the same map set up in a different way)? This makes it easy for Sacrifice to stop you from doing favours for the other gods. But how exactly would this work in DX2? Typically there are some objects in a DX2 map, which you are free to interact with as you please, and the factions have mutually exclusive desires regarding how you interact with those items. Let's say you pissed one faction off: what is to stop you from meeting their goals in the next map anyway? How should the factions react to that? Should they not explicitly give you a goal in the next map, but then grudgingly contact you and thank you for helping them out after the fact? That would be a minor change to the dialog, but structurally the game would not have changed.
We're getting ahead of ourselves in details here. The issue is that Sacrifice's model for faction choice and ulterior availability would've worked well for IW, a lot better than the existing model. The basic principle would translate to something like this - (simplifying) if, for instance, out of the first three missions you chose to complete two with the Order while screwing everyone else, then later in the game only the Order would contact you for a mission. Whether it's 2 outta 3 or highest out of 5, or whatever, those are details that can be decided to best accommodate the combination of average length of missions in the game, the overall length of the game, the number of factions, and so on. Whether you want to account for the player fulfilling other factions' goals despite not being explicitly requested to, or completely remove that possibility, that's another decision that can easily be made further down the line.
It all comes down to this - Sacrifice's system of excluding choices based on previous ones worked well from both narrative and gameplay perspectives. With IW, however, I basically chose to bumfuck one potential employer in favour of their bitter enemy in one mission, and then guess who's still coming back 24 hours later, holding a big tub of margarine, and asking for my seemingly messianic help yet again. The absurdity of the situation is a serious hindrance to immersion.
Sorry if I'm rambling a bit there, I realise it's hardly what you'd like given the whole scope of the discussion, but it's like 4am and I'm shit tired. :p
Papy on 21/8/2009 at 03:39
Quote Posted by Chade
you can't cleanly separate between strategic decisions and narrative decisions.
The same way I don't view choosing a restaurant to eat lunch as me telling my own story, I don't view a gameplay decision I make as a narrative. I don't participate in a game in order to create a story, I just play a game. So for me the narrative is limited to what the game is telling me, not what I'm doing. I make a lot of strategic decisions, I can make moral decisions, but never a narrative decision. I'm never view myself as an actor when I play a game, I am always myself. I guess I'm just not an artist.
With your T3 example, I'd like to know... Did you go to the murderous bastard mode because you were disgust with Pagans or because you thought it could be a good opportunity to act like someone who was disgust with Pagans.
Quote Posted by Chade
Err ... that moment when your actions really were completely meaningless? Where for the first time you didn't have any power to make any sort of decision? I remember that moment.
Deus Ex is a game I was immersed with. My actions (other than pure tactical choices), were based on how I felt and so were never "meaningless". I didn't have control over the rest of the world, but, like in real life, I never expected to. As long as I can have a morally acceptable solution, then I'll feel free. Deus Ex never forced me to do something I truly didn't want to and I don't care if I can't do something I won't naturally do. In the case of the signal, that's what I would have done even if I had a way of not doing it, so the consequences were justified in my case.
I will also use an example from Thief 3. During the mission with the blind widow, I didn't want to steal from her. In particular, I didn't want to steal what her husband left for her. I searched everywhere to see if I could steal something else. In the end, I was forced to steal those objects and that broke immersion badly. That something Deus Ex never did for me.
Quote Posted by Chade
On the one hand, you had been accustomed to some choice without any repurcussions, then all of a sudden you had no choice but with a huge repurcussion. It was ... jarring.
So what you are saying is that on your first playthrough, sending that signal was for you exactly like the widow mission was for me? You thought that sending that signal was immoral and you wanted to avoid it at all cost?
Quote Posted by Chade
No? Storytelling in games was crap. Except for adventure games, and are you telling me that the "I don't understand" or "you can't do that" parser errors weren't jarring?
Those were generally technical limitations and they were acceptable in 80s. They didn't really hinder the emotion from the story. I guess that a hundred years from now, when people will use voice recognition to speak to video game characters instead of choosing one line of text among three, players will see Deus Ex and Invisible War storytelling as pure crap. We don't feel that way now simply because we accept technical limitations (ok, I already see IW storytelling as crap, but you know what I mean).
Quote Posted by Chade
DX, and DX2, and every other game with a strong detailed story, jump through ridiculous hoops to stop the player from screwing up the story.
That's because game developers want everyone to succeed, no matter what stupid things the player might decide to do. That's to me an enormous mistake. When the player screw up, it would make a lot more sense to just end the game (either with killing the player or a simple "game over") than using these hoops. I know that nowadays it is not "acceptable" to punish anyone for being an idiot, but I'm "old school" (and not only with video games).
