121 réponses à ce sujet

[tmp7704]

Jimmy Fury wrote...

Ok since nothing is ever perfect I will pose a question instead of trying my debate angle again.

Which would you prefer:

You want - "That's a great idea Alistair" {Sarcastic with a smirk}
You get - "That's a great idea Alistair" {Sarcastic with an arched eyebrow}

--or--
You want - "That's a great idea Alistair" {Sarcastic with a smirk}
You get - "That's a great idea Alistair" {Sincere and honest}

because it seems to me that's the difference between what we're talking about. It sounds, to me at least, like you're saying the first is more immersion breaking than the second. I'm saying the second is more immersion breaking than the first.

Ahh no, i'm not trying to compare these in such manner at all. All i'm really saying is rather that without the VO you get:

"That's a great idea Alistair" (sarcastic)

and you can then imagine that's either "sarcastic with a smirk" or "sarcastic with an arched eyebrow".

But if the VO is present and it does "sarcastic with an arched eyebrow" then you can no longer imagine it was actually "sarcastic with a smirk" without actively ignoring the character actually did something different than you're imagining.

It isn't more "immersion breaking" but it does further limit any remaining flexibility the player up to this point had when it came to making their character unique (or if not unique then at least customized) 

This is all in response to original point how presence of VO has no impact of player's experience whatsoever, which i disagreed with -- imo this act of limiting the player's remaining flexibility does have certain impact. Although how large that's up to individual players, obviously.

[angelgaidin]

tmp7704 wrote...

Riona45 wrote...

tmp7704 wrote...

I suppose there's that, but then why would someone who thinks voice isn't as important part of the experience... partake in discussion concerning its importance to begin with? I mean, given the same time could be spent discussing things more interesting to them, personally.

LOL!  So basically you're saying, "If you disagree with me, why bother taking the time to mention why you disagree with me?"  Nice move, trying to invalidate the opinions of others.

No, basically i'm saying your argument isn't coherent. You'd have to admit it doesn't make much sense for person who has little interest in X to spend their time reading deep into thread discussing X *and* choose to participate in the discussion they have no interest in, when there's many more alternative threads for them to read, ones they actively care about?

Your statement ignores something.  If an individual isn't very interested in X, but very interested in Y, which X is a part of, they have a very good reason to participate in conversation about X.  In this case, Y = Dragon Age 2.

[angelgaidin]

tmp7704 wrote...

Ahh no, i'm not trying to compare these in such manner at all. All i'm really saying is rather that without the VO you get:

"That's a great idea Alistair" (sarcastic)

and you can then imagine that's either "sarcastic with a smirk" or "sarcastic with an arched eyebrow".

But if the VO is present and it does "sarcastic with an arched eyebrow" then you can no longer imagine it was actually "sarcastic with a smirk" without actively ignoring the character actually did something different than you're imagining.

It isn't more "immersion breaking" but it does further limit any remaining flexibility the player up to this point had when it came to making their character unique (or if not unique then at least customized) 

This is all in response to original point how presence of VO has no impact of player's experience whatsoever, which i disagreed with -- imo this act of limiting the player's remaining flexibility does have certain impact. Although how large that's up to individual players, obviously.

Who cares whether there's a smirk or an arched eyebrow?  Holy crap, are you serious, you're concerned that you can't *imagine* a smirk or an arched eyebrow?  Is that really what this is about?  I certainly hope not, because I can't imagine a more inane thing to be disappointed with.  I'm not flaming or trolling, I'm seriously flabbergasted that anyone could be concerned about a minor facial detail surrounding the delivery of a line.

Modifié par angelgaidin, 12 juillet 2010 - 07:30 .

[tmp7704]

angelgaidin wrote...

Who cares whether there's a smirk or an arched eyebrow?  Holy crap, are you serious, you're concerned that you can't *imagine* a smirk or an arched eyebrow?  Is that really what this is about?  I certainly hope not, because I can't imagine a more inane thing to be disappointed with.  I'm not flaming or trolling, I'm seriously flabbergasted that anyone could be concerned about a minor facial detail surrounding the delivery of a line.

