I recently bought Mass Effect, from Steam’s last Weekend Deal. I’ve been wanting to buy this for a while now, and I did think about it when EA finally released their activation limit-free version to UK residents. But I also wanted Mirror’s Edge at the same time, the discount was only 10% and I had been wanting to play Mirror’s Edge more, so I decided to get that one and wait for the Christmas holiday sales to get Mass Effect. Fortunately I haven’t had to wait that long for this better deal to arrive.
So far I’ve been having a lot of fun, it’s been a while since I’ve played a good RPG. It feels familiar, there is much in common with the KOTOR games, but there are quite a few subtleties that make the experience different. It’s one of these I want to write about today, with a more general gaming focus.
Going back to the original Baldur’s Gate, all Bioware RPGs I can remember playing have given you a numbered list of conversation options. Mass Effect does things differently though, possibly in a console friendly move they’ve used a radial selector, with various conversation options tagging off. It’s interesting, but a little too fiddly. Now that I have been playing a while I can use it effectively, but I haven’t quite gotten used to it. What I am more interested in, are the options given. In other games you are given a full text list of things you can have your character to say, but in Mass Effect it’s shortened, focusing on the motivation rather than what is actually said. Have a look at the following example:
These could be proper lines, they’d be a bit small but would work. However this is just the surface, once you select one of them the view pans to your character who delivers a longer version of the line. In their smaller form they make it much easier to work out the intended motivation, in a more verbose statement the actual point might only be apparent when you reach the end of the line. From this selection you can tell what mood the full lines are going be, the first is a friendly response, the second is curt but not unfriendly and the bottom decidedly anti-social. There are more complicated choices you have to make throughout the game, this one just addresses the point better.
Now it’s possible they only designed it this way to save space, but I think it’s actually a good way of doing things, giving these contracted options. It leaves you in control of your characters path, but still allows you to experience the story unfolding.
It also stops you from reading too much into the options, something I personally have done in the past, particularly with the KOTOR games. There can only be a small number of storyline paths, otherwise the story becomes confusing and difficult to navigate, so ultimately these options will generalise, using a phrase you might not associate with a particular motivation.
Mass Effects implementation isn’t perfect, some of the spoken sections feel like a generic mish-mash of several of the options. I haven’t gone through all the options of a conversation, this is just something I’ve picked up from hearing the response, but several times I have thought ‘That’s what I thought the other option would say’. For example, two choices of ‘Thank You’, and ‘Good-bye’ would have the player say: ‘I’ve got to go now, thank you.’ whichever you chose. Now it’s quite possible there are subtle differences between what is actually said, but it does take away some of the feeling of choice. But as an idea, it’s a good example.
By only giving the gist of what your character will say, you don’t constantly see what you are missing. Different forks in the storyline, characters and information you hadn’t considered relevant before, when you choose an option you are choosing a line of questioning, where this brings you out is up to the story. Rather than wishing you said something else, you wonder what would have been revealed if you’d asked a different question. They’re both very similar, but there is a subtle difference. It’s quite possible this has been used before in other games, but this is the first time I remember encountering it, definitely the first one in which I’ve noticed it.
There are benefits to having the lines in full, one reason is it fleshes out the options more, you know exactly what you’re selecting when you make a choice. With this system there is always an element of uncertainty. It also helps give you an idea of what is coming next, whether this is good or bad depends on the situation and your personal views. The main reason you have the full text options in games such as KOTOR series though, is that your character does not repeat the lines.
There are two reasons I can see for this; one, it cuts down the amount of voice recordings required. Now in this day of multi-terabyte hard disks, space is no longer a major concern, paying voice talent remains expensive though, that’s why you often here the same voice performing different roles. Some people find it off-putting when characters don’t speak to you, but the player’s character often remains silent and since that is usually the largest single role voicing it could be very expensive, especially when you start adding male\female versions and possibly multiple voices per gender.
The second reason is that by not voicing the player’s representation, it allows many more different types of character. Adding a voice can force a personality onto the character, rather than being exactly what the player imagines. In Mass Effect, despite having several differing classes, the background choices are all very similar. So the constricted choice doesn’t matter so much, but in more open games it could all to easily restrict the choice.
It was like that in KOTOR and in a lot of other RPGs too, there are some like The Elder Scrolls series and Baldur’s Gate that have a story that allows for any character type, but most are closely bound to a storyline creating character boundaries even if it allows some freedom of choice. Actually in The Elder Scrolls, I preferred Morrowind’s conversations over Oblivion’s. It was nice having someone talk to you, but using all text allows a lot more freedom. More people can say more things, and it allows more detail. Then there was the issue of people sounding to similar, and *shudders* the beggars changing voice mid-conversation. One question is, would this system work as well if the character responded in text?
So it’s not an idea that fits every game, but in the cases where it works I would like to see more implementations of it. If the game is going to give the player a lot of freedom, then the traditional way using text is best, however I feel those that are bound to a storyline should use this system of motivational dialogue. It helps engross you in the story, speeds up the pace of conversations to a more realistic level, and allows for greater surprises.
