BioWare: Final Fantasy XIII is Not an RPG

[Labcoat Samurai]

And your point is? Remember I like most of the Bioware library. I'm just under no illusion that their writing is good.

I'll clarify. You did not enjoy the writing... well, maybe even that's not true, though you certainly give that impression. I'm saying that the converse to me enjoying the writing not making it necessarily good is that you disliking the writing does not necessarily make it bad...

Your point was that Dragon age is a kid-friendly lord of the rings.

I never said anything of the kind.

Well, your *exact* quote was "Dragon Age has an egregious disparity between the hype it received, "an innovation in dark low fantasy," and all that bullshit, and a product that ends up, on the whole as a (relatively) kid friendly high fantasy version of Lord of the Rings."

Yeah, that didn't work out so well. As a piece of advice arguing that LotR isn't darker than DAO is neither.

Sure it is, when that was the benchmark you used to argue that it was not dark fantasy. Until this post, it was the only benchmark you offered. So all I have to do to refute your point is establish that it is darker than your benchmark. It still may not be dark fantasy, but I fairly easily return us to square one (i.e. you say it isn't, I say it is). Of course it hardly matters. Just as being darker than LotR doesn't make it, unequivocally, dark fantasy, being lighter than something that you would consider dark fantasy does not make it, unequivocally, not dark fantasy. Which is why I said the argument is a black hole.

BTW, assaulting individual pieces of evidence rather than attacking the thesis actually takes more work, generally speaking, so it's neither the lazy nor the easy approach and you should be commended for that. The lazy approach tends to involve attacking the thesis and ignoring the evidence.

Heh, yeah, you see a lot of that on the internet. Still, my approach is lazier than having to come up with some sort of prima facie argument of my own.

That's easy to say.

And easier still to type.

Hmmm.... that's debatable. But other than that observation, I shall not debate it.

This is actually two completely separate elements. The writing is, in general bad. For a snapshot, quickly name off the party members in Mass Effect 2 who don't have family issues tied into their loyalty quests at the hip.

I *could* do that. Or I could question its relevance to the point.

The relevance is, its the same trick being played over and over.

That's strained usage of "same". It's particularly strained below as you try to fit round pegs into square holes to get every backstory to fit this definition.

Now, in general as a writer you want to vary things up a bit, unless you're going for a theme.

So a hallmark of good writing is arbitrary variation? I can see the thinking Bioware *should* have had: Wow, this character works so well if we have her trying to protect her sister from the life her eugenics-practicing father foisted upon her, but, sadly, we already have another character who has issues with his father and the moral dillemna that comes with realizing his hero is deeply flawed, even capable of terrible things. I mean, they're completely different issues altogether, but it's critical that we don't leave ourselves open for some person on the internet to claim we didn't "vary things up" enough.

Name a single real person who doesn't have family issues tied into who they are and how they live their lives.

That would actually be most people.

No. It wouldn't. All the people I know well enough to know one way or the other have family issues tied into who they are and how they live their lives. Most of them, in very pronounced ways. But with your broad brush, there's not a person alive I couldn't paint, and you illustrate just how broad that brush is down below.

Think of it this way, you've known your parrents all your life. Now after 27 years of experience with my parents, concern over my father's health (he's 72) does raise some strange behavior towards him from me, but that behavior doesn't extend to others. In every single case I can think of, Bioware characters, when they have family issues feel compelled to share them with the player.

I know the family issues of my friends. They shared them with me because we are friends. Generally, in Bioware games, you have to reach out to the person, and they only share once you do.

They always act neurotically because of their family issues. And they always have only a single one.

Heh. You mean they have only a single loyalty quest or side mission. This much is true. But as to having only one family issue, I'd first list Ashley, who has an issue she deals with with her father's reputation as well as her feelings toward her youngest sister, which are completely separate. With the breadth of your brush, Thane has his son and the Hanar who raised him. Miranda has the issue with her father, and it informs her desire to protect her sister. Garrus has the issue with his father, and again, applying your brush, the loss of his squad that was like family to him. In many cases, you're right that there's just the one issue, but I think that's more a matter of available time than anything else.

Nor Mordin's.

The closest we get is the betrayal of his former team member. His reaction to his former assistant's betrayal is more consistent with family than that of a (somewhat) hardened operative's reaction to betrayal by a colleague. And his assistant's behavior is incredibly similar to the petulant BS we get from Thane's child.

Nah, it's more like the relationship of master to student or mentor to protege. Of course, that shares some traits with parent to child, but let's not lose the nuance here while we're arguing over whether or not it has any.

Nor Legion and Zaeed for that matter (despite your footnote).

Legion is a family issue in the most literal sense. His family is at war with itself. This comes off of the nature of the geth architecture. In a very real way they're all family.

Note that you had to qualify that they are family in a very real way. You wouldn't have to do that if they were literally family. And they are not family in the sense that we think. They are like a hive mind, knowing each others' thoughts and working as one, but at the same time maintaining individuality. It's more like an entity struggling with itself and its nature than it is a familial issue.

Zaeed is more of a fraternal issue. The Blue Suns are his family, in a very concrete way.

Well hell, then you're his family too. And you're everyone's family. And my relationship with Miranda was incestuous.

Jack doesn't actually have a literal family. The lack of one could be called a family issue, I suppose, but I'm not really sure how broad a brush you're applying with that term.

