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Pretentious lore

Zombra

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We all see where this is going, but how many of us press 4? It seems to me that most lore dumps are completely skippable. You don't have to choose the stupid "Tell me more about ..." dialogue options.
Except one of these options might toggle a gameplay flag, maybe useful, maybe even mandatory, and you don't really want to risk this and backtrack later.
I'd love to hear examples of RPGs that cannot be completed because you failed to choose the correct dialogue option hours earlier.
 

bminorkey

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We all see where this is going, but how many of us press 4? It seems to me that most lore dumps are completely skippable. You don't have to choose the stupid "Tell me more about ..." dialogue options.
Except one of these options might toggle a gameplay flag, maybe useful, maybe even mandatory, and you don't really want to risk this and backtrack later.
I'd love to hear examples of RPGs that cannot be completed because you failed to choose the correct dialogue option hours earlier.

well....witcher 3, kinda. you get a bad ending.
 

Zombra

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well....witcher 3, kinda. you get a bad ending.
Not germane. The argument is that players feel they "have to" choose the "correct" options or they'll miss content. The "bad ending" is content, you should want to see it just as much as the "good ending" - they are equal in terms of "getting your money's worth". My argument is that if you want to kill the kitten, you should kill the kitten and be happy to see the kitten killer ending. Don't save the kitten* just because you think the game "wants you to".

*Or read all the boring dialogue the game gives you a brass plated option to avoid
 

Data4

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It's one thing Morrowind did very well. I'll overlook the Wiki conversations, and just count that as a limitation of the system they used. The game had a fuckton of lore, and the type of lore is what made it so good. You had your training books and books that pointed you in the direction of some side quest, but then there were in-fiction fiction books, in-fiction mythologies, in-fiction history, and so on. They felt like books that would actually exist in the game world, and the best part about it was that as was mentioned before, it was completely optional. If I wanted to go out and just quest and grind my ass off all day, I could. If I didn't feel like playing but had an hour or two to kill, I could just go to the library and read to my heart's content.

I actually miss readable books in RPGs that lack them and wish more would have them in lieu of NPC monologues. Put a collection of books in a library or on a shelf in some common building like a tavern or town hall and let the player choose for himself if he wants an annotated history of why the elves and dwarves hate eachother. Otherwise, let him go out and bash the fuck out of whichever makes sense in the setting, because fuck 'em.
 

deuxhero

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We all see where this is going, but how many of us press 4? It seems to me that most lore dumps are completely skippable. You don't have to choose the stupid "Tell me more about ..." dialogue options.
Except one of these options might toggle a gameplay flag, maybe useful, maybe even mandatory, and you don't really want to risk this and backtrack later.
I'd love to hear examples of RPGs that cannot be completed because you failed to choose the correct dialogue option hours earlier.

Ignoring bugs?

I recall being able to refuse one of the early quests in Daggerfall (the woman who contacts you and will leave if you don't visit her soon enough)

Apparently in 7.62 High Caliber/Hard Life by making bad choices in quest (blindly running through and not even realizing you're being set up, leaving jobs unfinished) and letting lots of underlings die you can sink your professionalism so low none of the main factions will hire you, effectively ending the main quest (might be able to get it back up with sidequests. Not sure).

Way of the Samurai series generally has ways to break a route with dialog, but the games focus on multiple short playthroughs with NG+, so it's easy to go back.
 

Tramboi

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And if you created a dialog/charisma character, you can't really take the risk of skipping by getting into hard fights.
(So these builds are only pleasant in games with good writing)

Anyway, is anybody defending bad/over-verbose dialogs writing ? :)
 

octavius

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For me it's not about how "pretentious" the content is - it's all down to presentation. "Lore Dumps" are bad. If you have to flat out explain to me how the world is, you fucked up. Show me instead.

Don't tell me
" Hobbits and Dwarves have hated each other ever since the undead invaded both their lands during a war known as the Gloaming, which each blames the other for. "
zzzzzzzzz

Instead have a halfling NPC complain,
" That damned Zwalin still won't sell me the good ale! How many times do I have to tell him, halflings didn't cause the fucking Gloaming! "
and DO NOT give me a dialogue option
" 3. Tell me more about this Gloaming. "

If you have NPCs talk about it enough in normal conversation, the player will (1) care and (2) be able to figure it out themselves.

