268 réponses à ce sujet

[Prevenge]

Everything looks so bad for this game. Dragon Age: Origins is by far my favorite game of this gen, to the point where I bought DA:O:A, hated it [there were some cool skills but the whole role play thing was totally gone], and still didn't feel ripped off. Solely because of the time I spent with DA:O.
That said, I'm waiting for reviews before totally panning it. But all of the news coming out is extremely depressing. I Day 1'd Mass Effect, and didn't like it nearly as much as I'd anticipated ... if DA:O takes some things from Mass Effect, I don't see how they would make the game better. [they're similar, only the combat in ME is better [so I was kind of happy to hear about the combat improvements, though that's not why I play (and played ... I'm on a third playthrough, delaying my playthrough of Red Dead Redemption)], and the dialogue and romance/relationship system in DA:O is amazing: I like being able to start off from neutral with everybody instead of having some invisible random plague of tales fly through the world instantaneously, it makes it feel much more personal].
That said, I'm giving the game the benefit of held opinion until it comes out, and I'll most likely buy it.
That doesn't mean I can't be absolutely panicked for it, though. ...

Also: Please don't have the dialog options in the same places every time. it's stupid, and it promotes 'smash one part of the dialog wheel' gameplay, and I'm lazy, so I'll probably end up doing that at one point.

Modifié par Prevenge, 11 juillet 2010 - 08:14 .

[b09boy]

David Gaider wrote...

Can you clarify? How much freedom did you have to define the Warden's personality, exactly? From my perspective as the writer, you're still just picking options that I give you-- it's the same thing, unless I'm missing something.

That's kinda...depressing to hear from a lead writer.  Let me try to find a way to make this a bit more relatable.

Ok, so you're writing the game, you have all these fantastic characters in mind.  They're great, you love the history of this one and the way these two react is great and that subtle budding romance between these two makes you proud.  And thene the adventure, wow.  Epic, emotional, incredible.  The gauntlet these characters must walk through is unbelievable and how they react to all these situations and villains fills you with pride.

Problem?  Your protagonist is a blank slate.

Getting these wild and colorful characters to interact with this guy is like an obstacle in and of itself.  It's like filling out a questionnaire and it sometimes feels like these exciting characters are becoming almost boring because everyone knows the player character is going to want all those simple questions.  So to make things fun you give the character more snippets of personality to liven things up, all the while wishing there was some way you could wrest control over this character and make them a more interactive part of the world.

Here's the thing you didn't count on.

That blank slate character?  The one you felt you could give only snippets of personality?  Who seemed to be in the way of your real characters more often than not?  A lot of players have made them into a full-fledged character.  They've taken those base reponses and given them their own tone then taken advantage of the sarcastic response or the mean response or whatever whenever it comes along and they've added it onto the protagonist's personality.  So while you're seeing the optional line, "Let's get on with it then," as fairly basic neutral line, people are adding a dozen different inflections so they're saying it how they want yet are still getting the response they are looking for from the NPCs.  For instance, [Excited] "Let's get on with it then."  [Gruff] "Let's get on with it then." [Impatient] "Let's get on with it then." [Annoyed] "Let's get on with it then."  Imagine for a moment, if that's what a player can do with such a basic line, what can they create for themselves with the snippets of real personality showing through?  More, with that in mind, what would they create if you made more snippets, such as more actions in place of pure dialogue?

Believe it or not, this makes the Warden more personal to them than Hawke will ever be.  Think of a tabletop RPG, if you will.  The DM can write a story and railroad it all they want, but the player will still find a way to make the character their own...unless it's the DM saying all the lines while the player remains mute.

[Llane Lightbringer]

I have to agree with the main post.



I really have no idea why Bioware would scrap the entire idea of the first game (which was such an amazing, amazing experience for many of us) and take this approach. What happens to Morrigan, Leliana and all the other characters we held dear from Origins?



I was so looking forward to Dragon Age 2 to continue this journey with old and new companions and to dive back into the world of DA. But this new idea is a slap in the face of a lot of people who enjoyed playing Origins.



This wasn't a good idea. Not at all.