It kind of is. I mean, in a way she's more the abused child, and you can paint Cerberus as her family, but her lack of a family is what I was alluding to.

She seems less bothered by the lack of a family than by the general lack of a childhood. When you do her loyalty quest, she doesn't pine over how she might have had a father who could buy her ice cream, or some such. Instead, she remembers the other children, and she remembers the things she was attached to.

For the most part I'm trying to keep it fairly narrow. Aside from the DLC characters the only one that stands at odds is Garrius (who got his dues in in the first game), and Mordin (who certainly behaves like it.)

And, IMO, Legion, for the reason I stated above. And if we're being narrow, Grunt's issue is more with wanting to belong with his people than with Warlord Okeer. I mean, he refers to Okeer as "father" I believe, but doesn't seem to have any particular hangups or issues about him. Merely *having* a father, particularly a figurative one, doesn't qualify to me as a family issue.

To generate a character like Jack's psychology, what you would need is a basically nurturing, but restrictive environment. Religious extremists might fit the bill (and similar stimuli have resulted in similar results historically). But realistically a fairly average upbringing with a low level of familial resentment combined with an extreme trigger event sometime in her late teens (loss of family in a bataarian raid would work) would be more reliable.

I thought you were going with the "rebellious formerly repressed youth" stock character, but you surprised me by dusting off "destroyed innocence and lingering shellshock."

Personally, I think your back story would be a fine explanation for her behavior. Hardly the only believable one, but serviceable. Might not quite explain the *extent* of her behavior as well as the back story they chose, but had that been Jack's back story, I'd not have questioned it.

This has to be after her model of social norms and softer personally have been pretty well established. After that, her post Cerberus experiences could model something of the personality we see, but its her early history that undermines this model.

What Jack fundamentally lacks would be social norms to rebel against. Her treatment should result in a character who is predatory and feral, or completely devoid of emotion and psychopathic. A combination of both is possible, but would be rather bizarre.

Ah, so, in short, you see her as primarily defined by her rebellious tendencies, and the lack of a clear social order against which to rebel undermines the believability of her character. I hope I got it right, because otherwise, my counterargument will kind of miss the point.

I don't see her as fundamentally rebellious. I see her as a fundamentally angry borderline sociopath. The reason she isn't a complete sociopath, presumably, is that she isn't genetically one. That is, she still has the capacity for empathy and wants to care about others somewhere deep down, but she's distrusting of others and has never been comfortable letting her guard down enough to care about someone. She could have been a normal person, and she did have hints of normality even growing up, including friends (which is a place she would have been further damaged by having to fight them), and toys with which she developed sentimental attachment.

But to a large extent, she was just looking for an outlet. She fell in with a bad crowd, and went along with them because it gave her something to lash out against (as well as an outlet for her sexual desires). Seems pretty believable to me.

It's actually the lack of freedom though, that's the issue. Fallout 1, when it presented you with a hostage situation would then follow it with about four or five ways of solving it. Fallout 3 generally boils down to a handful of options, and, when it comes to the main story, a single option only (every main quest vault and (original) ending come to mind here).

Yeah. But like Morrowind and Oblivion, with this big open world to run around and explore, there's so much potential to use your imagination. I loved my character's transformation from a sheltered science geek to a western style ranger. It started when he watched the sheriff of Megaton get gunned down right in front of him, and he vowed, after that point, to do whatever it would take to protect those people and to pick up the job the Sheriff left behind. Which is kind of funny, because the Sheriff's death ultimately has little impact on the game, but that kind of thing just works for me.

But we were talking about writing... so anywho...

Not a comprehensive list by any means, but excellent writing in recent video games: Bioshock and Bioshock 2, Alpha Protocol, Two Worlds (the game is actually successfully doing some quite complex things structurally with the writing, and the dialog, while weird (very weird (no weirder than that)) and anachronistic, is consistent and entertaining (in a renfair on mescaline kind of way)), Saints Row 2, Far Cry 2 (though that could be my fondness for Nietzsche seeping through), Metro 2033 (though there may be translation issues), The Witcher, and Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer (though the original game is also quite well written). I'm tempted to add Dawn of War 2 to the list as well, because, while hammy as fuck, it accurately captures the tone of the Marines from the setting, and would be a fairly interesting mystery (if the various factions weren't all detailed on the box for multiplayer).

I was wrong about you. You said you weren't a snob and I didn't believe you. Many, but not all, of those are games I've played. Of those, many are ones where I enjoyed the writing, but didn't find it particularly remarkable. None of the games you listed had writing I would call "bad", but many of them are not unimpeachable choices. So... a cookie for surprising me, I guess.

Why am I reminded of President Clinton debating the meaning of "the"? Regardless, this was spinning off a comment you attributed incorrectly to me.

I didn't incorrectly attribute any comments. This was speculation on my part that you maybe were referring to the writing not as being bad for a video game but rather bad for an RPG, and I suggested that that was, perhaps, more defensible since there aren't many games that qualify as RPGs. You said that that wasn't true, but depends on what you consider "truly worthy", and I countered that it also depends on what you consider "many". And here we are, all caught up.

Might be a sign I'm turning into an old bastard. Mowing down loads of enemies still entertains me, but not as much as it used to.

Perhaps. How old exactly? Earlier you said you had 27 years experience with your parents. Does that make you 27? Or did you start counting from a later age?

