Chris

First off, I'm not arguing for keeping the bars. I'm just explaining why I think Mass Effect's system works pretty well. I'm not saying future games shouldn't try other things, or anything like that. Ideally, somebody would make a genuinely transparent system that is also still meaningful enough that it doesn't just become pointless. Anyway, yes you can allocate points to those skills. But the whole point of the Paragon/Renegade system is that your maximum skill points in those skills are capped by how much Paragon or Renegade stuff you've done. This makes a lot more sense than the generic skill system, where the vague accrual of "experience" is equally valid for use in a gun-related skill or a healing-related skill, for example. In the case of the conversation system, you only have the ability to tangibly improve your conversation skill if you "practice" that form of conversation. But unlike Oblivion or other games with similar "learning" mechanics, you still do have more RPG-like direct control over the rate of those skills. That is to say, you could be "practicing" Renegade or Paragon constantly simply by the choices you make, but if you as a player don't actually care about that aspect of the game, you don't have to use your skill points to boost them, even though your "practice" has raised your potential cap.

I don't know nearly as much about all the backroom stuff being discussed here as others apparently do, and I'm also not entirely sure what's being debated, but I did notice this and figured I could contribute since I just read a Time Magazine article about Miyazaki. Anyway it quotes Miyazaki as saying of Lasseter and Aardwolf's Nick Park, "My comrades in arms, in trying to keep good quality and commercially viable animation going."

Cars is my least favorite Pixar film by a long shot, but it seems bizarre to me to claim Lasseter is somehow squelching variety at the studio. Pixar's films have become increasingly varied and unusual, to an almost preposterous degree given their budgets and ostensible target audience. There might be specific firsthand evidence of Lasseter enforcing his homogeneous story ideas or whatever, but it certainly hasn't created that impression from my point of view as a moviegoer. It's fair enough to have your own opinion about Lasseter, but probably less fair to invent Purcell's reasoning for working at Pixar. As far as I'm aware, he is moving up within the company.

Okay yeah, that's what I thought.

Are you sure? I thought I had read that wasn't the case, that a pretty significant component of the sequel is that it just reads your save file and directly continues from the choices you made. I even thought I saw someone specifically ask which ending is "canon" and they said that's an irrelevant question based on how they're doing the sequel. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of room for the writing to grow, but there are a lot of great bits. This isn't a particularly mindblowing example or anything, but there's one where you can smuggle a shipment to a merchant past customs (thus avoid tariffs), using the higher level of access your character has. You can refuse, you can bring him the thing, you can tell him you're bringing him the thing and then not do it, you can tell him you're bringing him the thing and then report him, etc. And even if you do choose to bring it to him, you can do so agreeably or disagreeably, you can withhold it until you get more payment than you'd initially stipulated, and so on. And what's also cool is that some choices you make can cause you to connect that whole situation to a seemingly totally unrelated character whom you would otherwise have had no reason to approach. When I played through the game the first time, my character never became aware of that link, but the second time she did. (Not deliberately--I don't really remember the intricacies of how I dealt with the situation the first time.) There's no real aspect of it that's any more morally exaggerated than the same choices would basically be if you were making them in real life. Neither major choice is "right" or "wrong" -- the guy who runs the facility you're smuggling it into is kind of as asshole, but then again the guy who you're doing the task for is basically just an opportunist. The only "judgment" passed on you is how much you're skirting the law, or disregarding the previous agreements you already personally made. It has nothing really to do with whether you did a good or evil thing. Anyway I love stuff like that, and Mass Effect has a bunch of great examples of it.

Well there's definitely a reward in that you are the most proficient in that type of conversation, but I think that's fine. It makes sense. It's not like you're just becoming some intangible version of "evil"--you're just becoming more persuasive, or more intimidating, through habit. But yeah, if you just focus on maxing out one side, then you miss out on a bunch of other potential conversation options.

