|
BurritoJustice posted:It's a shame there isn't really a legion companion in New Vegas (I know Raul has his sympathies), whereas going for negative karma and legion rep cuts off Arcade, Boone and Cass.
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2020 06:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 03:15 |
|
|
Ulysses is a weird character who never really worked for me. I'm not sure how you combine his pre-war USA fetish with his legion sympathies. And it kind of hurt that talking to him was the only time the PC is ever really thought of as a "courier" outside of very setup. Like, he gives you Death Stranding style speeches about how you should have thought more about what a courier does as you're sitting there, about to nuke 0-2 super-powers and then teleport back to your mad scientist tower. He seems to flit between thinking deeply about things and totally committing himself to the first thing that pops into his head. Great VA work, though! otoh if he was like about to get enough likes to five-star that settlement when you accidentally (?) nuked it I guess that's the kind of frustration I can understand
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2020 10:55
|
|
|
Uysses was always intended to be a frumentarius, but he would come around to whatever faction you picked
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2020 11:42
|
|
|
For Ulysses having Legion sympathies/idealizing the pre-war America, I think that is easily explained. For one thing, he's ex-Legion. When you're in the Legion, you are shaped mind, body and soul into an instrument of Caesar's will. I imagine that is hard to step out of. Even if you left the Legion some lingering affections or ideals will remain. And two, I get the feeling Ulysses was just a man looking for a cause. I think that's one reason I like him so much. Caesar's vision is horrific but at least he has a vision and that vision has and always will attract some people who just need to fill a hole in their life. In both cases he's romanticizing the past to try and build an "ideal" future. But yeah, I'd have loved if he was both a Companion and a proper Legion supporter. Luckily there's a mod for that, at least the first part.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2020 13:08
|
|
|
The less Ulysses in the game, the better.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2020 13:19
|
|
|
Yeah Ulysses's deal is pretty much "I want to live in the perfect society but all the current societies suck. I want something like the Divide, where things were cool. But the Divide grew up out of a hostile uninhabited area, and for something like it to grow again I'd probably need to recreate those conditions. OwO what's this ☢"
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2020 18:40
|
|
|
BurritoJustice posted:It's a shame there isn't really a legion companion in New Vegas (I know Raul has his sympathies), whereas going for negative karma and legion rep cuts off Arcade, Boone and Cass. Don't look at ED-E's reddit posts.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2020 19:16
|
|
|
Digital Osmosis posted:Ulysses is a weird character who never really worked for me. I'm not sure how you combine his pre-war USA fetish with his legion sympathies. And it kind of hurt that talking to him was the only time the PC is ever really thought of as a "courier" outside of very setup. Like, he gives you Death Stranding style speeches about how you should have thought more about what a courier does as you're sitting there, about to nuke 0-2 super-powers and then teleport back to your mad scientist tower. He seems to flit between thinking deeply about things and totally committing himself to the first thing that pops into his head. Great VA work, though! He doesn't have a "fetish" for it as much as a fascination for symbolism, from what I could see. He's smug about thinking he's better than the NCR and the Legion because they only mimic trappings of the old world while he really understands everything going on. I've never once read Ulysses as a character who's supposed to be a correct genius by the writer. He's pretty obviously a kook who knows how to monologue dramatically.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2020 21:36
|
|
|
It's so dumb when people say that; if he was supposed to be a correct genius then the end of the DLC story would probably not involve defeating him. Like, stories are basically about concepts interacting with each other in the form of characters and setpieces and such. When the plot is about one character beating another, the story is about what that character represents triumphing over what the other one represents. Ulysses's entire role in the story is to be proven inferior to you!
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 00:24
|
|
|
I wouldn't necessarily call the talking Ulysses down route proving him inferior, tho.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 00:37
|
|
|
2house2fly posted:It's so dumb when people say that; if he was supposed to be a correct genius then the end of the DLC story would probably not involve defeating him. Like, stories are basically about concepts interacting with each other in the form of characters and setpieces and such. When the plot is about one character beating another, the story is about what that character represents triumphing over what the other one represents. Ulysses's entire role in the story is to be proven inferior to you! This is a repeated problem with people who hate on Avellone's characters. Whether it's Kreia or Ulysses, the fact the game ends with you proving them wrong somehow equals the game agrees with them and wants us to think they are the sole arbiters of truth and wisdom. When the story is more like Kreia and Ulysses have some good ideas but their overwhelming personal flaws warp their intellect and it is up to you to show them the error of their ways. Sure you can just shoot Ulysses or you can just attack Kreia or you can tell Durance to get lost but all these games very obviously favor the approach where you defeat them philosophically and mentally more than physically. Because they ae in fact wrong. They're smart, they're charismatic and they're wrong.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 00:38
|
|
|
I think what trips up people is that the game doesn’t ever really present an opposing thesis, it’s just a single elaborate presentation of the “wrong” thesis and a voiceless void that is the player character as some sort of empty counterpoint.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 00:58
|
|
|
It was... I guess I'll say ambitious... to try to have a character who pokes holes in your character's ideology in a game which has multiple ideologies to choose from, none of which the player might have thought about or be interested in, on a 4th-DLC budget. Alpha Protocol did a better job because it was able to have specific missions where you do specific things and then flash forward to the villain asking "so why'd you do that" and having multiple in-character responses- the cinematic presentation removes you from the character so there's able to be a distinction between what I would say and what Michael Thorton would say.MariusLecter posted:I wouldn't necessarily call the talking Ulysses down route proving him inferior, tho.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 01:10
|
|
|
I don't think the intent is necessarily to refute the "thesis" of these characters. the deal with Ulysses is he's a sideways critique of the RPG power fantasy: you're the Player Character, the only person with the agency to change the world around them... so much agency, in fact, you changed the world and one obsessive frumentarius without even realising it. Ulysses' beliefs about symbols, national/historical myths etc. aren't really deconstructed or whatever, they're just kinda interesting stepping stones to explore unintended consequences in Fallout (a game that traditionally placed a ton of emphasis on many, varied intentional consequences) similarly the Exile never actually destroys Kreia's ideology with facts and logic - the Exile fights a bunch of Sith and some Jedi and basically does exactly what Kreia wants, including killing her at the end of the game. but Kreia's hatred of the Force/"deconstruction of Star Wars" is maybe overstated. Kreia's philosophy is more accurately the philosophy of roleplaying games: become stronger by killing people, make other people do what you want because they're just NPCs (a concept that has bled over into general alt-right online discourse), do sidequests to level up. it's essentially a satire of RPGs as a genre; Kreia's iconoclasm is because she's the only person who realises she's in a (universe that runs on the same rules as a) video game and incorporates that into her beliefs. in turn when people rage against Kreia for being a dumb evil libertarian Objectivist, what they are truly recognising is the dumb evil libertarian Objectivist strand running through mainstream/D&D-style RPGs, with their leveling up and singular Player Characters and heroic fantasies and so on in that sense then the player doesn't really need to present a "counterpoint", because the character's beliefs aren't actually what's being scrutinised
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 01:56
|
|
|
It's the sort of critique that only really works if you're already knee-deep in the genre and making the specific assumptions that the writer expects you to. Otherwise it comes off as bizarrely presumptive.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 02:18
|
|
|
NikkolasKing posted:This is a repeated problem with people who hate on Avellone's characters. Whether it's Kreia or Ulysses, the fact the game ends with you proving them wrong somehow equals the game agrees with them and wants us to think they are the sole arbiters of truth and wisdom. Durance is projecting his zealousness in really absurd and gross ways because a part of him knows he was betrayed. You can convince him of that -- though it KINDA comes across as the Watcher making a Holmsian logical leap that happens to be true. But his denial of what his Goddess did to him coming out as over the top fervor reads as pretty realistic human psychology to me. Kreia, as far as I can tell, is 100% only about murdering the force. I always took her libertarian sentiment to be just about destabilizing the PC -- doesn't she chide and challenge you if you play BioWare Evil too? Maybe I'm bringing my own reading here but I always took her only actual beliefs to be "kill the force kill it kill it!!!" and I guess "any action or manipulation that ends in the force being murdered is justified." (Also, Kreia Did Nothing Wrong and everything in The Rise of Skywalker proves her right.) Ulysses