All this leads me to believe that what the Prince does in the end was the only resultant action justified by the game’s story. People’s complaints to the contrary, about it not being ‘right’ that the Prince cut down the trees, indicate LESS their understanding of the Prince’s psyche, and MORE a showing of their own.

Elika convinced _them_, the Player, that what she was doing was right, and they wrongly assumed that the Prince should share their convictions.

He does not, of course.

In my conclusion, the game and its story maintains its integrity. And the ending was not about Ubisoft shilling for DLC, but the excellent conclusion to a story about moral relativism. Thus, I agree with your article.

I wonder if in some cases the problem people are having is the dissonance between the character’s wants and the player’s, which is unusual in games. (But from the replies, I’m pretty certain that for some people it would have worked if the relationship between the characters had been more believable.)

Overall, I quite enjoyed this game except for the ending, which largely ruined the experience for me. It felt like a “haha, sucker! We’re going to force you to do this, and if you want to actually finish the game, how about another ten bucks, huh?” Well, Ubisoft can go hang, I’m not interested, and the hamhanded “make the player break the trees” thing really killed my interest. I suppose in one respect it was a “success” though – making “me” do it instead of just putting it in a cutscene produced a stronger emotional response. A stronger negative emotional response, but a stronger response nonetheless.

In my ideal world, the game would have ended after panning over the 4 trees with Ahriman’s whispering. An ambiguous ending where the player _wonders_ “Did he or didn’t he?” would have been very cool. The one they chose…was not, from my perspective.

Imagine a scene in a Brothers in Arms game where you drag off a downed soldier to a safe location, and you see him bleeding in real-time and possibly die at the end in your arms. You’re experiencing what the protagonist character is feeling, and therefore you’re more sympathetic or immersed into the game world than through normal gameplay styles.

At least this genre podcast is giving me something to listen to at work.

I’m using roleplaying here as a verb (well, participle). Roleplaying happens in tabletop RPGs, and it is the classic method by which players affect the progression of the story. Most players of tabletop RPGs distinguish, half-jokingly, between “roleplaying,” or acting and conversing as a character, and “roll-playing,” or focusing on the ludic qualities of the game (usually combat).

I am not using “roleplaying” as a noun to refer to the “genre” of “roleplaying games.” I don’t find the typical use of genres for categorizing games to be useful from a theoretical or critical perspective. Any time the player is choosing their actions according to their character’s motivations, she is roleplaying. Yes, even in Mario. The reason this seems so silly, I think, is that in Mario and most other games there is no real divide between the player’s motivations and the player character’s. If Mario didn’t have the storyline of the princess’s rescue, the player would still do the same things because the the world is lined up in such a way that the player loses the game if she doesn’t. For this reason, while it’s technically true that the player of Super Mario Bros. is roleplaying, it’s not remarkable or useful to discuss it.

But in POP2008, the motivation for the player to free Ahriman is based on the character’s motivations. Seen from a ludic perspective, it doesn’t make sense: why should you cut those trees? Even the feedback given when they are cut reverses the feedback given in the rest of the game. You’re not restoring fertile ground, you’re not gathering light seeds, and the credits have already rolled… so why are you doing it? Because the Prince would want to.

The “interactive” in my use of “interactive storytelling” modifies “telling” here, not “story.” The game does not tell an interactive story; it tells a story in an interactive way. And as I have said, the interactivity is vital to the presentation of the story. The story would simply not have the same impact, and the Prince’s (not the player’s) choice would seem less significant, if the scene was presented as a cutscene rather than an interactive sequence.

Players in a railroaded tabletop campaign are still roleplaying, even if they’re unable to control the direction of the plot. They have conversations, choose their low-level actions, and everything else according to the character they are playing. In the same way, the player in POP 2008 is roleplaying, even if she is unable to control the direction of the plot; she is acting in accordance with the motivations of her character.

