Non-Human Races

[Algea]

I was thinking about other playable races and Madoc's words that they will have completely different psychologies and I remembered about one thing that always peeved me in the Mass Effect series - how every last race was in essence humans with different meshes and skins. I wonder if Sui Generis is able to really implement different races' psychologies, because it's made by humans. It's a really hard and complex and ambitious thing to do; and it's so much more interesting and unusual than any playable race that devs could possibly make available.

 

[Sunpeece]

It's not difficult to implement creative psychologies at all. We humans, through science, are very self aware about how we work. From that knowledge, it's extremely easy to think of how it could be different, and figure out how that effects the rest of a fictional organism.

 

[unwoundpath]

If we are not able to play as a Non-human race on release I will be sad, but I will still love the game. It's just that I don't want to play as a human.

 

[Algea]

I'd really love to see it in contemporary gaming though. Besides it's always interesting to have a somewhat interactive experience rather than reading it in some article or a science fiction novel (not that I have anything against reading). Also wouldn't it be difficult to create a race with a different mindset that won't feel stiffed and artificial? It's quite a challenge.

 

[Sunpeece]

I'd really love to see it in contemporary gaming though. Besides it's always interesting to have a somewhat interactive experience rather than reading it in some article or a science fiction novel (not that I have anything against reading). Also wouldn't it be difficult to create a race with a different mindset that won't feel stiffed and artificial? It's quite a challenge.

A challenge for novice writer

 

[Anoe]

Also wouldn't it be difficult to create a race with a different mindset that won't feel stiffed and artificial?

Malkavian's mindset in Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines was totally different. Crazy dialogue options with unpredictable consequences, it was really fun and unique game experience

 

[Algea]

Malkavian's mindset in Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines was totally different. Crazy dialogue options with unpredictable consequences, it was really fun and unique game experience

This is true, but still they were humanoid, they were comprehensible. What I have in mind is something I can't describe or even imagine (although I have to say I have very poor imagination unfortunately), but it is something completely different from humans. Argh, I can't really translate my thoughts, but I do wonder if it is possible to feel compassion or to even understand other non-human races? I don't push devs to really implement something like that, but if they do take steps toward non-human personalities at all that would be marvelous. Bioware *created* their Qunari race in Dragon Age series, but it was so unmistakably human in essence it was pretty boring. And as I said there was nothing alien in Mass Effect's aliens.

Long story short - Troika games really made magnificent job with Malkavian clan, but it still had its human psyche limitations in the end. In my opinion of course.

 

[Anoe]

I believe its impossible to create or describe something completely non-human because, well, human mind is always trying to see social behaviors and emotions in other creatures\things. When you're watching animals or science fiction movie, or playing a video game, you kind of *know* why those two cats are fighting, you can tell if that alien monster is angry, hungry or scared etc. Let's take this video for example:

Even in some abstract geometrical figures you can clearly see the story, some motives and logic in their actions.
So yeah, from the human's viewpoint Qunari's action are also understandable and logical.

I guess the best what developers can do is to give their creatures some unusual philosophy, let them ignore some of the basic human instincts (like survival instinct or fear), but anyway we will treat them as human beings

 

[Algea]

Anoe, exactly! Moreover this whole 'make us a playable non-human race' issue is a bit shallow. Not to offend or condescend people who want one, of course. But I always selected other races in games when they had either some interesting backgrounds or had beautiful/unusual looks. However implementation of those races in games was rather poor (Malkavians being one happy exception I know of) so in the end it always went down to looks. There were no completely different dialogue options that could help with immersion and that's the only reason I call playable non-human races shallow. In my mind either do it in earnest or don't even think bout doing it.

What I want to say is that everywhere where we meet so-called alternative life-forms they are either hostile and silent (for example some cloud of dust that can only kill or something) or too human-like. So I always wondered if we ever made alien contact what it'd be like? We'd undoubtedly try to apply human logic and I wonder if it's the right path to take. But I digress.

Also I'd prefer to have some slender-looking races in SG (Sui Generis) myself if Madoc hadn't said earlier that there'll be different body builds in there.

 

[Pantheon]

I guess the best what developers can do is to give their creatures some unusual philosophy, let them ignore some of the basic human instincts (like survival instinct or fear)

I guess that huge ogre hasn't heard of fear

And I think the problem is that many living things share so many traits like fear, hunger, anger, etc. and that's why many non-human (humanoid) races still seem so human to us and unless those other races have a really low intelligence, they'll be capable of more or less the same things we humans are, although on a much simpler level, of course (or that's how it should be, anyways).

 

[Algea]

Pantheon, what do these races prefer to eat? Do they eat fruits and vegetables? Do they find human flesh appetizing? What makes them attack humans, do they even attack humans? What kind of society they have? If we're talking about races with low intelligence then it'd be easy to implement them as mobs suited for killing, but if we're talking about intelligent species then writer should try to think about every possible thing. Humans in disguise are really, really cliched and boring. So I'd rather see a well-written non-playable non-human race than generic pointed-ears one that I can play.

I mean, Sui Generis is a really ambitious project and I love it, I love how the devs make seemingly unreachable, impossible goals and strive to reach them and then more, but being a pragmatical person I don't want to get my hopes too high and then be disappointed and take it out on Bare Mettle team. I'd rather see less content that is well thought-out than to have many shallow options. It's like (not to offend DnD lovers) computer games in DnD settings - many races, many classes but with such poor execution in CRPGs. I mean, DnD as a rulebook is great for tabletop RPG when you have your DM, but for static CRPG it's very stiffing and underdeveloped. I loved it years ago but now it's really dissatisfying. I think I have higher expectations for games now, but it's only natural.

