If NPC text will impose a personality on me, just ditch silent protagonist schtick.

If you're going to impose a specific personality on our characters, just ditch the silent protagonist crap.

Silent protagonists exist so we can imagine our characters the way we want. But if you're going to do the old "NPC repeats what your character just said" trick, either make the protagonist's personality neutral or DON'T DO IT AT ALL.

The New Year's event confirms that all Eorzean adventurers are immature, impatient brats. While that's true of the majority of the player base, let us imagine our characters the way we want.

The dialogue is something like, "Let's get this show on the road, you say?" when he's talking about his country's history. He also repeats a question that I supposedly ask, something like, "What's the point of this helmet?" While I appreciate the cynicism regarding useless event items, especially ugly ones, I don't want this immature, impatient brat personality to continue to be imposed on my character.

Cut it out.

One thing you will eventually learn about rhetorics is that sometimes a speaker can assume a question unasked.

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Originally Posted by Celeblhach

One thing you will eventually learn about rhetorics is that sometimes a speaker can assume a question unasked.

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True.. except that it happens over, and over again throughout the story as well. The NPC's will answer questions that you never asked, or remark back to things that were never said but attributed to you.

I felt FFXIV's story to be ridiculously contrived. Not the least helped by the fact that I was forced to do it to play the game I'd paid for.

The people praising this game for its story must be on acid, it is occasionally well written but the overall feel of it all is awful.

I rather have the "silent protagonist" than a forced personality. Of course the best solution would be to just give players options to pick the answers they want but I guess that'd be asking for too much...

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I rather have the "silent protagonist" than a forced personality. Of course the best solution would be to just give players options to pick the answers they want but I guess that'd be asking for too much...

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That got really dull, really fast in SWTOR.

Woah... I've never even noticed what you're saying.
In my head, they were always assuming what I was thinking or about to say.

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Originally Posted by blowfin

That got really dull, really fast in SWTOR.

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But at least in TOR some options actually affected how your character progressed from that point on: 'dark' and 'light' actions.

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Originally Posted by KraggyKor

But at least in TOR some options actually affected how your character progressed from that point on: 'dark' and 'light' actions.

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If they gave branching dialogue options, I'd prefer it if they left out the whole alignment thing. Just because I really don't like this one NPC, I shouldn't be punished with Evil Karma for telling him that he sucks.

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Originally Posted by blowfin

That got really dull, really fast in SWTOR.

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WTF? how can something with more choice get dull?

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Originally Posted by WhaleBiologist

I felt FFXIV's story to be ridiculously contrived. Not the least helped by the fact that I was forced to do it to play the game I'd paid for.

The people praising this game for its story must be on acid, it is occasionally well written but the overall feel of it all is awful.

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I agree. Story is the worst part of the game. I'm a person who likes making multiple characters (yes even if we have the armory system) but I can't stand going through that damn story multiple times. I can do the dungeons, the leves, whatever else need be to get the levels... but screw the story, man. -__- I wish they would just make it so you could skip the story for any character on the account after doing it once on a single character. Of course I know that's a pipe dream.

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Originally Posted by Reyno

I agree. Story is the worst part of the game. I'm a person who likes making multiple characters (yes even if we have the armory system) but I can't stand going through that damn story multiple times. I can do the dungeons, the leves, whatever else need be to get the levels... but screw the story, man. -__- I wish they would just make it so you could skip the story for any character on the account after doing it once on a single character. Of course I know that's a pipe dream.

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I agree, they should never have tied the dungeons and events to the story in the first place. It's fine to have main-story progression in the dungeons, but don't make unlocking the blasted things as part of the main story.

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Originally Posted by sharazisspecial

WTF? how can something with more choice get dull?

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To give choices requires the developers to take added time to think things through. They don't really do this so the choices generally don't become choices at all. In SWTOR's case, it just became a system where you can either read the three (meaningless) choices, or simply look for the Light/Dark option and choose that instead (regardless of what the story implies).

Instead of getting you involved, it only created pauses in the story (God forbid that story was within a dungeon you already ran 20+ times).

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Originally Posted by Ri_ri

Woah... I've never even noticed what you're saying.
In my head, they were always assuming what I was thinking or about to say.

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Yeah, this. I've read it as the NPCs being so self-centered they're not actually paying any attention to what I'm saying or not saying. Just yammering on however they please. Never felt any of it reflected on my own personality much.

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Originally Posted by Codek

To give choices requires the developers to take added time to think things through. They don't really do this so the choices generally don't become choices at all. In SWTOR's case, it just became a system where you can either read the three (meaningless) choices, or simply look for the Light/Dark option and choose that instead (regardless of what the story implies).

Instead of getting you involved, it only created pauses in the story (God forbid that story was within a dungeon you already ran 20+ times).

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Yea that's the issue with most dialogue tree games, the words don't matter only what alignment they give. If they don't give anything its likely a meaningless choice that might effect one line but is typically ignored anyways.

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They don't really do this so the choices generally don't become choices at all. In SWTOR's case, it just became a system where you can either read the three (meaningless) choices, or simply look for the Light/Dark option and choose that instead (regardless of what the story implies).

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I think when different option gives you the choice either to kill an npc or let them live. Sleep with an npc or not. Flirt or reject an npc. Praise or insult an npc. I don't think thats meaningless. Those are just extremes but generally its JRPGs that don't give you choice in multi-path rpgs. They tend to give you different options which say the same thing in a slightly different way. Western rpg especially bioware try to make your choices meaningful.

If you had the option to sleep with minfillia by choosing the right dialogue options , i don't think you would call it meaningless...

Btw in swtor if you choose dark or light allign options. You don't have to stick to one , a few times you let a npc live, praise them etc. Won't impact your "side" much at all. Especially with the option to repeat dungeons/quest/crafting to boost your "side" points.

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Originally Posted by Ri_ri

Woah... I've never even noticed what you're saying.
In my head, they were always assuming what I was thinking or about to say.

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Yeah, I always figure it's them reading body language or facial expressions, not that I'm actually saying anything.

'cause the other way around makes things kinda awkward. How the hell does Alyx Vance fall in love with Gordon Freeman, who never says a word and never expresses any emotion?

In my opinion, the best use of the silent protagonist element was in Chrono Chross, where when Serge and Lynx switched bodies everyone except Kid was able to tell who was who based on Lynx becoming taciturn.