Dragon Age: Origins and Choice 2.0

[not a zaar]

This is a joke, and the reason that "moral choices" never work. All you're going to be affecting is some dialog choices and the feelings of some made up NPCs, and nobody really cares about that. Maybe it will cause some NPC to leave the party, and I guarantee they'll be easily replaced by another. The only way to make a choice count is to have it directly affect the player's experience. Fallout did this well: the choices you made dramatically altered the game, closing off some quest paths for a really powerful item for example.

 

[Nevyrmoore]

Save the king and get called a hero or use the ashes and become super powerful. Sounds pretty black and white to me.

Actually, it looks a bit more like "Take a pinch of the ashes to save the king and leave the urn to its probably suspect defence by the Chantry, making yourself unable to heal yourself, your party members, or any sick people you see along your travels, while the Darkspawn possibly zerg rush over the Chantry and prevent its later use or possibly use it to their own ends, but you may end up with the support of the Chantry. OR you can take the urn, which will result in being branded as a thief by the chantry, but you'll be able to not only heal the king, you'll also be able to heal every tom, dick and harry in the game and possibly rally more people to your cause depending on their thoughts on being healed by an off-limits holy relic, but then again, carrying it around with you will probably attract the Darkspawn as it's the equivalent of carrying a giant neon sign everywhere that reads 'I have a magical McGuffin that we can use to fuck you up, please bum rape me'. OR you can take all the ashes and destroy the urn, which will pretty much piss off everybody related to the Chantry in some way, depending on if those that know live to tell the tale, but I really doubt the people guarding it will realise it hasn't been destroyed the entire game, so that may affect how many people come to your aid in the final acts. OR you can say 'Fuck all this, leave the old bastard to his fate!'"

 

[Break]

You don't think a few folks just might take issue with you shoving the singlemost important icon of their religion in your rucksack?

Well, yes, I'm sure they would. But by the way it's been described, the Urn is being held by a cult, and you've just hacked your way through said cult to get to the Urn. From that, I think the assumption is that the cult isn't particularly friendly in any case. And that anyone who's not part of the cult, but still has a religious interest in the Urn, would rather have such a priceless artifact in the hands of a more moderate branch of the Chantry.

Hell, if taking it is no good, why don't we just rout the cult, and occupy the temple? I mean, we've just slaughtered our way to the urn - really, even if this temple's sitting atop some treacherous mountain, or something, it's supposed to be the Holy Grail. Why doesn't the Chantry have a whole battalion of holy knights sitting on it already?

 

[Grunker]

How exactly does this supposed "Moral Choice 2.0" differ from that of The Witcher? The Witcher had moral choices that a) had no easy answer and b) had consequences that in part were unforseeable.

This game looks fucking fantastic, but it's bad karma to take credit for something developed 5 years ago by some polish dudes.

 

[Ilosia]

Now this is the sort of karma meter gameplay that interests me, rejecting moral absolutes in favour of a system identical to the one we have in place in our world, everyone's a self righteous hypocrite convinced that their beliefs are right and others are wrong. This'll definitely be interesting to play around with when it comes out.

 

[Nmil-ek]

So basically they're trying to do what The Witcher already did extremely well. I wish them the best.

Minus the horrifying combat engine, for every good point the witcher had there was something just terrible haning over its head interesting world, bad navigation/camera, unique enemies, one fight every hour tops.

 

[thedo12]

Ive already made my choice to take it .

 

[lumenadducere]

I'm very glad they're finally showcasing moments like this in the game. As someone who frequents the DA:O forums I get to see moments like this mentioned along with bits and pieces of the world that make me very interested in the game. Heck, the writers even post in the forums explaining tidbits of lore, plot elements, etc. The wonky marketing campaign, however, showed a very different game than what we on the forums were getting to read about, so it was a bit frustrating to consistently see comments dismissing the game due to the marketing elements. Not only that, but there were even some who began to wonder if the marketing was more true to the game than the picture that the writers had painted for the forumites.

This new info that's surfacing in these demos, though, is showing game that the writers tell us about on the forums, and it's my sincere hope that it gets more people interested in the game. Goodness knows there are few enough Western RPGs, let alone good ones. If DA:O does well, maybe publishers will be more willing to give developers the backing to make RPGs with deep and complex worlds.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to the rest of what Susan writes. As it is, her comment of "holy crap, it's good" made me smile - I too find her reviews and opinions to be fairly solid, so if she's excited for it then that just makes me anticipate it even more. I think I'm legitimately more excited for DA:O than I have been for any other game.

 

[Susan Arendt]

You don't think a few folks just might take issue with you shoving the singlemost important icon of their religion in your rucksack?

Well, yes, I'm sure they would. But by the way it's been described, the Urn is being held by a cult, and you've just hacked your way through said cult to get to the Urn. From that, I think the assumption is that the cult isn't particularly friendly in any case. And that anyone who's not part of the cult, but still has a religious interest in the Urn, would rather have such a priceless artifact in the hands of a more moderate branch of the Chantry.

