Rehash: the canister not taken

[Student of Trinity]

I ranted about this years ago, but why not do it again. There are a few new people around who might have new reactions.

 

My biggest disappointment with the whole Geneforge series is that it had a golden opportunity to lampshade the biggest absurd convention of RPGs, and didn't take it. It could have lampshaded leveling, and it didn't even try.

 

The situation is totally absurd. You start out as a peon, who can barely take out a goblin/rat/crawler/whatever. Pretty soon you're taking down ogres and stuff, and by the end of the game you're duking it out with demon lords and what not, and single-handedly saving the universe. You complete this unbelievable ascension within a few short weeks. That's almost as good as Bowflex. And in most games, the NPCs still treat you as an ignorant peon right to the end, even though you could take out their entire nation state without raising a sweat.

 

Apparently it can only happen to you. Otherwise, whichever Bob is enlisting you for whatever quest would just never bother. They'd go out, beat up a few goblins, level up a bit, and then go do the job themselves — and raise some loot from those monsters, instead of having to give it out to you. Amirite?

 

Seriously, what's with that?

 

Well, Geneforge could have actually done this thing right. It would have been easy to start each game with some sort of bizarre Shaping accident, that happens to catch the PC. It leaves you infected with latent Geneforge godhood, whose effect will be triggered by cycles of stress and relief. So, because uncontrolled Shaping has warped your mind and body, you will gain strength and power after every successful fight.

 

The benefits of adding just a few more bits of text to the games, to describe the above, would have been great, in my view. Firstly, the absurdity would have been done away.

 

Secondly, the games' great theme of power and chaos would have been concentrated, by bringing all the gamer's munchkin instincts into the game. You're hungry for loot and XP? That's the Geneforge talking, sonny. You'll take every quest you can get, from every possible side? It's in your blood. Don't want to be warped and corrupted by uncontrolled Shaping? No power for you, then. Enjoy running madly from every Fyora, and not getting out of zone 1.

 

It would have been a win from many angles. I'm still bummed that Jeff never did it.

[Ohsky]

One of the stupidest things also is the hints they give you to avoid certain enemies, patrols, etc, using stealth, or whatever other means. By doing so you lose precious Xp, wich is scarce in games in wich enemies don´t respawn, and by that you will end up a low leveled idiot wich can´t face situations and bosses you can´t evade through that same stealth, wich are critical to advance further in the game.

 

So stealth is useless in most of situation save a bit, kill everything on sight as soon as you can, gain the precious xp so you can pass that unavoidable situation later or you will be stucked forever in game for being too low on everything.

[Student of Trinity]

You're supposed to be able to complete the whole game using stealth. You'll be too weak for some combats, but that's the point: you're using stealth instead. Somehow Jeff set himself that as a design challenge. I don't know how many people actually play the games that way. It doesn't seem to have been popular even as an Iron Man run.

[Randomizer]

Geneforge series is the only one where Jeff tried to create two routes to victory. Traditional hack and slash versus stealth, mechanics, and leadership to win. This lead to something Jeff hadn't expected and worked on eliminating which was do both. Use leadership to make the rogue creation obey you and then kill it for extra experience as it left.

 

I've always been too blood thirsty to hold to a non combat play through.

[Sudanna]

There are a few obligatory fights that will screw you over if you try that.

[Dikiyoba]

Stealth is useful in certain occasions, since it lets you get into areas full of enemies too high level for the PC to fight, and because in some places it lets you choose when and where to fight an enemy. Really, the best use of stealth and leadership is to weaken your opponents before you fight them.

 

Dikiyoba.

[wackypanda]

Rather reminds me of Skyrim, where the fact that you are Dragonborn, a mortal with the soul of a dragon, is the source of your awesomeness. One of the few good dragons talks to you about the perils of having the soul of a dragon, mainly the urge to dominate, kill, destroy, and conquer. Presumably you were supposed to chew on that awhile.

