13 posts were merged into an existing topic: The something to do with religion thread
Anyway, to return to mechanics - the one I dislike the most is personality stats directly affecting a reply in a *choice body. I’ve met it in Fernweh Saga and it annoyed me greatly - apparently, my character, a fairly distant and aloof guy, can’t muster up enough friendliness to actually ask a guy about his grandpa’s dead body without stuttering, bleeting and filling his speech with rows of “…”.
Despite the fact it’s beneficial for him to be friendly when he’s talking to coronary and the phrase I’ve chosen was fairly neutral. You just have to ask someone politely, my dear Chris, why do you suddenly lose your tongue? Have you never interacted with the outside world?
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Not friendily, no. That’s exactly what it means. Your MC has a specific personality and disposition, and, by your own choices, they’re bad at friendliness, which is why those interactions give you options of asking basically the same question with different attitudes. Your MC has no practice at being friendly, they’re bad at being friendly, and when they try to be friendly they come off as not genuine.
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I’m bad at sounding friendly, but I can be perfectly polite, friendly and sincere when I need something. Politeness and friendliness are fairly easy to do, it feels unfair to pigeonhole my poor guy into stuttering and muttering just because he has 61% Aloof.
And even aside from that, it just forces me to pick the same behaviour patterns in each and every situation because otherwise MC will stutter, moan and lose his ability to speak actual words. It gets annoying incredibly quickly when you’re not picking every single sarcastic option, but you’re Sarcastic 56% and your attempts at being genuine keep failing.
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Ah, see, THIS is a different objection, and this one I agree with.
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I don’t see it that much anymore but I hate when being strong and intelligent are mutually exclusive, or when being academically intelligent is the only way smart. Plus I don’t know why buff dudes tend to get stereotyped as dumb when some of them have to learn about anatomy and nutrition.
Lift stones
Eat everything
Read book
Life good
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Now see, I’m a fan of God Eater and the second game probably had the worst promotion making it seem like that MC would have more of a connection to the cast, alas, we got baited and it’s the same old kill kill kill.
Unfortunately a lot of ifs (that I’ve played) have exactly that issue, no substance to the MC outside of fluff choices like customization and deciding branching paths but making the MC feel like they’re part of the cast, part of the world, seems to be more rare than not. And before someone mentions it, no a completely set MC doesn’t fix that issue either if the writing falls flat. I understand that not everyone is looking for the same thing, some people are completely content with a surface level protagonist and would rather spend their time with the stats aspect of the genre. But I do wish more games would put a bit more care into establishing their MCs and building an organic relationship to its cast.
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It’s funny how Monster Hunter 4 did that better in-term of PC’s relevance.
The fight with Gore Magala, the connection with The Caravan even to the higher ranking Hunters like the Ace hunters.
Gore Magala practically revived from death to fight your player character again.
…that came from a game with usually barebones storyline and focused solely on hunting monsters.
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I think we’re getting off topic. How much or how little various religions have affected cultures and taboos doesn’t really matter in the context of story elements.
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@JBento @Havenstone etc.
If you want to continue this discussion, please move it to here. The Disliked story elements thread is not the place for it.
https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/the-something-to-do-with-religion-thread/2024/1099
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Just letting everyone know that I moved the nudity taboo posts as suggested.
Have a good weekend.
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I don’t really like when the MC quickly falls in love with the ROs. It usually feels pretty cheap. I vastly prefer when the the RO and MC have a previous story together, be it platonic or romantic (and this can be one-sided or not, but preferably unfulfilled). If can also work if there are some kind of timeskip in between meeting for the first time and starting to develop feelings, even if you as a player don’t really play those timeskipped weeks/months/years.
That is why one of my favorites ROs off the top of my head is Ortega (Fallen Hero), your character builds up a friendship with them before the game, and they may develop feelings for each other but they never had time to admit what it is before the incident. And then in the game itself, the MC can rebuilt their friendship with them and rekindle their feelings for each other.
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Just seen this, thought it would be interesting to share
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“Comicsgate was right” is an immediate sign that this dude is wrong, and nothing he says is worth listening to.