If you're 27, I have a couple of years on you, and I still enjoy games like Gears of War, Halo, and Modern Warfare.

On the other hand, I kind of feel like I've outgrown my taste for JRPGs... but I don't think it's because I'm older so much as different. I feel like gaming has moved on, and they haven't.

 

[Starke]

Your point was that Dragon age is a kid-friendly lord of the rings.

I never said anything of the kind.

Well, your *exact* quote was "Dragon Age has an egregious disparity between the hype it received, "an innovation in dark low fantasy," and all that bullshit, and a product that ends up, on the whole as a (relatively) kid friendly high fantasy version of Lord of the Rings."

Aside from only vaguely remembering writing that, I will stand behind the statement though. The key word being relatively. As much as it wants to play in the deep end of the pool, Dragon Age is at its core another morality tale from Bioware. In every case there's a good and an evil decision. Which is which is so clear cut they may as well be labeled in red and blue text... wait... where have we seen that before. Regardless, every nexus of dialog cuts down to "be a selfless paladin of idiocy", "try to be a paladin and fail fucking people over randomly" or "be an inveterate asshole."

In contrast, at least with the books, Lord of the Rings has a shitload of nuance and some very mature themes. That's themes, not blood spattered around and people rolling around in candlelight in their underwear.

Though, I'll admit, the blood does make me wonder about about what I was thinking when I used the phrase "kid friendly".

Yeah, that didn't work out so well. As a piece of advice arguing that LotR isn't darker than DAO is neither.

Sure it is, when that was the benchmark you used to argue that it was not dark fantasy. Until this post, it was the only benchmark you offered.

Again, you're getting into the same territory you did with the previous post, pulling contextual comments and applying them as global ones (I think (your habit of "context is for the weak" editing, makes parsing apart the original quotes an absolute *****)).

So all I have to do to refute your point is establish that it is darker than your benchmark.

No, I think you'd need to provide evidence that it is considerably darker.

It still may not be dark fantasy, but I fairly easily return us to square one (i.e. you say it isn't, I say it is). Of course it hardly matters. Just as being darker than LotR doesn't make it, unequivocally, dark fantasy, being lighter than something that you would consider dark fantasy does not make it, unequivocally, not dark fantasy. Which is why I said the argument is a black hole.

...and yet, against your better judgment, you returned to it. So either you've given up the argument, and are flailing aimlessly in the hopes that I'd get confused and fall over, or you really don't buy that theory. Pick one.

Now, if I remember where this started, it was with something to effect that the devs had no idea what they were doing, and this was evidence of that.

You aren't fighting a battle over something that's even relevant. That a credible argument can be made that this is on a similar level to the granddaddy of all high fantasy tells you, these guys don't know what the fuck they're doing. They don't have a clue. Like teens on livejournal they blurble about how they're going to be dark and dangerous, and they have no idea what that means.

The biggest example of this (that occurs off hand to my sleep deprived mind) is their fixation on blood as part of the design motif. Now, I can think of a couple reasons why that would be a legitimate visual motif with this subject mater. Stuff about the spread of the darkspawn, or the corruption in the Grey Wardens' blood. But, really? That doesn't come across. What comes across is a fixation on making battles bloody, and then expanding off of that. Really? That's dark? Fallout 3 once had my laughing at a decapitation that sprayed blood on the ceiling (granted it was 3am at the time and I was under a lot of stress). But that isn't what makes Fallout 3 dark.

BTW, assaulting individual pieces of evidence rather than attacking the thesis actually takes more work, generally speaking, so it's neither the lazy nor the easy approach and you should be commended for that. The lazy approach tends to involve attacking the thesis and ignoring the evidence.

Heh, yeah, you see a lot of that on the internet. Still, my approach is lazier than having to come up with some sort of prima facie argument of my own.

You see a lot of idiots on the internet who try to ignore inconvenient evidence, and snark around it by chopping down posts. In fact I remember a thread where someone was deliberately editing out everything in my posts except random phrases that he could refute out of context in his quotes. Something to watch out for, and avoid.

This is actually two completely separate elements. The writing is, in general bad. For a snapshot, quickly name off the party members in Mass Effect 2 who don't have family issues tied into their loyalty quests at the hip.

I *could* do that. Or I could question its relevance to the point.

The relevance is, its the same trick being played over and over.

That's strained usage of "same". It's particularly strained below as you try to fit round pegs into square holes to get every backstory to fit this definition.

Now, in general as a writer you want to vary things up a bit, unless you're going for a theme.

So a hallmark of good writing is arbitrary variation?

Arbitrary? No. In the inverse writing the same thing over and over with inconsequential variations is a sign of bad writing.

I can see the thinking Bioware *should* have had: Wow, this character works so well if we have her trying to protect her sister from the life her eugenics-practicing father foisted upon her, but, sadly, we already have another character who has issues with his father and the moral dillemna that comes with realizing his hero is deeply flawed, even capable of terrible things.

In ME2 alone we have Miranda, Tali and Jacob with daddy issues. That's a quarter of your crew. And just daddy issues. (And thank fucking god that Ashley, Liara, Kaiden, Garrius and Wrex don't revisit their paternal issues again when you see them. (Though Wrex at least seems to be reasonably well adjusted, as is Grunt)) If you add in children you have Thane, Samara, and Mordin (I know you don't like his inclusion in the list). But, again, we've covered this list.

