SWTOR on Consequences
I'm not offended, or even really concerned with, the ability to play an evil character, unlike some people. What does concern me is whether there are consequences to those (and other) choices in SWTOR. I've already been thinking on that the last few days. Since I'm not likely to play through an entire class a second time to do things differently, it's difficult to be certain, but I have lingering doubts.
One of the writers, Alexander Freed, said in a recent interview:
Well there is a core storyline, so choices have to eventually weave back into... not the exact same narrative but a similar narrative that ends up dealing with a lot of the same things. You can't make your choices branch into a completely different game. But there are ways to respect the choices while still doing that. It's not hard to change lines of dialogue so long as people eventually come back to the same place they can be having very different experiences in those places.
I've seen numerous small missions where you're faced with a choice along the lines of : bring someone in/kill them, or let them go. In the first case, you get a reward from the quest-giver. In the latter case, you usually get some (possibly lesser) reward for "trying" and end up getting mail with credits a while later from the person you helped get away. I don't know for sure, but I assume the rewards for either path are relatively balanced. This gives a small sense of consequence, but is it really there?
I'm sort of focused on the Agent mission chain at the end of Chapter 1. In very general (and not too spoilery) terms, you've been hunting terrorist cells across worlds and shutting them down and you're finally facing the person behind them. You're in a situation where you're faced with at least three obvious choices (and one that didn't seem so to me):
1) Go dark side and throw in with the baddie.
2) Prioritize neutralizing the bad guy. A lot of people are pretty much guaranteed to die in the meantime, but it might prevent him from pulling something like this again so it could be better in the long run.
3) Prioritize stopping the immediate danger to people. It's heavily implied that the bad guy is probably going to get away if you do this, so whether it serves the greater good is debatable
Now, because of the difficulty roadblock (I've done a little questing elsewhere until I can bring a friend or pull it off myself), I don't know how this is going to go. I've made my choice, but even the immediate fallout has not been revealed to me yet. And given that the overall narrative has to tie back in together, I seriously question whether the decision has the impact that's stated. In current-gen RPGs, I would expect the difference to be in what some NPCs say down the line. But it really should impact whether this villain comes back later and tries again or not, shouldn't it? And if you side with him... the only way I can see that working back into the same primary narrative is if he sends you back "undercover" or something, which lessens the impact of the choice.
I want to see more results of such choices down the line, not just in passing dialogue and not just in the short-tmer. I want helping someone to occasionally mean they help you back later, and to sometimes mean they end up causing trouble. Crushing your enemies utterly should make things easier at some times, but create more resistance at others. Light and Dark choices should not always have good and bad outcomes respectively for players, but they should have some. That's an ideal in my mind, though the reality of branching stories makes it difficult.
I'm still very curious about this, and may have to poke around the web and look up some videos to see other outcomes, if possible. But... I think I'll wait until I see more myself.
One of the writers, Alexander Freed, said in a recent interview:
Well there is a core storyline, so choices have to eventually weave back into... not the exact same narrative but a similar narrative that ends up dealing with a lot of the same things. You can't make your choices branch into a completely different game. But there are ways to respect the choices while still doing that. It's not hard to change lines of dialogue so long as people eventually come back to the same place they can be having very different experiences in those places.
I've seen numerous small missions where you're faced with a choice along the lines of : bring someone in/kill them, or let them go. In the first case, you get a reward from the quest-giver. In the latter case, you usually get some (possibly lesser) reward for "trying" and end up getting mail with credits a while later from the person you helped get away. I don't know for sure, but I assume the rewards for either path are relatively balanced. This gives a small sense of consequence, but is it really there?
I'm sort of focused on the Agent mission chain at the end of Chapter 1. In very general (and not too spoilery) terms, you've been hunting terrorist cells across worlds and shutting them down and you're finally facing the person behind them. You're in a situation where you're faced with at least three obvious choices (and one that didn't seem so to me):
1) Go dark side and throw in with the baddie.
2) Prioritize neutralizing the bad guy. A lot of people are pretty much guaranteed to die in the meantime, but it might prevent him from pulling something like this again so it could be better in the long run.
3) Prioritize stopping the immediate danger to people. It's heavily implied that the bad guy is probably going to get away if you do this, so whether it serves the greater good is debatable
Now, because of the difficulty roadblock (I've done a little questing elsewhere until I can bring a friend or pull it off myself), I don't know how this is going to go. I've made my choice, but even the immediate fallout has not been revealed to me yet. And given that the overall narrative has to tie back in together, I seriously question whether the decision has the impact that's stated. In current-gen RPGs, I would expect the difference to be in what some NPCs say down the line. But it really should impact whether this villain comes back later and tries again or not, shouldn't it? And if you side with him... the only way I can see that working back into the same primary narrative is if he sends you back "undercover" or something, which lessens the impact of the choice.
I want to see more results of such choices down the line, not just in passing dialogue and not just in the short-tmer. I want helping someone to occasionally mean they help you back later, and to sometimes mean they end up causing trouble. Crushing your enemies utterly should make things easier at some times, but create more resistance at others. Light and Dark choices should not always have good and bad outcomes respectively for players, but they should have some. That's an ideal in my mind, though the reality of branching stories makes it difficult.
I'm still very curious about this, and may have to poke around the web and look up some videos to see other outcomes, if possible. But... I think I'll wait until I see more myself.
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