Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Killing shouldn't be the solution for everything!

Thank you Ayvah, this was very good.
I also think that "the witcher" was the best game in this regard. (I have only played part 1, I would need a new computer for part 3)

As you have said, the witcher has a pre defined char. Gerald is a monster hunter who fights with swords and magic. He has a fixed personality and his own personal goals.

In D:OS2 you have a party of up to 4 chars. You can create your char with whatever race, gender, background and skill set you want. This amount of freedom is great, but it is much harder to create choices that make sense for this situation and for whatever char you chose to play.

There is one more problem. In every RPG I know there are lots of creatures who will attack you in any case. It makes little sense to talk to a mindless undead for example. A char who has good talking skills will have to fight at some points. A char who focusses on fighting will fight better and can also finish the game. So there must be a reward in taking non combat skills, because you have to fight in almost any case and fighting is almost always an option. I have written a character creation guide for NWN2. There is written:" When talking about a good char, I mean a char who can fight well. A dumb char may not always get what he wants, but he will be able to finish the game. If you get stuck, it is usually because you cannot win a fight." This statement is also true for all larian games I have played (DD, D2 and D:OS). Most game machanics were focused on combat.

For Pillars of Eternity and Deus Ex I know that there have been players who tried to finish the game by killing as little creatures as possible. In both games you do not get most exp through combat. I have never read about this in the larian forums (Ok, I did not search for it very intensively).

Yes, thats true!

Anyway, we are not talking about "no fighting/killing during the whole game until the end".

But it should be possible to avoid trouble with (some, but not all) bad guys.

And players should get penalties for killing good guys instead of gaining XP.
Killing good guys and to gain additional XP as reward is ridicules!

Of course - There should be always some exceptions to stay realistic.
One exception for killing good guys could be an accident, where a good guy is killed by a wolf in the wood or a collapsing house or something like that.

The decision in D:OS1 to save Steven or Boris is one good example.

I still hope that Larian will give "Charisma" and "Reputation" significantly more weight in D:OS2.

A RPG Game lives from realistic interacting environment

something to watch for you:

- choice and consequence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJJaGSV75y0

- realism in computer games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRsqAmuxjNk

- Uncomfort
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg_Lp5bO1U8

The other videos from him are also good.
I think he explains things better than I ever could.

Nice find. I Wish Sven order all the Larians watch this video every morning.

I like

Thanks. I'm glad my effort paid off.



When I think about this further, this really seems like this would only be a limitation from a story-telling perspective. Fully linear RPGs like Final Fantasy allow you to have a lot of great banter within your own party. Also, you get to watch your protagonist proceed through a clear character arc.

From the perspective of choice and consequences, I don't think it's a limitation at all.

Dragon Age: Origins handled this relatively well (for one character). You could play through an origin story, and then after that your origin would continue to influence the rest of the game in various ways. The following instalments diluted the range of choices, and I think the simplification of choice in newer games has a lot to do with the expense of voice acting. So I think that D:OS2 will have an advantage now that they've decided to abandon voice acting for the most part. (The protagonist in DA:O was unvoiced.)

D:OS2 is promising to take this to a whole new level. But at no point in Dragon Age: Origins did I feel that these different origins hindered their ability to provide interesting choices throughout the game.



I like his ideas, but I completely disagree with his formula:


1. Manage the scale / Realism in video games
The problem I have with many games is that they rely too much on the "save the world or die" narrative, and have to keep trying to raise the stakes to keep you invested.

I can't say I agree that Geralt is not "heroic"/large scale in the way he means it. In the Witcher 2, he has decisions that affects whether or not Temeria remains an independent country. The stakes in The Witcher 3 are even bigger (save the world stuff). The strength of the Witcher 3 is that whatever the stakes, he has his own personal motivations which you invest in.

This is harder to achieve when your protagonist is a blank slate. However, you can still use your side characters to provide investment. The Witcher 3 does this a lot in side quests. Geralt is just there for the money, and so the game uses some great writing and relies on the characters in the side quest to get you invested.

If you don't mind having a minor Witcher 3 sidequest spoiled: https://youtu.be/cQ6-1ts2aCg?t=4m49s

2. Failure as a consequence / 3. Make me paranoid / Uncomfort
I don't agree that failure is necessary. I believe that negative consequences are necessary.

In the above video, you are given choices and you can make your own decision as to which outcome is a "failure".

As far as paranoia, I think it's fine for a game to broadcast "This is a choice" (as the Witcher 3 usually did). At the same time, I think it'd be kind of cool to turn a few RPG tropes on their head.