I mean, they're completely different issues altogether, but it's critical that we don't leave ourselves open for some person on the internet to claim we didn't "vary things up" enough.

Okay, let's cut this down a bit, I alluded to it earlier, but let's make it a theme.

Looking at your squad members in Mass Effect. You have Liara, Wrex, Kaiden, Ashley, Tali and Garrus.

Garrus has issues living up to the expectations of his father.
Liara has issues sprouting from not knowing who her "father" was (possible bonus points in that Benezia is a boss in the game).
Ashley is blackballed because of her grandfather. (so... yay. first negative)
Tali has issues with living up to the expectations of her father.
Wrex killed his father.
Kaiden has issues with not living up to the expectations of his father until recently.
Now, that's a ~85% rate of parental issues. (100% if we take the bonus points from Liara pulling double duty.)

Now, let's look at Alpha Protocol, it's the game guide nearest me, and it's as good a pick as any. There's no squad members per say so I'm simply going to sample off every dossier in the game. (It is roughly equivalent, there are dossier sets on 22 characters so we're aiming for percentage)

Of those 22, 7 dossiers mention other family members (in any context), (of those only 4 (I think) will mention their family members in dialog). (This selection is skewed to raise the percentage as high as possible.)

Which results in 32%.

Now, I'm going to drag up another game that caught my attention, basically at random:
NWN2

Of your party members, Neeshka, Elanie, Quara, Shandra and Armon Jerro have family issues. (note that with Elanie it is a Druid Grove and with Neeshka it is her grandfather.) If you wanted to argue Khelgar's Clan, that would be legitimate as well. That gives us %50 (or %54 I can't remember the actual final head count).

So what we have is a situation where Bioware's numbers come off as peculiarly high. They tend to run in the high 80%s if you're extremely conservative as to what constitutes family, and 100% somewhat consistently if you don't.

Name a single real person who doesn't have family issues tied into who they are and how they live their lives.

That would actually be most people.

No. It wouldn't.

Oooh. I see what you did there. Okay, let me rephrase, most people do not behave neurotically as a direct result of their family.

All the people I know well enough to know one way or the other have family issues tied into who they are and how they live their lives. Most of them, in very pronounced ways. But with your broad brush, there's not a person alive I couldn't paint, and you illustrate just how broad that brush is down below.

Think of it this way, you've known your parrents all your life. Now after 27 years of experience with my parents, concern over my father's health (he's 72) does raise some strange behavior towards him from me, but that behavior doesn't extend to others. In every single case I can think of, Bioware characters, when they have family issues feel compelled to share them with the player.

I know the family issues of my friends.

Yes, but how long have you known them? The events of Mass Effect 2 take place over (maybe) a month or two at the most. Everyone you know opens up to you about their family after three or four conversations? I mean, I get compression for narrative effect, but it's just not shit most people regurgitate to every passing stranger, which does seem to be the case with Bioware's party members.

They shared them with me because we are friends. Generally, in Bioware games, you have to reach out to the person, and they only share once you do.

Like Carth in KOTOR? Where the game bugs you every level to talk to him and get him to open up if you're playing a female? Wait... that wasn't what you meant. You meant like if you're farming for XP and decide to get the loyalty missions in Mass Effect... or... no... Like how you have to keep digging to find out about silk fox... no wait... The games cram this shit down your throat. You can go out of your way to avoid this information (sometimes), but in ME2 you don't have that option. Put it another way, with ME2 you can (depending on the sequence of the missions) literally just pick up any party member (Except Jacob and Miranda for obvious reasons), and immediately, before their bunk is even warm, get dragged into the most intimate aspects of their personal life. I'm sorry, that experience really resonates with how people actually behave to you?

They always act neurotically because of their family issues. And they always have only a single one.

Heh. You mean they have only a single loyalty quest or side mission. This much is true. But as to having only one family issue, I'd first list Ashley, who has an issue she deals with with her father's reputation as well as her feelings toward her youngest sister, which are completely separate. With the breadth of your brush, Thane has his son and the Hanar who raised him. Miranda has the issue with her father, and it informs her desire to protect her sister. Garrus has the issue with his father, and again, applying your brush, the loss of his squad that was like family to him.

I actually shied away from this because I felt it was too vague, but if you're okay with it, then, sure. We can throw that one in.

In many cases, you're right that there's just the one issue, but I think that's more a matter of available time than anything else.

Nor Mordin's.

The closest we get is the betrayal of his former team member. His reaction to his former assistant's betrayal is more consistent with family than that of a (somewhat) hardened operative's reaction to betrayal by a colleague. And his assistant's behavior is incredibly similar to the petulant BS we get from Thane's child.

Nah, it's more like the relationship of master to student or mentor to protege. Of course, that shares some traits with parent to child, but let's not lose the nuance here while we're arguing over whether or not it has any.

Again. Look at how the character is written. He's whining, he's lashing out at Mordin, and he's behaving like a spoiled brat. The way the scene is written, out of context it would be very difficult to say it isn't a family squabble.

Nor Legion and Zaeed for that matter (despite your footnote).

Legion is a family issue in the most literal sense. His family is at war with itself. This comes off of the nature of the geth architecture. In a very real way they're all family.

