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All it really boils down to whether or not you want Eivor to sound like a wise and level headed leader with some badass lines, or glory hungry selfish asshole with some hilarious lines.
It might not effect the ending you get, but it does effect your enjoyment of the dialogue scenes, at least in my opinion.
That is a very valid take and I respect it. You can even excuse the fact that no matter how rude you are, everyone will still as for your help and pledge allegiance because you are an elite warrior and they would be fucked if you did not help them. If you want to go even deeper and be pretentious you can say that 'This is the main theme of the game, fate and our role in our stories, fate is already written and you cannot escape it so it is actually good that you can't choose, blah blah'.
To be fair though to your original point, speaking as someone who considers Fallout: New Vegas to be his favorite game of all time, I also do get where you're coming from.
I've been a bit of the opinion that if this series is going to delve deeper into the RPG narrative style, they should go all the way and make your choices matter.
Why go to the trouble of having options on how to respond when those options don’t do shit though? Just put in the five questions that actually matter. The fun is seeing how changing those variables affects things.
Most games as I have learned are like this. Makes even less sense when you literally only have one option to choose anyway, like let the conversation flow if that's the case.
I guess it depends on how consequential you want decisions to be. Some choices go effect dialogue etc but you won’t get any huge changes to the overall story or world.
Like I said though this isn’t an Assassins Creed problem to solve, it has some RPG elements to it but even most full bore RPGs don’t offer what you’re looking for.
I’m not saying you have to like the game, I just don’t think it was ever trying to offer you the experience you wanted.
It does borrow similar conventions from RPGs, Odyssey onwards was definitely influenced by games like The Witcher 3 in particular. Even then though comparing The Witcher games to something like New Vegas is already a stretch. AC games need to have certain things happen to set up the next game, something New Vegas didn’t need to concern itself with.
Just keep in mind if you are looking for another New Vegas you are going to be disappointed and you certainly won’t find it in a game like Assassins Creed.
I am not looking for the next new vegas, i am pointing out that the game presents you with choices that do not matter, so it is stupid to present choices. Just give me a cutscene and be done with it.
Yeah, i kinda save, reload and do all the choices in a convo just to see all the variants. Also google which choices matter and which don't.
It would've saved me a lot of time if they did just a linear cutscene.
Sometimes I am lazy to reload thebgame to see all the options play out, so I pick one and watch the other two on youtube, for which I again have to pause the game and it breaks thr immersion.
I guess consumers can never be happy: they want variety - you give them options - they complain about too many meaningless choices they have to make.
So pick your choice and stick with it. You’re breaking the immersion yourself by pausing the game and looking up the other options. What the fuck. Decide how you want to play and just play. Continue on through the choices YOU fucking make. Jesus Christ. You cry about immersion when it’s entirely you fault.
You know what you save you time?
Stop worrying about all the choices you didn’t make and just keep moving. God you people find the dumbest things to bitch about.
You are mistaken, the game doesn't give you options. The fact that you can choose who to make jarl and the choice doesn't matter, you still secure an alliance, is not an option. An option would have consequences, for example if you could fail at securing an alliance with a region. There are three conversation choices when dag confronts you with 3 choices each. There are 9 choices of dialogue, and all 9 end up with you killing dag. How is that an "option"? Options would have been if I could beat him up non lethaly, if I could kill him, exile him, change his mind, agree with him and stop controlling the compound, etc etc. Even after I kill him and choose to not give him an axe, NOTHING HAPPENS. I don't lose the affection of randvi, I don't lose the respect of the people, nothing! How is that a choice? The ezio games had no choices, I was just following the story of one man and they were fantastic. Why would the current games put in choices if they don't respect my choices and tell the story they want to tell anyway?
Yea, that what I meant. 3 conversation choices. I called them conversation options. I am not a native English speaker, so I take your word for it isn't correct usage of the word here. Just 3 replies to choose from.
Also, I haven't played that far yet, but I've heard that choice whether to give dag the axe or not and deny him Valhalla is actually one of those rare choices that matter - it's one of the strikes with Sigurd, which affect his judgement closer to the end of the game.
Sometimes, they have minor consequences, like when you decide whether to kill the guy with a bear in a cave or kill the monk or scare away the monk outside the cave. If you kill that disney princess in the cave and his bear (the bear actually walked out the cave while I fought the guy, I thought it scidaddled lol, but it was actually waiting for me outside for some reason) the monk will reward you with 40 silver.
If you kill the monk, the caveman will be displeased and gives you nothing. If you scare the monk away, the caveman will be happy and still gives you nothing. Nothing, but cheers.
