Consequences of Quest choices!

[OliverDK]

Consequences of Quest choices!

My question arrises from the followering video:

In this video Damien Monnier speaks about the complexity of the AI mechanics and how you can make a choice that then turns out not quite the way you had hope or thought. Eg. with the villagers he mentions who are hostages by a group of people and then if you kill these people to release those hostages it can turn out that either they are good or bad people - but you don't really know. Another example is the one with the bandits in a village and you kill them and it turns out bad because of ghouls invading the town.

While I absolutely love the dynamics of this it also concerns me a bit because if feels like complete randomness and you never really know how your decision ends up influencing the open world around you.

That of course gives great replay-ability but it also doesn't give a sense of satisfaction that you did everything you could to make the right moral decision in accordance with how you role-play your character. I mean if you decide to do something that SCREAMS this is just wrong and then because of the complexity it end up you are the hero of the area when in reality you wanted to teach them a lesson.

So my questions is as such if there a a way that you can 'investigate' or gather further information that then will lead you to a much better understanding of the whole situation and in the end the consequences of your choice, so it doesn't feel completely random?

For example I hope it won't be like two people are in a argument about who killed a farmer and then you just have to decide who to trust and in one game it can turn out you are right about your decision and in the next you pick the same answer and it is wrong. Furthermore I hope it will be possible to make some thorough investigation that can leave you with a strong qualified guess as to whom the culprit is.

I hope I made my point clear in that I hope it won't turn out as complete randomness and that you can if you take your time uncover information that will lead you to make not a necessarily good or wrong decision as I know and love that The Witcher world is gray as in real life, but give you the option to choice the lesser evil so to speak and have some idea of the consequences of that choice!

 

[HellKnightX88]

I would assume you'll get to look into the behind the scenes stuff and try to find clues as to what the "right" decision is for you (at least the majority of the time). They're not incompetent, I'm pretty sure someone on the team would tell them "Yo, this "lol so random!" decision making would just frustrate people." if they went overboard.

On the flip side, you never really know how things will turn out in real life, you can't be 100% sure all of the time, sometimes you need to make difficult decisions with uncertain consequences and then live with that.

Basically what I'm saying is that I expect them to stand somewhere in the middle: you'll get the chance to investigate and draw your own conclusions but you won't get to know everything about people's motivations and the possible outcomes. And I feel that¡s a good thing because it gives it more authenticity than the typical light side/dark side stuff you see in other games.

 

[OliverDK]

That's what I hope for so your choices have some bases in the world around you and with skill, investigation and so on you can figure out what the lesser evil is or whatever you as a player think is the moral high ground. Also I would like some indications as to what the consequences of your choices and actions might be. However I understand that you can never get the whole picture, but I could just fear that it would be too random and you never know what you might get at all.

 

[GuyNwah]

The Law of Unintended Consequences is the supreme law of the Witcher Universe, just as the Laws of Motion and the Laws of Thermodynamics are in our own. It is by intent such a part of the fabric of the games, that the best advice I can give would be, if you don't like it, this game is not for you.

The very idea that you should be able to control this world, predict the outcome of decisions, or discern the moral high ground or even the lesser evil, is the ultimate in hubris. Not even Mary Sue MacGuffinCiri, the Lady of the Worlds, can do anything like that.

And the nagging suspicion that you are not a moral free agent but are being ploughed by a higher power, is an integral, even essential, part of the game experience.

 

[OliverDK]

The Law of Unintended Consequences is the supreme law of the Witcher Universe, just as the Laws of Motion and the Laws of Thermodynamics are in our own. It is by intent such a part of the fabric of the games, that the best advice I can give would be, if you don't like it, this game is not for you.

The very idea that you should be able to control this world, predict the outcome of decisions, or discern the moral high ground or even the lesser evil, is the ultimate in hubris. Not even Mary Sue MacGuffinCiri, the Lady of the Worlds, can do anything like that.