 

Do both leadership and combat? That's the Geneforge talking. Break their wills before slitting their throats.

[Goldengirl]

I remember a while back Iffy proving that the stealth, mechanics, and leadership route can actually get you all the way through G4 without ever fighting yourself. I think he played as a fence-sitter, or maybe as a Shaper. He couldn't have been a diehard Rebel, because they have to kill Moseh and can't escape that. I also think, though, that there were a lot of situations in which he recruited allies (not in his party) and had to help them fight off his opponents for him by blessing and healing.

 

Anyway, as far as the issue of leveling goes... You're mostly right, SoT. However, there's one issue where the game actually plays out more or less as you describe. G5 has someone who used the Geneforge and then got somehow altered and weakened. At several points in the game, it talks about how, when you get stronger, it's more that you're remembering the powers and strengths that you forgot. Sometimes this is directly untapped via magic and further reShaping, sometimes you just figure it out on your own (i.e. through combat). The other games don't hold up as well, though, although there are traces of explanations. Shapers are taught to learn very quickly, for instance, and the G4 PC just so happens to get a lot of canisters and Shaped by the Geneforge, but they're weak explanations comparatively speaking.

[BMA]

Geneforge series is the only one where Jeff tried to create two routes to victory. Traditional hack and slash versus stealth, mechanics, and leadership to win.

 

The availability of multiple choices is overdone. Meeting that helpful character who tells you "If you want traps, go Left or if you like hacking rogues better, then go Right" makes it boring after a while.

 

-CC-

[Kelandon]

Both GF4 and GF5 have some discussion as to why you're different from everyone else. You use the Geneforge at the beginning of GF4. Some other Rebels do this, but they also gain strength rapidly. In GF5, you're... someone... who's forgotten it all. But I agree that neither makes this the central plot point that it could be.

 

If Jeff tried to eliminate the "do both" option, he failed pretty badly. Doing both is always clearly the way to go in all the games. This means getting way out in front on Leadership and Mechanics in the early going of at least GF4 and GF5, and then letting your combat skills catch up, but it seems clearly superior.

 

He did a better job in later games of making stealth a legitimate choice, though. It was clearly a bad path in GF1.

[Ohsky]

'

[Ohsky]

you start out as a noob wich can´t do anything, yet, you are asked to do things by people wich have 2345 hp and can win the game alone themselves. I still remember that greta killing kyshaaks in the first screen on g4, map, part of the game, yet, you are relevant to change the outcome of the war. "i can´t do this, you should, minion". You dont ever get, above 1000 hp, if rarely on G5.´If you go tank. You are the disposable diaper, the tool.Then, before the game ends, you can kill all of them if you wish.

 

you get the sensation everyone is much below as useless as you even start the game. but that´s not a problem, this a rant, this is something pointless.

[Dikiyoba]

On the other hand, Greta is a general and has to manage all the paperwork and orders, while the PC is more-or-less freelance. Not to mention that Southforge or other bases where she is stationed need to be protected from attack by the Shapers, so someone powerful has to stay behind on guard. Plus, Greta is so well known that she can't hope to go incognito or bluff her way out of situations the way an unknown lifecrafter can.

 

Dikiyoba.

[wackypanda]

For all that The Chosen One is a cliche, in games it really helps to explain why the main character can do things that no one else can if they really are different from everyone else.

 

Geneforge generally does a good job of tying up everyone else who's supposed to be more powerful than you with other work, but sometimes you do things (e.g. wiping out the Poryphra camp in G4, which pits you directly against those people with 2000 HP) which show that you really are more powerful than everyone else.

[Goldengirl]

For all that The Chosen One is a cliche, in games it really helps to explain why the main character can do things that no one else can if they really are different from everyone else.

 

Geneforge generally does a good job of tying up everyone else who's supposed to be more powerful than you with other work, but sometimes you do things (e.g. wiping out the Poryphra camp in G4, which pits you directly against those people with 2000 HP) which show that you really are more powerful than everyone else.