It's like when a science fiction writer will write, "I strapped on my mask and stepped into the street" ... he doesn't have to explain why the guy wears a mask unless it is directly relevant to the action. When he mentions it enough times, the reader will internalize it and accept it as a normal thing. He may even wonder about it later if the mask isn't mentioned.

Great analogy.
80 years ago the same problems were discussed amongst SF writers and fans: how to avoid info dumps and instead integrate what the reader needs to know naturally into the story.
Now I haven't played any of the newest games, but it seems like the witers for certain games have gone full circle back to 1935.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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No. Bad writing is bad. :) I'm attacking people who insist on reading it all even though games rarely require it.

But how do you know if a game requires it or not ? :)

Indeed, this seems like a fairly common-sense concept - if there's dialogue then there's a good chance it leads to something. Take Icewind Dale, for example, a game with barely any horrendous dialogue dumps. The owner of the Inn acquired the Inn via nefarious means, and this is all dialogue related, the first time I played the game I never discovered this awesomeness and as a result had the annoying problem of having to either buy all my resting (no resting in town generally) or rest in the wild (and do the whole spawned enemies or savescum routine). Now, completion of the innkeeper's dialogue quest-like thing enables you to sleep freely at the Inn, the place is basically yours while you're in there.

Little things like that aren't what you'd call game breaking, but the quality of life improvement is so great that, in some cases, it might well be something that could change the nature of someone's perception towards the game. So its all about finding out what the game has to offer, from items to quests to exp to possible new companions even. Just closing down dialogue as soon as humanly possible for fear of wasting time on trash dialogue is as retarded a concept to imagine as scolding a game because it doesn't have enough trash dialogue. I don't think anyone sets about going into an RPG for the first time with the mindset of maximum speed-running.

A game genre which inherently teaches you that every little helps and no cranny should be wasted or ignored that then does a bait and switch, either with a different game or even within the same game, and suddenly starts dumping trash dialogue on you is inherently retarded/decline. This isn't to say you can't have any purely fluff atmosphere dialogue and that all such is inherently bad, but that the abuse of said idea is, just as trash combat isn't really trash if its moderated, but tip over that respectable boundary and each example then magnifies upon the last in an escalation of irritation per encounter:

exponential-curve.png
 

Zombra

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No. Bad writing is bad. :) I'm attacking people who insist on reading it all even though games rarely require it.
But how do you know if a game requires it or not ? :)
Personally? I know because I skip stuff all the time if it doesn't interest me, and my gaming experience has gotten better, not worse.

In general? In order to know whether it's OK to skip something, one must skip it and see what happens. If one assumes that everything is necessary, one becomes a slave to that assumption and there is no longer any choice involved in playing.
You'll never know what is required and what isn't if you never test the limits.

Let go of what you think the game "wants" you to do. Try doing what you want to do and see how the game responds.
I'm serious about this, by the way. Anyone reading this should try, at least once, in the next RPG you play, just try playing it as if you're doing it to have fun instead of to follow the track you think the devs "want" you to follow.
You might have a lot more freedom than you think.

Just closing down dialogue as soon as humanly possible for fear of wasting time on trash dialogue is as retarded a concept to imagine as scolding a game because it doesn't have enough trash dialogue. I don't think anyone sets about going into an RPG for the first time with the mindset of maximum speed-running.
We agree that extremes are stupid. I'm not advocating skipping all dialogue any more than I accept that one must always read as much as possible "because it's there"; but if you get tired of the writing and continue to choose the most verbose options possible, you're being dumb and you should stop.
There are other options. Explore them.

[RPGs teach you] that every little helps and no cranny should be wasted or ignored
It's time to unlearn this. It's just not true.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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You don't really address the points raised, neither providing actual game examples nor indicating why you prefer missing out on the potential benefits of in-game discovery. You're very preachy and there's nothing to argue with when someone just preaches, but, like in my IWD example, how on earth could missing that dialogue quest possibly provide you with a more fun experience? Missing that quest effects the whole game... and it's effects cannot be described as 'more fun because of freedom'.
 

