I gotta say, Deltarune's whole "your choices don't matter" theme sure hits different after playing Dragon Quest and seeing just how often they give you a "yes/no" prompt that has literally no impact on the plot whatsoever
@Zennistrad oh yeah, FFXIV's got that in spades too. The agency in the story of that game can be lacking at times
@elfi As with most things in JRPGs, Dragon Quest is the originator of that entire trope and it probably does it more often than any other series
It's so famous that Obsidian gave an entire presentation at PAX about avoiding it, named specifically after the way it was used in Dragon Warrior for the NES:
FFXIV/Deltarune/Ar Nosurge spoiler discussion, probably tl;dr but I'm engaged now
@Zennistrad Yeah, I think FFXIV really deconstructs player agency in a similar but inverted way to Deltarune though. Sure, you're your own self, but in the main scenario, as the Warrior of Light you don't have any choice but forward, and eventually even find out you're not even your own person, just a reincarnation of one of the paragons, Azem
Contrast Deltarune, where Kris is evidently their own person, but steered--perhaps unknowingly at first--by the player without any of their own agency except when they can break free. God knows, after how forcefully they screamed they were upset by Spamton after I let them, I'd love to just sit down, listen to them, and ride in tandem if they're willing to permit it! But also as the plot goes, the player has very little agency in the experiment too
Interestingly, I've read that Ar Nosurge explores this whole player control/character agency thing with the Interdimend system being a tangible interface that the player uses to control EARTHES/Delta that ties into a lot of the dimensional physics of the series, but it also has a lot of racy bits so I've shied away from messing with it myself, because as a person my agency is particularly bothered by being forced into saying things I'd never want to because of the limitations of the fourth wall
FFXIV/Deltarune/Ar Nosurge spoiler discussion, probably tl;dr but I'm engaged now
@elfi Everhood is a very fascinating inversion of the Deltarune dynamic, IMO
I love Everhood because in many ways it's a direct reconstruction of all the genre conventions that Undertale took apart, and the way that it reconciles the inherent tension between player and player-character is one of them
(I won't spoil any more, it's a game you need to play blind.)
re: FFXIV/Deltarune/Ar Nosurge spoiler discussion, probably tl;dr but I'm engaged now
@Zennistrad I've seen and heard interesting things about Everhood! I'd love to sit down and take a poke at it someday
