The Gaming Den

I mean, gosh. I have to carefully balance completing quests with wantonly murdering the innocent so that none of my party members leave.

Now, you'd think that the Good Guys would just call me out the first time I murdered someone, and that the Evil Ones wouldn't be so fucking insane that they hate shop discounts. But no.

It's like all of the worst features of Alignment distilled into one easy-to-abuse system.

And I really miss having the chance to be a charismatic bastard. I mean, the Nameless One could be a giant dick, but he could be subtle about it and manipulative instead of merely murder happy.

I still like it more than the Mass Effect "I'm a good guy so I will be picking the top right option in every dialogue tree" system.

Can we all agree that Bioware has successfully fucked up good evil in a myriad of shitty ways?

Certainly, although I probably hate mid-period KOTOR and Jade Empire's systems even worse despite being more convenient than the BG systems since I generally find the power fantasy of being able to so broadly convert people to be pretty facile and distracting. I mean, it probably only happened because they didn't want to bother writing separate scenarios for the guy, but Garrus still went from being tied with the humans as my least essential ME1 squaddie to being my favorite NPC on the strength of deciding to ignore all those Paragon pep talks I dutifully ladled out in the first game.

Anyway, I think the last game to have an approach* to dialogue I rather liked was Alpha Protocol, which is too bad, because that game's reputation as a hot mess isn't all empty slander. I say this largely because they didn't wed you to the top right, all the time, every time, and while you couldn't talk yourself into a game over or anything, it was at least possible to have people actively dislike you and for there to be a measure of uncertainty to what would happen going forward--in short, they neither punished or coddled too egregiously, which is all I really ask for. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll see anyone attempt something like that game's approach in an unreservedly good game any time soon--these days developers have unprecedented access to player behavior thanks to games reporting back via the interwebs and only a minority of people actually finish games, much less replay them to see all the ways the game can unfold, so there's a growing sense that things like divergent content is actually a terrible waste of resources, which is part of the reasoning behind why Bioware tried taking Dragon Age II in the direction they eventually settled on.


*I should probably emphasize "approach" here, since it's not like the lines themselves were all gold. You could basically stumble through that game like a cut-rate Sterling Archer, if you wanted to, but what's the point of that if you're not going to run into any ocelots in Meowschwitz?

hyzmarca wrote:I mean, gosh. I have to carefully balance completing quests with wantonly murdering the innocent so that none of my party members leave.

Now, you'd think that the Good Guys would just call me out the first time I murdered someone, and that the Evil Ones wouldn't be so fucking insane that they hate shop discounts. But no.

It's like all of the worst features of Alignment distilled into one easy-to-abuse system.

And I really miss having the chance to be a charismatic bastard. I mean, the Nameless One could be a giant dick, but he could be subtle about it and manipulative instead of merely murder happy.

Well, to be fair on the latter point, BG was early days. They really hadn't worked out anything but the basic dialogue trees, and there was piss all for personal influence. BGII barely touched on the latter concept.

But yeah, solo murders in the wilderness creating hit squads to bring you to justice kill you was pretty annoying. Party members wandering off was especially annoying, but you learn pretty quickly what the break points are and which NPC party members are at all useful anyway. So many fighter types with mid-teen strength, which is the same as 10 strength in AD&D...

Kaelik wrote:Can we all agree that Bioware has successfully fucked up good evil in a myriad of shitty ways?

Screw good/evil. They just have a really fucked idea of personal interaction full stop. (And really nonsensical villains. I have yet to understand the motivation of a single one). The power of speechwriters can be pretty impressive, but talking someone out of saving his own species from extinction is pretty fucked up.

Not to beat that dead horse again, but yeah, that ending felt pretty schizophrenic given that the series already featured a couple big picture ethical responsibility dilemmas in the Rachni and Krogan genophage plotlines. It felt weird going from a Paragon Shep who argued against the genophage partly due to the chance (however slim) that the Krogan could change their ways to being the man who pulls the plug on life as all sentients know it. Which, btw, is why in other places why I have argued that Mass Effect's ending is bad primarily because they pitched it as "your" story despite not even offering a "Whatever man, it may be a mostly symbolic act, but I still refuse to be the guy who ends the universe," option.

Jade Empire's alignment system was the absolute worst one I've ever seen in a game and that's saying something.

That said, at least Jade Empire let you act like and be a total entitled bastard with no repercussions if you wanted to. Which is good, because the 'good' path of that game is actually somewhat nihilistic and immoral.

Jade Empire's morality system wasn't meant to be a traditional Good/Evil thing, but more of a pair of abstract Easternish philosophies with good points and bad.


Since apparently brutally drowning dozens of people just because they work for an enemy organization and systematic murdering everyone who crosses me is too soft for the totally not a bad person and you're racist to think so Dark Elf in my party, I've just caved in and given her a Helm of Opposite Alignment.


There are, apparently, no moral issues with brainwashing your allies into being happy with your rep.

hyzmarca wrote:Jade Empire's morality system wasn't meant to be a traditional Good/Evil thing, but more of a pair of abstract Easternish philosophies with good points and bad.

Even if we ignore the humanistic moral dissonance involved with Open Palm/Closed Fist (which you fucking shouldn't, since it's already a deal-breaker) the fact is that even within its own terms it's implemented poorly. Because Open Palm ended up being Baby-Kissing Good and Closed Fist ended up being Baby-Kicking Bad anyway.

The Closed Fist explanation hit me as more Randroid/Cartoon Disciplinarian than anything vaguely Eastern, right down to the disdain for charity and the firm belief that hardship builds character.

Whipstitch wrote:The Closed Fist explanation hit me as more Randroid/Cartoon Disciplinarian than anything vaguely Eastern, right down to the disdain for charity and the firm belief that hardship builds character.

No, no. Its too Socialist for a Randroid. You can tell because the Close Fist ending has you forcing the the Water Dragon to perform labor (okay, murdering the water dragon and taking its power) for the continued good of the community (and yourself).