Tramboi

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I'm serious about this, by the way. Anyone reading this should try, at least once, in the next RPG you play, just try playing it as if you're doing it to have fun instead of to follow the track you think the devs "want" you to follow.
You might have a lot more freedom than you think.

This is interesting advice, I shall try this.
Bottom-line is that I don't trust game designers very much, I guess.
 

Zombra

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You don't really address the points raised, neither providing actual game examples nor indicating why you prefer missing out on the potential benefits of in-game discovery. You're very preachy and there's nothing to argue with when someone just preaches, but, like in my IWD example, how on earth could missing that dialogue quest possibly provide you with a more fun experience? Missing that quest effects the whole game... and it's effects cannot be described as 'more fun because of freedom'.
You want examples? Sure.

There was some complaining recently about Shadowrun: Hong Kong in its thread. Some folks slammed the game because they didn't like all the dialogue with all the life stories of everybody on every street corner. Now, when I played the game, I didn't read all that stuff. I talked to the characters that interested me, and said no thanks to the ones that didn't. That was fun because I got to enjoy the stuff that appeared enjoyable and didn't have to endure the stuff that looked boring. The players who read every word apparently had a bad time compared to mine. I had more fun than them, got less bored, and had less to complain about. My system worked. You may be amazed to learn that I finished the game without a sense of creeping emptiness that oh no maybe I missed something!!!!!! I don't care. I played the game beginning to end, had fun the whole time, and felt satisfaction and closure when I was done.

Another example I really liked was in Skyrim (yes yes, Skyrim is evil, blah blah blah). I had a character who had something on his mind, I don't remember what quest he was pursuing exactly, but he walked by this house and this guy said, "Hey buddy, can I stop you for a minute to ask you something?" and my character said, "No, I'm busy," and walked right past him. You're not going to believe it, but this was fun. I know I missed a quest, but I wasn't interested and the very act of exercising my agency as a role-player was empowering and felt good. I was telling the story instead of being told. This is a substantial difference in attitude, playing the game instead of it playing me.

A general example: crafting systems. There was a thread a while back about "Do you do them?" A lot of people said they don't bother with crafting in RPGs unless it's absolutely required because it's usually not that fun. (I was one of them.) This is a clear example of people exercising their freedom to not use every means at their disposal to wring out every last possible armor point or DPS decimal. Can they be fun? Sure! Is it somehow my responsibility to always use them? Fuck no!

Then even more generally look at stuff like achievements and collectibles. The completionist attitude means you have to collect every fucking thing and finish every achievement - you somehow "owe it to yourself" to do it all or you didn't "really" experience the game. People will do the most tedious shit to get that "catch 10000 fish" achievement. If I have to explain to you why this is idiotic, there's no point in talking any more. The point is that doing it "because it's there" is not always the best use of your time.

RPGs are a special genre. They let you build a character or party how you want so you can approach the game's challenges how you want. This includes not reading every word or digging through every trash can if you don't want to. Choice. Real choice. It's a big deal. You have options. Exercise them. If you never say "No", then it's meaningless to say "Yes".

Once again I say: fucking try it.
 
Last edited:

Aenra

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my eyes kept rolling

When you don't go full /flagellant, you can actually make some pretty good posts.

On topic.. welcome to the age of maturity i guess?
They're games man. Made by manchildren, addressing children; or manchildren at best. We've grown older, we're no longer the target audience. And we shouldn't be. That's all there is to it.

Anyone here over the age of 25/30 (at worst) still asking for deep emoshunul stories and awesum lore needs a lobotomy or a life. Period.
For those younger or dumber? Things are fine as they are. If they weren't, games wouldn't be selling. If they weren't selling, we'd know, as they'd have changed the formula.

