I'm probably not the best at the "Role Playing" part of RPGs, I tend to create a character based on the kind of gameplay I want and maybe with a mind to completing certain quests in certain ways (once I've played the game a bit). Even so, I've been having a pretty interesting experience in Fallout 4 recently.
My first character was focussed on Charisma and Luck so I could try out the new settlement and critical systems (both fun, though settlements can eat your life and make you question if it was all worth it). After playing for a while, I thought I'd create a new character that would use Power Armour and not much VATS and since my other character was a goodie-goodie type she'd be much less sociable. I didn't want to go for "evil" because I have another character for that (more of an assassin), so she basically left the vault in a bad mood and tended to be as rude and moody as possible.
I've actually ended up spending far more time around "civilisation" with her, my other character built up settlements but didn't really visit many existing NPCs. I've also done some of the main quest (partly due to needing to in order to advance faction stories, which is a bit of a shame) and I wasn't keen on the way it kind of railroads your character in the conversations. In visiting the story locations I also stumbled on some side quests and took on the occasional companion (despite being a Lone Wanderer) and it's actually been good fun interacting with people.
While I'm not so keen on the dialogue wheel, some of the conversations are still pretty good fun. Being "mean" to people doesn't automatically drive them away, some like the more serious and cynical view and even the "good" aligned companions sometimes react better to a snarky comment than trying to be constantly nice. My character is pretty much always moody or sarcastic but it feels like she has organically developed to actually maybe start thinking that she could live in this world and that maybe there are some decent (or at least tolerable) people around.
It didn't really strike me that all this was happening until I was doing a particular side quest where you kill some bad people in the name of justice. I happened to bring along the companion that was hanging around at the time, mostly because he was wearing an outfit that I thought was appropriate for the job. Aside from being a really fun quest, there was a whole other story developing alongside it where it felt like my character was getting into things for more than just the pay and passing the time. She even started to build up some trust with her companion, who she'd only really been tolerating because she needed his help for the main quest before. It was really just a coincidence of different elements and unrelated parts of the game happening to work together at the same time but somehow it came out as a really good story that I didn't expect.
I'd imagine a lot of other people have played through the same quests and played similar characters but somehow the way the whole thing worked felt like a unique story with a certain natural realism to it. It's these kinds of moments that remind me why I really like RPGs, maybe you're always playing through a story that someone else has written but even despite that the experience can still feel uniquely yours. As much as these kind of games tend to be a bit light on the story and role playing elements, there's still a lot of potential for some fun experiences and sometimes you might just get lucky enough to have things come together to make for some great moments.
A bit of a ramble there but I thought it was interesting so hopefully someone else might too.
ilmaestro said:
Bloodborne will definitely win some awards too, the new DLC has been nicely timed to remind people about that game, but I think it's kind of crazy for people to give GOTY to The Witcher 3 as I didn't see any coverage of that game that stayed positive all the way though, compared to the hype when people had only played a few hours of it.
Has there been any negative coverage of The Witcher 3 from people playing for longer? I don't really follow these things much but the only negatives I've really seen were complaints that pre-ordering the expansion pass may have resulted in a slightly worse deal when they also offered a good deal on the first expansion (though it remains to be seen if that pans out). I've found my time with it to be fairly consistently enjoyable, I've played for a fair while but then I'm not necessarily miles into the story (which tends to be secondary with the way I play).