It's probably going to be a hit, anyway. But I will not buy it.

[MerinTB]

b09boy wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

Can you clarify? How much freedom did you have to define the Warden's personality, exactly? From my perspective as the writer, you're still just picking options that I give you-- it's the same thing, unless I'm missing something.

That's kinda...depressing to hear from a lead writer.  Let me try to find a way to make this a bit more relatable.

Ok, so you're writing the game, you have all these fantastic characters in mind.  They're great, you love the history of this one and the way these two react is great and that subtle budding romance between these two makes you proud.  And thene the adventure, wow.  Epic, emotional, incredible.  The gauntlet these characters must walk through is unbelievable and how they react to all these situations and villains fills you with pride.

Problem?  Your protagonist is a blank slate.

Getting these wild and colorful characters to interact with this guy is like an obstacle in and of itself.  It's like filling out a questionnaire and it sometimes feels like these exciting characters are becoming almost boring because everyone knows the player character is going to want all those simple questions.  So to make things fun you give the character more snippets of personality to liven things up, all the while wishing there was some way you could wrest control over this character and make them a more interactive part of the world.

Here's the thing you didn't count on.

That blank slate character?  The one you felt you could give only snippets of personality?  Who seemed to be in the way of your real characters more often than not?  A lot of players have made them into a full-fledged character.  They've taken those base reponses and given them their own tone then taken advantage of the sarcastic response or the mean response or whatever whenever it comes along and they've added it onto the protagonist's personality.  So while you're seeing the optional line, "Let's get on with it then," as fairly basic neutral line, people are adding a dozen different inflections so they're saying it how they want yet are still getting the response they are looking for from the NPCs.  For instance, [Excited] "Let's get on with it then."  [Gruff] "Let's get on with it then." [Impatient] "Let's get on with it then." [Annoyed] "Let's get on with it then."  Imagine for a moment, if that's what a player can do with such a basic line, what can they create for themselves with the snippets of real personality showing through?  More, with that in mind, what would they create if you made more snippets, such as more actions in place of pure dialogue?

Believe it or not, this makes the Warden more personal to them than Hawke will ever be.  Think of a tabletop RPG, if you will.  The DM can write a story and railroad it all they want, but the player will still find a way to make the character their own...unless it's the DM saying all the lines while the player remains mute.

Agree with this.

Good comparision to table top.  While a cRPG can never do what a table-top can, the analogy is sound.  The writer tell the player "you aren't making choices, you're just rifling through the "all go to the same place" options I put before you for the character I created for you" is just like the DM who tells the PCs what they are doing, and even if the players try to make their own choices, pushing hard agains the DM railroading, the DM just keeps on trucking the same results he had planned from the start.

That DM doesn't keep players.

[dan107]

I just want to throw in my 2 cents and say that I'm very happy with what I'm hearing about DA2 so far. ME2 was a better game than DA IMO, and the fast-paced, dramatic conversations were a big reason why. Great to see that making its way to DA2.

[Randy1012]

MerinTB wrote...

Agree with this.

Good comparision to table top.  While a cRPG can never do what a table-top can, the analogy is sound.  The writer tell the player "you aren't making choices, you're just rifling through the "all go to the same place" options I put before you for the character I created for you" is just like the DM who tells the PCs what they are doing, and even if the players try to make their own choices, pushing hard agains the DM railroading, the DM just keeps on trucking the same results he had planned from the start.

That DM doesn't keep players.

I agree, but again, video games are far more limited in what they can do. In a pen-and-paper game (if you have a good DM), campaigns can be completely upended and transformed by one single action. But we're all being railroaded in video games. The illusion of choice in video games is simply that, an illusion. We can only have our characters react how the developers decide our characters can react, and no matter which reactions we choose, they can only lead us to the endings that the developers decide our characters can reach. Every single RPG BioWare has ever done has been like that, no matter how much "freedom" they've ever supposedly offered.

[zahra]

dan107 wrote...

I just want to throw in my 2 cents and say that I'm very happy with what I'm hearing about DA2 so far. ME2 was a better game than DA IMO, and the fast-paced, dramatic conversations were a big reason why. Great to see that making its way to DA2.

