Not a bar, but plays one on TV

12:00 PM

I mean... it's a complicated game in many ways. Maybe it's the best if you check it out yourself and draw your own conclusions

There's a wide-ranging sense of ideological disappointment going on in the game

Seems like almost everyone's been let down by whoever's been on charge, no matter how revolutionary or friendly or sensible they've sounded like

There's the legacy of a bloody revolution, a bloody reaction, rule by self-proclaimed moralists whose agenda sounds sensible but that still leaves much of your day-to-day life under uncertain and unreliable power structures. psf, these people seem guilty by inactivity.

There's a political alignment tracker, four of them to be exact. Communist, Fascist, Ultraliberal, Moralist. I've ticked the most points in Communist and Ultraliberal so far --- Fascist seems to tick up mainly by strongly anti-communist or racist choices

Moralist seems to tick up by non-committal options

And they seem independent of each other

Anyway. I think I've managed to hash out a part of why I generally dislike CRPGs: it's the whole deal with trying to parse authorial intent from choices and options one gets only superficial information about

and as a result, one occasionally finds themselves committing to things they didn't want to commit to.

trogdor

12:25 PM

yeah

that's definitely an issue with CRPGs

although honestly not only with them either but it's definitely a more common issue with them

kviiri

In Kaiserreich (political fantasy / alt-history strategy wargame with CYOA/CRPG elements) I had unified Southern China under benevolent Federalist rule. Meanwhile the Japan-backed Fengtian government had unified a significant part of the North and summoned my faction to a conference discussing peaceful union. I accepted the invitation, thinking it'd at least not hurt taking the call and hearing them out

. . . turns out accepting the invitation railroads one into accepting.

trogdor

yeah that's,... an odd way to make that work

like

how are you supposed to figure out what their demands are if you can't even agree to talk it out before immediately being forced to choose to accept or not accept?

kviiri

It's a relatively egregious example but that's basically what I worry almost every time I press any dialogue choice

trogdor

oh Mass Effect

they had this whole Paragon Renegade thing, and there were occasionally options to just do a thing that was either Paragon or Renegade

kviiri

I think it's kinda funny because I'm also the most enthusiastic TRPG player in my circle :D OTOH you know I have the same feeling about many TRPGs, that I have to read the GM's mind too much.

trogdor

12:30 PM

problem is you didn't get any warning of what that thing would be

hit a renegade option? you might just yell at someone, but you also might immediately brutally murder them while they are talking

hit a paragon option? well at least you know you won't just murder someone

but you might make promises that you don't actually want to keep

kviiri

Ah yeah, Paragon/Renegade sounds like a fairly straightforward good ol' video game alignment compass x)

trogdor

lol

I didn't mind that it was basically just Nice guy/Jerk

kviiri

One of my personal unfavorite mechanics for being so overused without careful thought.

trogdor

I did mind that,... you literally didn't know in those surprise cases what picking the option would do

if Renegade options always just killed someone or something then at least you would get an idea

but because the options were so,.... variable

it kinda left you with just a random choice to hit a button or not

also the game kinda tried to force you to go hard down either of the only two moral options or it would severely restrict your choices as you got further in the game

so really if you were gunning for one or the other you kinda just had to hit the button every time your choice came up

OR resign yourself to just not doing ANY moral choice stuff at all

XD

and not getting any of the cool abilities/dialog options from those moral choices

I might have found similar issues with Dragon Age if I hadn't been terminally put off of it by,... the Templars and the mages,... thing

It doesn't help that when I watched some of Dragon Age Inquisition the mages were painted in the same light as the templars

X(

I don't honestly understand how Bioware could completely miss how messed up that is

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

12:48 PM

@trogdor But hey writing what you are actually about to do is toooo loooong, people can't understand what a dialogue option does if it doesn't fit into one-two words on a dialog wheeel.

kviiri

My personal pet peeve is when games have a "Good vs Bad" morality slider that you basically interact with by killing badguys for Bad and not-killing badguys for Good.