I don't know who cares about details this small. That particular example wasn't mine, i was just going with it to explain the principle. Maybe you'd be less flabbergasted if you took time to actually read the threads you're responding to beyond the last couple of posts? It could save you such head scratching and wondering if "that's really what this is about".

I'm not flaming or trolling either, this is genuine advice.

[AlanC9]

tmp7704 wrote...
But if the VO is present and it does "sarcastic with an arched eyebrow" then you can no longer imagine it was actually "sarcastic with a smirk" without actively ignoring the character actually did something different than you're imagining.

Sure, it's a tradeoff. But even leaving aside the value for some folks of  seeing the PC voice-acted and animated, at least you can pick that option with absolute certainty that it will be sarcastic. Which particular kind of sarcasm is enacted doesn't matter for the outcome of the conversation, but if the line wasn't actually sarcastic at all the outcome would be different.

This isn't theoretical. People had problems with DAO conversations because of this, especially with Alistair.

[tmp7704]

AlanC9 wrote...

Sure, it's a tradeoff. But even leaving aside the value for some folks of  seeing the PC voice-acted and animated, at least you can pick that option with absolute certainty that it will be sarcastic. Which particular kind of sarcasm is enacted doesn't matter for the outcome of the conversation, but if the line wasn't actually sarcastic at all the outcome would be different.

This isn't theoretical. People had problems with DAO conversations because of this, especially with Alistair.

I realize that. I'm not against it at all btw, but i tend to think of it as completely separate factor from the VO. Because even though it comes together with VO and dialogue wheel in the next game, this type of "intent indicator" is completely independent from either of them, in the sense it can work just as well added to traditional dialogue list.

[In Exile]

tmp7704 wrote...

If you pardon imperfect analogy, it's like being in position where you answer a question "how many fingers am i holding up behind my back?" You can pick any number from 1-5 and for all you know any of these picks is right, within the context i've provided you with. Until i go and outright state it's say, three. Once i do that, your number of options gets reduced to exactly one and any different choice will go directly against the reality as it's been defined by me i.e. the "writer".

I appreciate the distinction. Except I fundamentally disagree with you on the fact that the absence of inflection in the PC is in fact equivalent to the analogy you've given.

Put it another way - say you're asked to pick a number between 0 and +infinity (much greater range of choice). And once you choose you're number, the person you're talking to says, great, you've picked three. It doesn't matter that you believe you have that choice. The action of the other person has defined it for you.

To convince me otherwise, you're going to have to prove to me that it is possible to define every response in the game world beside the player, but that having every response defined will not define the option chosen by the player.

Premptively (because I've had this debate many times) misunderstanding does not work as an interpretation, if the game denies you the opportunity to clear it up.

....as far as player is concerned it can be stated matter-of-factly, or it
can be stated with a smile, it can be turned into act of encouragement,
or it can be reluctant, or in a number of other possible ways.

But as far as the NPC is concerned, it was said only one way: reluctant. And insofar as the game is concerned, you are being reluctant saying this. So you are no less free than in the non-VO case.

The difference as I see it is that because you do not see this happening, you can more easily pretend a counter-factual. But that doesn't mean that the previous dialogue system allowed you to do this; it means simply that it was not good enough to allow you to see the contradiction in doing it (in the same way that no one would say Cailan survived because we clearly saw him die).

i find it rather strange that people argue having character locked with
single voice isn't making any difference, and yet at the same time they
are not arguing in the threads which ask for visual customization that
such ability is equally unneeded and adds nothing to the experience.
When these two are very alike.

Except that they are not. I understand that we may not ever agree on how umambigious in fact dialogue is, and hence on the role of VO; but you have to at the very least appreciate that to us, non-VO is no less umabiguous than VO. So the presence or absence of VO cannot be judged on customizability, because there is no difference between the two. The trade-off for us is more cinematic content versus more content, and we favour the former over the latter.

Visual customizability is a very different thing. I guess a good way to put it is that we are empiricists when it comes to our video-games, so we fundamentally believe in 'what we see is what we get'. You and others who hate VO may not believe this, but appreciate that it is not inconsistent that we hold the positions which we do.