 

They can also clearly take you down. In the end, it's the fact that most enemies don't heal themselves that makes you able to defeat them. In a scenario where it's the PC versus Poryphra where the Shapers and loyalists all have plenty of pods and spores, it almost certainly would be next to impossible to win.

[wackypanda]

It's hardly your fault that they don't want to heal themselves, so your victory still counts for something. And since it's explicitly a quest it's something that people think your character might be able to do (though they emphasise the "might"). Contrast the other things that fluffwise are stated to be out of your league, like clearing the Turabi Gates or taking on the Northforge Warrens infiltrators by yourself - it's obviously possible for you (the player) to do it, but storywise it isn't supposed to be done.

 

Hypothetical:

 

"Yes. You have been changed by the fires of the Geneforge. Made new. You can feel, even now, the power filling you, waiting to be called. It is your mind that cannot yet grasp the gift that has been given, that limits itself to calling forth only the most trivial of cantrips. But that will change, as you assert your superiority."

 

1. Assert my superiority?

 

"Yes. Every time you slay a foe or break its will to fight you, every time you sabotage one of the crude mechanical contraptions that would confound lesser beings, you show that your new form is superior. Then your mind will grasp, more firmly, the magnitude of the power within you, and using that power will come more easily."

[Student of Trinity]

That's what I was asking for. That's all it would have taken. Grumble.

[wackypanda]

Having someone explain how the Geneforge allows you to level up is one thing. Working it into the game's theme of power and responsibility would require at least a few loyalists to get on your case about yielding to Forbidden Power™, which is another thing. On one hand, it would provide additional justification for a pacifist run. On the other hand, it would make players feel bad about something that is normally a good thing and it might intensify the dislike people already have for stealth (and/or loyalists).

[Triumph]

Ehh, it wouldn't be that big a deal. In G4, quite a few shapers give you grief for being a Geneforge-d monstrosity - even if you're loyally serving the shapers! Something similar could have been done in earlier games.

[Sudanna]

I can't help but think it would just be a distracting lampshade-hanging.

[Alorael at Large]

No, I think it would have fit. That lampshade's been hovering over RPGs forever. Geneforge has several good excuses just waiting, but Jeff didn't take them. G1 has canister use, and for that matter could have just said that Shapers grow in strength with terrifying speed anyway. Later games could have put you at the point in your training where you have all the theoretical knowledge you need and just need some practice for it all to come together, or something of the sort. Then there's starting out Geneforged to justify power gains.

 

I agree with SoT. It would have taken very little for there to be a throwaway line or two, either acknowledging that what you experience is common to Shapers, canister users, or the Geneforged, or pointing out your uniqueness. No such luck.

 

—Alorael, who has run a tabletop campaign in which the experience and level mechanics were entirely part of the world and relatively well understood. His favorite realization was that sending a company of soldiers on a suicide mission makes great sense. If you lose a thousand but get back five immensely powerful heroes you're probably out ahead; thousands of level one mooks won't stop a real adventurer, but some adventurers are potent weapons. You just have to keep them from becoming so embittered they tear down your kingdom like, well, disgruntled ex-Shapers.

[Student of Trinity]

I tried doing something like that with a tabletop game once, too, but unfortunately I only hit on the idea when it was really too late in my life for such things. First there was moving a lot and demanding jobs, then family.

 

My scheme incorporated leveling of the world. That is, the world had an onion-like structure, of successive layers of reality. You had to find the secret portals that would take you further in, where everything was higher level, but you could also advance to higher levels, too. Finding ways to pipe the power of inner layers out to outer ones, through personal mini-portals, was going to be one of the main campaign maguffins. In the center lived the gods, who were really just the people who had made it in that far. Ultimately you could try to join them. Or destroy them. It was going to be a campaign in which all the gods were bad.