Note that you had to qualify that they are family in a very real way. You wouldn't have to do that if they were literally family. And they are not family in the sense that we think. They are like a hive mind, knowing each others' thoughts and working as one, but at the same time maintaining individuality. It's more like an entity struggling with itself and its nature than it is a familial issue.

Yeah, the language was weird. But, at the same time arguing over semantics doesn't invalidate the argument. The geth are like a single family, at least that's the metaphor Legion (or maybe it was another squad member on the Legion Loyalty mission) uses to explain it. In this case it's dialog from the game that solidifies the argument. (I'm thinking it was the other squad member, I've done it with Tali, Garrus and... shit, I forget, someone else).

Zaeed is more of a fraternal issue. The Blue Suns are his family, in a very concrete way.

Well hell, then you're his family too. And you're everyone's family. And my relationship with Miranda was incestuous.

There are literally tens of thousands of pages written on how gangs emulate elements of fraternal relations. God knows I've read far more on the subject than I give a shit about.

To their (or your) credit, Bioware does waffle between calling the Blue Suns mercs and calling them a gang. So figuring out which one they actually are is a bit tricky. Made worse by the fact that they switch off identities between missions. It was something I hadn't considered until I started thinking about it.

Jack doesn't actually have a literal family. The lack of one could be called a family issue, I suppose, but I'm not really sure how broad a brush you're applying with that term.

It kind of is. I mean, in a way she's more the abused child, and you can paint Cerberus as her family, but her lack of a family is what I was alluding to.

She seems less bothered by the lack of a family than by the general lack of a childhood. When you do her loyalty quest, she doesn't pine over how she might have had a father who could buy her ice cream, or some such. Instead, she remembers the other children, and she remembers the things she was attached to.

Yeah, the problem is she's written like a character who's rebelling against her parents (as I explained somewhere.) She's a weirder case, but at the end of the day, she simply isn't plausible. Though IIRC she does do some rather oblique pining for something better if you get at her soft chewy caramel center.

For the most part I'm trying to keep it fairly narrow. Aside from the DLC characters the only one that stands at odds is Garrius (who got his dues in in the first game), and Mordin (who certainly behaves like it.)

And, IMO, Legion, for the reason I stated above. And if we're being narrow, Grunt's issue is more with wanting to belong with his people than with Warlord Okeer. I mean, he refers to Okeer as "father" I believe, but doesn't seem to have any particular hangups or issues about him. Merely *having* a father, particularly a figurative one, doesn't qualify to me as a family issue.

All admit, I passed over Grunt because I'd literally forgotten about him (until I started listing off archetypes later). When it comes to Mass Effect the krogen have a habit of being the most well adjusted members of the crew so when I'm trying to remember who's fucked up my mind glazes over them.

To generate a character like Jack's psychology, what you would need is a basically nurturing, but restrictive environment. Religious extremists might fit the bill (and similar stimuli have resulted in similar results historically). But realistically a fairly average upbringing with a low level of familial resentment combined with an extreme trigger event sometime in her late teens (loss of family in a bataarian raid would work) would be more reliable.

I thought you were going with the "rebellious formerly repressed youth" stock character, but you surprised me by dusting off "destroyed innocence and lingering shellshock."

They try to sell her humanity pretty hard at times. The problem is, a character like this wouldn't have any. There are a lot of ways to produce what they're showing, they just aren't showing us what those factors could have been. Now... it's possible the whole thing is some kind of elaborate ruse with false memory implants, and the like (which would explain why her memories don't quite sync with events in the facility), but that's not really a satisfying explanation.

Personally, I think your back story would be a fine explanation for her behavior. Hardly the only believable one, but serviceable. Might not quite explain the *extent* of her behavior as well as the back story they chose, but had that been Jack's back story, I'd not have questioned it.

Me either. Unfortunately that isn't what's presented in the game.

This has to be after her model of social norms and softer personally have been pretty well established. After that, her post Cerberus experiences could model something of the personality we see, but its her early history that undermines this model.

What Jack fundamentally lacks would be social norms to rebel against. Her treatment should result in a character who is predatory and feral, or completely devoid of emotion and psychopathic. A combination of both is possible, but would be rather bizarre.

Ah, so, in short, you see her as primarily defined by her rebellious tendencies, and the lack of a clear social order against which to rebel undermines the believability of her character. I hope I got it right, because otherwise, my counterargument will kind of miss the point.

Yeah, you kinda did.

I don't see her as fundamentally rebellious.

Based on her presented history, she shouldn't be.

I see her as a fundamentally angry borderline sociopath. The reason she isn't a complete sociopath, presumably, is that she isn't genetically one.

This is a much tougher argument to make. First of all she isn't a sociopath (though I do get flippant with the language (double checking this page, I haven't appeared to do it in this thread yet)). A sociopath is a highly charismatic individual who can't interface properly with society and possesses impaired emotional functionality and a general disregard for the well being of those around them. (The full DSM4 diagnosis is longer and kicking around online if you actually want to see it.) And would, by the way, be an entirely reasonable outcome from her experiences.

I'd say she was a psychopath, but again, a major part of both disorders is the ability to blend into the population at large.

That is, she still has the capacity for empathy and wants to care about others somewhere deep down, but she's distrusting of others and has never been comfortable letting her guard down enough to care about someone. She could have been a normal person, and she did have hints of normality even growing up, including friends (which is a place she would have been further damaged by having to fight them), and toys with which she developed sentimental attachment.