However this is a big "if", and the point is chances are frequently
the take of the VA's and the player's will be different. To reuse your
earlier example, even in such simple situation as the player who's been
trying to act like a jerk for most of their game and so is imagining
that "yes, it's good idea Alistair" is spoken reluctantly and gruff,
while the VA is nothing like that in their delivery because they didn't
envision the character they're acting for to be like that.

I'm really glad you said this: to me, this is already done by the writer in how the lines have been written and how characters react to them. There are plenty of times I've been surprised by lines in DA:O - generally when trying to pick what I thought were sarastic lines which were clearly not taken as such, but rather played straight as insults. Or one particularly egregious example where I thought I was participating in story time and instead just outed myself as a racist.

I suppose there's that, but then why
would someone who thinks voice isn't as important part of the
experience... partake in discussion concerning its importance to begin
with? I mean, given the same time could be spent discussing things more
interesting to them, personally.

At least for me, you're wrong. Voice is very important to the experience. Depending on how voice is handled, there could very well be no RPing. Which is not the game I want. I just happen to disagree with you over what it is that leads to no RPing, and to what degree and how a VO affects RPing.

So I'd appreciate not making inferences on what specifically we believe, yes?

edit: incidentally, re: your point about DA forcing character to play a "<3 wardens" person, this doesn't seem accurate. My first character was someone who got roped into the warden business against her will, and i don't recall her ever expressing this sort of attitude towards the order in DA:A.

In DA:A you have to be the Warden Commander. This is motivation breaking. My characters would never do this! It's like forcing the human noble to save, collaborate and swear fealty to Arl Howe in DA:O. There is no possible motivation available to continue being a Grey Warden if you never wanted to be a Grey Warden in the first place. Often when you mention the Blight, other characters say "Ah, you are a Grey Warden," and you do not have the option to refuse or clarify. Wynne asks you what it means to you to be a Grey Warden, and the only non-"I am clearly considering myself part of the order" line that you have is "Why does it have to mean anything," which is still an implicit recognition that you consider yourself a Warden, instead of: "It means nothing because I am not a member of their order."

Let me put it another way: DA:O gives you the option to get dragged kicking and screaming into the Wardens. But after the joining it tells you: tough, suck it, you're now a Warden and have to identify as such and care about their case. And I don't. And any dialogue option that denies me the opportunity to say this in favour of praising their mission is abhorent and anti-RP.

[AlanC9]

tmp7704 wrote...

I realize that. I'm not against it at all btw, but i tend to think of it as completely separate factor from the VO. Because even though it comes together with VO and dialogue wheel in the next game, this type of "intent indicator" is completely independent from either of them, in the sense it can work just as well added to traditional dialogue list.

No objection from me. Intention could be flagged in a pure-text system too, and really should be if the line is at all unclear.

[In Exile]

tmp7704 wrote...
Ahh no, i'm not trying to compare these in such manner at all. All i'm really saying is rather that without the VO you get:

"That's a great idea Alistair" (sarcastic)

and you can then imagine that's either "sarcastic with a smirk" or "sarcastic with an arched eyebrow".

But if the VO is present and it does "sarcastic with an arched eyebrow" then you can no longer imagine it was actually "sarcastic with a smirk" without actively ignoring the character actually did something different than you're imagining.

I think I have a better idea of why we are on opposite sides of the debate. To me, it is not a matter of behaviour so much as it is conveying intention, and this is what conversation is about (not just in a video-game, but in life).

So if I want to be sarcastic, I don't think to myself, "I have to smirk now!"  I think, "I'm going to be sarcastic," at a very basic, intuitive level. If a dialogue system operates in the same way, convey information [x] in a fashion that is sarcastic, then to me it is a working dialogue system that allows me for role-playing. That's just automatic unconscious responding, and to me it isn't part of what I, the player, have under my control, because I am the consciousness of the player. In the same way that whether or not I smirk or wink when being sarcastic is not something I consciously control in the real world.

Put another way, I don't imagine non-conscious behaviour in conjuction with dialogue.

