Mass Effect 2’s Subjective Story

Edge Online is offering up a thorough summary of a lecture given by Mass Effect 2 lead cinematic designer Armando Troisi during this year’s Game Developers Conference. During it, Armando talked about the challenges the team had to tackle when trying to tell an objective story rather than a more traditional subjective one:

(Using ‘˜objective’ or ‘˜subjective’, I’m talking from the perspective of the player. We have a huge history of doing games with a ‘˜subjective story’ the traditional [western] RPG experience we’ve known for many years,) said Troisi. (You are the avatar; dialogue responses are verbatim, and you feel uninterrupted agency there’s always a level of personal choice from moment to moment.)

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(The reason Mass Effect is still successful is that we form and agreement with the player to keep the experience consistent,) said Troisi, explaining that as the interface in particular the conversation wheel that governs most player-to-NPC interaction was (predictable,) the game could offer players choices they want and results they expect, despite not offering constant player agency.

However, Troisi described several cases in Mass Effect 2 in which they (broke the covenant) between player and designer, such as during an interaction with an exotic dancer where the placement of the (tip) option in a certain area of the wheel led players to expect tipping to aid their investigation, when in fact nothing would happen. Another example given involvea meeting a shopkeeper for the first time, which unwarrantedly features an option to (accuse of classism.) Selecting the option sets a chain of events that would lead to Sheppard leaving the store to loudly complain to bypassers until he received a discount.

(That didn’t really work: the player couldn’t expect what was going to happen,) said Troisi.