Hell, if taking it is no good, why don't we just rout the cult, and occupy the temple? I mean, we've just slaughtered our way to the urn - really, even if this temple's sitting atop some treacherous mountain, or something, it's supposed to be the Holy Grail. Why doesn't the Chantry have a whole battalion of holy knights sitting on it already?

I don't know the whole story, but from what I gather, the Urn was actually lost. The Chantry didn't know where it was -- you only found it because a holy man who'd devoted his life to studying and finding it led you there. Now, I suppose the Chantry could send in some knights now that you know where it is, but who's to say the Chantry isn't corrupt? Oh, and there's that whole Darkspawn problem, too.

 

[ace_of_something]

curse you bioware and your awesome products that will make me spend money even if I can't afford it at the time.

edit: I take it back you bring me too much joy *hugs bioware* let's never fight again.

 

[aaronmcc]

I never even heard of this game until a few weeks ago. What's that? Bioware type RPG like Jade Empire but done in a Lord of the Rings stylee and twice the size of Mass effect?

Definitely on the Xmas list

 

[Kevvers]

I'd normally just try to do the most "good" thing and to hell with the consequences, however, if they do actually make your companions object on religious grounds I'd probably pause for thought, because they are usually the only ones in a game that actually matter very much.

Thinking about it, all you really need to do introduce "moral ambiguity", is first remove any moral indicators such as evil/good axis, reputation (just track the choices internally) and then give the player a Catch-22 in which there are no good outcomes.

Of course this moral ambiguity is not always desired, sometimes you just want to kill the orcs without worrying about their wives and kids.

 

[Tyrant T100]

After reading this article, then reading about sex being in the game, then having that blatantly pointed out to me by Bioware in the trailers I think I may just have to get this game.

 

[Slycne]

This is a joke, and the reason that "moral choices" never work. All you're going to be affecting is some dialog choices and the feelings of some made up NPCs, and nobody really cares about that. Maybe it will cause some NPC to leave the party, and I guarantee they'll be easily replaced by another. The only way to make a choice count is to have it directly affect the player's experience. Fallout did this well: the choices you made dramatically altered the game, closing off some quest paths for a really powerful item for example.

Maybe I am missing something, but weighing the decision between loosing an entire armies support and keeping a powerful item for yourself seems like a pretty dramatic decision to me. The NPCs reactions are only on top of that base decision. And we are only being told about a quick snap shot in time, who knows how that decision will continue to effect the rest of the game.

 

[meatloaf231]

So basically they're trying to do what The Witcher already did extremely well. I wish them the best.

Minus the horrifying combat engine, for every good point the witcher had there was something just terrible haning over its head interesting world, bad navigation/camera, unique enemies, one fight every hour tops.

Yeah... it was a great, if extremely flawed game.

 

[Damien_B]

You know... I never really took moral choices in video games seriously.. Probably because I was introduced to Fable at the age of... Around 6?
After that, I just thought that they didn't appeal to me, and moved on to games that involved more mindless killing, more blood, and more guns.
BUT, that's just about all of the gaming industry is anymore, so....
Huzzah?
I want a compelling game with moral choices that DOESN'T involve killing everyone and everything in a mindless fashion, OR, become Jesus and cure the blind.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

I have found moral choice systems to generally be biased, but there are occasionally decent ones. Mass Effect's was interesting in that you could go both ways (Yes, like a Bi-Sexual), but even then it wasn't truly good/evil, which was ANOTHER +.

But it's truly rare to find a game that actually makes you think about it, for me it's generally just depends on whether I am PLAYING a good or evil character and there isn't much role-playing involved : /

But if a good moral choice system is ever made, I would be impressed.

 

[1337mokro]

Bout time GREY will be used to describe something positive once this game gets reviewed by ZP.

I do hope that the moral system really turns out a whole strip of different shades of grey cause that would eventually mean infinite re-playability (I know you are going to get bored sometime or will have taken every possible choice at some point but just theoretically speaking).

The only thing now is if you have all the options available. I mean what the preview descibed about the urn was still pretty linear and unimaginative.

Cause the options we had according to writer were 1: Take little bit of ash, leave urn alone.
2: Take urn with you to create indestructible army. 3: Destroy urn to keep it out of the hands of evil.

These are pretty boring how about

4: Burn the guide with a fireball and put his ash in a fake Urn to distract forces of evil.
5: Take the urn for yourself without telling your team.
6: Take Urn with you and hide somewhere else.
7: Coat your armour with the ashes than destroy the Urn (making invincible armour).
8: Press X to make team mate decide (each team mate has another decision or slightly different one).
9: And so on.

For now it sounds like the consequences of your actions have been multiplied from just good-evil-neutral To possibly good-evil with a hint of neutral in a way saying that your actions are open ended and the result is the sum of all actions up to that point.

But if we only have 3-4 options (good - evil - neutral - stupid) at every moral turn point we'll be back at choice 1.5 due to lack of variety.

 

[Pimppeter2]

When I first saw this game I thought "meh", but its looking pretty good.