I am looking for an RPG where choices actually matter.
>>>/tg/
>>3881577fallout 1 + 2
>>3881579Har har har
>>3881577Age of Decadence
Alpha Protocol
Nethack
>>3881577pathfinder kingmaker & wotr are obvious choices.
>>3881665Does it matter?
>>3881577Der LangrisserVanguard BanditsTriangle Strategy
>>3881673very much so, especially in wotr's case. there's one huge choice that branches out into 8 different paths in the midgame, but even within those 8 paths there's a huge variety of outcomes (except for the path where you just kill everything).
>>3881577Every choice matters if you're trying to play a character. One thing I really appreciated in Planescape: Torment was that it often provided the option to specify that the protagonist was lying about something. I don't think it ever provokes a different reaction from the truthful options, but that isn't the point.If you're looking for a game with a lot of reactivity to player choices, though, Alpha Protocol is a pretty good option.
>>3881577Merchants won't talk to you if yout reputation is too low with their faction in Fallout New Vegas. There are also certain high status NPCs that if you kill their entire faction immediately becomes permanently hostile.
>>3881784>Every choice matters if you're trying to play a character.Agreed>One thing I really appreciated in Planescape: Torment was that it often provided the option to specify that the protagonist was lying about something. I don't think it ever provokes a different reaction from the truthful options, but that isn't the point.Lying is a chaotic action, while telling the truth is a lawful action. Also, lying that your name is Adahn can eventually summon Adahn into existence>If you're looking for a game with a lot of reactivity to player choices, though, Alpha Protocol is a pretty good option.Agreed. Peak Obsidian.
>>3881577When playing Bound by Flame I came to like how choices barely matter except when they do a bit. Does the mc think that uniting with elf city army is the best move against the necromancer threat or does he think it's a useless time waster? The choice only matters for the demon transformation meter as the characters soon find out that the city got ice magic nuked by the villain just before their arrival.
>>3881577choices don't matter IRL, why should a game be different
>>3881577Choices matter in most RPGs. You probably mean choices "not counting combat or dungeon crawling" even though that's the core of what videogame RPGs have always been about.
>>3881577Probably a lot of simulation rpgs, best example I can point to is any fire emblem that has permadeath. Also because most of these have tons of missable items there is a very real potential to be softlocked.
>>3881577unironically this>>3881579>I am looking for an RPG where choices actually matter.Impossible to make.You 'd need to make a whole game for every different major choice.A game which only a small percentage of players would see.This is not economically feasible
>>3881987It's sad how many people don't like RPGs here and can't understand this.
>>3881987They mean story choices.>even though that's the core of what videogame RPGs have always been about.Games like FF7 attracted people for being highly advertised story based experiences with a lot of spectacle. The gameplay could be whatever as they liked these kinds of games in spite of being RPGs not because of it. On the other side of the RPG world, people like games such as Planescape: Torment, Fallout or Arcanum due to a focus on plot, characters and choices. Gameplay once again is secondary to many. You see these people nowadays getting mad and shit talking a game where you can't disable encounters, where dungeons have "annoying puzzles" (AKA any puzzle at all), where you can get lost inside dungeons and basically when you have any dungeons at all, and if combat offers any challenge they start overgrinding to then complain about the games requiring too much grinding. Because they don't want to play an RPG, they want a visual novel or moviegame. I've seen it many times and companies are making games for these people nowadays.
Baldur's Gate 3OblivionSkyrimUltima VII
>>3882157>Baldur's Gate 3Possibly the most railroaded, and most dismissive of player choice, of any cRPG in recent memory. Basically “but thou must” jrpg tier. The reactivity is a total illusion and falls apart on a second playthrough, or even just reloading a conversation to pick different options. I was Larian fan before it came out, utterly annihilated my respect for them.
>>3882159So why were you a Larian fan before then?This applies to DOS 1 and 2.
>>3882161I did not get that feeling from the original divine divinity, or dos1, or dos2. It’s far less immersion breaking when the game just goes “ok this thing happens because it has to”, we all get it. However, BG3 will frequently offer the player a false choice, and then turn around and say “lol no” if you make choice B. Hence, “but thou must jrpg tier”. Far better to not even offer the player a choice, if it’s not real.