And, while an excellent psychological breakdown of how her character is presented, it is, unfortunately not possible to reconcile this model with the conditions she was exposed to and the conditioning she underwent.

But to a large extent, she was just looking for an outlet. She fell in with a bad crowd, and went along with them because it gave her something to lash out against (as well as an outlet for her sexual desires). Seems pretty believable to me.

With the caveat that the bulk of her behavior is left unexplained. Saying she's a borderline sociopath doesn't gel at all with the description you followed it with. In point of fact, the description you gave, and for that mater the character presented is the antithesis of a sociopath.

If you said her behavior was a two stage process... well, unfortunately there too we run up against the softer side of her personality, which by all rights should not exist. There are ways it could exist, but these are at sharp right angles to what is presented.

Now, none of this addresses a fundamental problem with her character in general: Let's go out and make the ultimate biotic weapon and at the same time torture them to the point of psychological instability....

There's some random comments about how some of the procedures were designed to boost her biotic potential further, but really, there doesn't seem to be a potential upside to this.

It's actually the lack of freedom though, that's the issue. Fallout 1, when it presented you with a hostage situation would then follow it with about four or five ways of solving it. Fallout 3 generally boils down to a handful of options, and, when it comes to the main story, a single option only (every main quest vault and (original) ending come to mind here).

Yeah. But like Morrowind and Oblivion, with this big open world to run around and explore, there's so much potential to use your imagination. I loved my character's transformation from a sheltered science geek to a western style ranger. It started when he watched the sheriff of Megaton get gunned down right in front of him, and he vowed, after that point, to do whatever it would take to protect those people and to pick up the job the Sheriff left behind. Which is kind of funny, because the Sheriff's death ultimately has little impact on the game, but that kind of thing just works for me.

But we were talking about writing... so anywho...

Yeah, and the Sheriff is kinda a nod to a quest from the first Fallout, though you actually have more freedom on how to deal with the situation in Megaton than you did in Junktown, on the other hand there was more going on in Junktown. At least four substantial quests and a couple miniquests IIRC, opposed to (I think) three in megaton with a single minor.

Not a comprehensive list by any means, but excellent writing in recent video games: Bioshock and Bioshock 2, Alpha Protocol, Two Worlds (the game is actually successfully doing some quite complex things structurally with the writing, and the dialog, while weird (very weird (no weirder than that)) and anachronistic, is consistent and entertaining (in a renfair on mescaline kind of way)), Saints Row 2, Far Cry 2 (though that could be my fondness for Nietzsche seeping through), Metro 2033 (though there may be translation issues), The Witcher, and Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer (though the original game is also quite well written). I'm tempted to add Dawn of War 2 to the list as well, because, while hammy as fuck, it accurately captures the tone of the Marines from the setting, and would be a fairly interesting mystery (if the various factions weren't all detailed on the box for multiplayer).

I was wrong about you. You said you weren't a snob and I didn't believe you. Many, but not all, of those are games I've played. Of those, many are ones where I enjoyed the writing, but didn't find it particularly remarkable. None of the games you listed had writing I would call "bad", but many of them are not unimpeachable choices. So... a cookie for surprising me, I guess.

In each case I listed above (with the possible exception of 2033 (and DoW2)) there's some rather complex stuff going on under the surface that deserves analysis. Though, now I am hitting myself for not thinking of GTA4.

Saints Row 2, for instance, isn't simply dark humor, there's a very vicious and rather surprisingly complex cultural critique there as well. The same can be said for GTA: San Andreas (and most of the GTA titles since 3, honestly). But SR2 manages do do it with a kind of schizophrenic humor that really sells it on multiple levels at once.

Why am I reminded of President Clinton debating the meaning of "the"? Regardless, this was spinning off a comment you attributed incorrectly to me.

I didn't incorrectly attribute any comments. This was speculation on my part that you maybe were referring to the writing not as being bad for a video game but rather bad for an RPG, and I suggested that that was, perhaps, more defensible since there aren't many games that qualify as RPGs. You said that that wasn't true, but depends on what you consider "truly worthy", and I countered that it also depends on what you consider "many". And here we are, all caught up.

It was the use of "many" to which I was responding, which you selected to use, and then we end up in this goddamn mobious strip populated by grue.

Might be a sign I'm turning into an old bastard. Mowing down loads of enemies still entertains me, but not as much as it used to.

Perhaps. How old exactly? Earlier you said you had 27 years experience with your parents. Does that make you 27? Or did you start counting from a later age?

If you're 27, I have a couple of years on you, and I still enjoy games like Gears of War, Halo, and Modern Warfare.

On the other hand, I kind of feel like I've outgrown my taste for JRPGs... but I don't think it's because I'm older so much as different. I feel like gaming has moved on, and they haven't.

I'm not sure what I've outgrown. I certainly find the FEAR games more unintentionally hilarious today than I did when the first was released. As a point, I try to remain fairly omnivorous in my gaming habits (with the notable exceptions of racing games and JRPGs).

I do skew more to the inventive methods of dispatching opponents and found Just Cause 2 utterly worth the money for the inventive ways the line launcher can be used.

 

[Littlee300]

RPG means ROLE playing game and in mass effect you don't have a certain role. confused

 

[Starke]

RPG means ROLE playing game and in mass effect you don't have a certain role. confused

A weirdness of English, role playing is actually a single verb. So an RPG is a game that involves undertaking the action of role playing.

