Protagonist empowerment

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Protagonist empowerment

This has been building for a while now, but i've finally gotten pissed off enough to blurt it out. Slaughtering endless waves of faceless identical mooks doesn't make me feel good about my protagonist, at best it's a tactical and strategic challenge to overcome and hopefully survive, at worst i'm playing a dumb brute.

What's worse is that so many games are built on this dynamic, so that many players equate rpgs with lots of combat. Sorry but my pen and paper games weren't combat heavy, because combat was dangerous, a piece of steel with a few pounds of pressure behind it goes through flesh like butter, and I made damn sure my players knew it. So guess what, they used their brains, tried to avoid melee and pioneered other approaches to situations. They used their skills and intelligence to achieve their goals, and when they did fight, it was bloody, hard and effective because they knew it mattered. They felt powerful.

Ironically Geralt in Assassin of Kings, a trained monster slayer can use this approach, indeed his kill tally compared to most rpgs is positively dissapointing. When he does step into the forests around Flotsam, I make sure he damn well wins through cheating, knives, bombs, traps, signs and whatever the hell else it takes to overcome his opponents, as quickly as possible. The fair fighter dies, the cheating bastard gets the bounty.

When did I feel most powerful in Assassins of Kings, yes a nice takedown of multiple foes was nice, but it pales beside the decisions I made and the stands I took on issues that mattered to me. Holding back the Temerian rottweiler, when his teeth were itching for royal blood. Being there for Cedric at the end, and letting him drift off into eternity at one with the earth. Sharing a drink and a few words with Letho, before renouncing any nore pointless bloodshed. Good companionship among the dwarves, the rough foul mouthed heart of the Witcher games, crude and honourable. Rescuing a little girl who saw too much, whose father I failed. Seherim watching me from the riverbank, babe in arms.

I loves me some good violent games, Severance, the Punisher, Max Payne, but in an rpg there should be more ways to skin a cat than in these. Such blatant ego stroking belongs in Bioware games, where you are the chosen one, and the whole world is populated by idiots and losers who couldn't find their own arse with both hands and a map tattoed on their thigh. There's a place for generic Commander Shepards (saviour and messiah) and such obvious power fantasies, cheap and fun as they are, but there's also a place for a bit more of an intellectual and studied approach I think.

So what do my fellow sons and daughters of Kaer Morhen believe, is this cheap and nasty reliance on combat harming the medium, should a clever protagonist always have another way, a better way of doing things. I'm not making a Hepler like statement that I want an "I win" button, merely that combat should be tough, dangerous and interesting, rather than a chore to be laboured away at repetitively. That and if a player has other skills and ideas, then let him use them and reward him for it, or punish him if he's stupid enough to fuck up. The anatomy quest from Witcher 1 springs to mind.
 
Age of Decadence is coming out(hopefully). If you haven't played the demo check it out.
It addresses exactly your problem, and the developer has the same opinion as you.
 
I don't consider combat ego stroking, but brain stroking. If done well, it requires strategy, tactics and delivers great reward for the player. And I don't necessarily mean loot or XP. I mean the gratification of crushing your foes. That in and of itself is a pay off for me. It's just fun to kill shit in games. That said, for an RPG like The Witcher where choice is paramount, I have different expectations and feel just as empowered for telling Roche to sheathe his blade, or threatening every lice ridden peasant in the outskirts. If I'm playing Diablo or Dark Souls, I pretty much expect to kill shit and have fun with that.
 
I agree with you on Dark Souls Slim, it seems pleasingly challenging and edge of the seat stuff. There's a place for spectacular pulse pounding action, Max Payne bursting through a door, headshotting every mook in the room in slow motion, a bullet ballet of pleasing perfection as he glides through the air. But too often in rpgs it's just bland faceless foes, who are no challenge and boring to boot. Sword fodder.

Edit: Cheers for recommendation Jack, i'll look into it.
 
