{"id":50383,"date":"2020-07-18T17:17:07","date_gmt":"2020-07-18T21:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=50383"},"modified":"2020-07-18T18:04:58","modified_gmt":"2020-07-18T22:04:58","slug":"hypothetical-me4-partying-like-its-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=50383","title":{"rendered":"Hypothetical ME4: Partying Like It’s 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last entry covered the pop-up religions of a hypothetical Mass Effect 4<\/em>. We don’t want them to only exist in the background, or in codex entries and tie-in novels. They would – hopefully – be woven into the experience of playing the game, and the best way to do this is through character quests.<\/p>\n

By “character quest” I mean one that’s centered around a party member and isn’t part of the game’s primary campaign. I’ve thought for years that the character quest is one of the most underutilized plays in the RPG playbook. They both create a deeper connection between the player and their party members and connect those party members to the setting. Anyone who’s played the Mass Effect<\/em> series probably cares about the genophage largely because of Mordin and Wrex, or the Geth-Quarian conflict because of Tali and Legion. I suspect that one of the reasons Mass Effect 2<\/em> was so successful was because it had so many character quests – by runtime, they’re the bulk of the game.<\/p>\n

They’re also a muscle that Bioware still exercises. The most recent entries in the Dragon Age<\/em> and Mass Effect<\/em> franchises (Inquisition<\/em> and Andromeda<\/em>, respectively) were certainly flawed, but they both had decent characters that I usually found myself liking by the final credits. As I’ve said earlier in this series, parts of the Bioware formula still work, and this series seeks to focus on the (relatively) simple and doable.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If we are going to follow the Bioware formula, shortly after the tutorial\/kiddie pool area the player’s party will be crashed by two characters: one who does magic (or biotics\/jedi stuff\/whatever) and one who doesn’t. Think Bastila and Carth in KOTOR<\/em>, Morrigan and Alistair in Dragon Age: Origins<\/em>, and Kaidan and Ashley in Mass Effect<\/em>. This combination has several benefits. The most immediate mechanical one is that, regardless of what class\/build they choose, the player isn’t saddled with an unbalanced party.<\/p>\n

Ever want to make an RPG? Put concept art in the loading screens. It's a no-brainer if you ask me.<\/div>
Ever want to make an RPG? Put concept art in the loading screens. It's a no-brainer if you ask me.<\/div><\/p>\n

But the mechanical contrast is never the only one. Usually there are personality contrasts as well. One might be jokier or more outgoing (Carth, Alistair, Ashley) while the other is more private or intense (Bastila, Morrigan, Kaidan). Other contrasts include their attitudes towards authority (Alistair believes in the system somewhat, Morrigan is skeptical), religion (Ashley is openly religious, Kaidan is either not religious or keeps it private), or the player themselves (in Andromeda, Liam is eager to make friends while Cora – initially at least – nurses professional resentment).<\/p>\n

There’s one combination in particular that I think is particularly well done: Alistair and Morrigan of Dragon Age: Origins<\/em>. Not only is there contrast in personality (Alistair is the wisecracker, Morrigan the reserved, mysterious one), they also have origin stories and family connections that factor into the plot later. Having these two with you from the beginning grounds aspects of the setting in something familiar and personal.<\/p>\n

A mass relay. Spoiler alert: it's going to figure in my pretend ME4 main quest.<\/div>
A mass relay. Spoiler alert: it's going to figure in my pretend ME4 main quest.<\/div><\/p>\n

With those two in mind, I’m going to try and design an “Alistair” and a “Morrigan” for a hypothetical Mass Effect 4<\/em>. For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to assume that both are human, though they don’t have to be. For names I used the Mass Effect<\/em> name generator at fantasynamegenerators.com<\/a> and picked what I thought were the two names that had the most natural gravitas: Elton Goatley and Dagny Bigford. These two character templates are not meant as explicit recommendations but rather as an example of how the two characters might contrast each other.<\/p>\n

Elton Goatley, who we’ll just call “Elton<\/strong>,” is the biotic of the pair. In these pairings it’s more common to have the male half be the snarky half, so for the sake of variety we’re going to make Elton more of a Kaidan-type. We’re also going to make Elton the more spiritual of the two – he’s going to be an adherent of one of the setting’s newly-constructed religions. In keeping with his character, he considers his faith a private and personal matter, but over the course of the game you can get him to open up if you talk to him enough.<\/p>\n

Dagny Bigford, who we’ll just call “Dagny<\/strong>,” is Elton’s opposite in most ways. She prefers shooting and punching things to casting space magic at them, and cracking raunchy jokes to brooding silently in a corner. She’s not naturally inclined towards religion or spirituality, and may even be hostile to its periodic excesses. But she also has doubts and fears of her own, which she’ll only talk about with someone she trusts (i.e., the player).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even as Elton and Dagny contrast each other, they should contrast themselves. For instance, every so often (but not too often) have Elton crack wise, and every so often (but not too often) have Dagny have an introspective or vulnerable moment. They should also be hostile\/skeptical of each other during the first third of the game, more cordial by the second, and friends who recognize each other’s good qualities by the third. (Dragon Age 2<\/em>\u00a0did this especially well with the characters of Isabela and Aveline.)<\/p>\n

Of course, these won’t be the only two characters, just the first two. Characters – and there attendant quests – are going to be main source of content in this game, in keeping with Mass Effect 2<\/em> as a rough template to follow. We’ll cover additional characters in the next entry, as well as their roles in the story.<\/p>\n

(I realize that this was a relatively short entry – I’ve been busy with other projects, which I hope to share more about soon. But I haven’t forgotten about this one either. More to come.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last entry covered the pop-up religions of a hypothetical Mass Effect 4. We don’t want them to only exist in the background, or in codex entries and tie-in novels. They would – hopefully – be woven into the experience of playing the game, and the best way to do this is through character quests. By […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[508],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mass-effect"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50383"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50386,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50383\/revisions\/50386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}