If: 1) Narrator represents an active force in the game
You seem to missunderstand me ...
I wasnt trying to say that Narrator "represents" and active force ... Narrator "represents" our inner voice from start to end ... BUT if our own thoughts, our inner voice, are affected by some "active force" ... then our inner voice should act acordingly to that affection.
That is why i used that scene when you pick tadpole from Eodwins corpse:
Eodwin Tadpole reach to your tadpole, and they both forces you to like it ... that is their defence mechanism ...
In such case Narrator, YOUR inner voice, YOUR own mind even, talks smooth and sweet ... bcs your own perception was affected by tadpole influence ... it dont change to voice of that Tadpole, or the Absolute, since its still your own mind, but THAT is alterned by the tadpole ...
Then: the narrator is no longer fulfilling the role of narrator. It is an unreliable narrator claiming, external to the game, to be a reliable one, and requiring us to accept it as a reliable one the vast majority of the time. There is a contradiction and conflict in the voice role here - a role which, with all of these elements, now needs to be served by two separate elements. This is bad design and bad writing.
I quite honestly cant agree with this statement either ...
You cant tell if writing was bad until you know full story ... i mean i know many quite good stories, where people heared voices in their head, wich they concidered to be their own mind, and much much later (basicaly at the end) "surprise" come out that they were actualy someone else, who just manipulated them.
(Even tho i usualy like more those stories, where it works other way around.)
I mean, if you ARE supposed to believe that sweet and seductive voice is your own mind ... there is no better way to sell the idea, than through Narrator. :-/
The narrator is not a person; Notice that you're using active pronouns for the role: don't. It's not a person.
I dont know what this is ...
I never learned english, as you probably noticed.
If you are ascribing persona, such as pronoun identification and desires, intentions, wants, and how characters think of or feel about it, to the narrator, then you are not describing a narrator - you are describing an in-universe entity. The narrator, if it is a narrator, is not that, unless it is narrating its own actions and thoughts alone.
If it has intentions or desires, if it manipulates or spins perspective, then it is NOT a narrator any more - it's a character. And a character is not a reliable narrator and should not be attempting to fill that role; it's poor design.
Agreed ... its no longer narrator ...
But until story reveals the fact that it is not a narrator, it should act like one.
The narrator should let us know and show us that this is happening, but they are not the same entity, because one of them is not an entity at all - it's the narrator.
In the right time, yes ... and i bet they will, if that is the case.
But to let it know from the start would be as mysterious and surprising as puting HUGE NEON SIGN abowe Mintharas head saying:
"WARNING: THIS CHARACTER WILL MURDER YOU IN YOUR SLEEP IF YOU SIDE WITH HER". :-/ Here's something neat they COULD do: Have a new narrator voice for all of the reliable world narration, descriptions of scenes, settings and people; this one should not be dripping with sex and honey, because it is the story's narration. Then, have this second pseudo-narrator voice slide in, full of honey and seduction, all-and-only for the parts where it is actually spinning your perspective or trying to make you think differently about something; because unlike the narrator, this voice is an inner entity that our character is literally experiencing the actions of. Make that clearly distinct, but keep the interplay of the in-universe force attempting to influence us. That would actually work.
I dont like the idea ...
I like surprises and if there is some entitry influencing us succesfully, i dont want to know about it until it reveals itself.
I mean if this is the case, i believe tone of curent narator should be enough ...
I can try to focus more on her voice in next patch playthrough, maybe you open my eyes once again.
But as i recall it right now, it seems to me that "amount of seductioun" in her voice is higher in the parts when we are affected by something that as they say "makes our heart beat faster" and that is why i like it.
Last point to reiterate again: in a player-character driven RPG, a narrator should never, Never tell the player what their own character thinks or feels about anything. That is for the player to decide - having anything else tell us those things without us first indicating our desire to the game, is the very worst crime a character-driven RPG can commit.
And finaly i cant even agree with this statement. :-/
How would you like to describe any of your feeling or thinking, when they are affected by some magical influence ... while leting player to decide them? O_o
