| sundin13 said: Well written good sir. That was a brilliant read and it sums up my feelings quite well (although with a little less severity on my side). I really liked that the game gave you three choices, with both the extremes being "bad end" and the neutral path being "good", despite the immediate assumption that order=good. However, this becomes a problem if you are someone like me who power games everything to a fault. For a large part of my playthrough, whenever a decision came up I would think "okay, I probably need x amount of points in chaos/order to become neutral again" and make my choice accordingly, sometimes against what I personally would do. Additionally, if I recall correctly, there were times when I wished there was a neutral option as both options seemed like they sucked. This whole things was too transparent and it makes me wish that I was a spectator in the world instead of a key player. However, that sentiment goes against the strength of video games and leaves me at a loss for how to solve this problem. They already did right by making the morality bar invisible, but I suppose the problem was that even though the bar was invisible, the choices were still transparent. Better writing would likely get you past that (although I can't guarantee that I wouldn't just cheat my way through it anyways). Even still, your opinions on the neutral path are interesting. I went in knowing that it would add 10 hours of fluff to my playthrough and because of that, I wanted to get neutral even more. While some of the quests were frustrating, I still found that my time spent in the world was quite fun and the payoff of the good ending was worth it to me. Overall, I think that the problems with the game are present in a lot of games, and morality in games is something we really need to talk about as an industry. Systems like in Mass Effect are quite frankly terrible, and while I think SMTIV takes one step towards the right path, it still stumbles and falls into the same pitfalls. Additionally, SMTIV brings up a lot of problems I have with my own playstyle, which constantly limits my immersion in games. I'm not sure if that is my fault as a player for making decisions based on what would benefit me most in game, or the game's fault for not pulling me in enough to make a choice based on who I want the character to be, but I would love for a game to rip me away from my habits and give "different endings" instead of "good/bad" endings. Paper's Please is one game that did that and I love it for it. It was able to get me invested enough in the game to not know how I should react with every choice, and it made each choice feel real and organic instead of phony and binary. And finally..."Comething"....great typo |
My problem with the extra 11 hours was mostly how misleading it was. It was basically forcing you to be a completionist in order to get the best ending, but what was worst is that for someone like me was that by the time I realized that I didn't want the neutral route, I was locked into it. It felt like I was doing chores for 11 hours, and the game was a a stand still where pretty much nothing progressed but the Nozomi line of quests, which is the only thing that kept me sane throughout the whole thing. The reward for completing something like that should be something like amazing armor, or a really good demon unlock or something. It shouldn't be the requirement to complete the game for anyone.
As for the choices, I truly feel like the simple act of disconnecting Walter and Jonathan to the choices you make, on top of not triggering a "choice" icon whenever one is presented would have been a giant step in keeping them ambiguous. Like I said, some of the choices can be seen differently by different people, while others might not appear to be choices at all until after they've been made. In real life, you don't have someone shouting "Choice!" whenever you have a choice to make. You don't have a little devil and angel on your shoulders trying to tell you to be bad or good. I don't see why games should be any different. It just felt... clumbsy, in a game that had so much grace in other moments, like the Tokyo reveal.
"Comething" lol great catch. Thanks!