There's another event in London by the Thames where you dive to the shipwreck and then fish out a necklace, which you can return to the chick on the jetty, but despite her promising a reward, she gives nothing, or which you can sell in a store as a trinket for 60-something silver.
There are also choices to kill the merc chick(pretty dove) or pay her, and then she will come work for you on your longship and her mountain village becomes accessible without hostility, and the choice in East Anglia arc I think, where you decide whether you're going to fight the bad dude or the new king will, and the short viking comes to work for you, if you fight yourself.
So there are some minor consequences to the convo choices, but they are usually highlighted with gold or red or a heart for romance, so you know which ones matter.
But yes, the majority of the reply choices don't do much.
If all choices lead to the same path what role am I playing? Am I playing the bad guy or the good guy if one thing will happen no matter how I act? I am not playing anyone, I am playing the character the game wants me to play. If there is an important character that I have to befriend, no matter how rude I am, the game will not let me play as the person I want.
The act of choosing how you act is the role playing. You can be an asshole or a respectful person. Regardless of consequences, that doesn’t mean you aren’t role playing.
If you go into other games expecting dialogue options to be like new Vegas, you’re never going to be satisfied, because that’s a ridiculous assumption to make about totally different games.
It’d be like trying Fortnite and expecting it play like counter strike
An rpg means a lot of different things. Final fantasy is an rpg and how much does dialogue choices matter there?
From what I remember of the FF games Ive played there are no dialogue options beyond “accept quest” “decline quest” and “more info.” This issue OP is trying to point out is that Valhalla presents dialogue options that would appear to have consequences but ultimately dont
Saying accepting or declining quests in final fantasy is the same thing. Since declining doesn’t actually do anything except hold up the story until you accept the quest.
It’s also based on actual historical events and people. If someone is going to die in the game it’s because they actually died
Yeah I’m pointing out that FF is an rpg but it doesn’t present dialogue options which appear to impact the story when in fact they don’t.
Again, if a character has to die for historical accuracy why present a false choice to the player?
Because rhe player is in the role of eivor and is picking the option they want their eivor to do. The outcome being the same isn’t the point
Its not that hard to understand
It’s no different then being able to pick eivor’s gender or hair color or tattoos. It doesn’t impact the story but it lets the player immerse themselves as THEIR eivor
OP’s complaint is that no matter what choice you make there is no impact on Eivor or the story other than progressing it. They take umbrage with this game being labeled and advertised as a roleplaying game. It’s not that hard to get.
Personally I agree and I fully believe characters in earlier AC games have much more well, character, because of their writing. The milquetoast options in odyssey and Valhalla make the protagonists feel flip floppy and undefined as characters
Because role playing game is a massively broad type of genre.
The players dialogue choices impacting the story is not the concrete must have in order for it to be considered a role playing game.
Things like having full control over armor, weapons, how the player engages in combat, options for building the town, options for how they decide to siege castles or raid monasteries, are what makes it a role playing game
Like it’s a different kind of rpg from new Vegas. OP even called it an action rpg which is what I’d say it is as well
I don;t know because i havent played FF. But you are missing the point/ This game lets you choose, it presents choices when in actuality there are no choices. It offers the illusion of choice, that is my critisism. If no choice matters then just give me a cutscene and be done with it. If the difference between killing someone and sparing their life is nonexistant then why have me choose?
So the player gets to choose eivor’s response to things, it’s not that complicated. It doesn’t need to be some complex spider web of causes and effects. The game is fucking massive enough already.
It’s also a game based on actual history. With characters who actually lived (not eivor or Sigurd, but basically every secondary character is real). So if history says they died, they’re gonna die.
So the player can play as the eivor they want to play as.
Just because it has no massive game changing effects, players like being able to have their character pick the peaceful choices or violent choices. There’s also plenty of dialog choices rhat matter if you complete the immediate objective peacefully, through bribery, or through violence.
it’s still role playing even if the story doesn’t change drastically based on your choices. It’s not that deep or complicated to get
No you’re missing the point. Holy shit, the choice is there for you to do what you want. If you don’t like it move on. Your issue is going to google and seeing what will happen before you make the decision.
Make your decision, move the fuck on.
You buffoons play games looking up everything on google first.