And then there's the occasional story event whose outcome slides it a bit that way or this way, and you kill or not-kill a few more badguys to balance it out.

trogdor

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica yeah but they had actual dialog trees and at least in those you kinda had a general idea of what you were picking? in the "surprise! press a button to find out what it does!" bits you have at best some visual cues'

and not too much time to figure out what they mean

not my personal favorite

but hey, they do get points for,.. a little bit of creativity?

not like, a lot but some

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

@trogdor On one hand, I side with the mages. On the other, when there are two or more factions in a work of art, and real-life people end up divided roughly in comparable groups, with each group saying 'hey that other faction is messed up, they cannot even be compared as similar!', that seems like a sign that it is a complex topic the truth of which isn't all that simple.

kviiri

@trogdor So wanna hear a story about DS9? I'm thinking about whether to flood it here or Discord and I think this channel'd be maybe less hurt by the collateral damage of a long post :D

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

(The whole mage-vs-templar conflict is, in simple terms, a conflict between freedom of the individual vs. the minimisation of risks by collectivist action, and that's a fascinating topic that significantly divides people IRL.)

@kviiri I'm not so sure. It was advertised as not being the usual good vs. evil, and was trying to be portrayed as by-the-book vs. utilitarian, diplomatic-vs-ruthless, idealistic vs. cynical (in the new sense of the word), and similar things. But in practice that wasn't a consistent usage, and the Renegade often ended up petty at best.

kviiri

12:59 PM

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Hm, I see

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

They're also amusingly Rapport vs. Provoke in FATE terms.

kviiri

I find myself repeatedly somewhat surprised by how much Disco Elysium equates fascism with racism in many places, and then I remember that I've been playing too much TNO and that is indeed a pretty normal point of view

TNO is yet another Political fantasy / alt-history CYOA/CRPG strategy game, and its premise is that Nazi Germany won the second World War. The world is pretty royally screwed and while the game does have some happier, more hopeful paths where the player can repair some of the damage, the overall image is pretty bleak.

Anyway the predominance of right-wing politics means the game has three ideological alignments that are even right of fascism, quite often "fascism" is reserved by the game to "reform evil" leaders who are the least bad characters in their faction.

trogdor

2:04 PM

@kviiri I really need to sleep but when I wake up I would be happy to see what it is on your mind about it XD

kviiri

@trogdor Haha, okay x)

So Quark's cousin Kono has gone on a little expedition and acquired some illicit stolen merchandise from a lower-tech world: cast-iron gear wheels. Since there's not much business for those, he stows his cargo on Deep Space 9 and embarks on a quest to find a buyer. Safer to leave those stolen gears at the station.

Now Quark, he gets suspicious when his larcenous cousin turns up and leaves some "empty containers for safekeeping" in Quark's warehouse. He goes sneaking around and discovers the truth about his cousin's stolen merchandise. His mind starts racing: the stuff is stolen, so Quark i…

So Quark makes his brother a counter-offer: instead of expensive iron pills, what if Quark sold Rom some much, much more affordable gear wheel shaped iron ingots instead? Rom is excited and agrees. Quark goes to the storage and pilfers the gear wheels, handing them to Rom in exchange of an affordable compensation in gold-pressed latinum. Rom takes the gear wheels home to his son, who begins chewing and sucking on them, improving his dietary iron intake and averting a bad case on anemia.

Months pass. Cousin Kono returns to the station, having finally found a buyer. Going to inspect his stol…

"Sorry cousin," Quark says without a hint of remorse. "Rule of Acquisition 713...

it's a Nog eat cog world."

SPArcheon

2:41 PM

@trogdor I already told you, my loyal student. I know, Star Trek has Q.... but you don't need to focus on space stuff to get your daily De Lance dose.... That is what we have Discord for

trogdor

8:50 PM

While Q and Discord are both great characters in their respective shows they are not the main or only reason I watch by a long shot :P

@kviiri you did this all for the opportunity to pun? Bravo XD

trogdor

9:25 PM

@SPArcheon also, Q only even shows up in like, one or maybe 2 episodes of DS9?

trogdor

11:42 PM

@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica I don't disagree with this by the way, but my point is actually that the game itself kinda represents the Templars and the Mages as both fighting for stupid reasons and causing damage and death in the areas they are fighting for no reason

meanwhile they have a whole history of the Templars basically kidnapping and abusing mages to teach them how to "properly do magic in a safe way" and anyone who runs from them or rebels or doesn't do things the way they want get's killed or magicaly lobotomized

it's not about people being able to pick sides so much as,... the game itself missing what seems like obvious context to the conflict itself

IE, I guess if the mages resist or fight the templars in anyway it's wasteful conflict

that implies they should just sit there and take what abuse they get :/

it actually reminds me a bit of the Broken Earth trilogy (Although I don't think Bioware came anywhere even remotely close to handling it as well)

and I'm honestly not here to say that anyone who sided with the Templars in that conflict is some kind of monster or something either, I just think they didn't necessarily read into it the same things I did

Transcript for

Not a bar, but plays one on TV