 

[MNONE]

Algea - did you ever read Stewart and Cohen's Wheelers? They deal with the idea of radically different species. A fair amount speculates on the relationship between physical form, metabolism and mind (and perception).

The psyche, though, is roughly similar - pettyness, empathy, control, rebelliousness etc. - which may in part reflect their non-fiction work where they think of evolution as a phase-space and thus are open to the possibility of convergeance towards niches (of which "an intelligent species" is one).

I'd still recommend it for a look at what you're talking about.

I never really saw the Malkavian characters in V:TM as a different and distinct kind of mind - neither the player character, nor the high-ranking one whose mansion you infiltrate - as really they're a pathology of a particular kind of mind.

 

[Algea]

MNONE, I'll look it up, thanks. Do you have any recommendations considering forays into really non-human minds? Any kind of speculations. It's quite a paradox - trying to write something one supposedly shouldn't have any conception about.

 

[Icecold]

If being human is a part of the plot, then it's completely understandable and logical to leave the humans as the only playable race. But in this problem lays the solution: make another story. A prologue, an epilogue, or even some parallel events happening in a different part of the world. It could be a DLC or expansion or whatever, released after the main game and helping to see the World and Story from different perspective and all that.

But yeah, it'll be pretty hard to make not just a differently-skinned human, but a Non-Human Race. And the most difficult part, in my opinion, would not be just to create that race, with their totally alien language, behavior, ethics, morals and stuff, but to actually make that race playable, i. e. to implement all of those non-human traits into gameplay. Though I don't think it is impossible, and it could enrich the game greatly.

So, you played the game and saved the world or something. Now, how about you play as one of those "savages" that you killed by the dozens and try to save their own little world?

 

[Cooper Holt]

I think that there should be only humanoid races, if not, only humans. I think that completely different races would be hard to animate and would be unrealistic. Besides, it goes against Madoc's opinions.

 

[Algea]

So, you played the game and saved the world or something. Now, how about you play as one of those "savages" that you killed by the dozens and try to save their own little world?

See? Compassion. In my opinion seriously playing for another non-human race is near impossible. You'll try to apply your human logic (just like the one who wrote this in-game scenario) to justify their actions. Or even to play for them, to select some dialogue options written by human. How is it possible? I think only if the writer chooses to write something like "44gdbvheflmr" as a dialogue option with randomized outcome this can succeed. Because it's the only way you won't apply your logic and psyche to make a decision.

I'm just joking though. But with a deeper meaning.

 

[Icecold]

Well, other races (or, at least, some of them) should'n be completely alien. Those who are completely alien are usually those who are Always Chaotic Evil: you can't understand them, they can't understand you, WAR. But if this race does have concepts which are distantly similar to human (and a decipherable language), then it's a different case. You can communicate, you can even understand them, their culture and motivations, but they are still different.

And that's why I think that it's possible, in theory, to make that sort of non-human race playable. But I suppose it is really hard to make that kind of race both playable and believable at the same time. Can't think of a way to properly introduce a player to all those racial differences and stuff and to make player obey those rules. Some thing can be part of the gameplay, like human money being worthless and using trophies instead of gold or something like that, but still... Stupid human logic and psychology!

 

[MNONE]

It's pretty hard to think of an intelligent species that's completely different to a human. Usually it has to revolve around variations of certain attributes - often but not always empathy - enlarged or removed. I think it might be partly because it would be hard to become a highly intelligent species without a similar set of characteristics revolving around sensitivity to social contexts, language and reason. It's easier for Lovecraft (haven't really read any of his stuff so this is largely second hand) to talk about weird Outsiders and insensible Idiot Gods because he's not constrained by considering how these individuals could plausibly originate - they just come to be out of the chaos.


The Gengris in China Mieville's The Scar, and the Saruthi in Dan Abnet's Xenos, are pretty alien, although their psychologies aren't really examined and it's basically a variation or reflection of unpleasant slavers and the worst excesses of the aspect of domination in a social species (so closer to an inversion of Bank's egalitarian Culture than a truely "other" psychology).

The Mane in Chris Wooding's "Tales of the Ketty Jay" series are rather similar - they have the same needs and desires as you might expect. If anything their empathy and need for one another is ramped up to 11. It's just that they don't empathise with humans, who are outside of their collective community and thus don't really register as "people" to the Mane.

Sergei Lukyanenko's Others in the Nightwatch series are basically humans with an altered perspective. Similar situation for the orcs in Stan Nicholls' Orcs.

Perhaps closer are the creatures living inside the gas giant in Iain M. Bank's The Algebraist. They don't really value life, or even survival. Been a while since I read it, but they don't really care for their children, hitting them away, letting them ride on the back of their "ships" that plough through the gas giant's depths which means that a lot of these young end up falling off and disappearing. They even watch impassively as humans are launched at their planet in an attempt to horrify and intimidate them.

 

[Mimel]

Since this world is set in Medieval Europe, then perhaps the "other races/species" could just be a hominid that hadn't died out as in our real timeline. Neanderthals would be a good thought, or a mix of humans and these or others.

This goes for creatures as well.

 

[Madoc]

The game is not set in mediaeval Europe. There are reasons for the similarity but it's not the real thing. Historical accuracy is not an aim but we have taken a lof from the period also just because of the depth and realism we can gain from using a real life example of a civilisation with that level of technological development etc.