Pyrian on 1/12/2010 at 22:48
I'm really not clear on what point, if any, is supposedly being made? I mean, sure, MOST games have you play The Hero for roughly the reasons given in the OP. But you can find games where you play a flawed protaganist and have no choice in the matter, and you can find games where you have a choice in the matter and can choose to play a flawed protaganist (in virtually any dimension you'd care to name, at least somewhere). You can even find games where "winning" the game is at best a pyrrhic achievement, storywise (sometimes as a possible ending, sometimes as the only ending). "Games can't have flawed protaganists" is IMO at best a severe overstatement.
Personally, not a big fan of forced failure (or flaw), but love games that let you continue playing from a failed (or flawed) state. I guess henke's right in that it's easier to just go along with being the hero than to just go along with being a, well, less-heroic individual, let's say. But I don't think that observation of "fixed plot" games applies to games with more choice of how to play at all. Well, no, it applies partially; The Hero should probably always be a choice even if it's not the only (or necessarily even the best) choice.
Eldron on 1/12/2010 at 22:49
Quote Posted by henke
We were discussing the "No Russian" mission in the CoD:MW2 thread and I suggested that the reason the player goes along with slaughtering an airportfull of civilians isn't because he's immoral, or callous. It's simply that he's too afraid to do what is right. Now, many others are having a hard time accepting this and I can understand that. It's not like the game even gives you a choice. If you try to put a stop to the slaughter you're greeted with a Game Over screen. The game needs you to keep your head down and go along with it for the story to go on.
The problem, of course, is that games are wishfullfillment, powerfantasies, and the player will always play as heroically as he can. And when I say "heroically" I don't neccessarily mean that he's a good guy. He can be an antihero, sometimes even a villain, but never a coward. So when a protagonist has to do something cowardly, or make a hasty decision that the player knows is wrong, it's usually done in a cutscene. And that creates a disconnect between the player and the character.
In good movies, or books, the protagonist will often have a moment of weakness at some point and do something wrong. But games are games, and players are conditioned to win. So they will always play as heroically as possible and do the right thing if given a choice. That's why the only videogame-protagonist who we will feel comfortable playing is the hero who always does the right thing.
Discuss.
To be fair though, the guy infiltrating isn't a hero, he's just another minor character in the story who has to stay infiltrated.
I mean, if the player could make choices in modern warfare, this is how the story would go:
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THU2H5_nadQ)
Otherwise, games are different, some have a place for meaningful choices, others are made to tell a story without the player having a meaningful impact, he is just there to experience it as a part of it.
Papy on 2/12/2010 at 05:49
I'm not sure what is the subject of this thread. Is it about allowing the player to choose to act as a flawed character and to choose to "fail" a part of the game only for acting's sake? Or is it about making the player's own flaws (mainly fear of dying) involuntary creating a flawed character?
This is of course indirectly about an age-old debate... Is role playing about imitating someone else, or is it about the player himself having different characteristics and being in a different situation.
Koki on 2/12/2010 at 07:25
Quote Posted by Papy
I'm not sure what is the subject of this thread.
Making excuses for henke's
lack of reason huge suspension of disbelief.
henke on 2/12/2010 at 08:08
Quote Posted by steo
Some games manage to achieve a lesser degree of protagonist imperfection through secondary objectives. When this is done in such a way that a player doesn't realise they've failed until it's too late for most to bother going back, they just accept that the they haven't met the best possible outcome and continue, perhaps later playing the game again and doing it right.
Quote Posted by ZymeAddict
Also, I don't know about any of you, but I will routinely stick with a bad decision I made in a game just to see what direction that takes me.
Yes, thanks for bringing this up guys. Quickloading is a huge imparment against letting a protagonist have flaws. All too often if players have discovered that they've fucked up, not done something in the best way it could've been done, they will quickload and do it over instead of just living with their mistakes. If the narrative requires the player to fuck up it'll lead to missions like "No Russian". Even when it's done well, like that part in Deus Ex where JC is captured by UNATCO, I bet some players tried quickloading and doing the whole thing over again.
Yeah Zyme, I try to stick with my bad decisions as well. In Far Cry 2 for example, if my buddies died I'd just accept it and move on.
Ulu, when I said "doing the right thing" and "heroically" I wasn't talking about moraily.
The rest of your posts I will read and reply to later, when I'm not supposed to be working.
Aja on 2/12/2010 at 08:37
My example's a bit silly but one of the best things about Animal Crossing is that if you forget to water your plants, or you forget to wake up at the certain time to catch that certain fish, or forget to talk to your friend so they don't move away—if you forget do any of those things—you face the consequences. Of course the consequences are never especially severe, but the more you play, the more you feel an obligation and affection toward your town, making any bad choices on your part sting all the worse. But if you turn back the DS's clock to redo something, the game becomes meaningless, there's no reason to play it if you aren't willing to accept that the potential for failure is what makes success so satisfying.
van HellSing on 2/12/2010 at 10:53
How about Silent Hill 2?
First up, there's the fact that James is quite a flawed character to begin with, once you realize he killed his wife and most of what's happening is delusions caused by guilt.
Then, you have the mechanic for achieving the different endings, whicgh range from somewhat optimistic to outright depressing. You don't get any Big Moral Choices in the game. Which ending you get is determined by a multitude of pretty minor things you do during normal gameplay, and the game never tells you what they are. So the save/load thing just doesn't apply here.
demagogue on 2/12/2010 at 15:45
My interpretation of this is that games don't work unless there's a working modus operandi, an MO, a basic motivation to get you to act, and you're always "gaming" the MO, trying to maximize your position (if you're not, it's not really a game).
The reason most games lock you into "heroic" gameplay is because their MO is rather shallow. You're not tasked to be the best "you" (you being the PC), or to get the world or your life into any order, but only to make progress in the map to some very local goal. That's the entire universe of your MO and they only thing you're going to game the system towards.
The games that do flawed characters best, the examples you see here -- Civilization, Elite, Minecraft, that gardening one -- tend to be sandbox or economic games where the MO is widely expanded, and you're gaming your position in the whole world with a million (potential) things to juggle. There's not a single "right" thing to do that the world cares about, so you can't game it like that. Gaming it in this context is trying to maximize your position in the face of ambiguity, and you can be wrong or absent minded or selfish and miss something. E.g., being cowardly only makes sense as an MO if your PC also has a wife and kids to take care of and can't just risk dying or what happens to them? And to be honest you're looking forward to just going home and having sex with your wife than dealing with this shit. If worries like that become part of the game's MO, then I guarantee you'll start seeing people rather not risk life and limb to "win" the greater game going on.
So it's all about what level of scale the game crams into its MO, local goals vs. global life-time goals, I think.