For example, in D:OS (and other RPGs like Skyrim) I can make all the good choices, but as soon as the NPCs turn their back, I'm stealing absolutely everything that isn't nailed down. As long as no one sees me, I'm still considered good.

However, imagine what would happen in reality. People in the town would start to get suspicious after seeing their possessions disappear when you're left alone in a room. Or maybe the opposite happens and everyone completely trusts you. Maybe you would get a new quest to retrieve someone's wedding ring -- except it's the same wedding ring you stole from him earlier! You go to the shop you pawned it off to, buy back the ring, then give it back to him and ask for a large reward. Maybe you even blame someone innocent for the crime. Does it get much more evil than that? (Of course, there should also be some form of "good" option for you to take responsibility.)

Traditionally, consequences for theft have just been "go to jail" or "the entire town tries to kill you". There are much more interesting and nuanced ways to play with this.

4. Don't get carried away
I'm not sure what his point is here. Yes, story & gameplay mechanics are the most important things and the focus should be on these above all. However, it certainly seems that in this thread, people are very passionate about having choices. When done well, it has the potential to enrich both the story and gameplay.

That means that killing a popular quest quiver in a pub rise a ton of xp. Such a quest giver could be a simple fisher man level one.

Only deep consequence system could allow that. Otherwise killing such xp honey pot is too tempting. One sword swing and ... several levels ding.

Easily handled by simply setting a flag -- "quest completed"
if "quest completed" for an NPC, then ZERO xp for killing them.
...but, yeah, point taken -- quest-hub type NPCs might need "special rules."

What defines a 'good guy'? IIRC, all of the characters/races all have their own views and good and evil is subjective. A good guy for a dwarf might be a mighty slayer of elves, while the elves might view that slayer as an evil character.

Quest givers aren't always 'good guys', there's numerous games where you do things for what you think is a good person who ends up turning out to what you would consider to be a bad guy.

- An old woman who is missing her little grandchild

- A fisher man who is fighting for survival

- A little girl who is playing with her Dog

- A father who is building up a new house for his family

But how do you know that any of these (except maybe a girl playing with her dog) are good guys?

Say, the father who is building a house for his family might be building it from sacred wood, or maybe on some elven burial site.

The old woman might be missing her grandchild because he ran away due to her abuse? Or maybe she's a witch?

The fisher man who was fighting for survival (from what)? Elves, dwarves, bandits, goblins, undead? What if he's done something to disturb those guys?

Don't be so one dimensional.

I think we should get rid of an alignment system. Usually it makes little sense to say somebody is good/evil/lawful/chaotic unless you look at some archetypical chars like the white knight or the killer who kills and tortures just for fun. Those chars are usually boring, but you can make good fun of them. ( Lets think of a Paladin who wants to help good people and kill bad people. There is a burning house and somebody screams for help. He runs into the burning house and saves this person. After saving her some people say that this person is a witch. All paladins know that witches are evil and must be burned alive. So he gathers some wood and burns her alive. She is also evil because she tricked him into saving her, so the paladin destroys her body as punishment after the fire killed her. What a good day, saved somebody, burned a witch and cut a betrayer to pieces.)

I think those alinments were only created to make some class/items/spell effects or restrictions. So paladins must be lawful good and assessins must be evil. You have the spell "smite evil" and the longsword+3,+5 vs evil. How do you know if somebody is evil? Thats simple because each char has an alignment tag attached to it. It is only a game mechanic, it has no meaning beyond this.

Regarding D:OS2 and choice&consequence: It may be interesting that you can kill everybody and then talk to their ghosts. There were some nice quest solutions in the demo. You can also kill the ghost to get rid of this person completely. Maybe ghosts cannot give you items or money as quest reward because they are not material. Or the quest exp are lowered by the exp you got for killing the quest giver. There should be a little bit of penalty for killing everybody just for fun.

This is it!

One simple sentence: "There should be a little bit of penalty for killing everybody just for fun."

I have killed everybody in Lucula forest and Hunters edge. Just for fun. How big penalty you suggests for that?

You're changing the scenario. The point is that these situations are unambiguous. It doesn't matter if you're an elf, dwarf, or whatever. A father trying to build a house for his family is unambiguously a good act. Oh, but what if he's a vampire! And his family is brain-eating zombies! Well, yeah, with that knowledge you might be justified when you decide to paint their house red.

But that doesn't mean you're justified killing everyone on sight, little old ladies included, simply based on the logic that they must have done something to deserve it.


I really hope they're not planning to do this. It's bad enough that you can kill everyone in the game once.