And the nagging suspicion that you are not a moral free agent but are being ploughed by a higher power, is an integral, even essential, part of the game experience.

Agreed with you to some degree that the Witcher is full of unforseen consequences and I do play the witcher for those reason and the fact that there is a light/dark path. That's no my concern. And I played the first two games and they are among my favorites so that the game is not for me is not quite valid.

My concern is that if no matter what you do, how much you investigate or how hard your intentions is to pick whatever you choose as a lesser evil or a moral high ground will always turn out absolutely totally unpredictable, then it will just be a wheel of randomness and you might as well just throw a dice when you are stuck with choices. There should IMO be some matter of transparency as to what the consequences of your action and choices are or at least some of them are. As I stated I am well away that there can be unforeseen consequences in the bigger picture.

But lets say the before mentioned example with the hostages and the people holding the hostages. Here you can choose to either intervene and free the hostages or you can choose not too. The moral high ground will of course be to intervene but little do you know that the hostages were in fact held hostages for a very good reason. There should in my book be hints and clues that you can find that gives indications to explain why they are hostages and it might not be a smart idea to intervene and free them or at least you should know it might have serve consequences if you do so. If not then you are in fact stuck with a dice roll again. The example is of course a simplification.

A example from the Witcher 2 is the Malena quest line where she is accuse of murdering the town soldiers. Geralt intervenes and you can choose to investigate the matter and find out that they were shoot by Scoia'tael arrows and this is a very strong hint to she is at least partial guilty in the crime as they were last seen with her according to the soldiers. Here you have some indication as to her involvement and you can choose to either emphasizes with her and just leave (I think) or you can ask her to explain which turn out to be a ambush or just accuse her and leave her to her faith - being hanged. Here you have a choose and you have some information as too whether she is guilty or not if you choose to investigate and you can kind of foresee the ambush if you choose to listen and put two and two together. That is the kind of quest, consequence etc. I am hoping for and if you really put your mind to it and do the investigation you can at least partial foresee the consequences.

Lastly I am not arguing for as you mentioned that I can control the world completely or that I can foresee the consequences of my every choices to a full extend - not at all. I just want to have some substance in which I can build my choices and actions on (like the Malena quest line) and some indications too what some of the consequences are. Otherwise I would feel I might as well just roll the dice.

But properly I am worrying about nothing and it will be like with the Malena quest line just on a much grander scale

Have a awesome weekend by the way :cheers:

 

[GuyNwah]

I think you may be confusing "unpredictable" and "unknowable" with "random" and "purposeless". They're not the same thing at all.

The consequences of actions in the Witcher games are by design not just unpredictable but also unknowable. This is to prevent exactly what I think you are hoping to force the game to do: allow you to make decisions based on full knowlege of the predictable moral and factual consequences. But you are not making those decisions so that the game can "roll dice"; it's not constructed that way. It's constructed so that there are sensible consequences that you are not given the foresight to predict. You are making decisions based on the fact that you are not a common or garden variety hero who can tailor his actions to save the world, but rather you are at best a good man trying to make his way down the mean streets of an uncaring world, without losing what humanity he has left.

 

[OliverDK]

I think you may be confusing "unpredictable" and "unknowable" with "random" and "purposeless". They're not the same thing at all.

The consequences of actions in the Witcher games are by design not just unpredictable but also unknowable. This is to prevent exactly what I think you are hoping to force the game to do: allow you to make decisions based on full knowlege of the predictable moral and factual consequences. But you are not making those decisions so that the game can "roll dice"; it's not constructed that way. It's constructed so that there are sensible consequences that you are not given the foresight to predict. You are making decisions based on the fact that you are not a common or garden variety hero who can tailor his actions to save the world, but rather you are at best a good man trying to make his way down the mean streets of an uncaring world, without losing what humanity he has left.

