*GASP* oo: BLASPHEMY!!!!

@Hairdo Galosh Jam,

I completely agree. Nothing like some political/cultural eccentricities to spice up the lore.

No, I'm saying that Bioware did not execute its own story formula well in Dragon age. It felt like a chore, and I think I'd find it even more boring if they repeated the formula in a sequel. In KOTOR for example, you were going there for the star maps, and you only had to deal with their problems enough to get the star map and get back to your ship. Heck, on tatooine you could completely ignore Czerka's quest with the sand people. IN Dragon age, it felt like the end all be all reason for even going to those places was to solve their problems. It felt like a chore in Dragon age, but not KOTOR.

I'm not trying to say they should make their stories more shallow, I'm saying that their stories feel trite and boring because they haven't done a single damned thing different after so many years.

That idea of yours is pretty generic iteslf. How many movies, or games for that matter started out as the PC striking out for revenge becasue their family was killed? I mean look at Dragon Age: Play Human Noble, family killed. Play Dwarf Commoner: kill someone who oppresses your family. Dwarf Noble: seek revenge for killing the rest of your family....

A fresh new idea is something that hasn't been done so much that it has become cliche, and that's difficult in a mass media world, and it never has been easy, considering the Western fixation on the Grand Epic style of storytelling, where a common or destroyed individual weathers every diversity to become heroic.

Yea pretty much that.
There's a lot of cases that are story wise force-told to be the "good" choice but honestly looking at them, they're GRUESOME. And then again there are acts you'd considder harmless in context but are considdered evil by the games path.

For compaison, look at the "back path" for Morrowind, you have to kill Vivec to fulfill that, shouldn't that be considdered horribly evil? However you do it to be able to destroy Dagoth Ur so... is good now again?
You simply can't say 100% so you can't really make it good or evil.

However WHAT you can have in a game is "social judgement" and "law judgement". For social judgement NPC personalities need to be improved, but they ARE a point that needs improvement anyway so that pretty much is a must.
The different paths are primarily meant to be able to play a different WAY since at some point's it's impossible to prevent certain occurences, in Oblivion, if you play a pure stealth character, how many times where you forced in open combat?

well lets see, If your a stealthy you probably had to kill a few people in the first oblivion gate, The attack on Weynon Priory, that ayleid lich guy is scripted to actually follow the player so you'll probably fight him, Mankar Cameron, getting Martin to the Temple, getting that idiot burd through the oblivion gate will most likely involve combat, and umm...

I don't think the costs for implementing alternative paths are that astronomical high if it's done right. Multiple paths are especially important for a sandbox game. You need a central story element like Dagoth Ur and the Heart of Lorkhan and a good writer to design and keep track of various story paths dealing with that element. The different story lines need more work to be fleshed out, but I think this would certainly be worth it.

About the alignment of paths, I don't think a story path has a moral alignment, some are only more obvious for characters with certain moral values. You might want to kill an important character for various reasons, maybe the character is not so decent in your opinion, maybe as an acceptable sacrifice to reach a greater goal. You can let an "evil" character live by talking him out of his goals, or by slaughtering his family to break him and make him do what you want. The goal of this quest path was just to let this character live, how you do this is up to you.

Another thing is, the usual character has no will of his own and is completely dependent on quest givers to make a change in the world. You should be able to advance the story by your own decisions without being told to "do this". This requires the game to recognize the current situation of the game world (best done with flags) and find or alter the right entry points for other possible story paths.

What id like to see is a split story with an anti hero who fits in to the missions and story as the other side. Confusing? Ill clear that up. Lets say you have a story that splits at the begining of the game, its all decided on not so much a descision but the choices the player makes at the begining of the game, and then for much of the main quest, each side (either path) has the same missions but your role in the oposite path is filled with the anti hero. So lets say the story branches between good and evil, (or just 2 shades of grey), the main quest is then split on either faction you join or side you choose. So lets say you have to protect the emporer, the other role would have to kill the emporer, but in your place you have the anti hero from the other side protecting or defendign the emporer, and then as the final quest comes to bear, you finally face off with your anti hero. not a bad idea.

I think a big poblem comming up with the "good vs evil side" storyline is that they tend to forget one thing, giving the "evil" side a POINT. Honestly, how many times has he "evil" sides plot just been "they attack BECAUSE..." or "They're evil, that's what they do". In Morrowind Dagoth Ur had a POINT, he wanted to reclaim Morrowind for his people, but his plans reached into insanity (which is no wonder after what he went through) be expanding them into conquering Tamriel. Still he at least had a motiv.