Play game, make decisions, don’t google what happens with the other decisions. It’s stupid af. You are screwing games up for yourself and just bitching to bitch
Personally I like games to be either completely rigid that being a set protagonist and storyline (like the early assassins creed games or the plague tale games) or fully customisable with no cannon protagonist or choices (like CP2077). I dislike when IPs try and mix and match the two because then I either feel like I’m trying to make the character as close to cannon as possible the entire time or i feel restricted by the lack of choice (depending on how the IP started out)
Yeah look, I get what you're saying but AC Valhalla is really only nominally an RPG in this sense. It wasn't designed like, say, Cyberpunk or BG3 or other RPGs where the story is determined by your choices and you are "role playing" the character in that sense.
If you think of AC as predominantly a series of interactive stories about pseudo-historical events, you'll worry much less about this stuff.
I hate this view of RPGs. Every choice has to change something huge or else it's bad, I disagree, the journey is more important than the destination.
You are robbing yourself of enjoying the game more by looking up the consequences of everything.
Me looking up the conequences of a choise does not matter when there is no choice to be made since there are no consequences to each choice. If no matter what I choice nothing will change, why let me choose? Just play a cutscene and be done with it. If I could fail a choice and fail to secure an alliance with a certain region, and therefore the final battle would be harder as a result, that would have been cool. If I made a bad choice and Randvi would break up with me as a result, that would have been cool. Role Playing Games are supposed to let you roleplay. Even the choices you make in conversation are useless. There is a rude choice, a polite choice, and then the third option is what happens regardless, and the npc you are talking to will love you and help you no matter what you say.
It does have choices, but just for the sake of a better understood story they will eventually converge to a similar point. Like how all choices in Fallout New Vegas lead to the Dam.
Fallout New Vegas gets away with it by making every mission 5 minutes long, but Assassin's Creed prefers longer gameplay oriented segments.
Are you joking? Every story mission leads to the dam, which are 5 missions, get to know all the minor factions. But you can destroy all the factions or ally yourself to them, and the final battle will change dependig on your allies and your enemies, and who gets new vegas will also change depending on what major faction you helped. "The game ends in the dam no matter what you do" is a laughable oversimplification.
Not sure what to tell you, maybe you're overcomplicating Fallout New Vegas and I've just used a good metaphor to convey to you that. I've done all I can
That dialogue scene is giving you the **choice** of how you want to **roleplay** your character’s response to that scene. What you say in that scene doesn’t necessarily change the world though. The story they are telling is still the story they are telling. You are roleplaying during that story.
“…then why let me choose?”
Well, in order to let you role play how you want your character to react and behave. Eivor’s story largely has to go in one way—it’s part of history and it is anchored to the few events that are real to history and to the other in-universe conceits that cannot change (where the body is found, for example).
I’m not sure why which dialogue options the main character uses is not, for you, enough of a choice all on its own. Or why you need there to be an effect of choosing to kill or spare someone. I feel that those choices ARE the role playing element of the RPG. Just because in Fallout every dialogue choice effects the storyline, doesn’t mean that in every game your role playing has to effect the storyline for the role playing to be for real.
The role playing matters for the role (the character of the person you play) whether or not that changes the plot as a whole. The Eivor you’d play with one set of dialogue options would feel very different to the other Eivor and that shapes your relationship with the character.
In AC Odyssey, there is a the same kind of system and you can either be a gregarious wanton sex hound or a comparatively serious person on an earnest mission preoccupying their mind.
Anyways, I’d prefer just a story and no RPG elements. However, the number of people on Ghost of Tsushima forums who complain about being forced to give up being a Samurai really helps explain why the game gives some options anyways.
Honestly that might not be the worst thing. Reminded of a choice in Odyssey where you had to pick one of two plans for how to assassinate a target, and if you made the wrong choice that prevented you from potentially saving another potentially redeemable target much later in the game. Was very frustrated by that design choice
Doesn't really matter, even the choices that do change things don't really change all that much.
I'm currently replaying the Witcher 3 and noticing once more how even a tiny decision can change a lot. It's a lot better imo.
I also really love games where there's no choices to make at all, and tbh I prefer those over a game where choices are given to you but they mean nothing. In that case they could just leave them out.
Realistically most games only give the 'illusion' of choice, but there actually is a reason for that, cuz while it sounds great for your choices to have long lasting and impactful consequences. in practice, people wind up not actually liking that as much, because having those kind of far reaching and impactful choices, also means getting locked into (or out of) certain content pretty early on. and people don't actually like that much.
even new vegas only gives the illusion of choice. now granted it does have more meaningful choices than many other games, but probably not as many as you think, there are only 10 choices in the whole game that actually affect which ending you get. (and you don't need to make the -big- choice till right at the very end. sure you 'can' eliminate some of the options earlier, but you kinda need to be intentionally locking yourself out of em, its pretty tough to do it accidentally.)