Role playing refers to engaging activity where you undertake someone else's role or a hypothetical one.

So, yeah, you're kinda right. Except, Mass Effect sort of steers you into the role of Shepard, but you never really have control over Shepard (except in combat and when wandering around aimlessly), just an illusion of control, and the ability to sometimes influence how annoyed Shepard is in dialog.

 

[Labcoat Samurai]

snip

Sorry to do this, but...

I like some of your points, others I don't find particularly compelling. I do think it's interesting to see where your thinking is similar to mine and where it has diverged so greatly, but ultimately, it's not interesting enough to try to figure out why. These posts are getting ridiculously time-consuming to respond to, and... well, it's selfish, but I think I got everything out of them that I'm going to. In particular, I was looking to see if there was something important I had missed about Dragon Age or Mass Effect, and I'm as confident as ever in my original assessment.

At this point, there are only three possible reasons to continue debating:

1) On the chance that you'll yet say something I hadn't considered that changes my mind.

2) On the chance I'll say something that changes your mind.

3) Fun. Sport. etc.

The first is seeming increasingly unlikely, and even if the second *were* likely, it would have to matter to me. I mean, you seem perfectly happy with your opinion. It makes sense to you. Why mess with what works?

And as for the third.... I was doing that for a while, what with the arguing about arguing and the silly banter, but it only entertains me for so long before I get bored of it.

Anyway, it's been good. See you around

 

[Kelethor]

In the words of the Archon "Flame wars, Overwhelming!"

OT: Bioware, Listen, you make good Games. okay? now that that is said, PLEASE STOP STARTING SHIT!! all it does is get a buncha people mad, As well as making people take a closer look at ME2, which, lets be honest, was held together by spit, a prayer, and Miranda's Squishy bits.

 

[Fumbleumble]

Hey Bioware.... Mass Effect 2 isn't an RPG either.

OR a cohesive continuation of 1's storyline.

 

[Cryo84R]

Way to necro.

 

[hermes]

They make a cover based 3rd person shooter and then go bash about how other games are not true RPGs... yeah, right.

If the game focuses upon playing a role. Then its an RPG. The combat system is regardless.

So Gears of War is an RPG? I play the role of Marcus Phoenix...

Why not... ME2 is.

 

[Captain Ninja]

As ironic as Bioware stating that Final Fantasy is not an RPG series is, one mediocre developer talking shit about another mediocre developer is not a legitimate news story.

What do you consider a fantastic developer?
OT: ehh FF XII was very linear but the combat really made me face palm a lot.

 

[IamSofaKingRaw]

I disagree completely because only in the most infamous FF (X-2) was choice and even character building really a focus. I can't see where this has gone off the rails.

FF's have always defined their RPGness as turn based combat, high customization of equipment, story based focus and creating a huge new world.

FFXIII does all this exactly like it's predecessors. The only real difference is a lack of towns and sidequests, which I don't feel define a JRPG but are far more valid

The lack of towns and exploration is why I don't consider it a RPG. If I were truly role playing I would be able to do whatever I wanted at whatever part of the game. I was basically being dragged along at all times so I could never get the feeling of Role Playing anything.

 

[theimpsarecoming]

Generally i would agree with Bioware, But this is Bioware Austin Ha Ha

 

[Dense_Electric]

Does it have stats and leveling as a focus in combat? Then it's an RPG.

So by this logic Halo and Call of Duty are RPGs, since they both involve stats and there's a focus on leveling in the mutliplayer component.

Unless he's also saying that stuff like Diablo and MMORPGs aren't RPGs?

You know, they really aren't. Neither are the Elder Scrolls games. The ability to roam around in a big open world and go on quests does not make a game an RPG, it makes it what I like to call a FRAG (Free Roaming Adventure Game).

No, they're RPGs, silly. You are just Role Playing the lead character. In Game format.

/does not play many RPGs

So Halo is an RPG because I play the role of Master Chief. Call of Duty 4 is an RPG because I play the role of Soap. FarCry is an RPG because I play the role of Jack Carver.

An RPG, by definition, is a ROLE PLAYING GAME. This does not mean simply taking control of the lead character, this means a game where your actions and choices alter the outcome of the story, the character, and the setting. In other words, ROLE PLAYING. Leveling and stats, character customization, free roaming, etc., are almost always used in RPGs, but are not strictly necesarry as long as you can do someing that will alter the course of the story.

 

[Daedalus1942]

I love how they're having a go at Square, when their last piece of shit to grace our pc screens couldn't really be classified as an rpg in any sense of the word either. -.-
I'm really getting sick of Bioware *sigh*
-Tabs<3-

 

[mikev7.0]

Does it have stats and leveling as a focus in combat? Then it's an RPG.

Unless he's also saying that stuff like Diablo and MMORPGs aren't RPGs?

Besides, when the genre was named, anything with dialogue and a plot above "Eat Dots" was pretty much an RPG.

A copypasted reply to a copypasted statement:

My copy of Football Manager 2010 is loaded with stats. It has more stats than FF13, ME2, and every GTA game combined. The characters 'fight' using their stats and skills, they even gain 'experience' and 'level up' their attributes with enough training. Still, I would find it very difficult to take you seriously if you were to claim that FM'10 is more of an RPG than any of the other titles I mentioned.

