STORY HANGOUT QUESTIONS

QUESTION:How do you make a choice for a player to become an elf (in the possible future) meaningful to the story and not just a cosmetic choice?

QUESTION: Don't you have to punish players that are min/maxing for the sake of min/maxing before you can make an environment where there are real consequences?

QUESTION: Was it purposeful that the statue of Boreas has one hand behind his back that remains hidden?

QUESTION: Do you believe that players are the sum of their choices in the game? Or are there some choices that can't be defended even if all the other choices made would be considered virtuous?

QUESTION: How do you balance the true intent of the player verses intent of the game to measure their actions? For example, if the game thinks something is virtuous but the player has good reasons to think otherwise (things the game hasn't been designed for)?

 

We'll figure that out when/if it happens. It won't be a merely cosmetic choice.

No. There will always be outliers - people who max their character in one day, people who race through the game's content in three. Trying to build a game's structure around such outliers is a fool's errand.

Knowing the original artist (Stephen Daniele) I very much doubt it was accidental.

The structure of SotA's main story as written strongly argues the latter of your assertions. On that I cannot say further.

There are many choices which are a minor evil for a greater good, even in our own world (such as people who loot stores for food during natural disasters). The first popup when you loot a dead body in Solace Bridge addresses this. You take a very minor virtue hit but at that point the gold you find is probably more important, and obviously the former owner isn't using it any more. But it's still not a virtuous choice by a strict reading.

So, in the sense of the game, we keep choices open as much as possible, while still imposing a sense of consequence for actions, hopefully appropriate to the scale of that action. It's a constant juggling act.

 

Thank you, Lum.