I agree with Bloth. There should be different ways to achieve certain objectives. at least in some PRGs, like TW series. I am OK with combat when it is at least somewhat realistic. But not when a protagonist turns into an unstoppable and virtually invincible killing machine, and takes on the hordes of enemies. You never have it in Dark Souls, btw. That's why I am rooting for a better stealth in TW3, with more missions that Geralt can do purely through stealth or brains, not brawn.

Even when we have to fight, it would be nice to do it smart. For example, in TW2 Loredo's mission was good - we hit him with the entire Blue Stripes forces. But when we go after Anais, only two guys, I would prefer to create some sort of distraction first, to draw the major forces out of Kedweni camp. To get in guns blazing and to exterminate everyone was in the best Bioware tradition, which, in my opinion, should stay out of TW Universe.

That's why I like Dishonored, for example. In every mission you can get wild and kill everyone, like 50-70 opponents per mission, or you accomplish the same task without killing anyone, including your mark, and even without being seen by anybody at all. Makes for much more enjoyably play-through to play as a ghost, then to blast your way with bullets, grenades, and spring-razors.
 
Bloth said:
I agree with you on Dark Souls Slim, it seems pleasingly challenging and edge of the seat stuff. There's a place for spectacular pulse pounding action, Max Payne bursting through a door, headshotting every mook in the room in slow motion, a bullet ballet of pleasing perfection as he glides through the air. But too often in rpgs it's just bland faceless foes, who are no challenge and boring to boot. Sword fodder.

Edit: Cheers for recommendation Jack, i'll look into it.
The dev was moderator in RPGCodex. I say that so you know what to expect.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/02/01/against-design-decadence-vince-d-weller/
http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,3228.0.html
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/vault-dweller-interviewed-by-forbes-about-age-of-decadence.81307/
http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=171
Some interviews and reviews of the demo. The one at RPS is...fun.
 

goopit

Forum veteran
don't really consider anyone in TW2 to be sword fodder though. There are a lot of games tend to have a lot of enemy fodder so that the player has something to do like Mass Effect but games like Dark Souls and Metro 2033 feel like they're there for a reason.

I guess it's the way the story gives you a believable amount of enemies.I'm expecting that now we're going into open world that we're allowed to deal with situations more socially.

In F:NV you could have a playthrough without anybody which was really cool, it should be one of the goals of CP2077 but not W3 though.
 
Everything thats done a ton of times and covers most examples harms the medium, so yes it does in this case.
 
I always loved that in planescape with enough intelligence, wisdom and charisma you could convince some person that he doesn't exist, and because whole planescape setting is build over idea that everything is shaped by belief, he disappeared. That's what i call badass protagonist, one that can unmake a person by just talking to him.
 
I have always believed that violence is banalized in the video gaming industry (and indeed in all of media). Violence is portrayed in a nonchalant way as a business necessity rather than with actual story relevance 99% of the time. If a game, or at least an RPG, has you think "I am going to kill these people for XP", than imo it on some level failed as a story-driven game. This problem is part of the whole gameplay-story segregation problem.

And I did feel that TW2 was relatively ahead of other contemporary games of its genre in that regard. Other than a few random bandits in Flotsam, most of the time we kill people (which as Bloth said is a pretty small amount compared to other games) with some story significance. The killing for XP is mostly directed at monsters which I mind much less, and even then it's pretty lore important considering Geralt's profession.

To add on Bloth's point, one of the major reasons why I find Geralt a compelling protagonist is his knowledge being demonstrated in-game and that is actual relevant to the story. In both games, esp TW2, Geralt is an actual active participant in conversations, offering his opinions and sharing what he knows. This marks him as quite distinct from other protagonists who are shown to know nothing of basic history of their own world, who contend themselves with only asking questions and listening instead of being an active participant. Indeed, in TW2, we even had Geralt schooling two very powerful mages, Dethmold and Eilhart, on curses.

What seem to be small details in fact add to a protagonist significantly and decisively.
 