You want it spinned differently? Take this forum. Supposedly the qualitative portion of the internet's RPG hive. Who are the people bitching and demanding third rate writers (at best) a.k.a game writers, start producing great stories?
- Unitard students still living in the glass bubble of intelligencia/a-kaka-demia. Such as Lacrymas.
- self-admitted no-lifers, some of whom still live with mommy and daddy, expecting the full panorama of the human condition to be portrayed in their games, because as stated, no life. They want it from somewhere, somehow they've managed to delude themselves into believing it's possible to get it inside RPGs.
- teens galore that joined the Codex NOT because they're old enough to have played what we have, but because they can swear freely. They bitch about the story or lore too, but log into their MOBAs or FPSs or akshun gaemz the second they log out the forum.

News at eleven.
It's still gaemz. We're not the primary audience. Not in our age man. Accept or move on to greener pastures and a new hobby.
(and for those with ADHD, again; if things were -that- bad, they wouldn't be selling would they. Except they are. Ergo? All the above)
 

Karellen

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You don't really address the points raised, neither providing actual game examples nor indicating why you prefer missing out on the potential benefits of in-game discovery. You're very preachy and there's nothing to argue with when someone just preaches, but, like in my IWD example, how on earth could missing that dialogue quest possibly provide you with a more fun experience? Missing that quest effects the whole game... and it's effects cannot be described as 'more fun because of freedom'.
You want examples? Sure.

There was some complaining recently about Shadowrun: Hong Kong in its thread. Some folks slammed the game because they didn't like all the dialogue with all the life stories of everybody on every street corner. Now, when I played the game, I didn't read all that stuff. I talked to the characters that interested me, and said no thanks to the ones that didn't. That was fun because I got to enjoy the stuff that appeared enjoyable and didn't have to endure the stuff that looked boring. The players who read every word apparently had a bad time compared to mine. I had more fun than them, got less bored, and had less to complain about. My system worked. You may be amazed to learn that I finished the game without a sense of creeping emptiness that oh no maybe I missed something!!!!!! I don't care. I played the game beginning to end, had fun the whole time, and felt satisfaction and closure when I was done.

So, Zombra, what's your position on games in which arbitrarily talking to people and listening to them drone on and on for no apparent reason will give you experience, permanent stat improvements, unique items, new followers, extra side areas, more ending options and access to crucial parts of the story of the game?

I've only played Dragonfall out of the new Shadowrun games, but they're a little bit unusual, because the games have a very clear and apparent structure; you've got missions, with areas you don't go back to, and the hub area between the missions, where you get new missions and buy stuff. The hub in Dragonfall was pretty "structured", too - you get a sense pretty soon about how specific parts of it are going to be important, while the rest is mostly fluff that's there for ambience. I guess what I'm saying is that the game communicates its structure effectively, which is actually a big reason why I like it - it has a comfortable pace that reminds me of jRPGs, which makes it easy to play without worrying about needless things.

The same is not true of all RPGs, though. If I play Planescape: Torment with the goal of figuring out who the Nameless One is and what his deal is - which, y'know, is a pretty reasonable way to be playing the game, since that's pretty much the default goal of the game and all - there's no better way to do this than to systematically talk to everyone until they have nothing more to say. I don't feel that the game offers meaningful ways to exercise choice, because there's no meaningful way to determine which parts of the game are important (in terms of strategy, or even in character) and which are not. I don't think that people are completionists simply by nature; maybe some are, but I think that (some) games also teach them to play that way, and correspondingly the problem can be alleviated by making better games with more meaningful forms of interaction.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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You want examples? Sure.

There was some complaining recently about Shadowrun: Hong Kong in its thread. Some folks slammed the game because they didn't like all the dialogue with all the life stories of everybody on every street corner. Now, when I played the game, I didn't read all that stuff. I talked to the characters that interested me, and said no thanks to the ones that didn't. That was fun because I got to enjoy the stuff that appeared enjoyable and didn't have to endure the stuff that looked boring. The players who read every word apparently had a bad time compared to mine. I had more fun than them, got less bored, and had less to complain about. My system worked. You may be amazed to learn that I finished the game without a sense of creeping emptiness that oh no maybe I missed something!!!!!! I don't care. I played the game beginning to end, had fun the whole time, and felt satisfaction and closure when I was done.