Yeah it's visible, but the only incentive to being a Paragon, for example, is to keep being more of a Paragon. If you just max out that column, then you won't get the Renegade options in conversations, so I don't really see that as a win. But if you want to "game" it, well, that's fine. I'm not sure specifically what the result of "gaming" in this context would be, but that's your choice as a player for playing that way. Developers shouldn't be hamstrung by having to find ways to suppress tendencies of obsessive-compulsive players at the expense of their game design, unless it's really a game-breaking situation. I'm certainly not playing it that way and I'm a relatively "hardcore" player so it obviously isn't an inevitability. I'm not saying Mass Effect actually presents an incredible, perfectly subtle, transparent, realistic morality system. Obviously it doesn't. (And of course, morality isn't what's being modeled.) But developers still have to try new things and move forward incrementally (which is the only way games ever progress), it won't just be all or nothing. Mass Effect does it very differently to Fable 2, for example, and just because it isn't the end goal achieved doesn't mean it isn't a different approach on it that's interesting. (For that matter, there are also a million other parts of game design and development that don't model the way the world actually works in a truly believable way--in this category, I would put every single facet of games--so I think it's pretty fair that developers still haven't nailed the one that's clearly one of the absolute hardest of all. I'm not saying I wouldn't love something far more intricate and subtle, but it's probably going to be a while.)

It refers specifically to the relatively nonlinear nature of those games, by which they usually take place entirely on one huge interconnected map (rather than a series of levels), where your access to new areas is limited not explicitly by goal completion, but rather by your lack of certain equipment or abilities that, when obtained, allows you to surpass physical obstacles. It's the kind of thing where you might have seen a particular door a dozen times, but could never go through it until you found the missiles--but meanwhile you were exploring plenty of other stuff and achieving other goals. In particular the Metroid games inspire people to "sequence break," which is to find ways to get to areas before they "should" be able to based on how much equipment or how many abilities they've found. I have no idea if Shadow Complex is designed in such a way that supports that, though.

I never said anything about "amazing depth." The point is that the more you act in a particular way, the more you are able to control conversations better as that archetype--so the more often you act as a paragon, the better your character (potentially) becomes at high-minded persuasion, whereas the more often you act as a renegade, the better your character (potentially) becomes becomes at outright intimidation. This unlocks additional dialogue (or action) options in those categories that wouldn't otherwise be available. If you just don't care about the conversations in the game, you don't have to focus on those skills, and yes, then I guess in that case the system basically becomes little more than window dressing. But that's fine. It's doing them no harm and they aren't missing out on anything except more conversation possibilities, which they don't care about anyway. Of course since it's a narrative-driven game without procedurally-generated conversations, or something like that, there are a finite number of potential narrative-based choices to make, and the choices in many cases aren't black and white enough to lend themselves to a straight-up one-side-only playthrough, and some of the choices you make will not be strong enough in either direction to get you points in either direction (and it's hard for me to imagine any realistic person quicksaving before every single decision just in case), so you probably will end up with some amount of points in either rather than worrying about min/maxing it because really, why bother? I imagine most people end up with a lopsided situation, but that makes sense--your character generally acts in a certain manner, but there are always exceptions with everyone. And as far as the system not being a hugely important thing--well yes, it's not. That, as far as I'm concerned, is much more preferable. I like that it's something that just happens, not something that paints itself as a huge deal. It's there, and it tangibly affects how your character can interact with other characters, but it isn't at all the center of the game. It's in the background enough that the more enjoyable way to play the game is simply to react to each situation as it comes, perhaps with an inevitable bit of consideration in the back of your mind about your character's record so far and how this decision stacks up against that. I'd be extremely surprised if anyone other than the very hardcore played by constantly checking up on their meters and trying to carefully plot out all their choices, or anything like that.

Yeah but that's not how it works in Mass Effect. You can have a full Renegade bar and an empty Paragon bar, or you can have both of them full, or both of them empty, or anywhere in between any of those places. They aren't mutually exclusive at all. Some actions give you a few points of one, some give you a bunch, some choices are pretty neutral and give you no points of either. There really is absolutely no incentive (that I'm aware of, anyway) to stick to just one or the other. I guess it's possible there's an achievement for doing that? If so, it doesn't really matter because 1) I'm playing the PC version and it doesn't have achievements, and 2) well I guess that's the main reason, but I did play the Xbox 360 version for a few hours when it came out and I don't remember there being any kind of prompt that would have let me know about such an achievement, even if it were there.

Surely something like that has been done? I feel dumb for drawing a complete blank, but I'm sure I've come across systems that have at least attempted that.

