» Fri Jun 08, 2012 10:50 pm http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1338671-perks-and-gimps/
Response from the last thread:
Yes to all of that, that is the essence of role playing games, but this is a single player computer game with no co-players or a DM to oversee the game and give you feedback on all the effort and thoughts you put into your character. I get all that feedback when I play table top, but in Skyrim I get a big silent nothing. There's no one there taking notice of who my character is, or if he's good or bad, or if his left eye has a weird twitch to it, like I would get if I was playing in a universe where everything reacted to my character. That's hard to achieve in computer games, and one way to improve that, for me, would be to let me at least have more influence on setting up those traits, nerfs, whatever, so I could give myself some feedback on it when I see it in-game. It's the blandness in Skyrim that really gets me. No one cares WHO I am, all I get is generic responses that sometimes completely contradict who I think me character is. If there was a perk coded in that let me express that in-game, chances are a proper response could also be coded in.
That's where the huge difference in ideology comes in.
For a game to have that level of scripted response, it would have to have much more linear choice branches. It'd be a game like BioWare, or some other style RPG - which is fine, but essentially takes a dump on everything I love about Elder Scrolls, which is 100% free reign to do whatever I want with my character.
I guess the way I look at it is this - nobody cares who I am in game? Okay, nobody cares who I am in real life either. It's realistic.
"But the Dovahkiin accomplished X, Y, Z" - Okay, understood. But do you know the guys who took out Osama Bin Laden? If you saw them walking down the street, would you acknowledge them, and respond to their actions? Or would you tip your hat, give them a bland, generic acknowledgement, and go about your day as if nothing happened? I'd say it'd be the latter, because you wouldn't know.
Why should someone in Markarth be aware of my doings in the College of Winterhold, clear on the other side of the country?
Why should random civilians know that I (spoiler tagged for your protection)
Spoiler
killed Alduin, when I did so on the plane of Sovengarde amongst the spirits of long deceased Nords, with not a living soul (literally) around to witness the deed?
That type of game recognition is a cool feature, no doubt, but to me, it's nothing more than a "cool feature". I don't need the game to tell me what I accomplished, I know that it was done.
That said, I still notice plenty of in game recognition to my deeds. Yes, there are some wonky responses, that Farangar never realizing that I joined the College of Winterhold (but again, how exactly would he know when he's in Whiterun, and we're not exactly in the internet / information age here), but I have plenty of acknowledgment of my character, and my deeds, so all that added stuff, while nice, again, is unecessary to my gameplay.
Someone in the previous thread mentioned that perhaps Elder Scrolls games just aren't for you, and I think that's the case (and I don't say that in a bad way at all, so I hope it doesn't come off that way). There's lots of games that do much better in the "choice / consequence" department than Elder Scrolls, yes, but I feel those games lack because it takes away the overall dynamic of being able to create a character -my way- and in my vision. I want the game to stay out of character development as much as possible, and leave that to me.
Games like BioWare, to me, have some of the best "choice / consequence" I've ever seen in an RPG (maybe that's lack of experience? IDK, but I love BioWare games), but they lack compared to Bethesda games because ultimately, the character isn't mine, the character is BioWare's. I have a choice of what path I want to go down, sure, but in the end, all of those paths are pre-determined, pre-scripted, linear paths that were created by BioWare to tell me how my character ends up. There's more consequence, but the options are more limited. My character has to fall into a pre-determined "class" box (with certain levels of customization, to be sure, but not as great as Bethesda games), and my choices ultmiately lead to "good", "bad", or "neutral", with pre-determined dialogue options that often times, none of them are something my character would say.
I begin shooting for a "good" or "bad" score, instead of just playing the character naturally. It feels more artificial.
Like I said, I love BioWare games, they are my 2nd favorite studio behind Bethesda (although I'm not a huge fan of the Mass Effect games - like 'em, but they don't do a lot for me - nor do I really like Star Wars: The Old Republic, I'm only really playing it cuz I have a good friend who plays it and he wants to play with me, but that's about it), but like I said, the characters feel like BioWare creations that I can put my stamp on, instead of -my- creations that exist in a world.