It isn't more "immersion breaking" but it does further limit any remaining flexibility the player up to this point had when it came to making their character unique (or if not unique then at least customized) 

This is all in response to original point how presence of VO has no impact of player's experience whatsoever, which i disagreed with -- imo this act of limiting the player's remaining flexibility does have certain impact. Although how large that's up to individual players, obviously.

I see what your initial point was. Like I said above: this is never a flexibility I considered or considered that people used. I do not consider particular actions or behaviours being filled in via a dialogue choice - to me choosing dialogue is merely that. So when if I choose a line that is sarcastic, then I know there was a line chosen and it was done so sarcastically. And that was it. I never considered the non-conscious behaviour of the character as something under my control and part of RPing.

If the way it was done, if the behaviour itself, is something that people actively saw as under their control, I can see why they would find VO as restrictive. But I suppose that is not something I can ever appreciate because my concept characters do not have mannerisms so much as they have attitudes and intention, and mannerism and behaviour is pretty irrelevant to the character concept (aside from action).

So whether or not the smirk or wink is sarcastici is irrelevant to me, and does not impact RP; now if a dialogue option (see ME) forced me into actual behaviour like slugging someone in the face, then notice would absolutely be required because conscious behaviour of that sort  I need to control.

[Drasill]

People definitely exaggerate the openness of both Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Choosing where you go first doesn't mean anything as you have to go to all the places eventually.

[Addai]

In Exile wrote...
You caught me mid-snark, sorry about the lawn ornament remark. I just kept that going after you claimed I haven't palyed or cared as much about DA:O as you did to get under your skin. As for the second part - I am not saying that wanting to inject your imagination into the game is nonsensical; just that there are other possible ways of role-playing and that it is possible that this is consistent with wanting VO in a game.

Apology accepted and thank you.

What is the point of having a dialogue wheel versus the tree except to allow the voiceover to represent the PC's actual interaction with the world, versus my selection of a text?

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at.

The promotional blurbs about the new system tout the ability of the PC to go off and interact with the world without player direction.  Hawke doesn't need to check in with me in order to interact with the world.  He's taken a vague direction from my choice on the wheel, and is going to run with it.  I don't care how tight a leash the game gives him, or how "cool" it can be to be so "cinematic" and spontaneous etc., I still don't like this.  He's not my character. 

No; what I am saying is that the dialogue wheel is UI. I can't speak for what the writers are saying. I would appreciate a direct quote, though. I'm certainly willing to grant you're right, but I'm going to need to see what the writers specifically are getting at.

I point you to the thread currently going about the new dialogue system (edited to add link).  Mary Kirby responds to a post about the new system confirming that it will be a dialogue wheel like in Mass Effect, but with tone indicators.

You mentioned not being insulting.  It is a bit insulting for you to keep insisting to me that what I disliked about Mass Effect is not really what I disliked, as though you know my mind better than I do.  I hated the femShep's voice.  I hated her butch persona, as conveyed in the voice.  What does that have to do with the writers?

Your initial claim was that VO wrecks role-playing. I am arguing that you're mistaken about that, because VO in itself does not work differently than non-VO. Now, if you simply hate VO in and of itself, that's perfectly justifiable. But then don't say that it's an issue that wrecks roleplaying. Because it has nothing to do with the role-playing; it has everything to do with the fact tha you hate the voice.

You're taking two separate objections of mine and mashing them together.  One objection is that the voiced PC does not allow me to roleplay in the manner I prefer, the manner of DAO.  I acknowledge that it's not the only way to roleplay.  Some people like sitting back and watching a character that someone else has created and directing them.  I prefer creating my own character, backstory, etc.  This is what allows me to feel engaged with a character.  I can appreciate others' characters when I watch a movie or read a book.  When I'm playing an RPG, I want it to be mine, as much as possible.

Now, the fact that my PC is forced to assume a voice that I may or may not like is part of this, but really that is also a separate objection.  Or call it a fear.  Many people like Leliana's VO, to take a non-Mass Effect example, and I find it like nails on a chalkboard.  Even for a voice I might actually like, having a voice actor assume the persona of my character is an intrusion I don't want and don't find necessary. 

