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Why is the story so enjoyable to me ?
calranthe
Member UncommonPosts: 359
Had a discussion on teamspeak today trying to figure out the reasons why some of us me including are absolutely loving the VO and storyline and others are not.
After much discussion (20+ people) one of the main reasons seemed to be roleplay, now I am not talking about sandbox purist rp but a different kind of rp, I roleplay as in play the role of my characters in SWTOR, which makes these quests so much more engaging, more enjoyable and part of the journey instead of a rush to end game, Each of my characters has a different background and ideals, different drives, some are close to myself and easy to rp, others like my sith inquisitor, she is a real piece of work and a challenge to play.
I find myself at every quest relating to it from my characters perspective and Bioware have made a storyline that encourages this.
Comments
There are several things happening here, and they are subjective. Some people love it, some don't.
Some find the story and repetitive dialog choices to be boring and simplistic either right away, or after they have been questing for 10-30+ levels. Your character often responds with the same dialog over and over again.
Some find that having all of the quests VO is disruptive to actual gameplay. This is especially true when players of different classes are trying to quest together. It also conflicts with voice comms like Vent.
Some don't like having their story shoved down their throat, and they prefer to make their own story, and see their character the way they want to rather than have it all dictated to them by the story line.
Some people find the VO side-quests to be too much, and it breaks the flow of questing. For example, when you finish a bunch of quests, and you go back to turn in, you spend 10-15 minutes listening to VO content that really doesn't even matter. "Thanks for killing X Rats, you really saved my mother's uncle. Let me tell you how..."
Some don't like the voice that is given to their character because they don't feel like it fits.
I'm sure there are plenty of other things going on, but those are off the top of my head.
I think the VO quests should have been limited to class and epic/story quests, and side quests should be standard. For me no amount of 60-second dialog is going to make 'Kill X Rats' quests more exciting.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Different people different likes, personally every quest I do side quest or otherwise is important because I am playing my role and unlike mass effect, DAO no save game, choices matter.
By that I mean if you are playing a role and staying true to your ideals etc to your chars story then every decision actually matters, a mistake can haunt you a success can be a nights worth of tales in the cantina
How is it a bloody roleplaying? If you're watching a film are you roleplaying? If you're reading a book are you roleplaying? If you're observing a cut-scene and then have to choose a dialogue line out of three, is that the pinnacle of roleplaying as you said in your OP? Incredible how wrongly understood is the term roleplaying.
REALITY CHECK
Yes, it is.
Just because your role is scripted does not make it less role-playing.
I liked the story and the voice overs, enough so that maybe I could put up with the boring execution of the quests (kill x mobs, etc etc)... but this game was marketed as an MMORPG. It's a bad MMORPG but a very good singleplayer game... sadly it costs 60$ and 15$ a month.... way too much for a a single player game.
I will wait until it's cheaper so that I can play through the stories.
..Cake..
Yes in that case I had a fabulous roleplaying experience yesterday when I was watching The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, because apparently, everybody nowadays think that Story-Telling is a synonymum to Roleplaying with cut-scenes as its defining features.
REALITY CHECK
Yes, that happens fairly often when one consider self as ultimately righteous being...
PS: I have read your post history, do not bother explaining.
You're so wrong it's not even funny. Did you have a specific character who you were controlling in The Good, Bad, and the Ugly? Did you get to shape his personality based on choices given to you in the movie?
[Mod Edit] In this game you get to develop your character's personality. Is it able to be completely fleshed out like pen and paper role-playing games? Of course not. That's just the limitation you get from playing an MMO. You NEVER have that much choice. But name me one other game that allows to you develop your character and give him personality, motivations, and morality that is actually built into the storyline. There aren't any that do it to this degree. And guess what? You can still do the old-fashioned /rp thing in this game too, just like you can in other games. Only now, your character has a bit more depth built into the gameplay.
If the story is enjoyable don't analyze it just enjoy!
Personally I also found the story enjoyable but I'm going through multiple play throughs of the lower levels so its not as enjoyable anymore. Trying to focus on just a couple characters now.
To me it's the little things things that make it interesting; a quest giver handing you the reward after you staged a large attack on the enemy faction but suddenly he interupts you to say "Hang on, the Republic is sending damage reports over insecure channels, I can't miss this", and cuts off the conversation to prompt you with the reward screen.
All the little, seemingly insignificant details like that make it very realistic. Personally I think the writing and VO work is top notch in a big chunk of all quests. More mature and realistic than Skyrim, which is more about heroic cliche's, imo.
Also I try to walk a very righteous path and go for strictly light side choices as an imperial operative ... but sometimes .... the character or deeds of npc's piss me off so much that I gladly take the darkside points to get back on them. Decision making like that simply adds another layer to generic questing and turns it into a much more compelling timesink.
Doesn't mean I don't ever spacebar though, if I am in a rush or the convo is very straightforward.
My brand new bloggity blog.
I think that cinematic dialogue-choices are a thing of the past now. There are far better narrative-delivery systems than cutscenes or dialogue-wheels.