In Oblivion, what was the Daedra invasion, did it have any point aside "that's what they do"?


And that's the same problem you run into if you write a story for a "evil" character, it ends up with NO POINT why he should be like that aside being a complete, sadistic bastard. But you don't need a separate storyline for that, the character could just as well be a bastard in the normal storyline too. Hell in Morrowind you could have threatend to kill everyone in the ashlander camps if they didn't name you Nerevarine, you could have kidnapped and blackmailed the great house leaders. It would still be the same storyline.

What i mean is DON'T think in "good side" and "evil side", think of "Side with motivation A" and "Side with motivation B". WHY is there a group that wants to kill the emperor, to bring a god down who will slaughter them all... not a very good reason in my opinion.
But what if they killed him because in their eyes he wasn't a good leader and only kept in place because of the bloodline?


I always try to think of the "settlers descendants vs. the natives descendants" dilemma:
There's a group of settlers that lived on a spot of land for a few generations now but their ancestors had to hunt away natives who lived there to do that. Now both of their peoples are in need of that land and splitting it up wouldn't be a adequate option. Tell me which is the good side and which is the bad side to fight for?
Not that easy to decide, right? THAT is a actual conflict, one where deciding a side is actually hard work.

^ Mehrunes Dagon wanted to conquer Tamriel. And the Deadra simply followed their master.

I will prefer in the next ES the main story to be about my character and the consequences to have impact mainly on my character. The political sories can be handle by some of the guilds for example.

Dagon did have a goal. As the Demon* Prince of Destruction, his single purpose for existing is to destroy Mundus and return it to the Planes of Oblivion. He's just following his programming, making deals with the less omnicidal daedra to achieve his goal as he takes advantage of Mundus's Anti-Dagon Defense Grid going kaput. As a Cosmic Horror with his own version of reality, destroying the world is conquoring it, with nothing but a growth in power for him. I keep wanting to make a comparison to Jygglag's strength before creation of Mundus and the races, when the cosmos was static... When he failed to keep it static (Letting creation occur), he fell so hard his power shot deep into the negatives. Dagon wants the insane power of having everything destroyed.

*Demon is the correct translation of the Aldmeri word "Daedra", and has been consistently in every Elder Scrolls game. So for those who want to yell at me for calling them "demons", please do the research first before you make yourself look like a fool.

Not to mention pre-creation, Dagon was known as the kind leaper demon king. But because he made some fatal errors, the former kind leaper king became forced into a role where he MUST destroy every bit of Mundus in order to return to his former state, which is actually an impossible goal.

We hardly got this in OB other than "he's MD, and wants to destroy everything."

Well im sorry that in your opinion it felt like a chore. It didnt for me and I felt like I had an actual purpose for doing everything I did. You probably just weren't that into the story.

Well I think what we both want is for your actions to lead to certain outcomes as well as giving you more options in the way you play the game, but its inevitable some choices are going to be more altruistic or selfish than others.

I dont understand who you talking about, the antagonist or the player character?

Well i really want both, alternate PATHS you can play the story with AND being able to play different WAYS. Theoretically you can play every path with different character types. As mentioned with the "Back Path" for Morrowind, if they had tweeked it more you could play that without killing Vivec, but even if you did kill him was it a evil or a good thing to do? After all you now have the chance to kill the "big bad" even when you screwed up the stroy before it.
There really shouldn't be a "play as a saint" and "play as a bastard" path, just different BRANCHES in the story that play a different way through the story. If you play them as a total bastard or a saint is your decission, it CAN have a impact however. If you managed to get somebody so angry at you they refuse to speak with you no matter what you HAVE to take a different path, but that doesn't mean you have to play as a bastard now.

That's because that's all that's relevant. He is a force of unstoppable distruction now. He can't be dissuaded, he can't be converted, he can't be dissuaded. And what are the "Fatal errors" he made? I'm pretty sure the people of Mundus won't say they are as fatal as correcting them...

well technically if you killed vivec the game would end as the ministry comes crashing down killing everyone,but thats beside the point.

And I dont understand why you dislike the idea of someone wanting to be completely good or bad as they tackled the game. If I understand correctly, from being well enough in your speechcraft you could get what you wanted out of someone through intimidation which a "bastard" would do or find some other way to gain leverage against that character until he spilled the beans. If the designers took out those extremes and only put in shades in gray then I would be dissapointed since they're doing it for the sake of being different ignoring the fact that that's how some people might prefer to roleplay(or how they are in reality)

Nah, just find another magician to move the rock. The only reason they haven't moved it yet is because Vic is living too close, and might notice.

