Poll: Predefined RPG characters: when do they kill the concept?

[The Eggplant]

Making my own character has no affect what so ever on my enjoyment. What I look for is a good story and I don't have the need to transfer myself onto the game. Pre-made characters can be much more better.

If all you're looking for is a good story, then, why not read a book or watch a movie? Games are interactive mediums by default, and to my mind if you're not interested in making the story of that game your own, it's not doing a very good job expressing the interactivity of the medium. If I'm gaming, I want to be invested in the character I'm playing, not just curious to see where he/she goes next.

 

[The Eggplant]

Well, take Mass Effect 2 for instance... for whatever interactivity through dialogues and "interrupt commands" you get...it is still a very rigid, linear story with a solid beginning and end point. You can be holy..or you can be a dick...but in the grand scheme of the narrative your choices mean nothing. The story is set (like in a book)...you only get to choose your dialogue...the consequences of which don't really matter. So you can decide whether Sidonis lives or dies...or whether Vido escapes or not...so what....you will still save the galaxy from the Collectors in the way Bioware wants you to.

True interactivity would have been a story you actually shape... your ACTIONS...not just words...write the story. Yahtzee had a great example of this (actually a game he planned on making but didn't): suppose you are a person in a hospital...if you choose to sit down and wait...you assume the rol of a visitor (so apparently someone you know is hospitalized)...that will become the story. If, on the other hand, you move around as if you're lost and searching for something or someone...that will become another role and thus another story.

Or what if you could choose the role another character would play. Suppose you travel in a bus...and some guy of your age is sitting beside you.. this guy is either...your brother...your best friend...an acquaintance...or a complete stranger....and you get to decide that....also you decide why you're on the bus with this person in the first place.

Mass Effect 2, definitely not a bad game, got nothing on that. Bioware can learn a thing or two on interactivity.

Fair point, but I suppose my counter-argument to that would be that at least when given a bit more freedom to choose how your character interacts with the world around him/her, you can exercise a degree of control over how they save the world. Yeah, Shep is going to save us from the Collectors pretty much no matter what. Yes, it can get a little hard to believe when Commandr Shepard, Galactic Dickhead, suddenly becomes Commander Shepard, Savior of All (I would hold up the karma system of the Fallout games as another example...if you're going around being evil incarnate, why the hell are you suddenly saving the post-apocalyptic world from The Big Baddies? Hell, I would've loved to throw my lot in with the Enclave). But at least you're given the illusion of choice, and more importantly the freedom to create your own possible motivations for a character inevitably following the one main plotline to conclusion. An RPG wherein characters have all their personality traits and motivations laid out before you, with no opportunity for even tacking on your own attempt to explain the actions of the character who you are supposed to be identifying with (hence rolelay, y'know?), doesn't seem quite right to me.

'Pologies for the double post, felt I needed to address that comment. (i.e. Someone else say something! Save me from talking to myself...and bumping my own thread...because that's bad...yeah.)

 

[squid5580]

RPG doesn't = blank slate for characters, and most of the time the ones that do have terrible systems. I never get why people complain about FF not being customizable when they make it more customizable every time (haven't played 13 yet but I assume its the same way).

It doesn't. It gives you the illusion of customization by giving you a system similar to the sphere grid of 10. But locks you in by having to take the skill before to get the next one. No switching paths in the same class. And eventually everyone gets access to all the classes.

Some games require pre built characters. If you name them then in every cutscene you get called buddy or some other generic term since it can't be voiced. And sometimes pre built characters are needed for the story. That doesn't really excuse not being able to customize them to some degree (skills, powers ect ect).

 

[Cowabungaa]

But ask yourself this: Why should an elaborate RPG story allow you to create yourself and doodle around how you wish, when an generic FPS game with a mute doesn't?

That is an interesting question!

Quite an easy question if you ask me; not everything offers the same experience. It's like asking a comedian to have the same style of writing as an opera piece.

Well, take Mass Effect 2 for instance... for whatever interactivity through dialogues and "interrupt commands" you get...it is still a very rigid, linear story with a solid beginning and end point. You can be holy..or you can be a dick...but in the grand scheme of the narrative your choices mean nothing. The story is set (like in a book)...you only get to choose your dialogue...the consequences of which don't really matter. So you can decide whether Sidonis lives or dies...or whether Vido escapes or not...so what....you will still save the galaxy from the Collectors in the way Bioware wants you to.

That's not true at all. Little decisions might not matter in the grand scheme of things, as they never do even in real life, but other things certainly do. Think the Quarian's war with the Geth, think characters dying, think how you handled the Rachni in ME1, what you did with the Collector's base. I loved it how I could see some of the decisions I made in ME1 ripple through in ME2.

I'm not saying every action you take has a big impact, but it's certainly not true that your choices mean nothing. I can't wait to see how the decisions we made in ME1 and 2 ripple through in ME3, the final game of the trilogy. Not seeing that clearly in ME2 is one of the handicaps it has from being the 2nd game in a trilogy.