Quote Posted by Pyrian
A bit petty for true villainy. Now, let's say you cleaned out an entire museum, for example, and indeed every other bank, dwelling, church, etc., you could get into, regardless of consequence.
It really depends on the situation. Would I feel bad for stealing from a public museum? Probably. But from the private museum of a selfish (or worse) rich guy? Probably not. In the case of Thief, I never felt attachment for the world or for the authority in place. So stealing was more or less ok. As I said to Chade, the only time I felt I was doing a morally bad thing was when I stole from the window in Thief 3.
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Help terrorists, rather than rooting out corruption at the source? In my first playthrough I didn't even FIND that datacube.
Oh, come on! It wasn't just one datacube (BTW, wasn't that datacube part of your mission objectives?). By the time I had to send the signal, datacube or not, it was clear UNATCO, as an organization, was not what it pretended to be. Right from the start, I was confronted to contradictions between what I expected and what I saw, and it never stopped. At the start of the mission where I had to send the signal, I learned that Paul's killswitch has been activated! I mean the assassination of Lebedev might be acceptable to you, but the assassination of your brother too?
I'd also like to add that when someone who, from my point of view, is a clearly responsible for high treason and the most inhumane action you can think of is accusing another group of terrorism, I tend to believe that group are probably more freedom fighters (that is : on my side) than "real" terrorists.
Quote Posted by Pyrian
And yet that example is every bit as bad as mine. From that moment you went then went right on to screw over the NSF's operation completely.
It is every bit as bad as yours only if you start with the assumption that everything in a video game is a simplistic and idiotic caricature where your individuality is only a function of your "faction". I mean it was clear to me the leaders of UNATCO were at the very least morally dubious and the NSF were not "terrorists", but I was just asked to recover a vaccine, not to fundamentally destroy a group of people. So why would I refuse the mission?
In fact, it is exactly the same with the signal. You are not asked to completely screw UNATCO, only to send a distress signal so a few people, who might be the good guys, can have a chance to survive. The situation looked urgent so the idea to investigate more was out of question.
Pyrian on 21/8/2009 at 19:35
In Deus Ex, the narrative (in its normal meaning) is impacted by purely gameplay decisions, it's the plot structure that remains essentially consistent. Seems to me you guys are kind of talking past each other on a semantic distinction.
It sounds to me like the story in Deus Ex worked for you at best by accident. But I find the coincidence, well, stretches believability. ( :D ) So, I think I have to guess that you're simply inclined to give a linear story the benefit of the doubt as much as possible. Indeed, your argument about older games suggests that the older a game is, the more leeway you give it, and newer and rather experimental ideas have to meet a much higher standard.
(Seriously, your argument is you saw nothing wrong with retrieving vaccine from the good guys taking it to "the people" and trying to find an actual cure, then returning said vaccine to the bad guys who were using it to blackmail politicians and effectively rule the world? While tracking down - for the bad guys - the lead good guy - whom you know the bad guys want assassinated - in the process?)
Random factoid: I wasn't playing on expert so I didn't have to take the widow's money. I did anyway because it seemed like the Garrett thing to do. :D
What bothered me about IW's factions' behavior before the end-game wasn't that they always wanted you to do stuff for them - face it, in many military circles negotiation, propaganda, and attempts to "turn" enemies are considered on-going strategies regardless of events on the ground - but rather that they never made that their backup plan. Seriously, if you slaughtered all of one faction in one area, they should have attacked you on sight in the next area, even if they're still also trying to get you to turn on a different faction... But that doesn't happen in IW until the very last level.
ZylonBane on 21/8/2009 at 20:40
That is exactly the problem with IW's consequence-free approach to non-linear storytelling. In DX, UNATCO flips your killswitch at the very first act of rebellion. In IW, the same factions keep trying to recruit you even after you've murdered dozens of their employees. It's beyond moronic.
It's not even as if Alex is particularly special (aside from his DNA, which only becomes relevant in the endgame). Unless I've forgotten something major, Alex is just another augmented graduate of the Tarsus academy... presumably one of hundreds.
Pyrian on 21/8/2009 at 22:49
What kills me is how easy it would have been to change (or even just remove) a few dialogues and a few friend/enemy toggles and make it substantially more believable in that respect.
rachel on 21/8/2009 at 22:50
Well hundreds may be an exaggeration, with the destruction of the Chicago center, but there are at least the other three stooges who manage to get hired by the factions too.
I even remember a supposedly friendly one who shot me as I was killing enemies who tried to kill her. I double-checked, no-friendly fire, three times it happened the exact same way. Bitch. :nono:
