I don't know if anyone around here plays ELEX, but that isn't really important. This should be easy enough to understand regardless, so feel free to read even if you don't play the game. That said, let's get into it: I reached a city run by, let's say, Faction A. The guard at the gate said that due to supply issues, they weren't letting anyone else into the city. Luckily, some guys from Faction B were hanging around outside, and they helpfully contributed a counterfeit ID to solve my dilemma. With this ID, I could enter the city. The guard at the gate didn't notice anything off (apart from the fact that a person who had just been asking about IDs suddenly had one, funnily enough) .. So it was a good counterfeit, indeed. Of course, at this point I had the option of turning these guys in and proudly proclaiming my ID was a fake. .. Why the fuck would I do that, though? Those guys had just helped me out, so I wasn't about to sell them up the river. ... and how would I get into the city if I ratted myself out, too!? So I go on in, no problems. I get in and find out that Faction C is trying to get Faction D kicked out with a falsified eye-witness account of them supposedly doing something bad. The supposed eye-witness himself is saying he basically has no idea what he saw and it's just a buddy of his that's making a big deal about things because of sheer prejudice and hate. So being an upstanding citizen, I convince him to go talk to Faction A and tell them his true version of events, so Faction D doesn't get shoved out without reason. I'm starting to feel pretty good about myself, until I get to my next order of business: In exchange for that fake ID, the Faction B guys outside want me to deliver another fake ID to one of their friends in the city. When I get there, this guy in-my-face bluntly asks if I'm "against" or "for" Faction A, and gets really upset when I tell him I think they might be religious nuts, but are otherwise pretty cool dudes who even opened their city up to offer shelter to dickheads like him, no questions asked. Given his weird rebellious attitude, I started to get suspicious of these guys and I turned to my good old friend Google for answers. It turns out that soon Faction B will be starting a little uprising against Faction A. Faction C, being otherwise pretty cool guys when they're not acting all whiny and prejudiced, will stand up and defend the city alongside Faction A. .. All good so far, I'm thinking. I'll just work against these guys a bit where I can.... and then I see that Faction D, those poor misunderstood bastards, will actually join the uprising alongside Faction B. .. I'm thinking.. WHAT THE FUCK, GUYS. I JUST HELPED YOU OUT. ... Yeah, no, doesn't matter. In fact, I should have sat back and watched them get kicked out on their asses, because that's the happiest ending I'm gonna get to this whole farce. So for things to turn out the way I'd like here, I need to reload to an earlier save - I have one that will work, three hours back, and BE A DICK TO EVERYONE. The cool bros that give me a fake ID? Yeah, gotta turn those fuckers in posthaste. The mistreated Faction D? Yeah, fuck those guys, out on their asses ASAP. ... I mean, jesus christ. For a good ending, I have to do the wrong thing. Damn game. At least give me a little warning! Spoiler: Enough with the Faction 'A', shit, give me names The Abessa Conflict. Clerics, Outlaws, Berserkers, Separatists, in that order.
In most games the more wrong your choices are, the more likely they're the good thing to do. I remember playing star wars the old republic and when you play jedi side the good choices are always to do evil and when you played the sith side all the good choices were to good rather than evil. So in most games it's always the opposite that pays off.
Haha, not everything is what it seems. Makes me want to play the game. Good guys using despicable means to achieve justice Cool Bros selling ID are tied into much deeper criminal activities.
The purpose of this post was to rant right? What am I supposed to respond? Anyway I guess, yeah, that happens a lot in games. I feel you man.
So basically you're pissy that a game accurately portrayed the very human condition that people lie, backstab, manipulate facts, and don't appreciate compassion? And that because you spent all of 10 minutes helping out some folks from another faction you expected them to blindly follow your moral route? And to top that off, you expected the people who provided you with a fake ID to circumvent lawful authority to be the good guys?
So you're complaining that the game gave you choices that had consequences you didn't fully understand, now rather than dealing with the ramifications of your actions, you're literally going to go 3 hours back so you can get the "good" ending so you can be the hero? It sounds like this is a good rpg with realistic and ambiguous morality, and you sound like you want to watch a movie, not play an rpg.
Once I get ELEX I planned to just kill everything in my way while going from Conan the Barbarian to Future Super Soldier.
The problem with ELEX is that there's no way to see the effects you're decisions are going to have or how they balance against the rest of the game. There are no moral markers or reputation signs for you to gauge with. In Real Life, relationships are always on a personal level, and very rarely do people feel naturally included to how things affect the group. In games where that is the focus, it's really hard for us (the player) to make those decisions because we just don't know. Would making Decision A grant a better outcome or bonus than Decision B? No clue, thus the decision is really hard to do.
Yeah, basically. I mean there's a pretty big difference between forging fake IDs and a fucking armed uprising. I didn't expect one to suddenly become the other. I thought they were more along the lines of petty crooks. Nothing wrong with a bit of petty crime here and there. Especially when they'd done me a favor. The other faction I helped out was a group that NEEDED to be in this city. They were basically deserters from an army, and on the run from said army. They needed shelter, and the city offered it. The army they deserted from was pretty hated, so there was nothing weird about others trying to falsely accuse them and drive them out. In fact, that's to be expected. What's not to be expected is that these idiots would be willing to risk their shelter in the city by joining an armed uprising, for fuck's sake. I mean it's not like I blindly helped them without thinking through it at all. Ideally I'd actually just live with the consequences of my actions. That said, that's in an ideal world where I have the time and interest to play through 60~100 hour long games multiple times to see multiple slightly-different endings instead of just aiming for the one I want to begin with. ... and it's not about 'being the hero' so much as actually being somewhat immersed in the world and not wanting to see the slaughter and destruction of a city of pretty decent guys. Because, uh, fuck that?
well . . . in the past in the age where sensei isn't known and wide spread yet. . . . gamers spend weeks just to get the ending theh wanted. . . why? because no walkthroughs . . . and pure mapping by paper, ahahahahaha
They still do, actually. This game is too new. If you check my spoiler, you can get the name of this entire series of events and every faction involved. If you google it, however, you won't find much information on it. Just some chatter back and forth on consequences and some things people tried to see different results. Nothing really comprehensive. If you want to play blind, playing new games is the way to go.
it is a comon theme in games with multiple endings, the player will be less likely to get the 'true ending'. forcing the player to replay the game, providing some kind of replay value with minimal effort on the devs part.
Eh. There's not so much a true ending. The multiple endings are all legit. In some cases, a player may actually want to see this city destroyed or controlled by another faction. The game has toooooooooooooooooons of choices like this with far-reaching consequences. In a way, they're the entire point of the game.
There was a big discussion about a similar situation when it came to the Mass Effect series. The Paragon/Renegade system gave players a scale they could gauge themselves and their actions upon that actually felt like they had real-world consequences to it. At the same time, the Developers commented that such things made them feel restricted because of the 'morality' of such choices. Everyone dreams of being a hero, after all, which isn't realistic. Nor being a straight up villain, for that matter. But as we saw with Mass Effect: Andromeda, lacking that sort of gauge takes out part of the guide posts for the story. When in pure writing, choices can have far reaching consequences because such can be written out and explained; and yet in a game, without a scale or a gauge, such things are much harder to spot because games focus on being on the same personal level as in Real Life. Humans by nature are not inclined to thinking about the group in that way. Choices are personal, often driven by point-in-time snap decisions; especially when involving benefits. Just like in xainxia novels, benefits are king. Now, on a different scale, like city building games, it takes the personal aspect out of it and thus we gauge everything through bars and graphs that shows incomes and expenditures. This is the way we naturally expect such concepts to be presented as. ELEX has none of those, which makes it very rough to deal with even without the moral part.