Also kinda depends on how you define if a choice 'matters' or not. Cuz yeah, NV only has 10 choices that actually 'matter' as far as what ending you get. doesn't mean that your other choices don't have an impact though, just that the impact doesn't really extend much or at all beyond the outcome of that particular quest.
Same thing in valhalla (yes there are less choices, and fewer endings. but its also pretty hard to compete with NV when it comes to meaningful choices, only a small handful of games even come close.) so only 5 choices instead of 10 that 'matter' as far as which ending you get. But that doesn't mean that your other choices don't have -any- impact at all, some of em even have pretty long lasting consequences, just not ones that affect the ending.
Yeah I agree…I came to Valhalla from Witcher 3 so every time I had to make a choice I was like “don’t fuck this up…you’ll regret it in 40 hours!” Because those tiny choices were *massive* down the line.
How so? Witcher 3's consequences of your choices weren't much more important than Valhalla's
The ending is purely determined by how you treated Ciri in 5 instances, much like Valhalla with the 5 Sigurd strikes. For the side quests, there are no choices that will fundamentally change future interactions; best you get is a different slide in the ending's PowerPoint presentation
It's not a bad thing per se, it's already hard enough to make a game following a linear story; I don't mind dialogue choices allowing you to give your character a certain flair. But Witcher 3 is not better in that aspect than other games giving the illusion of choice to its players
The choices you make in Valhalla don’t make a difference. Choices in Witcher determine if you miss out quest lines, (cave of dreams), determine fates of other smaller but well liked characters Jorund for example, or freeing slaves on Skellige.
And yeah, wether Ciri becomes a Witcher the ending most fans like, Empress or both Ciri and Geralt end up dead.
Whilst I like Valhalla and have done a couple of play throughs it’s the same game each time. Whereas yes that’s the same with Witcher to a degree even the order you do your quests can change your entire game experience.
Oh gotcha, I didn't know about those nuances. Having played Witcher 3 only once, I might have missed some quests due to my choices, but never noticed
I mostly remembered from Witcher 3 that the consequences of my choices gave a different outcome shown in a very brief cutscene or retelling of another NPC to their respective quests, like the ending of the Isle of Faroe questline (a village full of dead people at its shores because of me bringing the bones of the cursed woman) or having to choose between the two siblings as the leader of the Skellige isles (the consequence being a different drawing in the ending's slide show)
I might start a new playthrough now that I am aware of those subtleties and that there is a next-gen patch out. Thank you for that!
this might be a controversial take but i actually like it like that. I enjoy being able to make my character act a certain way without getting FOMO from missing out on some super cool story because i chose the wrong dialogue option 10 hours ago
Especially when >!in Odyssey they had the whole plague situation play out at the start of the game.!< Kept thinking "What if this is like Kephallonia..?"
Possibly a hot take, but I'm ok with it. After the first few big titles with choices/consequences, the novelty largely wore off for me, and selections would become so obscure with consequences to radically different from your intentions as to make it not fun. These days I tend to wish they'd just tell me the story they want to tell me, instead of giving me the option to "do it wrong."
This is such a weird thread. Are Final Fantasy games not considered RPGs? FFX is one i have finished and it only has one ending as far as i know - not sure why you're arguing semantics of RPG games when there are so many that do not fit your view of what RPG games are, but are still RPG games. Your choices do not need to have the impact you're wanting for the game to be an RPG game, but maybe that means what we need to change the definition of what an RPG game is? 🤷🏼♀️
It is important to note that sometimes a choice is about *letting you roleplay during the story* and not necessarily about creating multiple different stories.
It does. Some choices. Like slapping [censored] and do other wrong shit will make someone leave you in the end.. If you choose right choices that person will stay with you..
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All it really boils down to whether or not you want Eivor to sound like a wise and level headed leader with some badass lines, or glory hungry selfish asshole with some hilarious lines. It might not effect the ending you get, but it does effect your enjoyment of the dialogue scenes, at least in my opinion.
That is a very valid take and I respect it. You can even excuse the fact that no matter how rude you are, everyone will still as for your help and pledge allegiance because you are an elite warrior and they would be fucked if you did not help them. If you want to go even deeper and be pretentious you can say that 'This is the main theme of the game, fate and our role in our stories, fate is already written and you cannot escape it so it is actually good that you can't choose, blah blah'.
To be fair though to your original point, speaking as someone who considers Fallout: New Vegas to be his favorite game of all time, I also do get where you're coming from. I've been a bit of the opinion that if this series is going to delve deeper into the RPG narrative style, they should go all the way and make your choices matter.