*cries a little*

[the_one_54321]

Video games can never be just like PnP. While I agree with a lot of the sentiment just given, a DM is always there during the game. In a video game the DM is never there. That makes the creation process completely different. The writer in a game needs to take some liberties, and needs to take away some liberties from the player. Where a DM can write the story as events progress, changing and reacting to the characters, a writer of a game has to write everything before any players even touch the game. This means they can never work the same way.



It's a trade off. You get a more defined character and more definitive interactions when you have less freedom in the main character. You get a more variable more personally tailored character when you take away some of the definition within the interactions.



You can't have your cake and eat it too.

[Xandurpein]

b09boy wrote...

David Gaider wrote...

Can you clarify? How much freedom did you have to define the Warden's personality, exactly? From my perspective as the writer, you're still just picking options that I give you-- it's the same thing, unless I'm missing something.

That's kinda...depressing to hear from a lead writer.  Let me try to find a way to make this a bit more relatable.

Ok, so you're writing the game, you have all these fantastic characters in mind.  They're great, you love the history of this one and the way these two react is great and that subtle budding romance between these two makes you proud.  And thene the adventure, wow.  Epic, emotional, incredible.  The gauntlet these characters must walk through is unbelievable and how they react to all these situations and villains fills you with pride.

Problem?  Your protagonist is a blank slate.

Getting these wild and colorful characters to interact with this guy is like an obstacle in and of itself.  It's like filling out a questionnaire and it sometimes feels like these exciting characters are becoming almost boring because everyone knows the player character is going to want all those simple questions.  So to make things fun you give the character more snippets of personality to liven things up, all the while wishing there was some way you could wrest control over this character and make them a more interactive part of the world.

Here's the thing you didn't count on.

That blank slate character?  The one you felt you could give only snippets of personality?  Who seemed to be in the way of your real characters more often than not?  A lot of players have made them into a full-fledged character.  They've taken those base reponses and given them their own tone then taken advantage of the sarcastic response or the mean response or whatever whenever it comes along and they've added it onto the protagonist's personality.  So while you're seeing the optional line, "Let's get on with it then," as fairly basic neutral line, people are adding a dozen different inflections so they're saying it how they want yet are still getting the response they are looking for from the NPCs.  For instance, [Excited] "Let's get on with it then."  [Gruff] "Let's get on with it then." [Impatient] "Let's get on with it then." [Annoyed] "Let's get on with it then."  Imagine for a moment, if that's what a player can do with such a basic line, what can they create for themselves with the snippets of real personality showing through?  More, with that in mind, what would they create if you made more snippets, such as more actions in place of pure dialogue?

Believe it or not, this makes the Warden more personal to them than Hawke will ever be.  Think of a tabletop RPG, if you will.  The DM can write a story and railroad it all they want, but the player will still find a way to make the character their own...unless it's the DM saying all the lines while the player remains mute.

I totally agree with this post. I do not for a moment pretend to have the kind of experience the lead writers of Bioware have, or any professional game writer, but one thing I did learn when I wrote game conversations was the simple fact that a minimalistic conversation line for the player was almost always better.

It is much easier to expand a short, minimalistic sentence into something bigger in your head. It is much, much harder to ignore a more elaborate reply that doesn't feel right for you. By making the PC silent and choose from replies that are more minimalistic, you give the player more room to participate in the creation of their story.

It doesn't matter that some of the choices is just an illussion. That it's only pre-programmed responses. It's the fact that witohut voice acting and a dialogue wheel, there is a blank sheet in the story where I can write my own hero.

Now, I can understand that not all players want to invest so much into creating the story, preferring to have the game writers do it for them. But for those of us who do enjoy this aspect of roleplaying games, the "first-person RPG", there is simply no deeper immersion than a first-person RPG where I can truly feel I'm creating my own story.

I loved Mass Effect too, but in the end Mass Effect was Commander Shepard's story, while Dragon Age was MY story. I don't know how else to differnetiate between the feelings.

Modifié par Xandurpein, 11 juillet 2010 - 08:41 .

