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In your opinion(s), what is the best use of C&C in a non-RPG/adventure game?

Joined
Nov 5, 2017
Messages
10
This topic has been on my mind for a while now for some reason.

Basically, which game that doesn't qualify as an RPG or adventure title has choices and consequences that not only change the outcome of the game, but are also morally gray and not arbitrarily binary?

My example would be the 7th generation console and PC versions Splinter Cell: Double Agent. The story is rife with morally ambigious no-win C&C along with an excellent NSA/JBA alliance system that allows you to find a middle ground.

For example, in the cruise ship mission, the JBA gives you an objective to blow it up. You can choose to either let the bomb detonate, maintaining your cover with the JBA and killing hundreds of innocent people in the process, prevent the explosion by jamming the signal, which makes you lose JBA trust, or frame Erica, your hinted love interest, by using her disarm code, if you acquire it from her office during the JBA HQ mission, which is timed and one of the most intense stealth missions I've ever played. The only way to maintain NSA and JBA trust is to frame Erica. However, no matter what, non-detonation causes Dufraisne to kill Enrica so you either have to get your love interest or hundreds of innocent people killed.

Also, if you kill Jamie Washington and reveal yourself while letting Erica survive, she will let you sneak out and give you your equipment.

The endings all vary pretty differently, although I'm not gonna go too deeply into that since I want you to try the game out yourself.

On top of that, you can ghost all but one level, which makes it even more stealth oriented than Chaos Theory. I know it's not that big of a deal in the context of other stealth titles like Thief and The Dark Mod, but considering how other stealth action titles like Metal Gear Solid and later Splinter Cell games pretty much encouraged genocide, it's an accomplishment.

By comparison, the 6th generation versions were extremely binary when it came to C&C, which makes me think that the C&C in those versions was an afterthought, given that they were a retread of Chaos Theory in most aspects (that is not a bad thing nor was it meant to be a criticism, more Chaos Theory style games is great).
 

Jokzore

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 18, 2017
Messages
623
Until Dawn, Papers Please, Dishonored.

... does Overlord count as a RPG?
 
Last edited:

Zenith

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 26, 2017
Messages
296
Don't know about "best", but Vangers are a curiosity.
Unless it also counts as an RPG (which it might).
Putting under spoiler, since significant part of the charm there is not knowing anything about the world.
OK, so there are three mutant species residing on different worlds. To move on through the worlds you have to get on each faction's good side somehow (although you never see your "reputation meter"). Now, you could just trade trash back and forth for pennies and maybe eventually succeed. Or you could steal embryos from one world to sell as delicacies on the other instead.
Once you've gained some trust with a faction, they'll let you take part in their world's seasonal rituals (these pay well and improve reputation). Eventually you'll learn (kinda) that all life is governed by pheromone-emitting underground larvae. Then you sell pheromone-rich soil for huge profit and even catch the larvae themselves. Upon bringing these to appropriate species you'll find that each season is controlled by a particular larva, and when one gets caught, there's no need for that season anymore. Bringing all the larvae will leave a dead seasonless world, make the species recluse into solipsist hibernation and leave their vangers homeless.
That's one ending path. The other is to instead seed uninhabited hostile worlds with unsuspecting specimens for a chance that they'll start new (possibly less incestuous) mutant strains and build their own world from scratch. The scale doesn't really make sense, but hey, works for a game.

This is the sort of stuff I wanted from bioshock btw, when pre-release they kept going about living breating ecosystem, natural cycle of adam and the rest of marketing-talk. Too bad, I could see it working in a shock/uuw type game.
 

Sceptic

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 2, 2010
Messages
10,871
Divinity: Original Sin
Emperor Battle for Dune did this in a cool way I think, there were a ton of optional missions and whether you did them or not would change which allies you got, how big the enemy base was, if you started with a more advanced base, and so on. There was even one big choice in the Harkonnen campaign that changed several of the later missions completely. The only problem is that no matter the choices you make, or even which House you're playing, everything funnels into the exact same final mission and ending. Shame because having all the little choices you make add up to the final mission and the ending would've been pretty awesome for an RTS.
 

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,765
Original War
Betrayal and alliance, by you and everyone around you
 

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