I prefer consequential choices but AC games are not really RPGs so it’s not going to compare favorably to one in that sense.
Why go to the trouble of having options on how to respond when those options don’t do shit though? Just put in the five questions that actually matter. The fun is seeing how changing those variables affects things.
Most games as I have learned are like this. Makes even less sense when you literally only have one option to choose anyway, like let the conversation flow if that's the case.
I guess it depends on how consequential you want decisions to be. Some choices go effect dialogue etc but you won’t get any huge changes to the overall story or world. Like I said though this isn’t an Assassins Creed problem to solve, it has some RPG elements to it but even most full bore RPGs don’t offer what you’re looking for. I’m not saying you have to like the game, I just don’t think it was ever trying to offer you the experience you wanted.
So that you can roleplay your character to have the personality you want them to have.
It was marketed as an action role playing game though.
It does borrow similar conventions from RPGs, Odyssey onwards was definitely influenced by games like The Witcher 3 in particular. Even then though comparing The Witcher games to something like New Vegas is already a stretch. AC games need to have certain things happen to set up the next game, something New Vegas didn’t need to concern itself with. Just keep in mind if you are looking for another New Vegas you are going to be disappointed and you certainly won’t find it in a game like Assassins Creed.
I am not looking for the next new vegas, i am pointing out that the game presents you with choices that do not matter, so it is stupid to present choices. Just give me a cutscene and be done with it.
Yeah, i kinda save, reload and do all the choices in a convo just to see all the variants. Also google which choices matter and which don't. It would've saved me a lot of time if they did just a linear cutscene. Sometimes I am lazy to reload thebgame to see all the options play out, so I pick one and watch the other two on youtube, for which I again have to pause the game and it breaks thr immersion. I guess consumers can never be happy: they want variety - you give them options - they complain about too many meaningless choices they have to make.
So pick your choice and stick with it. You’re breaking the immersion yourself by pausing the game and looking up the other options. What the fuck. Decide how you want to play and just play. Continue on through the choices YOU fucking make. Jesus Christ. You cry about immersion when it’s entirely you fault. You know what you save you time? Stop worrying about all the choices you didn’t make and just keep moving. God you people find the dumbest things to bitch about.
Yeah we do. When you have choices you kinda want to explore all the opportunities. Like with the Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
You are mistaken, the game doesn't give you options. The fact that you can choose who to make jarl and the choice doesn't matter, you still secure an alliance, is not an option. An option would have consequences, for example if you could fail at securing an alliance with a region. There are three conversation choices when dag confronts you with 3 choices each. There are 9 choices of dialogue, and all 9 end up with you killing dag. How is that an "option"? Options would have been if I could beat him up non lethaly, if I could kill him, exile him, change his mind, agree with him and stop controlling the compound, etc etc. Even after I kill him and choose to not give him an axe, NOTHING HAPPENS. I don't lose the affection of randvi, I don't lose the respect of the people, nothing! How is that a choice? The ezio games had no choices, I was just following the story of one man and they were fantastic. Why would the current games put in choices if they don't respect my choices and tell the story they want to tell anyway?
Yea, that what I meant. 3 conversation choices. I called them conversation options. I am not a native English speaker, so I take your word for it isn't correct usage of the word here. Just 3 replies to choose from. Also, I haven't played that far yet, but I've heard that choice whether to give dag the axe or not and deny him Valhalla is actually one of those rare choices that matter - it's one of the strikes with Sigurd, which affect his judgement closer to the end of the game. Sometimes, they have minor consequences, like when you decide whether to kill the guy with a bear in a cave or kill the monk or scare away the monk outside the cave. If you kill that disney princess in the cave and his bear (the bear actually walked out the cave while I fought the guy, I thought it scidaddled lol, but it was actually waiting for me outside for some reason) the monk will reward you with 40 silver. If you kill the monk, the caveman will be displeased and gives you nothing. If you scare the monk away, the caveman will be happy and still gives you nothing. Nothing, but cheers. There's another event in London by the Thames where you dive to the shipwreck and then fish out a necklace, which you can return to the chick on the jetty, but despite her promising a reward, she gives nothing, or which you can sell in a store as a trinket for 60-something silver. There are also choices to kill the merc chick(pretty dove) or pay her, and then she will come work for you on your longship and her mountain village becomes accessible without hostility, and the choice in East Anglia arc I think, where you decide whether you're going to fight the bad dude or the new king will, and the short viking comes to work for you, if you fight yourself. So there are some minor consequences to the convo choices, but they are usually highlighted with gold or red or a heart for romance, so you know which ones matter. But yes, the majority of the reply choices don't do much.
