Darth Rosenberg said:
Bethesda have a monopoly on open-world RPG's (though, ironically, I tend to call Fallout 4 an anti-RPG... ), which is personally my ideal expression of a bare bones role-player given the greater sense of identification/immersion in a created character's POV and sense of freedom (of space/movement, of pacing, of choice regarding whether a faction or questline even needs to be continued, of self-defined goals independent of any conventional narrative structure, etc).
Not quite, other open world RPGs do exist [E.G: Witcher 3], however Bethesda are the most well known in the genre in general.
What you describe also isn't necessarily a greater roleplaying experience, but a greater sandbox experience. You prefer expression in the characters you role play, and the ability to tell the story, but that isn't the definition of role playing. It is a type, a form, of role playing, but it isn't a more valid, or more true, sense of role playing than any other.
The greater sense of identification/immersion is also not entirely correct, and entirely subjective. Some people will enjoy and understand a character they're given to role play, far better than they would one they made up on the spot [Hot Elf Ranger being by far the easiest target of this], and can get properly immersed in the point of view of that given character, whereas with a self created character they simply use it as a vehicle to do what they as a person want within the game world, not play the role of the character they created. It really depends on the person, and the character, as to how this goes.
And no, I disagree; Mass Effect was - and probably still will be - a narrative driven variously middling 3rdP shooter with light RPG elements.
Yes, it pretty much all goes back to D&D and other tabletop gaming, and that quality of creating a role and playing it is almost entirely absent in Mass Effect, or most supposed RPG's, frankly. At best, Shepard was a single 'character' with optional action class types, nothing more. I hate to sound like a stuck record, but Shepard wasn't a defined character, nor the player's own creation - they fell between those two stools and, I believe, suffered for it. In the cinematics she's the writers - fairly bland, if still charismatic and admirably assertive - 'character', often reacting without any prompting whatsoever (that character barely ever segued with the role I'd been trying to express). The cutscene ends? And the avatar is handed over to the puppet master player, to nudge them around the world until the game takes the reigns again.
This tells me that most of your experience is with Mass Effect 2 and 3, and yes, they were shit for role playing. Its one of my biggest complaints with them. 2 was functional, 3... The writers just took over and the character you had created and were playing as no longer existed in its entirety. More than a few people were pissed off at that.
Shepard was, however, your classic RPG character. In a D&D campaign, if you tell the DM you're an interdimensional time traveller from a far off universe with hidden powers that will be revealed when you reach your full potential, a lot of the time he's going to say "Toss off". Sometimes a DM will roll with it if it fits in with a campaign. A lot of the time they won't. Even in the original RPG, you were limited in the roles you could create.
Some DMs also enforce role playing, and if you say something your character wouldn't have said, they won't accept it and you've got to try again. You only get a few options, roughly, of what to say and do, defined by who your character is.
Lets also try one where your party is a team of adventurers trying to save your kingdom from the invading undead. If you say "I'm secretly an undead and want to betray everyone", sometimes the DM will roll with it, other times he'll say "Look, that doesn't really fit in with this story. Hell, I've already got 3 of those characters written in, and it'd take a level of role playing I don't think you possess to pull of a fourth. Additionally, the undead here don't take allies, so it'd be a major break in the plot of them, and...". Your roles are ALWAYS limited by the story and campaign the DM is trying to tell. Sometimes a DM is more open to different roles, sometimes they're not. This doesn't make either of them better or worse ROLE PLAYING experiences, it just determines how much the players are the storytellers in the campaign.
Shepard, at least in 1, was a semi-defined role. He's a navy marine officer type person, with a colourful history of your choosing. He's on his way to becoming promoted, and is loyal to humanity. Outside that, he's mostly up to you. You're given a framework, based on the requirements of the campaign you're playing, and within that framework you determine the details of the character - like with any D&D campaign. Since games can't take your voice input, comprehend language, and dynamically create new dialogue lines using hyper advanced AI, the dialogue options you can take are limited to the ones that, broadly, fit into the character archetype as a whole. You're given the ability to be a highly pragmatic Shepard, or a highly idealistic one, or anywhere in between. At least in 1. You can be rough and abrasive but still idealistic, or you could be kind and calm, but pragmatic to the end. So long as you stick within the barriers of human navy officer who is loyal to humanity, you're pretty much good. In 1 at least. You could make him react to and crack under stress, you could make him xenophobic, you could make him hold himself high despite the battering he keeps receiving, you can make him xenophilic. You can make him an over confident asshole, or he can be a humble hero. The biggest limitation in the game, outside the fact that you have a semi-defined role to work with, is that how much of each you are is tied to your persuasion system, which is a silly idea that really needed to be dropped, rather than reinforced, in the latter titles.