This is something I've been wanting to come along for a while. Do not get me wrong I LOVE well-designed combat in games, but an RPG where you can discuss, investigate and negotiate your way through situations instead of thinking about going straight for the knife has always been one that interested me. This has actually always been how I've played my 4X games. Lots of diplomacy, little war declaring unless declared on me.
 
Before I write a serious response to the OP, I need to ask this: does it bother you that someone else might enjoy the type of game you dislike? I'll be honest, I wasn't able to play ME and DA games in their entirety because I found them lacking in style and substance, but I don't see any reason to go around bad-mouthing them just because I don't like them.

There's a sense that everyone needs to agree on what they like because developers are going to make only one type of game. The way I see it, some developers make what's going to be popular, while others make something niche, whatever that might be. The distributions of things you like or dislike are always going to fluctuate in the market, and that's not a sign of decaying culture or whatever. Some people like variance, some people like consistency, but there's no set logic to how consumerism works.

I am mentioning this because of your implication that rpgs used to be such and such before, and now they're different. But I have to say, so what? It's likely they'll be different tomorrow, or maybe they won't.

Personally, if it becomes the case that most games in the market are 16-bit, turn-based, isometric RPGs, I'll resort to playing only the few which I like. If it's the case that there isn't anything which I'd like to play, then I won't play games.

One property of living in a capitalist system is that the inherent value of things is distorted out of proportion. You can argue that the content of games is answerable to more than just consumerism, that it's art. But there's no one definition of art.

Maybe I am just having a really mellow day, but I don't see any reason to get mad if people buy the things I don't like.
 
I completely agree there should be more games that go this route. Your statement pretty much sums up how I play my strategy games: diplomacy, negotiation, underhanded tricks, and very little war(and proxy wars).
 
Bloth said:
What's worse is that so many games are built on this dynamic, so that many players equate rpgs with lots of combat. Sorry but my pen and paper games weren't combat heavy, because combat was dangerous, a piece of steel with a few pounds of pressure behind it goes through flesh like butter, and I made damn sure my players knew it. So guess what, they used their brains, tried to avoid melee and pioneered other approaches to situations. They used their skills and intelligence to achieve their goals, and when they did fight, it was bloody, hard and effective because they knew it mattered. They felt powerful.

Having Bloth as a DM sounds awesome! Hope I'll find a new group soon. :)
 
I feel like the DM in question would have it rain crumpets and watermelons. The hero, knighted by Queen Victoria. And the main bad dude would be Sean Connery. Water would be replaced by tea.

This is all in good humour of course.
 
Am with Bloth on this.

I must say The Witcher games does address this issue a bit better than most games(mainly TW2 and its difficulty for most of its length), but they still make you feel sometimes like Geralt is an all-mighty unstoppable warrior(specially on the Witcher 1 during the Swamps part, and TW2 forest area on Chapter 1, Harpy nest chapter 2 and Nilfgardian camp chapter 3)

While on the books Geralt was still quite a badass, and took multiple opponents at once by himself, he also had a hard time taking on others, not to mention that he actually lost with ease to Vilgefortz the fist time they fought.. also he on the books had help from his companions in multiple occasions, and had it not been from them(and their sacrifice)he would have never been able to rescue Ciri from Vilgefortz...

So i would enjoy if there were not swarms of opponents in every corner but in stead, fewer ones but stronger and more unique, a more tactical approach to combat and a sightly increased difficulty would be appreciated indeed, as well as different options/paths that do not require you to use your sword each time you need something, maybe more stealth and diplomacy would help in this regard...
 
cmdrsilverbolt said:
I am mentioning this because of your implication that rpgs used to be such and such before, and now they're different. But I have to say, so what? It's likely they'll be different tomorrow, or maybe they won't.

Maybe I am just having a really mellow day, but I don't see any reason to get mad if people buy the things I don't like.

Not getting mad at game companies, just sick and tired of what is fast becoming the only recognised method of character empowerment, it's cheap, blatant and ethically a little disturbing. Yes rpgs such as Torment, Arcanum and many others offered multiple routes through situations, empowering the character through use of his skills, knowledge and cunning. It doesn't always have to be more pointless slaughter.