[Prevenge]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Video games can never be just like PnP. While I agree with a lot of the sentiment just given, a DM is always there during the game. In a video game the DM is never there. That makes the creation process completely different. The writer in a game needs to take some liberties, and needs to take away some liberties from the player. Where a DM can write the story as events progress, changing and reacting to the characters, a writer of a game has to write everything before any players even touch the game. This means they can never work the same way.

It's a trade off. You get a more defined character and more definitive interactions when you have less freedom in the main character. You get a more variable more personally tailored character when you take away some of the definition within the interactions.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

So we want more freedom. How hard is this to understand?
To extend the analogy, it's not that we want our cake to have two kinds of frosting: it's that we really like this one kind of frosting, but the baker inexplicably decided to make us a cake with this other frosting. We've already tried this frosting. It's passable. It isn't really comparable.
I would personally be more than satisfied with a ME2 that was ME1 with a different story [/new campaign, if you want to go all D&D on me].

[Layn]

David Gaider wrote...

I suppose I see what you're saying-- but in the end, I provided that option to tease Alistair and I can do exactly the same thing with the DA2 system if I choose. Our ability to provide you enough choices so that you can express the type of personality you wish lies in the execution of the writing, not the structure of the interface. Interface-wise we still have six slots available on the wheel, just the same as we had six lines to work with in DAO.

As for being limited to friendly/ flirty/ angry/ investigate-- I suppose there's an element of that, sure, but there was also in DAO. We tended to include the same "categories" of responses so that they covered a limited breadth of personalities or actions. This is no different, and as I said it comes down to the writing style.

i just like to know what exactly my character is going to say. I'll be afraid to choose the flirty and angry options because i just don't know what exactly will be said. how strong those emotions will be

Modifié par Crrash, 11 juillet 2010 - 08:43 .

[b09boy]

the_one_54321 wrote...

Video games can never be just like PnP. 

I think I should clarify here before this turns into a whole other discussion that this was an analogy, not a direct example.  Basically, a player is as limited as the DM allows them to be and if you take away their ability to even have their own voice and tone, to even pick the lines they want...well, that's really limiting them on who they can be.

[spottyblanket]

Can't people just post their moans and groans in ONE thread?

[Prevenge]

spottyblanket wrote...

Can't people just post their moans and groans in ONE thread?

What else is there to talk about? It looks like about half of the audience of the first game hates this change, some with the kind of vehement hate I reserve for worse things. ... Also, just in general having more threads makes it a larger chance of having your voice heard? I'd guess? I dunno. Keep your excitement to one thread, then we can have two threads in the forum and then the stickies up top.

Modifié par Prevenge, 11 juillet 2010 - 08:50 .

[spottyblanket]

Like posting it everywhere? Seriously though, lol--do we need to see the same thread over and over? I'd much rather people posted threads about cheese. All this moaning is ruining it for the people who are actullay excited about the game. <<; Every new scrap of info is leaped on for another excessive moan. People need to lighten up a little.

[Kinkaku]

I still believe that people are going way to far with so little info out...I guess people are taking something they know so little about a little too hard hmm?

[Onac Proudmoore]

David Gaider wrote...

_-Greywolf-_ wrote...
What I am worried about is that Hawke will turn out to be just like Shepard, I remember reading an interview with Greg and Ray where they explained why they limit the personality options of a character like Shepard where they would give more freedom to a character the player can create

In our opinion, it might be okay for Commander Shepherd to be stoic and gruff as a rule-- he's a soldier, after all-- but that's not going to fly for Dragon Age. We don't intend to lock you into a single personality.

As to our solution for doing that-- well, we'll have to discuss that later on. But we do have one, and it's not something you see in Mass Effect. Dragon Age is a different game, despite the comparisons some people seem pretty quick to make based on a few common features.

Hallelujah! I am really relived by this

[Rogue Unit]

Prevenge wrote...

spottyblanket wrote...

Can't people just post their moans and groans in ONE thread?