Another example I really liked was in Skyrim (yes yes, Skyrim is evil, blah blah blah). I had a character who had something on his mind, I don't remember what quest he was pursuing exactly, but he walked by this house and this guy said, "Hey buddy, can I stop you for a minute to ask you something?" and my character said, "No, I'm busy," and walked right past him. You're not going to believe it, but this was fun. I know I missed a quest, but I wasn't interested and the very act of exercising my agency as a role-player was empowering and felt good. I was telling the story instead of being told. This is a substantial difference in attitude, playing the game instead of it playing me.

A general example: crafting systems. There was a thread a while back about "Do you do them?" A lot of people said they don't bother with crafting in RPGs unless it's absolutely required because it's usually not that fun. (I was one of them.) This is a clear example of people exercising their freedom to not use every means at their disposal to wring out every last possible armor point or DPS decimal. Can they be fun? Sure! Is it somehow my responsibility to always use them? Fuck no!

Then even more generally look at stuff like achievements and collectibles. The completionist attitude means you have to collect every fucking thing and finish every achievement - you somehow "owe it to yourself" to do it all or you somehow didn't experience the game. People will do the most tedious shit to get that "catch 10000 fish" achievement. If I have to explain to you why this is idiotic, there's no point in talking any more. The point is that doing it "because it's there" is not always the best use of your time.

RPGs are a special genre. They let you build a character or party how you want so you can approach the game's challenges how you want. This includes not reading every word or digging through every trash can if you don't want to. Choice. Real choice. It's a big deal. You have options. Exercise them. If you never say "No", then it's meaningless to say "Yes".

Once again I say: fucking try it.

Oh, I don't disagree with any of this, if I was playing those specific games then I'd likely do the same. I mean, I'm never going to be playing Skyrim, or any Elder Scrolls game for that matter, but can imagine how their world would encourage you to start ignoring great swathes of content. SRHK on the other hand is a game I've already bought and am planning to play at some point, but I am aware of its over-dialogue from reading posts about it, so I'm going in aware.

And this is where we disagree. Not on whether this kind of content is good, but how we choose to respond to it, and not just how we respond internally, but how we respond in the public sphere, the aspect of our response that makes everyone who writes anything in a public place a miniature critic. Yadda yadda yadda, everyone's a critic etc etc etc.

If people didn't communicate that something is displeasuarable then developers could make anything and claim ignorance, we're back at the old debate of "hate or constructive criticism?". Whenever someone belittles genuine complaints and brushes them off as things like "optional content" or whatever then that's verging on the apologist side of criticism, the old IGN thing of listing all the things that the game was crap at and then giving it a good score because *excuses*.

I hear what you're saying about roleplaying, and that's something that is important for a game, for it to not necessarily break the game if you play with low intelligence and have minimal dialogue, or kill first and loot second, or max intelligence/stealth and maximise dialogue and minimise combat etc etc etc, but all of this is a far cry from packing your game with literally meaningless content that is the exact same content regardless of whether your character is dumb as nails or the town gossip, it has ceased being roleplaying from the charatcer sheet and has become roleplaying from larping and/or your own personal preference, which takes us back to yet another debate that's so routine its almost a meme, that of "what do you mean the game has roleplaying?".

On the subject of crafting, like you it's something I generally ignore, but even more so for me as finding out a game has a strong emphasis on crafting is like finding a big reason not to purchase it in the first place. So for me its even worse than hearing that a game has lots of trash dialogue. At least trash dialogue has the chance to be unpredictable in quality and interest. But, of course, when highlighting these points in the form of criticism I will always be negative and leave very little room for developer *escape loopholes*.
 

Zombra

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We disagree - not on whether this kind of content is good, but how we choose to respond to it, and not just how we respond internally, but how we respond in the public sphere, the aspect of our response that makes everyone who writes anything in a public place a miniature critic.
I salute your public spirit and long-term vision :salute: and improving the medium is certainly a good reason to play games and critically explore everything they have to offer. At some point though, one should play games for the experience itself, as an audience member and not a critic. Otherwise, what the hell are we doing? "I caught 10000 fish and was bored the whole time." #informative, but also #sad. Don't be #sad your whole life.