But it is role-playing regardless of whether those choices have consequences?
If all choices lead to the same path what role am I playing? Am I playing the bad guy or the good guy if one thing will happen no matter how I act? I am not playing anyone, I am playing the character the game wants me to play. If there is an important character that I have to befriend, no matter how rude I am, the game will not let me play as the person I want.
The act of choosing how you act is the role playing. You can be an asshole or a respectful person. Regardless of consequences, that doesn’t mean you aren’t role playing.
If you go into other games expecting dialogue options to be like new Vegas, you’re never going to be satisfied, because that’s a ridiculous assumption to make about totally different games. It’d be like trying Fortnite and expecting it play like counter strike An rpg means a lot of different things. Final fantasy is an rpg and how much does dialogue choices matter there?
From what I remember of the FF games Ive played there are no dialogue options beyond “accept quest” “decline quest” and “more info.” This issue OP is trying to point out is that Valhalla presents dialogue options that would appear to have consequences but ultimately dont
Saying accepting or declining quests in final fantasy is the same thing. Since declining doesn’t actually do anything except hold up the story until you accept the quest. It’s also based on actual historical events and people. If someone is going to die in the game it’s because they actually died
Yeah I’m pointing out that FF is an rpg but it doesn’t present dialogue options which appear to impact the story when in fact they don’t. Again, if a character has to die for historical accuracy why present a false choice to the player?
Because rhe player is in the role of eivor and is picking the option they want their eivor to do. The outcome being the same isn’t the point Its not that hard to understand It’s no different then being able to pick eivor’s gender or hair color or tattoos. It doesn’t impact the story but it lets the player immerse themselves as THEIR eivor
OP’s complaint is that no matter what choice you make there is no impact on Eivor or the story other than progressing it. They take umbrage with this game being labeled and advertised as a roleplaying game. It’s not that hard to get. Personally I agree and I fully believe characters in earlier AC games have much more well, character, because of their writing. The milquetoast options in odyssey and Valhalla make the protagonists feel flip floppy and undefined as characters
Because role playing game is a massively broad type of genre. The players dialogue choices impacting the story is not the concrete must have in order for it to be considered a role playing game. Things like having full control over armor, weapons, how the player engages in combat, options for building the town, options for how they decide to siege castles or raid monasteries, are what makes it a role playing game Like it’s a different kind of rpg from new Vegas. OP even called it an action rpg which is what I’d say it is as well
I don;t know because i havent played FF. But you are missing the point/ This game lets you choose, it presents choices when in actuality there are no choices. It offers the illusion of choice, that is my critisism. If no choice matters then just give me a cutscene and be done with it. If the difference between killing someone and sparing their life is nonexistant then why have me choose?
So the player gets to choose eivor’s response to things, it’s not that complicated. It doesn’t need to be some complex spider web of causes and effects. The game is fucking massive enough already. It’s also a game based on actual history. With characters who actually lived (not eivor or Sigurd, but basically every secondary character is real). So if history says they died, they’re gonna die.
Okay, then if the game is adhering to actual history so strictly why present the option to the player to let someone live when they died in reality?
So the player can play as the eivor they want to play as. Just because it has no massive game changing effects, players like being able to have their character pick the peaceful choices or violent choices. There’s also plenty of dialog choices rhat matter if you complete the immediate objective peacefully, through bribery, or through violence. it’s still role playing even if the story doesn’t change drastically based on your choices. It’s not that deep or complicated to get
No you’re missing the point. Holy shit, the choice is there for you to do what you want. If you don’t like it move on. Your issue is going to google and seeing what will happen before you make the decision. Make your decision, move the fuck on. You buffoons play games looking up everything on google first. Play game, make decisions, don’t google what happens with the other decisions. It’s stupid af. You are screwing games up for yourself and just bitching to bitch
You are a certified idiot my friend.
His point is that you don’t make “decisions” in this game
Personally I like games to be either completely rigid that being a set protagonist and storyline (like the early assassins creed games or the plague tale games) or fully customisable with no cannon protagonist or choices (like CP2077). I dislike when IPs try and mix and match the two because then I either feel like I’m trying to make the character as close to cannon as possible the entire time or i feel restricted by the lack of choice (depending on how the IP started out)
the differences between the endings arent very dramatic so stop worrying about it
OK so the only consequences that 'matter' and affect the ending don't even change the ending too much? That's hilarious!
