In Oblivion, if you so much as killed another NPC outside of combat, you had every single town guard in the entire world on your ass. It didn't matter if you committed the murder in the middle of the night in a small dark shack in the middle of an uninhabited forest. Somehow, the guards knew what was up and you ended up on the run for the entire rest of the game.
That's not entirely true, though it often looked like it. There was an invisible stat for NPCs called "Responsibility", and the higher the "Responsibility" (100-ish for (most) guards, very high for shopkeepers, average for townspeople, very low to nonexistent for thieves, bandits, and skooma addicts) the more likely they were to manage to report your crime, even if there was no one around to see it. Maybe they wrote your name on the wall with their blood after you left, I dunno
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Heh, thanks, I felt compelled to explain it but you beat me to the punch.
Also, iirc, guards in towns didn't care so much if you committed a crime in a different town (or at least for me), but one irritating thing about Morrowind was the fact that even though the guards weren't actively trying to arrest you or chase you or whatever, if you committed a crime then went to talk to them, you'd get the generic arrest dialogue first and foremost. It made me feel like my character was terrible at hiding the fact that he committed a crime and was so guilty that he just HAD to tell someone.
In regards to playing evil in games, I'm so over it. Game developers barely, if ever, do it right for the player character (although NPCs and companions may have the evil down pat). Instead of being an evil character with personality, you turn into a generic, destructive jerkass.
I adore Terry Pratchett, and have turned into a dribbling fan-girl every time I've been in his presence. Also, I own the whole set. Including the one that came out on Monday. It's ok to read them out of order as long as a)you can put each of the story lines in order in your head (technology advances, people change, etc. etc.), and b) you remember that in the first three books, the characters hadn't really been developed totally or settled into their proper personalities (or bodies) yet.
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That's not entirely true, though it often looked like it. There was an invisible stat for NPCs called "Responsibility", and the higher the "Responsibility" (100-ish for (most) guards, very high for shopkeepers, average for townspeople, very low to nonexistent for thieves, bandits, and skooma addicts) the more likely they were to manage to report your crime, even if there was no one around to see it. Maybe they wrote your name on the wall with their blood after you left, I dunno ( ... )
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Also, iirc, guards in towns didn't care so much if you committed a crime in a different town (or at least for me), but one irritating thing about Morrowind was the fact that even though the guards weren't actively trying to arrest you or chase you or whatever, if you committed a crime then went to talk to them, you'd get the generic arrest dialogue first and foremost. It made me feel like my character was terrible at hiding the fact that he committed a crime and was so guilty that he just HAD to tell someone.
In regards to playing evil in games, I'm so over it. Game developers barely, if ever, do it right for the player character (although NPCs and companions may have the evil down pat). Instead of being an evil character with personality, you turn into a generic, destructive jerkass.
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