I found the series to be peculiarly schizoid, never committing to being an actual RPG, yet never having the guts to just fully flesh out Shepard and tell a conventional character narrative (given the 'cinematic' presentation and voice acting, I'd have preferred the latter path).
The series as a whole, yeah. ME1 had promising beginnings, but rather than improve on them they tried to go mainstream. Worst mistake of the series, that led to literally all the problems the series as a whole has. Within the first game, however, it was reasonably consistent, I don't know if there was a single dialogue line Shepard said that you didn't get some choice in, even if it was the same voice recording - at least you got choice in what he was thinking as he said it. The most cinematic action that happened was taking cover, and shooting, and walking out of the ruined citadel tower at the end. Otherwise most of it was gunplay, then talking between people.
...is discussing semantics particularly useful to anyone or anything? Not in the slightest, and despite their fundamental differences TES and ME represent populist gaming ergo more or less inhabit the same cultural space. It just personally riles me a little that something like ME is so heavily associated with the acronym.
I feel the same about Skyrim. Skyrim is a terrible role playing game. You have no real choice in how you express your dialogue - its all just one option. You don't have any choice in how you interact with most people either. I can't tell the Jarls to toss off, or anything of the like. The world isn't designed with any way for you to truly express and role play a character - it exists as a static slate so you can PRETEND you're any character, and it won't make a toss of difference no matter what. It tries to make any role you could play
technically viable, but it fails to actually acknowledge any role, or let you properly play it. Its as much role playing as me talking to my wall and pretending I'm an all powerful wizard on a quest is. It lacks the reactivity needed to truly play a role and have it exist.
ME is tied to the acronym because it is a great role playing game. You don't have to tell the story to be able to play the role, and ME lets you play the role of Shepard just fine. Its a restricted role, but that doesn't reduce its role playing credibility at all. All roles are restricted in role playing. Even in Skyrim you have to start off as some level of nobody, with no skills and no powers, and you can't ally with Alduin to take over the world as the most powerful duo to ever have lived.
Role playing isn't about telling the story, and having absolute freedom in what you do. That's sandbox play. Role playing is about playing a role, whether its one you define, or one that's defined for you, or somewhere in between. Both games offer a different take on that experience, and that's why they're both popular and tied so heavily to RPGs. Neither is more of a true RPG than the other. Both naturally have their flaws, but both also have their strengths, and both allow role playing.
Why is it a "cash in"? It's a game in a [big] business - surely everything is a literal cash in. And can't fictional worlds tell more than one story?
Talking literally, yeah, everything is a cash in for a business. Mass Effect though?
2 and 3 weren't Cash Ins, as they had a story to tell. They started it, and they needed to finish it. Once it was finished, that was Mass Effect. You could do spin offs, but that's not what they're trying to do.
They're doing a sequel, in another galaxy, with some contrived plot, so that they get to throw all the fanservice they want in, but detach themselves from any of the consequences of the way they ended the story - which literally changed the entire Mass Effect world.
It stinks to me of not having another story in the Mass Effect setting that they wanted to tell, but needing to sell another Mass Effect game because its a popular brand, and having to come up with a story to tell in order to do so. It'll come out, and it'll be another Jar Jar Abrams/Michael Bay knockoff, with a pretty shallow and uninteresting, but fanservicey plot, and without a meaningful story it wants to tell about the world, just another one its trying to tell in it for the sake of selling more games.
DA:II, for all its flaws, wasn't a cash in. As an example. It had a story within the world it wanted to tell, a new perspective to give, and the game was built around that. It didn't shy from the consequences of the earlier game, but it had a different story, of a different place, within the same world that it wanted to tell. It lacked polish, and was rushed out, but much like DA:I, it served to grow the world of Thedas, and give us a different perspective on it, and understanding of life there.
Mass Effect; Andromeda? They're literally hitting the reset button. They are trying to distance themselves entirely from the world they created with Mass Effects 1-3, but still pull on fan Nostalgia to buy into it anyway. Its not going to add a deeper understanding of the world we were shown in 1-3, its not going to give a different perspective on that world, and it doesn't even really take place in that world. It doesn't want to be Mass Effect, but it wants to use the name and symbols of the series to try and grab some sales. Its a cash in. If I'm proven wrong, then hey, great. As is though, there's only one way I see this game going, and that's as a new IP that was designed by marketing and test groups, and is tied to an existing brand name to boost sales. I've got no faith in it being good at this point.
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