Look at games like Bastion, where the story is told by a narrator, but not just talking down on you, but actually commenting, actually -narrating- your experience.
Bastion tells a story without interrupting the gameplay, actually its more reactionary to your gameplay, if you pick something up or make a choice in the world, it is sort of solidified through the narrator.
Its where the gameplay facilitates narrative not the other way around, and thats how it should be for games.
There is actually another prototype game that pioneered this narrative non-linear delivery that I can't rememeber the name of atm...
I guess you are just easy to please mate. Wish it was me
I had been looking forward to this forever but hated every second.
Just enjoy the story if you like it
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I've tried repeatedly, but just can't get into it. I think for me it's mainly the pacing. I don't like to see one cutscene for the story, but then have to wait like 3 hours to see the next because of sidequests, PvP, walking, etc. It basically just feels like a show with TONS of commercials to me
.
But once again, that's me, if you enjoy it, then that's awesome
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I wouldn't go so far as to say that dialog choices are a thing of the past. Bastion's narrator is an awesome system, but you don't really have any choice in the story, you just do pre-determined things and the narrator tells you about it.
There are plenty of games that deliver a great story with dialog, just look at the Witcher 2. The dialog is a MAJOR part of this game because it literally decides where you go for 1/3rd of the game. Yep, an entire 1/3rd of the game (act 2) is branching.
And I loved the dialog in old school RPG games like Planescape Torment...it formed a big part of the experience.
I don't like when dialog choices are trivial though, or pointless. Sometimes I get this feeling in SWTOR. I am sure some of them make a difference, but the vast majority seem to just be filler.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I roll played while reading this compelling story. I played the roll of a fanboi trapped by the expectation of another promise by a AAA title, struggling to self awareness that the game has been weighed and measured and has been found lacking.
I think this is a general staple of (recent?) Bioware games actually.
If you think about it all their recent games (bar Masseffect 1) had massive pacing problems.
DAO - the fucking fade, seriously not one thing would be lost if you would remove that segment from the game.
ME2 - actually just a huge filler between 1 and 3 anyways
Didn't play DA2.
I felt that Bioware always excells at the main story, but the stuff they put in between is either just passable or sometimes plain horrible. They are also horrible world-crafters (narrative-wise) MassEffect only works because it basically amalgamated half of the known SF franchises together into one. I still call it Babylon 5: The Game.
Found the game-prototype I was talking about, the prototype for non-linear narration:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xic6erwZPpY
The Stanley Parable
Check it out, the narrator reacts to the choices you make ingame.
HAH.....I know that one all too well.
I try to play my alts like every other day to burn up their accumulated exp bonus(always park them in a cantina), and even when the bar is depleted I still havent logged.
I have played about 5 hrs already today, and like all but a few minutes was alt play.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Darkside was hard to replay durring OB, like even with different classes because of the life and questing I ended up space barrin afer hitting level 6 on my sith warrior back then, some times I actually wished the side quest were more so like Skyrim I guess were you can talk but you didn't have a cutscene though I guess it'd be hard to have that work in a MMO.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
Actually you do have that much choice in open games. Skyrim, Arcanum, Gothic (to name single player games), or EVE (to name MMORPG) are pure roleplaying experience. The sheer openess of the world and its varialibity shapes your character to a far more greater extent than you shape your character through three dialogue lines. SWTOR is about reading stories insignificant to your character, and then making decisions, which only lead to a different dark/light/companion point gain, whereas in the games I mentioned, the roleplaying allows you to have a totally different gameplay and view on the world.
REALITY CHECK
Its something RPG fans tend to enjoy. Personally, I enjoyed the whole story elements. My issue was at about level 10 I started to just tire of it. It started to lack the flare and seemed much more dule to me. It was still somewhat interesting but it felt so... 'half assed' compared to what I expect in an RPG. I think its due to the limitations of an MMo and the fact that whatever I do really holds little 'effect' on what will happen next. Sure, the story will advance for the main line but it doesn't do anything at all for the world around me.
I love the story also, but it does seem to get watered down a lot, as you progress through the levels.
Personally, I consider roleplaying (in singleplayer) or roleplaying stereotypes (the dirty greedy always drunk dwarf etc) very pointless.
And no, having a story doesnt equal roleplaying. Otherwise tons of shooters etc would suddenly be RPGs.
Story is roleplaying fuel, if you enjoy the story then obviously it helps to get into character. I find the op post really funny (but great to hear) I thought people had forgotton how to use their imaginations, there is hope after all!
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Yes, I agree, story serving as background information for your character is an important part of role playing, however, further on, the word "playing" in the "roleplaying" is greatly reduced in SWTOR. It's more like moving the story forwards and passively observing it. The dialogues do not give you different gameplay experience, they just award you with different dark/light/companion points, and if you turn them down, the story simply stops - so turning it down is like pausing a movie. It's not much of a roleplaying if you're just observing one event after another with some minigames in between (combat).
REALITY CHECK