though, I can see how that same pattern is set up but it doesn't totally work for me. I'm not sure WHAT he cares about. I know that he cares a lot, from the writing and acting... it seems like he cares deeply about symbols of the old world, but also worked for an organization dedicating to overgrowing those symbols. I know he cares deeply about built communities, but only wants to tear down the people trying to build such communities. There's the kind of ambivalent, even paradoxical sentiments I can understand -- like I said, Durance makes psychological sense to me -- but it never quite clicked for me with Ulysses. Maybe if we had a better understanding of what The Divide was like as a community we could see what he saw in it, and could come to understand his motives, but absent that I don't really understand him and his desires at all. 2house2fly posted:It was... I guess I'll say ambitious... to try to have a character who pokes holes in your character's ideology in a game which has multiple ideologies to choose from, none of which the player might have thought about or be interested in, on a 4th-DLC budget. Alpha Protocol did a better job because it was able to have specific missions where you do specific things and then flash forward to the villain asking "so why'd you do that" and having multiple in-character responses- the cinematic presentation removes you from the character so there's able to be a distinction between what I would say and what Michael Thorton would say. also all this
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 02:37
|
|
|
Digital Osmosis posted:Durance is projecting his zealousness in really absurd and gross ways because a part of him knows he was betrayed. You can convince him of that -- though it KINDA comes across as the Watcher making a Holmsian logical leap that happens to be true. But his denial of what his Goddess did to him coming out as over the top fervor reads as pretty realistic human psychology to me. She does indeed have dialogue if you just randomly murder people or do other cartoonishly evil and pointless things. Kreia is a misanthrope and conceited but she isn't stupid or completely stuck in her ways. She wants to challenge the Exile, not create a mindless sycophant. She presents her ideas to the Exile and the Exile is free to make up their mind on if they agree with them or not. I've only played KOTOR 2 through once and in it I mostly played DS and I killed all the Jedi Masters for revenge. How much of what we see of Kreia is her true self and how much was just an act is something we are supposed to ponder but I think her scathing interaction with you when you return to the Jedi Temple after killing all the Masters was her truest self. She has no love for her former peers but she didn't want them dead, at least not that way. She's so incredibly disappointed in you because she wanted to show the Jedi she was right and they were wrong. Killing the Masters proves nothing. Similarly, she gives you opportunities in the final battle to just attack but these are clearly the wrong options and even as a DS Exile I chose instead to try and talk her down. She approves of this, saying "at least you are not a full Sith" or something like that. My reading of Kreia is this: she understand she's a part of the old order, a relic of the useless and wrongheaded Jedi and Sith Orders. She has no future. The future lies with the Exile who transcended the limits of the old ideologies and will build a better future now that both the failed Jedi and Sith ways are expunged. or not. But we don't talk about Revan or TOR here. EDIT: Although it's interesting you call it "BioWare Evil" because I was interested to learn David Gaider of Dragon Age fame wrote the Korriban section of KOTOR 1 which was the best part of KOTOR 1. He created the Sith Code which is about he only claim the Sith have to being more than just one-dimensional cartoon villains. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Sep 27, 2020 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 03:59
|
|
|
The Jedi Masters also end up dead if you play light side: she reveals that by cutting yourself off from the Force the Exile ended up stronger than any of them, and proves it by cutting them off from the Force, the shock of which kills them all instantly. Actually, I'm not sure if you play dark side that you even get the reveal that the Exile cut himself off from the Force to escape from feeling the scale of the death at Malachor. Taking the standard RPG conventions of earning xp and having party members with multiple alignments, and drawing a parallel between that and the mindless yawning hunger of Darth Nihilus blew my young mind back in the day
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 05:45
|
|
|
I mean she sure seemed to want them dead when you reassemble the masters on a light side run. I guess what she really wanted is just the chance to say I told you so. When you're trying to destroy a fundamental force of the universe and possibly kill all lifeforms in the process, you want to at least get the chance to tell somebody whose opinions you value before you push the button. I tried a couple times to dark side in Kotor, but I always lose steam because it just feels bad to be playing a character doing bad things. There's magic in a game giving you choices, but it's best when there's nuanced choices that you can really think about. I think one of my favorite choices in a Bioware game was the Dwarf King in Dragon Age, where you have a reformer who definitely did some sinister poo poo to position himself on the throne against a regressive but innocent claimant. Also if depending on your character origin, one's dating your ma while the other doesn't consider you a person or one framed you for murder. It's neat stuff. Or I guess, New Vegas that gives you two nuanced options with pros and cons, one basically allows you to craft an ending unique to you, and one for the weirdos who just wanna see everything destroyed (unless you believe weird nerd archaic theories of history).