As for the butch persona part, that's the same thing as my hating the "I wuv <3 Grey Wardens" attitude in DA:A that the writers force your character into. It is not possible to play DA:A in any way other than  Wardens. This, despite the absence of VO.

So if you hate the voice merely because of how the VA portrays it, fair enough. If you hate the character archetype, then that isn't exclusively to VO at all; in fact, it's completely unrelated to it. And I've given you an example from a non-VO game to back that up.

I dunno, your example is not a great one.  I rarely played gung-ho Warden types, and I was able to play Awakening as a reluctant Warden without feeling any dissonance.  I take that back- I did want the ability to tell Mistress Woolsey to bugger off back to Weisshaupt.  But I was able to tell Alistair, for instance, "you know I didn't want to return to the Wardens" and he acknowledges that as if he knew it.  I saw my Wardens as being there to respond to a threat to Ferelden.  If I had pictured them off on a beach in Antiva, I wouldn't have imported them at all.

My point to you, however, is that if you hate a writer restricting your choices, why would you want to cede greater control of your PC to the writer and add a voice actor and voice director to the mix?

Modifié par Addai67, 12 juillet 2010 - 05:06 .

[tmp7704]

In Exile wrote...

The difference as I see it is that because you do not see this happening, you can more easily pretend a counter-factual. But that doesn't mean that the previous dialogue system allowed you to do this; it means simply that it was not good enough to allow you to see the contradiction in doing it (in the same way that no one would say Cailan survived because we clearly saw him die).

Yes, it is basically this. Although i'd disagree with statement the previous dialogue system didn't allow to do this (because after all you could do this and the system didn't actually prevent you from doing it) Or rather, i'd say it was --possibly unintentional-- side-effect of that system that happened to be positive.

Except that they are not. I understand that we may not ever agree on how umambigious in fact dialogue is, and hence on the role of VO; but you have to at the very least appreciate that to us, non-VO is no less umabiguous than VO. So the presence or absence of VO cannot be judged on customizability, because there is no difference between the two.

I'm interested how you arrive to such conclusion. After all, having your character equipped with certain, defined voice goes directly against ability to decide for yourself what sort of voice, accent and inflection mannerisms your character may have, does it not?

Visual customizability is a very different thing. I guess a good way to put it is that we are empiricists when it comes to our video-games, so we fundamentally believe in 'what we see is what we get'. You and others who hate VO may not believe this, but appreciate that it is not inconsistent that we hold the positions which we do.

Does it mean if the game does not take time to define character's voice, you believe this character's voice has no characteristics whatsoever? Considering in such case you see (or rather hear) nothing. Or do you --maybe subconsciously-- still define it somewhat in your head?

In DA:A you have to be the Warden Commander. This is motivation breaking. My characters would never do this! It's like forcing the human noble to save, collaborate and swear fealty to Arl Howe in DA:O. There is no possible motivation available to continue being a Grey Warden if you never wanted to be a Grey Warden in the first place.

I don't see how it forces your character to be a "<3 Wardens" sort of a person. You can't stop being a Warden once you're forced to go through the Joining becase the taint that makes you one does not go away -- it's like getting blinded and then declaring one doesn't want to be blind anymore, it just won't work. It does not however mean you are forced to have nothing but love for the order itself. The Howe analogy is curious here because as human noble you do get to utilize Howe's resources in your Awakening campaign. But i suspect few players would see it as sign their noble is all "<3 Howe" because of it and they think any better of him. The Warden-Commander thing can be viewed in similar manner, as mere tool utilized to achieve your personal goals, and as such the least form of payback the order can offer in compensation for what they had made you.

As for motivation... it can be the same motivation which made the character fight the darkspawn in the first place even though they don't care about the Wardens -- the darkspawn is there and its presence is threatening whatever may be precious to the player. And this threat won't go away if the player says "but i don't want to be a Warden" because they don't actually care about the player and their viewpoint.

Modifié par tmp7704, 12 juillet 2010 - 05:25 .

[In Exile]

Addai67 wrote...

