Lack of meaningful choices/shallow RPG elements

Salt_The_Fries · 2014-12-06 05:11:30

This is my main beef with video games since the previous generation. You know this feeling when the game supposedly gives you a choice to spare someone or kill them only to show you that no matter what you do, that person dies anyway. Is it really that costly to create new scenarios influenced by your choices? Or are the publishers like: 'don't allow meaningful choices, our focus tests showed that 99% of people went for the A option'? I really want to know, is it really that costly to create different sub-scenarios after players' choices? The Witcher 2 showed us all that it is possible to not only create different story branches, but also whole different acts altogether (along with different environments). Why are so few developers doing it nowadays?In the original Deus Ex, there were so many variables, that even almost a decade after finishing it, I'd see something that I didn't think was possible to achieve in the story!Or take game endings into consideration. Some games indeed have different endings and you have some illusion of choice. You can choose whichever one you like, and it is just a matter of reloading a savegame to choose a different one, instead of having them dynamically permutating as you go through the game and excluding one another. In the latest Sherlock Holmes, even if every case has 5 or 6 different outcomes, each with 2 different variations of endings, so 10 endings per case, you can - upon choosing one ending - choose whichever one you want how many times you please.Then there's the matter of 'RPG elements' where you supposedly have separate trees but over the course of the game you end up having them all and thus eradicating any specialization element and thus replayability. Do you remember how unique were choices that you made in System Shock 2 that basically put you in separate classes with gameplay that varied wildly between them? Now it's all but gone.The very worst thing is, all of the above apply also to a number of modern RPG games.

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Lulu_Lulu

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#51 Lulu_Lulu

Member since 2013 • 19564 Posts

@blue_hazy_basic

Obviously..... And are you telling theres no difference between lock picking in Splinter Cell game and lock picking in an RPG.......

One uses a mechanic, it requires a certain level of skill, the other is a contextual single button press tied to number, which requires a stat/skill check.

Thats a pretty big difference for just semantics. And if lock picking doesn't cut it for you then theres Persuasion in interactive Dialogues like the ones in Fallout and Mass Effect.

And to a lesser extant the samething happens in combat. Where do the stats begin and the mechanics end ?

9 years ago