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I really do need to finish this one. I wanted to play with the idea that things aren’t necessarily love at first sight for the MC and NPCs. I kinda wish there were a lot more games where you can build a friendship and then decide whether or not to take things further or not 
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Though I don’t disagree with you, I think this is, in great part, an inevitable consequence of the medium. A gamebook is a lot of work and a lot of time (especially because it very rarely is the author’s actual job), so things, by necessity, have to work on a compressed timescale.
EDIT: For example, if you check the Wayhaven (still not a drinking game) thread, you can see that there’s plenty of people displeased with the low relationship speed of the A and M romances, and Sera can AFFORD to do that, because she’s fully committed to making it seven books (and also I think, but don’t quote me on that, that it’s her actual job, or at least a considerable source of her income?)
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I’m not convinced that’s necessarily the case. If ROs were written primarily as characters rather than goals, I don’t think it’s always that hard to get a non romantic relationship going and then move to a romantic one later if you choose. I mean it wouldn’t be considered to hard to write a friendship arc with an NPC, so it should be possible to write a friendship with the possibility of more in many games (depending on their focus.)
Where it can be problematic is where there are lots of possible ROs, making it harder to give each a variable meaningful story arc with different options without blowing the length and difficulty tracking the story out. An unfortunate consequence of writers feeling like they have to include lots of ROs to have a viable game means sometimes the RO sections can feel superficial or rushed into.
I must admit, I’m in the camp where I often find it quite disconcerting to annoying to be asked if Im in love with every character I just met, or have every RO in the game throwing themselves at me from the first meeting just because I’m the MC. It can work in dating genre games, but otherwise it kinda nice to have some variation in NPC reactions.
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My take on the whole romance thing is that it just bothers me how a solid 80% of stories focused on romance seem to treat it and sex as the exact same thing, and if you’re not going to have sex with a character, then your only option is to be friends with them and that’s that.
Like… There is a whole spectrum of ways to show one’s affection for another that doesn’t have to involve sucking on each other’s faces or jumping down everyone’s pants, people. Have you heard of this amazing thing called “snuggling up close and enjoying each other’s company?”
I know you meant this as a critique of a double standard, but that’s… actually kind of a legit thing for me. XD
I’m the kind of ace that doesn’t want to see sex, period, because it honest to goodness makes me feel queasy, but I’m perfectly fine with most anything else you choose to throw at me (within reason).
I’ve had a hard time finding the words to express this in the past, but I despise it to no end when I’m focusing my character in one direction, and everybody in the story just will not stop insisting on dragging me in every other direction but the way I’m trying to go.
Like, in the one magic academy CoG (really narrows it down, I know), my character is wholly disinterested in sports and expressed zero desire to join the local sport team. Unfortunately, they wound up being forced to join anyways, because it’s apparently unthinkable to not want to be part of the sports team, let alone not wanting to even play said sport in the first place.
It’s not a mandatory plot point, the story doesn’t ever hinge on you being good at racing sky boats (that’s the sport by the way), and yet you get dragged into it regardless.
Best I could do to make up for it was purposely fudging my own performance in order to be stuck benchwarming while the rest of my team played instead.
Oh my Lord, Rebecca. Don’t worry, I think you’re in pretty firm company on that one. The prevailing opinion of her that I’ve seen (and concur with) is that she’s a strong candidate for a very sarcastic Mother of the Year Award because of just how crap she is at… pretty much everything, being honest. Even with the story trying to jump her up as this big badass veteran agent, it’s just one faux pas after another for her from the moment she first enters the plot.
And yet I’m supposed to feel bad for hating her?
Nah. Pretty sure our relationship being irreparably broken is canon, chief, because I can’t think of a single good reason why I’d want to repair it.
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It doesn’t help that I’ve seen no reason to believe that anybody at the Agency other than the medical staff has any degree of competence whatsoever (which helps explain why the medical staff is so good, I guess?).
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Oh yeah, that fae nurse bro is great, I got no beef with him.
And that dwarf who was putting warding runes on the door, I can respect his work ethic.
(I feel like there’s another one I’m missing but I can’t remember who)
Basically, put the medics and the techs in charge of the agency, and I might have a slightly more positive opinion about the organization as a whole.
Faebio, if you will.
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