There's a error in my other post. It's was not that there is a dark/light path but that there isn't and that's why I play the game

And I think we agree more or less for most of the way. We just differ in the opinion that I wish for there to be a kind of transparency in regards to some (not all) of the consequences of your choices and actions. If there doesn't to some degree exist this kind of transparency then there will not be any reason to explorer or investigate as I see. It doesn't by any means mean that I am looking for there to be a right choice but a lesser of two or three evils and so on.

Let's say if you pick option A in a quest and you kill a monster, the consequence is that the villagers is happy with you because that monster killed a villager every now and again - your reward is cheap prices and access to a new armor.

Had you picked option B you would let the monster live but the villagers would then react negatively to you because you didn't save them from the monster and prices would rise and no new awesome armor from them.

Option A looks like the correct and good answer and B as the wrong one but had you investigated you would have known that letting the monster live you would in fact have saved the entire village from a serve blow because the monster kept other monsters at bay that invades the villages after it's demise and kills half the village.

And that's what I mean about the transparency of more immediate consequences, that by investigating you will have indications - maybe not absolutely clear answers to yes B is properly the lesser evil in this case for the time being.

So you felt you did the right thing by picking option B but unfortunately you couldn't foresee that maybe in the long run option A would actually had been better because the other monsters power grew in power over time and then it overpowered the original monster and the whole village then demised,

The example is of course very simplified but I hope it makes more sense now that I am not looking for a overall solution and that I know EVERY consequences to my choice actions but that there is a sense of reward by investigating and you can then get a idea of the immediate consequences but of course not the long term effects.

 

[vivaxardas2015]

Well, I hope CDPR won't overdo with unintended consequences. Sure, in real life a lot of decisions are made under uncertainty, but, to be honest, if we become too concerned with knowing complete consequences, we'll be paralyzed and won't be able to act at all. In any case whatever happens as a consequence is not something Geralt is responsible for. Still, it will be pretty bad if all his good intentions and attempts to do right will turn out a complete disaster. At the same time total control a la Bioware is something no one probably wants to have. I hope CDPR found a middle ground between these two extremes, and also make even bad consequences meaningful, and not some random cosmic screw-ups like monsters suddenly showing up and eating all freed peasants or something. At least it should be a known possibility, a risk villagers are willing to take.

 

[tommy5761]

For myself that`s what makes the witcher series so goood . The fact that you the player has little if any knowledge about how the outcome of quests are going to play out . Like the Beauty and the Beast quest from Witcher 1 or your choice of Abigail or Adda . The women elves in Flotsam also come to mind . Do you try to save them or go after Loredo . Also what if there is "right" choice but instead you have to choose between what you think is the lesser of the two evils .

 

[EliHarel]

Just want to Note two things.

1. I think it's safe to say that cdpr won't choose any extreme. It's not that every decision will bear unforeseen consequences. At that point the player grows to expect something unexpected and that's counterproductive to the goal of creating genuine surprise.

2. Unforeseen consequences can be mistakenly understood as good intentions leading to bad results, and vice versa. Damien's examples fortified that impression. I'm hoping that he just used simple scenarios, and that these unforeseen consequences more often than not avoid some flat trait of good or bad. The Reds like avoiding the good or evil dichotomy in decisions. I hope this complexity remains in the unforeseen consequences. Otherwise it'll become a different sort of cliché.

 

[DukeAlmighty]

I'm sure TW3 will have option to investigate, not fully, but to some degree, so anyone can decide which one he thinks is lesser evil.
For example Abigail quest from TW1, or the quest in TW2 "Little Sisters" was very well written in my opinion.
You won't always know for 100%, just like in preavious games and choices will be pretty tough and that is what makes Witcher games so great.

On other hand sometimes I hate that, because often I couldn''t bear the choice I made, so I cheated with save game.
I'm determined not to do that in TW3.

 

[Alpha8Wolf]

The important thing is that it does not get overdone or random. They should make some sense. I hope they don't overdo it like cutting off body parts in combat.