I like the Mass Effect system. It's still a discrete point value per action, but it's a lot less dumb than others. The scale is more a matter of lawfulness than morality; there are plenty of times I receive points on the Renegade scale for doing something that I personally consider more moral than the Paragon option, and vice versa, but since it's not "Good" and "Evil" or something like that, there's no disconnect. I also like that you can accrue points in both over time, rather than having an increase in one inherently detract from the other. If Mass Effect had no combat (or rather, only extremely rare instances of it) it would be pretty close to totally rad.

Haha, I (sadly) know this feeling. I think in reality it's total bullshit but I am susceptible to it for some reason. There are multiple pursuits where I have felt that way and been too intimidated to continue, until I just kind of passively fall out of it entirely. (Nice picture though!)

There seem to be references to a PC version scattered all over the internet, including in a few previews and things, but no indication of any release date.

That is definitely what was going on!

Retro/Grade!

The original concept for that episode was for it to be entirely that, but it is beyond obvious that we could not keep it going.

It has new levels and an updated editor and I think some other new stuff

Maybe it'll be a PC game! Ha ha ha

You set goals in your life, just like you set a goal with a business. For the second time in a row, you also didn't respond to my actual example. Fine, fucking whatever. Jesus. Make one more post than I'll lock the thread and you can have the last word forever.

I understand your example. You need food to live. Is the goal of your life to consume food, or is that just something you have to do to continue actually pursuing your goals? Sometimes difficult decisions must be made. That doesn't mean you don't have a larger purpose and goal. I was providing a new example that illustrates my point, not changing your existing example. I'm sorry if the use of Mr X. made that unclear. My example was perfectly plausible. If money was the sole goal of the business in question (and certainly it could be, but once again my argument is that it need not be) then they obvious choice would be the option that is expected to return more money. If money is not the sole goal, but rather one of many factors, the choice might well be to the more satisfying, less profitable option. For the last time (literally, for the last time I think, because I'm running out of ways to say it), I have said many, many, many, many, many, many, many times that a company needs money to run. But money does not need to be its primary goal.

It is a sequel. It's not the game "Trials" that has already been released on PC. It's a new one.

"Now"??? I have said--quite literally, many, many times--there are many different kinds of companies with many DIFFERENT goals. A company's "sole function" need not be to make money. It is a function, but it need not be the sole function. Do you understand what "sole" means...? I don't know why you're bringing up terms like "evil" and quoting it, because you're certainly not quoting me. No, I wouldn't consider him "evil." However, again I'll just explain this, for the nth time. "Mr. X" has two options: one of them would make less money than the other, but is more personally appealing to Mr. X. Because Mr. X's goal in this enterprise is to pursue work he finds rewarding and worthwhile, he chooses the one that makes less money, but still keeps the doors open (I've taken great pains to ensure the bit about "paying the bills" is mentioned MANY times, so stop acting as if I'm suddenly tacking it on). The reason he does this is because money is not the goal in his enterprise. Do you understand? I agree that it's a means to an end, but not necessarily the end in itself. The goal is the final result you are attempting to achieve. Money is one of the things that leads you to that goal. It need not be the goal itself. It certainly can be--there are obviously plenty of people who get involved in a business purely because they believe it is the way they can make the most money--but it need not be.

This one hasn't

Wow. I can't believe you're trying to explain to me what an "investor" is, etc., etc., blah blah blah. Are you going to respond to the actual point I've been trying to make again and again, or keep harping on the fringes? How about chastising me again for bringing up a cable television example, when cable television was the introductory example used? There are people who invest in quite likely moneylosing enterprises out of the love of the art--while still obviously also hoping they make their money back and more--above all else. If you simply refuse to believe this exists, then fine. I don't know what to tell you. It exists. Is Chris also != businessman? What is Chris' business, if not Chris and the people who work for him? Again, a business only takes actions as a result of the people who comprise it. And no, the goal of Chris' business (I shouldn't speak for Chris I guess, but certainly the kind of businesses I'm talking about here) is "to publish quality comics." It's not some vague thing like "love of comics," it's a very specific thing. Money is, indeed, necessary to reach that goal and do it over a long term.