Double-checked and yes, the Wild Card ending allows you to negotiate the truce between the NCR and BOS, in which case Veronica can be convinced to stay with them.
The edit you made to my entry needs to be reverted.
1. Whether Veronica stays with the Brotherhood or not is not the point. Her problems with the Brotherhood are not magically fixed just because she decides to stay. Her epilogue endings make it clear that no matter what, at minimum Veronica loses faith in the Brotherhood and isolates herself from them. That is the conflict that persists, and that player has no option to address, even though there's no rational reason why they wouldn't or couldn't.
2. The entry about House and the Brotherhood has been unacceptably neutered. The point of the entry is to discuss how the game forces the player to commit one of two immoral acts, even though, again, there's no rational reason why the player character would be limited to these two choices in-universe. As I explained, it's not just a lack of ability to convince House with speech, but a lack of ability to simply tell him that you refuse to work with him, and a lack of ability to justify your actions on any moral grounds.
3. But Thou Must! alone is not enough to cover this. It's not just that the player is forced to do something, it's that the player is forced to do something that causes a conflict with no in-universe justification.
4. I don't see anything in Conflict Ball that says it can only be applied when the conflict contradictions previous characterization. The very first line is "A character introduces or provokes conflict for reasons which are weak or which contradict previous characterization."
5. Even with your definition of Conflict Ball, I don't see why this example shouldn't apply. The player character and the player themselves can easily have a history of taking moral actions and making moral choices, and yet this scenario forces the player to abandon that characterization and either kill House or kill the Brotherhood, when there's no real reason why the moral conflict couldn't be, if not completely avoided, at minimum significantly mitigated.
Edited by David7204
If you want to rewrite it to be more neutral, be my guest, but as written it's more about your opinion of the quality of the interaction than what actually happens in the game. If you do rewrite it, I still don't think Conflict Ball is the right trope for what you're talking about. As one of the Ball Index tropes, like Idiot Ball and Villain Ball, it does pretty much always involve characters acting out of character for the sake of the plot. That's not really the case here — these are conflicts that have been written into Veronica and the factions throughout the game. They don't come out of nowhere or require anyone to change their normal behaviour, so no one is picking up any balls they weren't already carrying, so to speak.
You might be able to just move it largely unchanged to YMMV. Character Derailment is YMMV. Not sure if Idiot Ball can be listed there.
Edited by Unsung
Not going to post all of it or try and go through it with a red pen, but:
"Both choices cause the player to lose karma, leaving little doubt that the point of the scenario is to try and push the Aesop that no matter how good and moral you try to be, evil actions are inevitable. The problem is, this "betrayal" is forced by the game for no real reason other than creating unnecessary conflict. Even with 100 Speech and 10 Intelligence, the only objection the player can make to House is "I don't want to kill off the entire Brotherhood," which is hardly convincing."
Stuff like "it leaves little doubt" "push the Aesop", "the problem is". You're writing this as if you're arguing against the creators. You're free to disagree with their design decisions, but main page examples aren't the place for lengthy critiques or analyses. You could still have an example you could write up beyond the But Thou Must! aspects of it, it might still fit somewhere else on the main page. You just need to tone it down a little.
Edited by Unsung
Sorry for taking so long to respond...
I can replace "Both choices cause the player to lose karma, leaving little doubt that the point of the scenario is to try and push the Aesop that no matter how good and moral you try to be, evil actions are inevitable." with "Both choices cause the player to lose karma, so the player cannot avoid making a choice that is explicitly deemed evil by the story." How is that?
As for Conflict Ball, I'm convinced that is the appropriate trope, and that's what I intended to re-add it under. You said "They don't come out of nowhere or require anyone to change their normal behaviour, so no one is picking up any balls they weren't already carrying, so to speak" but that just isn't true. These conflicts require the player character to pick up a "ball" they normally don't carry.
Edited by David7204
Just got your PM, and that phrasing is better, thanks for that.
I do still think that if we're talking about the player character, But Thou Must! is the more appropriate, specific trope. Conflict Ball is for characters who obviously have to do whatever the creators make them do, but the player at the very least always has the option of just shutting off the game. Personally I'd add onto the example there, but I've said my piece, and the phrasing was the bigger issue.
Edited by Unsung
Broken links - The J.E. Sawyer mod link (http://www.nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=60505)
is broken; goes to a non-existent page.
Hide / Show Replies