As for what others are playing, that's their business, i'm arguing for the things I want to see, not that Dragon Age and Mass Effect should cease to exist. They're both fun senseless games, that a lot of people enjoy and more power to them as I stated in the opening post.

Tea and crumpets sounds damn good, think i'll put kettle on.
 
Bloth said:
Not getting mad at game companies, just sick and tired of what is fast becoming the only recognised method of character empowerment, it's cheap, blatant and ethically a little disturbing.

The differences in the approaches you're discussing is direct and passive. You can either be aggressive or passive aggressive, the point is for you to complete some objective in the game, but at the end of it you're still aggressive.

Even in the passive approach, you utilize your abilities to get what you want or emerge victorious. If we get down to discussing which method is more "ethically disturbing", then there are more shades of grey than we'd like to think.

What's funny is that we think shooting enemies is worse than subduing or overpowering them with nonphysical means. Sorry for the cliche, but there are things worse than death.

On a related note, I don't think it's accurate to assume that if someone plays a certain type of game, then they're such and such.

But okay, I get that you want the option to mess with the game world in more than one way. I geddit.
 
Planescape Torment absolutely blew me away. A computer RPG were I can use other means besides a weapon to solve problems? Impoosible! But I was wrong, and happily so.

As my man Yeslick would say, "fighting solves simple problems, but you need to use your head for the more difficult ones".

I've been think a lot about this recently. For the principle of the thing, I wanted to complete an Elder Scrolls game, a setting with a ludicrous amount of killing, and stealing because bandits have not souls and must die.

BUT the real Archduke Ferdinand was in Baldur's Gate. I expected something similar to Planescape Torment, funnily enough, it reminds me of a stronger and more interesting "what the Elder Scrolls should have been" sort of thing.

While escaping the clutches of the Iron Throne, a guard walks up to me, likely with a since of safety considering there are 3 Good Clerics and a Paladin in my party. Right before he recognizes me as an intruder, he tells me about some trouble he's been having with his wife--trouble in a sensitive "bed room" area. Before my character Kimblar Kettlebelly can prescribe some old dwarven remedy, he recognizes us and goes hostile. Is there an option to stun him? Is there an option to beat him until he submits? Can I tell him I am going to flood the whole damn mine and he better leave. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! He is a "BANDIT/GUARD" so therefore he eats babies and takes dumps on the elderly. Well fuck you game, I expected more from you than constant D&D cliche Good vs Evil bullshit. What's the point of giving me substance to a character if he just another XP fruit to be picked.
 
cmdrsilverbolt said:
The differences in the approaches you're discussing is direct and passive. You can either be aggressive or passive aggressive, the point is for you to complete some objective in the game, but at the end of it you're still aggressive.

Even in the passive approach, you utilize your abilities to get what you want or emerge victorious. If we get down to discussing which method is more "ethically disturbing", then there are more shades of grey than we'd like to think.

What's funny is that we think shooting enemies is worse than subduing or overpowering them with nonphysical means. Sorry for the cliche, but there are things worse than death.

On a related note, I don't think it's accurate to assume that if someone plays a certain type of game, then they're such and such.

But okay, I get that you want the option to mess with the game world in more than one way. I geddit.

I'm not advocating a non violent approach where you strangle or knock out the opposition, i'm advocating avoiding conflict entirely if you can manage it, as any smart person would do. Aggression or passivity have nothing to do with it, i'm arguing for more methods of achieving your goals, utility more than anything. Smarter ways of empowering the player rather than another mob of fifteen guards to kill or spare. Indeed this could entail more focued and effective use of violence as a means to an end, a sniper rifle from half a mile away rather than a trawl through endless waves of mooks in a stronghold.

Who's assuming anything about anybody, I enjoyed both Mass Effects as brainless shooters and certain parts of Dragon Age Origins were good. As i've stated twice now, there is a market for such blatant power fantasies and I begrudge nobody enjoying them, as I did.
 
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