Thanks to everyone for the feeback, both supportive and critical. Especially the elusive (Illusive?) Mike Laidlaw, who I know has at least one job more important than trawling the forums. It's a well-known baseless statistic that, when it comes to forums, internet and otherwise, the negative voice tends to be the loudest. I'm glad to see that, in this topic at least, the response has been largely optimistic.
Sable Rhapsody wrote...
Thanks for an intelligent, thoughtful post 
A few quibbles--I doubt Hawke will become the sole face of DA2. Hell, even Sheploo had to share the spotlight, and we've already seen concept art of the woman with white hair...whom I assume has to be important if she made it onto the cover alongside Hawke.
Now that you mention the fifth point on Hawke, the whole "Who is the Champion of Kirkwall" thing reminds me kind of PS:T. Who is the Nameless One? What can change the nature of a man? That whole schtick. And that's not a bad thing. DA:O did not have the intense focus on a personal story; it was about the Blight, ultimately, as evidenced by how poorly things could turn out for the unfortunate Warden. Having a very personal journey could be really cool. The DA series is the story of a world, not one individual. DA:O was the story of one important event in the world. DA2 could very well be the story of one pivotal person. Sounds kinda cool.
Also, if either Mark Meer or Jennifer Hale voices the protagonist, I'ma have a hard time playing. I love Hale, don't get me wrong, but every time I hear her voice now, I think Shepard. Or sometimes Avatar Kyoshi or Bastila. We need fresh voices.
And thank you for a reply of the same. You're right about Shepard not being the sole face of his game, of course. I suppose my point was that when we start seeing DA2 following the same formula ME uses for most of its media-that is, main character + attractive woman + mysterious non-human on the box art and in all the adds-the prophets can use that as evidence of whatever clash of celestial bodies they are predicting. Not that it would even be very strong evidence, mind.
The point about Plannescape:Torment is a good one. I'll be honest and say I've never played the game myself (it's on the list, I swear), but the way people talk about it, you'd be hard-pressed to give a more flattering comparison. Someone else in the thread mentioned that DA2 sounded a bit like Fable, and I actually agree. Not with respect to gameplay, obviously, but what we've heard so far does remind be a bit of the whole "Who will you be?" media narrative. And that's a good thing.
I agree that resuing VOs to that extent would be jarring. I just finished the Overload DLC for ME2, and whenever Dr. Archer had a line I couldn't help but think of Loghain. (Though I suppose the two characters have more than their VOs in common.) At the same time, though, I'm sure BioWare realizes that there's a sizeable crossover between DA and ME, and that most of those players would notice the similarities, so I really doubt they would use the same actor or actress to voice the main character in their two biggest current (non-MMO) franchises. It's obvious that BioWare's directors, like any director, have a group of actors they trust and enjoy working with, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Meer and Hale appear a role or three, just not as Hawke.
Felfenix wrote...
The POINT of playing Origins was to play an enjoyable game. The same "point" of playing any game.
My thoughts exactly. Of course, now it turns out that you can indeed port DA:O save files, which is just gravy.
Mike Laidlaw wrote...
Also, for the record, "Hawke Talk" would be an awesome daytime talk show. A fake plant in the corner, a
series of guests who come and work through their emotional problems with the Champion...I'm totally digging that idea.
Well, you guys
did do that one skit during the Jade Empire credits, with Dawn Star and Sagacious Zu's voice actors riffing on Hollywood and whatnot. Just putting that out there.
Lilacs wrote...
Even though the company was acquired by EA, I know Bioware won't ignore its fans, and it's a big pool of
enthusiastic fans, too. One thing I would like to add though, is that if voicing is considered ,I advise that it is not reduced to Mass Effect2, shortage of words, but similarly to "Leliana's Song " where you get a very good idea of what Leliana would say. Some of the response choices provided in Leliana's song were in line with what I
want her (as my PC) to say.
There's definitely a balance to be maintained between what shows up in the menu and what your character actually says. On one end, there's the system of unvoiced full transcription used in pretty much every BioWare game other than Mass Effect, and on the other is Alpha Protocol's "stance system" (or dialogue rectangle, if you prefer) where you get a single descriptor word and nothing else. The Mass Effect wheel falls somewhere in the middle, though closer to the latter than the former.
I agree completely that the two systems feel different, even though in both cases it's the game's writers who construct the dialogue rather than the player. Besides the wheel system not always giving a perfect picture of what sort of response a selection actually leads to, there's something to be said for knowing what your character is going to say before he or she actually says it, rather than hearing it for the first time along with everyone else.
My guess is that BioWare isn't trying to deprive the player of information or prescience, but rather that the wheel is a necessary side effect of the conversion to a voiced PC. It would be odd, not to mention a bit boring, for the player to
read a line once then have to listen to their character say the same line again, especially when the voice didn't match with how the player expected it would sound. With shorter dialogue summaries in place of transcriptions, the actual voice acting will seem fresher, and the VO's reading won't clash with the player's quite as much.
I don't know nearly enough (read: anything) about game development to know how much work it would require to provide options for both, but it seems possible, at least in theory, if voiced is the default and all the dialogue is already written anyway. Regardless, each option as its pros and cons, and it's perfectly legitimate to prefer the unvoiced system over the voiced one.
term8 wrote...
What makes Hawke a Shepard is the fact that he is essentially one character and although you can choose his
reactions Shepard is ultimately one character with two paths... in DA:O you could be several characters with ultimately one path... I'm not saying i'm not going to buy DA2 or that Hawke has been Shepardized...
but i will say this: voice acting the protagonist is 50% of shepardization, if the voice actor turns out to be bland, lifeless, and disconnected with the role then you have 100% shepardization
Just for the record, I throughly enjoyed both ME1 and ME2. I'm not trying to make "Shepardize" a bad word, it's just that if you like both Italian food and you like Japanese food, you don't want to see the last spaghetti joint in town turn into another sushi bar.
Anyway, I can't say I understand the logic behind most of this post, unless our definitions for Shepardization are very different. I do, however, agree with the part about the paths. That's sort of what I mean with the Fable comparison. I'm hoping that DA2 will turn out to be divergent where DA:O was convergent. The origins offered your character with a variety of backgrounds, but as the saying goes, all roads lead to Ostagar. The player could certainly make them matter through roleplay efforts, but between the beginning and the epilogue, the effects of the origins on the story were minor DA2, on the other hand, has the potential to take a single character background and spread out before it a myriad of potential futures, turning DA:O's structure on its head. Put another way, you could have as the same breadth options for the entirety of DA2 as you had for the first two hours of DA:O.
As I've said before, of course, all this is just speculation on my part. The possibility for a truly villainous Hawke in particular is probably 10% evidence and 90% wishful thinking, whether or not it turns out to be accurate. We've got a long and winding road ahead of us in the DA2 speculation season; it's too early to be finalizing judgement of any sort.
Sylvius the Mad wrote...
These vague pronouncements by developers typically raise more questions than they answer.
Then it sounds like the pronouncements are doing their job.
Modifié par CLime, 11 juillet 2010 - 01:45 .
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. It's nice to see someone whose objective and to the point:lol:. Hopefully you can sway the doomsayers to not be so pessimistic:bandit:. So far Bioware has yet to let me down so here's hoping for a fantastic sequel. I hope choices will have a noticeable impact like the good:innocent: and evil:devil: choices in Fable 2 as due to the whole ten years journey there will be ample opportunity to show a changing world based on your choices.