“Yes, acting in the role of Mario is also roleplaying.” I can’t believe you actually wrote that. What you are saying is that if I added a bunch of cut scenes and dialogue and background information to add “dissonance,” then suddenly Mario would be a “remarkable” roleplaying game. Your argument seems to be that how you FEEL about a game changes the game’s genre, which is a frankly stupid thing to say.

(two comments joined into one by editor)

Never mind. I see now from this sentence that you are using “roleplaying” is a completely meaningless way: “You are indeed roleplaying; you are taking actions according to your role.”

So, I shouldn’t have even tried to address it. I thought you were at least close to a useful definition, because you mentioned choice and story, but I see that we have no common ground to discuss this on.

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_role-playing_games/

In POP2008, you’ve spent the whole game pursuing the goal of imprisoning Ahriman, so that the player does not want to undo all that work. The story is offering compelling reasons not to free Ahriman: dark god, devastation, et cetera. The character motivation goes against that. Therefore, when the player makes the Prince cut down the trees, she is roleplaying in opposition to what the previous gameplay and story elements have stated.

This is interactive storytelling. A story is being told in an interactive way. If the trees were cut down in a cutscene, it would not have had the same effect. Making the player do it herself makes her complicit and lets her mind model the decision process of the Prince. It is the interactivity that makes this scene so strong.

Giving the player a choice here would provide high-level agency, and I would love to see more of that in games. However, the lack of high-level agency does not make a game non-interactive. My hands, as a player, caused each of those trees to be cut down, and without my actions, they would have stayed standing.

Jesus, man.

Wow. You are quite off the mark. You cannot influence the story in any way, so you are not “roleplaying.” Just because you get emotional about what’s on screen doesn’t make NewPoP’s endgame any more a “moment of true roleplaying” than Mario’s quest to rescue the princess. You have a goal, you have a path, you follow it. If I started crying because I really KNEW deep inside that Mario wanted to rescue the princess, and I was DOING WHAT MARIO WOULD DO, would I be “roleplaying?” I mean, Jesus, man.

The lack of death is indeed a checkpoint system, but it is a checkpoint system where (A) the checkpoints are very close together, (B) there is no loading screen or extended pause due to failure, and (C) the game’s fiction doesn’t present returning to the last checkpoint as death or reversal of time, but as an in-game rescue. I don’t recall any other game with these properties. The closest would be a masocore platformer with checkpoints at every screen, although POP2008 is not nearly as hard as those games are.

As for the not dying, I don’t get it. All it is, is a dressed up checkpoint system that works fine in every other game that uses it. You don’t die, but you still enter a fail state and get to try again. To most people it is the fiction that is more important than actual mechanics. I was fine with it, because the game never presented me with any sense of urgency, so a threat of death was never really a concern. Being able to explore the world completely and get all the light seeds was.

Offering a choice would have been nice, too, but as the game stands there is a strong authorial statement: you may help the Prince in his decision, but you can’t change his mind.

Personally, I found the ending to be brilliant. Of course, I would have made no other choice than the one presented.

It would have worked a lot better for me if instead of having to “choose” to turn off your console, there was a way to walk past the four trees back into the desert, or whatever. Even if all that did was dump you back to the menu screen, it would have felt like an equally valid choice.

That being said, it was still fantastic that much agency was granted. I just wished there had been a bit more balance in terms of choices.

I found PoP 2008 to be the biggest game ever misunderstood. It was my favorite game in 2008, yet my friends who watched me play dissed it. “What’s with this game? You can’t die?” “This is the easiest game I’ve ever played.” are the most common comments I’ve heard. As if dying and having to return from the latest checkpoint make a game more challenging.

There were some negative comments about the ending, too, with the most obvious comment like “Well the ending sucks, the bad guy wins.”

When the Prince has gone silent while carrying Elika’s body, I knew something was going to happen. When I regain control of Prince, I knew exactly what to do without the game narrative telling me what to do. Brilliant piece of storytelling.