What else is there to talk about? It looks like about half of the audience of the first game hates this change, some with the kind of vehement hate I reserve for worse things. ... Also, just in general having more threads makes it a larger chance of having your voice heard? I'd guess? I dunno. Keep your excitement to one thread, then we can have two threads in the forum and then the stickies up top.

These forums hardly represent even half of DA's audience.

[Samb84]

Akiios wrote...

I still believe that people are going way to far with so little info out...I guess people are taking something they know so little about a little too hard hmm?

I believe some of that is true but some of the changes we have heard so far is some extreme ones and I for one is a bit shocked and would really want to know why...

I loved the classical rpg feeling and that will be gone or at least some if it and would like to know why...

[Kinkaku]

Samb84 wrote...

Akiios wrote...

I still believe that people are going way to far with so little info out...I guess people are taking something they know so little about a little too hard hmm?

I believe some of that is true but some of the changes we have heard so far is some extreme ones and I for one is a bit shocked and would really want to know why...

I loved the classical rpg feeling and that will be gone or at least some if it and would like to know why...

Well considering the past games Bioware has made I have doubt it will be so extreme that they would want all there fans to leave there side..and like I said with so little info out its hard to make any kind of asumptions, I know its sucks waiting for more info but time will tell.

Modifié par Akiios, 11 juillet 2010 - 09:02 .

[BallaZs]

Hell yeah here we go again...

U are calling DA2 a nightmare already, but u have only like 5 line information about it.

Gongratz. Well, 1 thing for sure, I really won't miss you. I'm sick of the criers like u.

What the hell is wrong with you?

It sounds like that Bioware could come up with anything u guys would just complain and whine about that.

Have faith for God's sake. They still have 8 months to upgrade the game, these are just the very first information about the game.

I truly belive that we'll get another amazing game like DAO was. Just let them do their work, and STOP complaining already. Support them instead.

[the_one_54321]

spottyblanket wrote...
All this moaning is ruining it for the people who are actullay excited about the game. <<; Every new scrap of info is leaped on for another excessive moan. People need to lighten up a little.

All the people who complain have just as much of a right to be angry/nervous/sad as you have to be excited. Every new scrap of info has been to the tune of "like ME did." And that is bothersome. That is worth being worried over, and it's worth letting BioWare know that a whole lot of their fans do not want to see a ME-in-space franchise and an ME-in-medievil-times franchise. We want two different kinds of games.

Different is better. Diversity is good.

[Rogue Unit]

BallaZs wrote...

Hell yeah here we go again...
U are calling DA2 a nightmare already, but u have only like 5 line information about it.
Gongratz. Well, 1 thing for sure, I really won't miss you. I'm sick of the criers like u.
What the hell is wrong with you?
It sounds like that Bioware could come up with anything u guys would just complain and whine about that.
Have faith for God's sake. They still have 8 months to upgrade the game, these are just the very first information about the game.
I truly belive that we'll get another amazing game like DAO was. Just let them do their work, and STOP complaining already. Support them instead.

Agreed.

If this game will be so horrible why still hang around the forums?
I know the forums arent JUST for people who enjoy DA2 and are planning on buying it but if you've given up hope and are not buying the game why not just leave and stop wasting your time here?

And yes I know the difference between adressing concerns and whining. Im talking to the "Dialogue wheel sux. Game ruined! Dwarf on Morrigan sex plox! I hate the name Hawke!" group.

[wicked_being]

Can we just have one thread for people to post their complaints in? (Maybe this one would do)

[Kinkaku]

the_one_54321 wrote...

spottyblanket wrote...
All this moaning is ruining it for the people who are actullay excited about the game. <<; Every new scrap of info is leaped on for another excessive moan. People need to lighten up a little.

All the people who complain have just as much of a right to be angry/nervous/sad as you have to be excited. Every new scrap of info has been to the tune of "like ME did." And that is bothersome. That is worth being worried over, and it's worth letting BioWare know that a whole lot of their fans do not want to see a ME-in-space franchise and an ME-in-medievil-times franchise. We want two different kinds of games.

Different is better. Diversity is good.

Well I for one would like to know the details in which this game will be like ME2 or 1? I mean there has to be something that makes it a clone or similar