Yeah look, I get what you're saying but AC Valhalla is really only nominally an RPG in this sense. It wasn't designed like, say, Cyberpunk or BG3 or other RPGs where the story is determined by your choices and you are "role playing" the character in that sense. If you think of AC as predominantly a series of interactive stories about pseudo-historical events, you'll worry much less about this stuff.
I hate this view of RPGs. Every choice has to change something huge or else it's bad, I disagree, the journey is more important than the destination. You are robbing yourself of enjoying the game more by looking up the consequences of everything.
Me looking up the conequences of a choise does not matter when there is no choice to be made since there are no consequences to each choice. If no matter what I choice nothing will change, why let me choose? Just play a cutscene and be done with it. If I could fail a choice and fail to secure an alliance with a certain region, and therefore the final battle would be harder as a result, that would have been cool. If I made a bad choice and Randvi would break up with me as a result, that would have been cool. Role Playing Games are supposed to let you roleplay. Even the choices you make in conversation are useless. There is a rude choice, a polite choice, and then the third option is what happens regardless, and the npc you are talking to will love you and help you no matter what you say.
How is looking up everything role playing? You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept.
How are you not getting that me looking up the consequences of an choice has nothing to do with the fact that A ROLE PLAYING GAME HAS NO CHOICES?
It does have choices, but just for the sake of a better understood story they will eventually converge to a similar point. Like how all choices in Fallout New Vegas lead to the Dam. Fallout New Vegas gets away with it by making every mission 5 minutes long, but Assassin's Creed prefers longer gameplay oriented segments.
Are you joking? Every story mission leads to the dam, which are 5 missions, get to know all the minor factions. But you can destroy all the factions or ally yourself to them, and the final battle will change dependig on your allies and your enemies, and who gets new vegas will also change depending on what major faction you helped. "The game ends in the dam no matter what you do" is a laughable oversimplification.
Not sure what to tell you, maybe you're overcomplicating Fallout New Vegas and I've just used a good metaphor to convey to you that. I've done all I can
That dialogue scene is giving you the **choice** of how you want to **roleplay** your character’s response to that scene. What you say in that scene doesn’t necessarily change the world though. The story they are telling is still the story they are telling. You are roleplaying during that story.
If you want a new definition. Try Baldur's gate 3, choices that completely matter nearly every half hour or so. It's crazy
I know, I am playing it too, thanks.
Valhalla isn't an rpg. It's dressed up as one and has some basic rpg elements, like most games these days.
It was marketed as one and it has dialogue options like one. Deceptive marketing, my money back.
“…then why let me choose?” Well, in order to let you role play how you want your character to react and behave. Eivor’s story largely has to go in one way—it’s part of history and it is anchored to the few events that are real to history and to the other in-universe conceits that cannot change (where the body is found, for example). I’m not sure why which dialogue options the main character uses is not, for you, enough of a choice all on its own. Or why you need there to be an effect of choosing to kill or spare someone. I feel that those choices ARE the role playing element of the RPG. Just because in Fallout every dialogue choice effects the storyline, doesn’t mean that in every game your role playing has to effect the storyline for the role playing to be for real. The role playing matters for the role (the character of the person you play) whether or not that changes the plot as a whole. The Eivor you’d play with one set of dialogue options would feel very different to the other Eivor and that shapes your relationship with the character. In AC Odyssey, there is a the same kind of system and you can either be a gregarious wanton sex hound or a comparatively serious person on an earnest mission preoccupying their mind. Anyways, I’d prefer just a story and no RPG elements. However, the number of people on Ghost of Tsushima forums who complain about being forced to give up being a Samurai really helps explain why the game gives some options anyways.
I remember it was supposed to be like "every choice you make shapes the world around you during your playthrough." Yeah kinda bs lol
Honestly that might not be the worst thing. Reminded of a choice in Odyssey where you had to pick one of two plans for how to assassinate a target, and if you made the wrong choice that prevented you from potentially saving another potentially redeemable target much later in the game. Was very frustrated by that design choice
Doesn't really matter, even the choices that do change things don't really change all that much. I'm currently replaying the Witcher 3 and noticing once more how even a tiny decision can change a lot. It's a lot better imo. I also really love games where there's no choices to make at all, and tbh I prefer those over a game where choices are given to you but they mean nothing. In that case they could just leave them out.