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 06:09
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:I tried a couple times to dark side in Kotor, but I always lose steam because it just feels bad to be playing a character doing bad things. Post/avatar combo
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 07:25
|
|
|
Most of the time I'm so sick of Ulysses' bloviating by the time I get to him that my rebuttal is a .50 BMG right between the eyes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 08:44
|
|
|
Wingnut Ninja posted:Most of the time I'm so sick of Ulysses' bloviating by the time I get to him that my rebuttal is a .50 BMG right between the eyes. Right, wrong, I'm the guy with a 12 gauge shotgun. Until today I didn't even know you could talk him down.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 08:58
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:It's the sort of critique that only really works if you're already knee-deep in the genre and making the specific assumptions that the writer expects you to. well this is how Avellone always operated. the original pitch for Torment was explicitly "no elves or dwarves, no swords, what if dying in an RPG wasn't a game over but in fact progressed the game?" truth is, the game was a reflexive critique of the genre from the start Digital Osmosis posted:There's the kind of ambivalent, even paradoxical sentiments I can understand -- like I said, Durance makes psychological sense to me -- but it never quite clicked for me with Ulysses. Maybe if we had a better understanding of what The Divide was like as a community we could see what he saw in it, and could come to understand his motives, but absent that I don't really understand him and his desires at all. Ulysses is incredibly traumatised by his experience with the Legion and the destruction of his tribe. he desperately wishes to belong to a community while being fundamentally too damaged to connect with one. he despises Caesar but feels powerless to oppose him and, more generally, the world around him it would have been good to see more of what the Divide was like as a community though. all we ever got was tidbits of pre-War life
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 10:39
|
|
|
It's a real shame that Avellone turned out to be a garbagefire person, I did have a soft spot for his writing
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 10:59
|
|
|
First time I encountered an Avellone character I thought they were interesting and well written. Second time I thought "oh, this character's interesting... but this feels kind of familiar?". Third time and on it's "oh, another Avellone character. Of course." The novelty wears off, and I sure didn't have the interest to engage with Durance's "Magran's a whore" rants. The bad man wrote some decent enough stuff, but that still exists and I don't think a lack of him doing more is any great loss.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 13:44
|
|
|
madeintaipei posted:Until today I didn't even know you could talk him down. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 14:18
|
|
|
There's always something new. Veronica: "So what do you know about the Brotherhood?" Me: "They're usually harmless unless you use advanced technology around them." Veronica: "Well that shouldn't be a problem for me. I can't afford anything like that." I haven't even started OWB at this point and am already bursting with implants. At least 20,000 caps went into this body. I'm also pretty sure the Mojave has mutated the ol' DNA a bit, as sausages made of human are now my primary method of healing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 15:50
|
|
|
Avellone's writing seemed to regress a bit, but I think that may have been a result of fame (he was oft considered the only person who grasped writing for videogames) and also the result of having his scope narrowed - KOTOR2 is filled with great characters of different stripes and Avellone did a bulk of writing and design on that one, while Torment definitely has a 'tone' he did everything there and they weren't all the characters you'd expect from him. once other creators at Obsidian got their push he seemed to really like making his vague, angry bitter teacher characters more. I liked Durance though.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 21:38
|
|
|
I feel Avellone's writing is at its best when he's leading a project, sets the tone for the game and all the characters and gets to write a few himself. Otherwise his style kind of clashes with that of the other writers or even his project lead. I think that Ulysses being cut is probably an example of that in action.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 23:09
|
|
|