If people didn't communicate that something is displeasuarable then developers could make anything and claim ignorance, we're back at the old debate of "hate or constructive criticism?".
There's nothing wrong and everything right about giving feedback. But again, as consumers and not paid critics, it is perfectly OK for us to post a glib Steam review that says something like, "There was too much lore, and what little I read was very dry so I skipped the rest. The NPCs were boring so I avoided talking to them whenever I could. There was a quest to murder a kitten but my character didn't want to do that so I bailed and went back to hunting the dragon."

So, Zombra, what's your position on games in which arbitrarily talking to people and listening to them drone on and on for no apparent reason will give you experience, permanent stat improvements, unique items, new followers, extra side areas, more ending options and access to crucial parts of the story of the game?
The same as I described above. I'll try to play a game in a way that is fun, and will deliberately skip stuff if it doesn't look interesting and/or I don't want my character(s) to behave that way. Unless the game is punishingly difficult, those extra stat points aren't going to make or break my ability to finish the story in a perfectly satisfactory way. As for maps and NPCs, I've already explained that I am perfectly OK missing out on content if the game is designed to be played that way - and if it gives you options
1. Talk to Joe for hours on end
2. Thank Joe and be on your way
then it is designed to be played that way.

Note again that I don't advocate trying to skip a game entirely - in what world is that fun? If I'm not going to participate in anything then I shouldn't be playing in the first place. But neither am I obligated to participate in everything, unless the game is constructed to force me to.

Did I miss out on getting a sweet sword or talking to a wonderful NPC? I can absolutely live with that as long as it's not required (and if the Sword of Boss Killing is mandatory for completion, then there won't be an option to skip the quest to get it). It's the price I pay for not having to dig through a thousand piles of garbage and talk to each and every boring NPC. And if every character in a particular game is a delight to interact with, then I'll naturally want to talk to them all anyway and won't skip anything. It's a self-correcting system.

The same is not true of all RPGs, though. If I play Planescape: Torment with the goal of figuring out who the Nameless One is and what his deal is - which, y'know, is a pretty reasonable way to be playing the game, since that's pretty much the default goal of the game and all - there's no better way to do this than to systematically talk to everyone until they have nothing more to say. I don't feel that the game offers meaningful ways to exercise choice, because there's no meaningful way to determine which parts of the game are important (in terms of strategy, or even in character) and which are not. I don't think that people are completionists simply by nature; maybe some are, but I think that (some) games also teach them to play that way, and correspondingly the problem can be alleviated by making better games with more meaningful forms of interaction.
RPGs - particularly older ones - have definitely conditioned players to scrape the bottom of every barrel, leave no dialogue option unclicked and no trash can unsearched. In more recent games this is not always the case though. RPGs are getting big enough, broad enough, deep enough that seeing everything just isn't necessary any more. In fact many of them are being deliberately designed to decondition these impulses by excluding content based on player decisions. Wasteland 2 changes whole areas and permanently destroys factions. Witcher 2 and 3 cut off access to entire maps. Age of Decadence goes whole hog with everything - almost every dialogue decision excludes others and many choices have catastrophic consequences.

For some people, this means "Well then I guess I have to play through the game 12 times." To me this is the wrong lesson to take away. I embrace the consequences of decisions big and small, even if they aren't hard-coded, signposted HIGHPOOL OR AG CENTER choices. "No, I don't have time for your side quest, stranger" can be a fun, meaningful decision too.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Zombra is entirely right. Far too often you see people (and sometimes, I see myself) going "this is so stupid but there's a +1 sword at the end of this dumb corridor." Dude, this isn't real life and you aren't suffering through law school because there's a job on the line. It's a fucking +1 sword - and in most cases in most games, you will still be fucking powerful without that sword, you will do just fine for the rest of the game, you won't notice you missed out on the stupid sword whether in terms of meaningful game experiences or being powerful.