>>3882135>You 'd need to make a whole game for every different major choice.>A game which only a small percentage of players would see.The flaw in this argument is the assumption that an RPG must have a story that's hand-crafted line by line with elaborate (expensive) pre-written cutscenes for every story branch.A combat narrative starts with a flexible engine that can model combat. The player can estimate the risk of each action and predict (with modest accuracy) the most likely consequences. And, when negative consequences happen, usually there's enough "give" in the system, so that just one mistake or bad roll doesn't ruin everything. So, proceeding from established facts (location of units, their strength, their abilities, etc), the mix of AI and randomness leads to every combat sequence having an emergent narrative.That's the approach that should be taken for non-combat elements as well.
>>3882151>They mean story choices.Yes, I know.That's what I said, except I phrased it more effectively.RPGs are not primarily about story. They never have been and never will be.This mistake probably comes from tabletop gaming.There, "story" appears to be the differentiating feature.It makes sense when you compare TTRPGs to other tabletop games.Games like Monopoly, Chess, Pictionary, and Poker have no protagonist, no story.Even turbo nerd games like Settlers of Catan don't involve roleplaying and storytelling like RPGs.In videogames, this is reversed.Most videogames make you a protagonist in a story.Even PvP-oriented games literally fucking call it "Story Mode" when you play single-player. Some of these non-RPGs like GTA5 even include branching stories based on player decisions.RPGs started out ahead of the curve on storytelling due to their tabletop origins and popularity on home computers vs consoles. But other genres were largely caught up by the late 90s.The rest of your post is pretty fucking pointless whining about people and marketing, raising a whole bunch of tangent issues we could discuss, but as you clearly have meme-tier understanding of the relevant games it seems unlikely to be a productive discussion. But I have to point out:>Planescape: TormentA game made with the Infinity Engine, an RTS combat engine adapted to D&D and where PS:T is the weirdo outlier next to Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale.
>>3882286I'm not saying anything about the games themselves, just about their fanbases. They got a lot of people interested in the genre who only care about story and spectacle despite not liking the genre. I know PS:T is nothing like the other games, that's not the point. What RPGs are about nowadays to someone like OP is not what RPGs are about to people like you. You might say choices matter in a dungeon crawler but people like OP will tell you they're linear games, and might be happier playing a shooter like Cyberpunk or Fallout.
>>3882135>This is not economically feasibleLLMs make this feasible, if not trivial, your thinking just hasn't caught up with the times
>>3882311Literally no one wants LLM slop.
>>3882166My friend and I quit for good when we chose to kill the boss guy at the end of act 2 and our characters basically just let him live anyway.
>>3882296Point is that people lile OP are misled and need gentle correction. Despite abuse of the label by marketing, it's still only a subset of people who incorrectly believe that RPG = story choices
Stanley Parable
>>3881577I am making one. Each loop takes an hour, and I'm trying to cram as many loops as I can.
Choices don't matter is just revisonism
>>3883531it's revisionism when talking about a single gamebut a series of games like dragon age or mass effect? it's always been the truth.
choice and consequence bullshit came from retarded fallout fans and their love of dialogue trees rather than interesting character development and combat.
>>3881577It's video games, nothing you do in them actually matters.
>>3882311LLMs are too flexible that it'll just become incoherent.
>>3884345Couldn't you just give them tight constraints? Still might create some weird outputs but could work decently. Tell it you want a list of certain scenarios and let it fill in the blanks, which items you want to be involved, what possible action types, etc.
>>3882271Nice bunch of abstract words nigga.Let's see you give a concrete example of how this actually would work in practice.Spoiler: You can't
>>3881987>>3882140>>3882286>>3882732>whaaa whaaa, real Role Playing Game is when you fight mindlessly fight with trashmob in boring, repetetive dungeon for 100 hoursNothing makes me happier than the fact that theatre kids won the fight for RPGs with math nerds.Combatfags get the rope
>>3884354You'd need to make a bunch of constraints based upon each NPC. At that point you might as well write all the choices. Like why would someone have the exact same knowledge of something as someone else? None the less you'd need to have that person's personal temperament and possibly beyond that.
>>3884364>theatre kids won the fight for RPGs with math nerdsbut they didn't. they just label action games and cyoas as rpgs.lol
>>3881784Correct. People with no imagination need to avoid playing RPGS of any kind. I thought Witcher 2 and Rogue Trader had good choices in their stories.
>>3884367kek exactly, they are delusional>>3884360If this thread is still alive when I'm finished with a simplistic prototype, I will.
>>3884364Theatre kids won the fight for every AAA genre and most AA too. At least math nerds still got niche games here and there.
>>3881577you think you do, but you don't
>>3881585>Age of DecadenceThis game has more branching than any other. And it turns out people hate it, they just want something like>good>bad>fail>secret/true
>>3881577Real life