Utgardaloki posted:Avellone's writing seemed to regress a bit, but I think that may have been a result of fame (he was oft considered the only person who grasped writing for videogames) and also the result of having his scope narrowed - KOTOR2 is filled with great characters of different stripes and Avellone did a bulk of writing and design on that one, while Torment definitely has a 'tone' he did everything there and they weren't all the characters you'd expect from him.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2020 23:46
|
|
|
X_Toad posted:I feel Avellone's writing is at its best when he's leading a project, sets the tone for the game and all the characters and gets to write a few himself. Otherwise his style kind of clashes with that of the other writers or even his project lead. I think that Ulysses being cut is probably an example of that in action. Ulysses was cut because his character VO literally would not fit on the disc. His dialogue node count was something like 2x or 3x higher than any other companion, including Cass, who had the second highest (hers was ~615 IIRC and I think Ulysses was... ~1500??). I genuinely consider "original" Ulysses being cut as a big loss for F:NV overall because Avellone's original critique was right: we needed a Legion-sympathetic companion. During Pillars of Eternity's pre-production I established strict node count limits on companions for logistical and pacing reasons.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 00:58
|
|
|
I kind of consider the length of dialogue to be part of Avellone's style, which is why I said that. Even in PoE I found his companions to be much more verbose than the others.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 08:57
|
|
|
madeintaipei posted:There's always something new. Do you almost always play low-intelligence characters? Veronica is usually the first companion I recruit, since all you need is to pass that intelligence check.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 09:16
|
|
|
X_Toad posted:I kind of consider the length of dialogue to be part of Avellone's style, which is why I said that. Even in PoE I found his companions to be much more verbose than the others. Anyway, Ulysses being cut was a logistical rather than a stylistic decision, though I think there are strong arguments to be made for maintaining a similar range of nodes between companions (which, again, was one of the reasons for the limits in Pillars and Deadfire).
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 18:28
|
|
|
Chamale posted:Do you almost always play low-intelligence characters? Veronica is usually the first companion I recruit, since all you need is to pass that intelligence check. I just thought it was funny how the conversation sounds when my character is more advanced technology than flesh. I usually have to snag Boone first. Legion assassins are easier to survive in the early game with him along and Vulpes must die. I've never built a character with less than 5 INT. That might be the next playthrough. Just have the DLC minus HH and the endgame to go through.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 18:45
|
|
|
A 1 int character has some nice moments. It's a lot more feasible than in the first games where 1 int made you a grunting meat sack; it's more like you're Forrest Gump or Brick from Anchorman. You can still talk to people, you just sometimes astound them with how poorly you understand or misinterpret things.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2020 19:11
|
|
|
rope kid posted:Ulysses was cut because his character VO literally would not fit on the disc. lmao. That I can believe. Good lord he's a wordy bastard.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2020 21:34
|
|
|
Why Ulysses waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
Kaiju Cage Match fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Sep 29, 2020 |
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2020 21:36
|
|
|
Chamale posted:Do you almost always play low-intelligence characters? Veronica is usually the first companion I recruit, since all you need is to pass that intelligence check. Having just played a low INT Courier, the low Intelligence dialogue is: Veronica: Do you know anything about the Brotherhood of Steel? [Intelligence 2/6] I've heard they shoot lasers from their eyes.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2020 21:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 03:15 |
|
|
Woebin posted:F4 really does have excellent companions, though! Except Strong, but that's because Bethesda has never known what to do with mutants beyond "post-apoc orcs". The way Bethesda games write super mutants always seems like a waste of potential. Super mutants are more interesting when they're written as...different to humans. Not evil, or even hostile, just different. Keene is New Vegas is a good example. He's irritable and openly dislikes humans, but is ok to work and co-exist with them, and can be reasoned with, because you know, society. The only really interesting Super Mutant in Bethesda's games is Grahm, because he was one of the very few characters actually in Fallout 76 on launch.
|
|
#
?
Sep 29, 2020 23:22
|
|