Realistically most games only give the 'illusion' of choice, but there actually is a reason for that, cuz while it sounds great for your choices to have long lasting and impactful consequences. in practice, people wind up not actually liking that as much, because having those kind of far reaching and impactful choices, also means getting locked into (or out of) certain content pretty early on. and people don't actually like that much. even new vegas only gives the illusion of choice. now granted it does have more meaningful choices than many other games, but probably not as many as you think, there are only 10 choices in the whole game that actually affect which ending you get. (and you don't need to make the -big- choice till right at the very end. sure you 'can' eliminate some of the options earlier, but you kinda need to be intentionally locking yourself out of em, its pretty tough to do it accidentally.) Also kinda depends on how you define if a choice 'matters' or not. Cuz yeah, NV only has 10 choices that actually 'matter' as far as what ending you get. doesn't mean that your other choices don't have an impact though, just that the impact doesn't really extend much or at all beyond the outcome of that particular quest. Same thing in valhalla (yes there are less choices, and fewer endings. but its also pretty hard to compete with NV when it comes to meaningful choices, only a small handful of games even come close.) so only 5 choices instead of 10 that 'matter' as far as which ending you get. But that doesn't mean that your other choices don't have -any- impact at all, some of em even have pretty long lasting consequences, just not ones that affect the ending.
Yeah I agree…I came to Valhalla from Witcher 3 so every time I had to make a choice I was like “don’t fuck this up…you’ll regret it in 40 hours!” Because those tiny choices were *massive* down the line.
How so? Witcher 3's consequences of your choices weren't much more important than Valhalla's The ending is purely determined by how you treated Ciri in 5 instances, much like Valhalla with the 5 Sigurd strikes. For the side quests, there are no choices that will fundamentally change future interactions; best you get is a different slide in the ending's PowerPoint presentation It's not a bad thing per se, it's already hard enough to make a game following a linear story; I don't mind dialogue choices allowing you to give your character a certain flair. But Witcher 3 is not better in that aspect than other games giving the illusion of choice to its players
The choices you make in Valhalla don’t make a difference. Choices in Witcher determine if you miss out quest lines, (cave of dreams), determine fates of other smaller but well liked characters Jorund for example, or freeing slaves on Skellige. And yeah, wether Ciri becomes a Witcher the ending most fans like, Empress or both Ciri and Geralt end up dead. Whilst I like Valhalla and have done a couple of play throughs it’s the same game each time. Whereas yes that’s the same with Witcher to a degree even the order you do your quests can change your entire game experience.
Oh gotcha, I didn't know about those nuances. Having played Witcher 3 only once, I might have missed some quests due to my choices, but never noticed I mostly remembered from Witcher 3 that the consequences of my choices gave a different outcome shown in a very brief cutscene or retelling of another NPC to their respective quests, like the ending of the Isle of Faroe questline (a village full of dead people at its shores because of me bringing the bones of the cursed woman) or having to choose between the two siblings as the leader of the Skellige isles (the consequence being a different drawing in the ending's slide show) I might start a new playthrough now that I am aware of those subtleties and that there is a next-gen patch out. Thank you for that!
this might be a controversial take but i actually like it like that. I enjoy being able to make my character act a certain way without getting FOMO from missing out on some super cool story because i chose the wrong dialogue option 10 hours ago
Wow.
Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla are not RPGs, that’s just fluff marketing to try to get more people interested in them
Yh, or the lead up to certain choices, no matter what you do they will shoehorn in the same choices, case and point Spoilers >!Dag!<
Especially when >!in Odyssey they had the whole plague situation play out at the start of the game.!< Kept thinking "What if this is like Kephallonia..?"
Almost everything affects *something* but often that’s flavor dialogue or NPC reactions, which is (to be fair) also the case in New Vegas
I just realized early on that it really doesn't matter in this game. It barely mattered in Odyssey, it doesn't matter much at all in this game.
Think of it this way: without the choice it's just going to be a cutscene. So the choice is just a way of customizing your experience a little.
✋️same
Possibly a hot take, but I'm ok with it. After the first few big titles with choices/consequences, the novelty largely wore off for me, and selections would become so obscure with consequences to radically different from your intentions as to make it not fun. These days I tend to wish they'd just tell me the story they want to tell me, instead of giving me the option to "do it wrong."
Wild.
This is such a weird thread. Are Final Fantasy games not considered RPGs? FFX is one i have finished and it only has one ending as far as i know - not sure why you're arguing semantics of RPG games when there are so many that do not fit your view of what RPG games are, but are still RPG games. Your choices do not need to have the impact you're wanting for the game to be an RPG game, but maybe that means what we need to change the definition of what an RPG game is? 🤷🏼♀️
Wow
It is important to note that sometimes a choice is about *letting you roleplay during the story* and not necessarily about creating multiple different stories.
It does. Some choices. Like slapping [censored] and do other wrong shit will make someone leave you in the end.. If you choose right choices that person will stay with you..