Corrected this for you. XD

Their ghosts will pop up from the dead bodies. The ghosts of the innocents will continue to roam, acting all innocent. The ghosts of shopkeepers will continue to shopkeep. They will sell you ghostswords and ghostbread and ghostscrolls. You can have ghostversations with them where they will talk about their ghostfeelings and send you on ghostquests.

Your true punishment is the knowledge that your actions, however violent, are ultimately meaningless.

You may kill them again if you wish. But what happens when you kill a ghost? Do they go to the after-after-life? Do ghosts have ghosts?

*wooosh*

No, a father building a house for his family on an elven burial site is not a good act. That's deliberately desecrating the burial site and the elves probably wouldn't view that as something good. Not everything by default is good, there are no 'good guys'. Everything is subjected to your beliefs, there is no common 'belief' anywhere. What the goblins think is good sure as hell isn't going to be what you think is good. Unambiguous situations don't exist; everything has consequences and will negatively impact something while at the same time positively impacting something else.

Thinking one dimensionally about everything creates some really flat content.

This is a pretty dark form of moral relativism here. Your logic really appears to be that anything can be interpreted as evil in some relativistic sense, so every act is completely and unambiguously evil. Maybe one day he ate an apple. Did anyone stop to ask how the apple felt about being eaten? What if the apple didn't like being eaten? Does that make him a murderer? Who can be sure? Practically everyone has eaten an apple before. I guess that means no one is innocent. We're all evil.

This is my interpretation of your logic.


I'll point out that in the context of this thread "good" means "not evil enough to kill". If in reality a Native American tribe objected to a family building a house on their ancestral burial grounds, and reacted by attempting to murder the family, then I'm confident we would all react with disgust to the actions being taken by the tribe. It's not a difficult moral judgement.

The original situation described is just a man building a house for his family. Looking at this information alone, is he doing a good thing? Absolutely yes.

Now you learn he's building the house on sacred elven burial ground. This is a new fact and it completely changes the scenario. Now, is he doing a good thing? Maybe.

Taken to an extreme, imagine he and his family are actually vampires. They drink human blood and kill humans for fun. Is he doing a good thing? Absolutely not.

However, you still can't just go around killing everyone just because you assume they're all secretly vampires. They are not evil until you learn that they are evil.


This reminds me of an odd situation in Baldur's Gate 2.


The whole scenario made me feel really awkward. One of the key mechanics of D&D is good fights evil, so my understanding of D&D is that "evil" actually does mean evil enough to kill. And yet she had done no evil to them, and she'd done no evil at all really. Later you learn from her backstory that she had done some evil a long time ago, but it was pretty justified. Still she is characterised as evil by the mechanics of the game itself. It all felt pretty clumsy to me.

It's a contrast to a more nuanced presentation of morality, like Iorveth in the Witcher 2. This is genuine moral relativism.


Is he doing a good thing? Yes and no.

And in The Witcher 3, even monsters can be morally complex...
https://youtu.be/2hGylVl6290?t=7m00s

Just make the Charisma skill really matter! wink

Killing good guys shouldn't be a solution to gain XP!

Killing bad guys should be one of a number of possible strategic/tactical options to gain XP!


Killing everyone and everything should be nevertheless possible.
It gives Players the freedom to play how they want.
This feeling to be free is particularly important.

I'm of the opinion that the same act should award different good/bad points (generalizing here a bit) based on the context in which it is done.


Let's take the hypothetical situation of killing an innocuous looking murderer.

Outright killing him without any questions asked and no information that he is a murderer is pretty clearly an outright evil act.

Killing him with only a hint that he might be a murderer would still be an evil act, but a lesser one.

Killing him with evidence in hand would be a mildly good act.


Now, I'm saying this from a reputation point of view. This means how the world sees your character/party. I would find it interesting to have both a reputation point of view, as well as a more absolute point of view, something that builds upon the system D:OS 1 had.

Building upon D:OS 1's reputation and character trait system, I'd really like to see both reputation and character traits to be split into categories. So, your traits would describe your character from an inside point of view, while reputation would describe your character on the same scales, but from an outside point of view.

Heck, I'd be even more interested in the reputation system if we were to throw in a third opinion, namely that of the gods: how each god views a character based on what that character is and what the god considers to be part of its sphere.

But I wager that's just me and my enjoyment of meaningful complexity.


To summarize: This is all just an opinion, but I think rewards/penalties should apply to one action based on the context in which said action was performed. I also think the reputation/traits system could be expanded to include other factors, have more points of view and describe a character using the same scales for all points of view.