I'm a little mean, so I think what I would do is open an Oblivion gate to Mephala's plane and drop the rock in there. That's one hell of a prison sentence for anyone still on board.

No, no you understood wrong.
I didnt say "you shouldn't be able to play as a complete bastard", in fact if you loo back a bit i DID say you should be able to (Morrowinds storyline example, threaten to kill the ashlanders if they don't name you nerevarine or blackmail the great houses). What i did mean was that there is no "path" that is PURELY reserved for good or PURELY reserved for evil. Every single path in the game can be played as a "bad guy" or as a "good guy" and anything in between, there would simply be no path that demands you to be a dog kicking, backstabbing, lying and cheating [censored] the same as there is none that demands you to be a goody-good saint. You CAN be but you don't HAVE to be, you understand what i mean?

EDIT: Didnt know that word is considered a swear here :blink:

I disagree. If we limit relevance to only the barest one-dimensional skeleton, then it's just boring. Dagon who destroys things just because that's what he does is a helluva lot less interesting or compelling or even believable than Dagon who destroys things because he's a kindly leaper-demon-king now chastised, and he wants to undo what he and the Greedy Man did (via destroying Mundus) to re-attain that state of kindly-leaper-demon-kingitude.

Well then yeah I agree, so long as it isn't just getting rid of it for the sake of, though with some things like the dark brotherhood or a knightly order your character should follow a certain path if he wants to gain acceptance since that guild requires your character act a certain way

I was into the story. I read every codex entry I unlocked and payed attention to every sentence of dialogue.

All making stories here, but why not discuss the problem with video games and story. Any good writer knows that a story flows naturally, outlines are not set, and anybody who has played video games knows that most video games are not like that at all. The author of the story might be writing an as good story as ever possible, and it might be awesome, and in the writer's mind flow perfectly, but once put into a video game, it's just another cage. That's why people play open world role playing games, and that's what we're looking at. In most games, players will be annyed they have to do what the story tells them to, in RPGs, people will be annoyed because the gamemmakers didn't allow such a decision. It's limited by work, of course, so a perfect open RPG will never work unless it's a player driven MMORPG with lots and lots of possible actions.
For different possibilities, gammekers make faction or even good/evil/whatever alignments, even if it's a lot more complex, people don't like that either. A perfect story will not work in a video game, because it's an interactive story, and all actions can never be presented.

Yea the factions are a different thing as they can have a codex you have to keep to, not followi it word by word though. However isntead of outright kicking you out many could scold you for certain actions, demot you, give you punishments or penalties and the like.
Also bringing up the Dark Brotherhood, PLEASE don't say "they're a evil faction, they should deamnd you to do evil things" because that's just silly. Why would they demand you to do "evil stuff", even the worst mercanaries wouldn't demand you to randomly kill people or behave like a total dike just because you're a member. Anything outside the factions business isn't their business as long as it doesn't give them a bad name, the DB sure wouldn't scold you for helping out in a homeless kitchen (mostly as they're a secret organisation and people shouldn't know you're one of them, so this could possibly only help to keep cover) but something like the temple would give you hell if you got caught stealing.

And even then, even if you play in a faction that's not far off being called "the order of saints with a sword" there's still room for behavior.



That's the reason why i suggested a http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=1066138&view=findpost&p=15507566

No the dark brother isnt "evil" as you call it but looking at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29#Alignments

Tell me which groups of people do you think would be more likely to join an organization that murders for money(illegal assassinations).

* Tenet 1: Never dishonor the Night Mother. To do so is to invoke the Wrath of Sithis.
* Tenet 2: Never betray the Dark Brotherhood or its secrets. To do so is to invoke the Wrath of Sithis.
* Tenet 3: Never disobey or refuse to carry out an order from a Dark Brotherhood superior. To do so is to invoke the Wrath of Sithis.
* Tenet 4: Never steal the possessions of a Dark Brother or Dark Sister. To do so is to invoke the Wrath of Sithis.
* Tenet 5: Never kill a Dark Brother or Dark Sister. To do so is to invoke the Wrath of Sithis.

The Dark Brotherhood is a "Lawful Evil" faction with Neutral Evil members. There's no question there. They just aren't Stupid Evil...