Diablo isn't more of an RPG than ME2. It's a hack&slash dungeon crawler. It has more in common with any given Roguelike than an RPG. Mumorpegers can be more RPG-like than any other genre currently in existence if you choose them to be (there's that magic word again: choice).

When the genre was named, it was the name of a pen-and-paper game that was all about endless choice. The level of choice from a PnP RPG still can't be approximated by a CRPG, but JRPGs aren't even trying.

Which seems to be especially fitting for you to comment since that game (Dungeons and Dragons) grew from a strategy miniatures game! (Chainmail) I don't think I agree with Bioware here. I haven't played all the Final Fantasies but I've started 1,3,7, and I almost beat 10! I bought XIII a few days ago and can't put it down and am not really sure why. I think that's the hallmark of a great game. Genuinely entertaining for whatever reason. I think it's that I actually (as usual in Final Fantasy games) CARE about what happens to these characters and the story which I think is really engrossing. Enough so that I've read all of the Datalog stuff on it that I've gotten so far.

So in my opinion it's fun but is it an RPG? Well from someone who has played just about every type of RPG you can imagine, (Including Descent which, yes, I also consider an RPG especially when played with Road to Legend.) yes.

 

[KingdomFantasyXIII]

Oh the cruel irony when you realize that Bioware screwed up on Mass Effect 3 ending so badly that there are people who are now saying "Final Fantasy XIII-2's ending is a much better ending than ME3" (that and the fact in which 13-2 has multiple and more endings than ME3's one "choose this color to save the galaxy" ending.)

Karma is a *****, isn't it, Daniel Erickson? Maybe you should keep your mouth shut and focus on listening to your fans instead of bashing other games.

You know. I really wanted to try out Mass Effect. I like FF13 and I heard people prasied Mass Effect so I was like "huh, I wonder if this will be good? This sounds pretty exciting! Maybe I will wait to buy ME3 like I did with FF13." Oh how you have betrayed your fans Bioware. It took me the convincing of 10 people out of 12 to go onwards to buy ME's game series.

As for any Mass Effect fans, I know your pain about what happened to your beloved character being thrown away like a used tissue. I played FF7 for hours, loving Cloud and getting to know him. However, the ending gave me no closure to Cloud and Company!!! I felt betrayed in the fact that the character was thrown away in his own original game. Characters like Terra (FF6), Zidane (ff9), and Lightning (FF13) I got closure in. Even characters that I hated like Squall (FF8) and even Tidus (FF10) I got closure in the end of their games. Not Cloud though in FF7 (and this is ironically the best game of the FF series).

So the lesson here is: It's good to give constructive criticism while being respectful but when you start making fun and bashing a game, karma always comes back to bite you in the ass.

 

[Beautiful End]

Sorry, BioWare, but you're kinda missing the point. FFXIII is STILL an RPG (Not the best but whatever) because of the following reasons:

-Turn based combat. Believe it or not, there were RPGs before Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Turn-based combat defined RPGs for the longest time and that's something FF brought to the table.
-You can still customize your weapons and stuff, but it doesn't show physically. Again, this is something that most RPGs did waaaaaaay before Dragon Age came up with their slutty armor for girls.
-It is story-driven. If you plan a RPG, it's because you wanna be told this amazing story about fantasy and lore. Sure, FFXIII takes the wheel as opposed to letting the player coach them through the ride, but still. That's there.

To counter that guy's argument:

You don't make any choices, you don't create a character, you don't live your character... I don't know what those are - adventure games maybe? But they're not RPG's."

Again, some RPGs don't require you to make choice. They just bring you along for the ride. I recall one of my favorite RPGs; Legend of Dragoon. You don't make a single important decision in the game because it wasn't built that way. It's not a bad thing! Those are the original RPGs.
Creating a character isn't relevant either. I was more than happy to take the role of Dart or Cloud or Cecil or whatever. Their story was awesome and epic and it was way more emotive than what my character does for Dragon Age or whatever. Mind you, I love DA:O but the companions are the characters with the true story. My character is just a mute caught in the middle of a war. Some people like the former and some like the latter.
Lack of towns and sidequests and stuff doesn't mean it's not a RPG. Again, think back to the original FFs, which were considered RPGs icons once, and you can explore, yes, but there aren't that many sidequests. They only introduced that about a decade ago. Legend of Dragoon has very little exploration; you can go to other towns and just...chill...and maybe grind up. But other than that, it was fairly linear. Yet, most RPG fans love that game.

Granted, FFXIII is not probably the best FF game up to date. But it's still a RPG. One can even make the argument that it falls under the category of JRPG because you don't create your character. But again, not a bad thing. how many good JRPGs do we have? Look at Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, Pandora's Tower, the old school FFs. You can't tell me those are not RPGs.

So. If you ask me, someone needs to tell this guy to shut the hell up. It seems he's under the assumption that BioWare is the leader when it comes to RPGs and that they are the precursors of the genre. While BioWare is good at what it does, there were not the precursors nor are they the only ones out there doing RPGs. Hell, is Mass Effect even considered a RPG? Sure, it has SOME RPG elements, but it's not one. Kinda like Borderlands. Just goes to show the ignorance of this guy. I seriously hope all the other guys at BioWare are smarter than him.

(PS: That awkward moment when you realize this is an old thread and this is surely old news by now)