Do you restart your game 9 hours in because you realised you put in 11 CON but 10 CON is 'optimal'? Do you play a game you're thoroughly bored with for 18 more hours to get that final Get 1000 Fish achievement? Do you go back and take Jan with you to do his quest even if you think he is a tard and he sucks in combat and you hate carrying him around? Why the hell would you waste your time like that? So, by the same token, who really cares if there was a +1 stat bonus hidden behind that gigantic dialogue tree that looks thoroughly unappealing to you? The bonus is, you're not even going to know that if you stop worrying and stop forcing yourself to play parts of the game you don't want to play.

There are couple of situations where there is more of a reason to do so. One is if you know that a particularly enticing bit of content has been gated this way - e.g. you want that boots of speed to make Morrowind not take 800 years of being eaten by cliff racers on the road, but let's say you have to go through a pretty boring exposition-laden quest to do it. Two is if you are a poor kid with a low allowance or something, and so you have to really squeeze every last drop of gameplay out of each game to make them last 200 hours - even if you might not enjoy 60 of it. If neither of those apply, then you have to ask yourself the question: why am I playing this game? To have fun, or to be able to tell nobody that I got all the loot and unlocked all the achievements? To have a character journey through a fictional world, or to rote memorise everything in that world like some human data scraping API?

Of course you can and should complain a game for gating stuff behind boring shit - and for having boring shit, flat. But in the meantime, you're a poor bugger at best, and an illogical self-flagellating chump at the mercy of OCD at worst, when you insist on subjecting yourself to parts of a single player video game you know is shit just because there's a 'reward'.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,949
Pathfinder: Wrath
All of this demagoguery has nothing to do with the game or the shitty lore within it, whether you choose to play through it or not is your problem, not the game's, so this whole line of reasoning is beyond irrelevant (both for the topic and for gaming in general).
 

Azarkon

Arcane
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
Pretentiousness arises when a writer tries to pretend that he or she is a better writer than he or she actually is. It is a case of self importance and significance that is not deserved. Planescape: Torment can get away with a complicated narrative & themes because Avellone actually has shit to say that is not trivial or cliche, and the skill to present it in a way that doesn't feel boring or condescending - though even then there obviously are people who feel that Avellone was being too pretentious. Dragon Age Origins, on the other hand, had little or nothing to say, and yet wanted to act like it was more important & deep than it actually was. It failed to even reach its relatively low standard of Game of Thrones, because regardless of whether you enjoy Martin's grimdark medieval sex party, you have to admit that Martin's writing is not nearly as bad as Dragon Age's.

Between these two is Pillars of Eternity, the writers of which were obviously smarter than Dragon Age's, but who still managed to over reach into Planescape: Torment territory without having the vision & skill to back it up. Pillars of Eternity wanted to be as profound & important as Planescape: Torment, and it did indeed have significant ideas & shit to say; but it was simply deficient in its execution, most obviously in player motivation, world building, and characterization, areas in which it cannot possibly measure up to Planescape: Torment. Consequently, its lofty ideas end up appearing more pretentious than deep.

Pretentious writing is, by its very nature, a failure of intent, since it's nobody's goal to be caught attempting to be deeper and more sophisticated than he or she actually is. To this end, writers can avoid pretentiousness by knowing their limits and not nurturing delusions of grandeur. Unfortunately it is often difficult for an individual to objectively evaluate their own writing, and the fact that the video game industry is filled with sycophants and paid reviewers makes it incredibly hard to get proper criticism. Pretentious game design is thus an institutional failure as much as it is an individual one, and the reason we see more of it today is simply because there's an increasing emphasis on story telling, without a corresponding increase in quality control, leading to more frequent writer over reach.
 

bminorkey

Guest
well....witcher 3, kinda. you get a bad ending.
Not germane. The argument is that players feel they "have to" choose the "correct" options or they'll miss content. The "bad ending" is content, you should want to see it just as much as the "good ending" - they are equal in terms of "getting your money's worth". My argument is that if you want to kill the kitten, you should kill the kitten and be happy to see the kitten killer ending. Don't save the kitten* just because you think the game "wants you to".

*Or read all the boring dialogue the game gives you a brass plated option to avoid

you should be more specific about what you mean. like, almost every game over screen is the result of making a bad choice and results in being unable to complete the game
 

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