Apology accepted and thank you.

Awesome. I don't like having bad blood, and dislike the fact that the internet sometimes leads to rudeness back and forth. I think it's the medium. At any rate, I hope we can have a pleasant discussion from now on.

The promotional blurbs about the new system tout the ability of the PC to go off and interact with the world without player direction.  Hawke doesn't need to check in with me in order to interact with the world.  He's taken a vague direction from my choice on the wheel, and is going to run with it.  I don't care how tight a leash the game gives him, or how "cool" it can be to be so "cinematic" and spontaneous etc., I still don't like this.  He's not my character.

I tend to put very little stock into promotional blurbs. It's similar to that Marylin Manson hack & slash DA:O video. That's not to say that the blurb could not be completely right, and that it may be the case the writers and the design team will take the game in a direction that is intolerable and makes RP impossible.

That being said, do you happen to know where these blurbs are? It isn't on the DA2 bioware site; that just has fluff about consequences, action etc.

I point you to the thread currently going about the new dialogue system.  Mary Kirby responds to a post about the new system confirming that it will be a dialogue wheel like in Mass Effect, but with tone indicators.

I'm familiar with the thread. What I don't understand your initial objection. And I mean actually don't understand the wording. What do you mean by "dialogue wheel + VO will allow the PC to go off on their own"? Is that

You're taking two separate objections of mine and mashing them together.  One objection is that the voiced PC does not allow me to roleplay in the manner I prefer, the manner of DAO.  I acknowledge that it's not the only way to roleplay.  Some people like sitting back and watching a character that someone else has created and directing them.  I prefer creating my own character, backstory, etc.  This is what allows me to feel engaged with a character.  I can appreciate others' characters when I watch a movie or read a book.  When I'm playing an RPG, I want it to be mine, as much as possible.

No, you're still not acknowledging there are other ways to role-play. The bolded line is evidence of this.

I consider that character my own. Look: there are other features that I consider as being those features which make a character mine. To you, it is creative control over a significant portion of the background and perhaps, as tmp7704 put it, the ability to imagine unconscious reactions coupled with intention (e.g. smirking versus winking while being sarcastic). This is not what makes a character mine. To me, it is first and foremost visual customization. A character is mine if I design what the character looks like. Beyond that, it is the varied degree of choices I can make during the story, and the degree to which these choices reflect the personality that I want (which I apparently interpret differently than you do).

To put it another way: in the old IE games, you had to pick a portrait for characters. That was something that was as abhorent to me as VO is to you. The character looks like something someone else designed! It is not my character; it is the artist's character. It affected my gameplay as much as VO affects yours. The difference was that I was lucky enough to have more options, but it was still restrictive. It never felt like my character. It was the character forced onto me by the combination of the writers and the artist. As we've moved toward VO and 3D characters, I've felt a greater sense of, this is my character.

Insofar as you continue to insist that only your way makes it your character you are not grasping that other people role-play differently.

Now, the fact that my PC is forced to assume a voice that I may or may not like is part of this, but really that is also a separate objection.  Or call it a fear.  Many people like Leliana's VO, to take a non-Mass Effect example, and I find it like nails on a chalkboard.  Even for a voice I might actually like, having a voice actor assume the persona of my character is an intrusion I don't want and don't find necessary.

Fair enough. This is where I don't think we'll see eye to eye, because I don't see this intrusion any worse than the original silenced writing. But we've exhausted that debate.

I dunno, your example is not a great one.  I rarely played gung-ho Warden types, and I was able to play Awakening as a reluctant Warden without feeling any dissonance.  I take that back- I did want the ability to tell Mistress Woolsey to bugger off back to Weisshaupt.  But I was able to tell Alistair, for instance, "you know I didn't want to return to the Wardens" and he acknowledges that as if he knew it.  I saw my Wardens as being there to respond to a threat to Ferelden. [b] If I had pictured them off on a beach in Antiva, I wouldn't have imported them at all.[/b[

Do you not see how this makes the game unplayable, as much as "I hate femshep"? I am forced to invent a reason that my character has to have to choose to become a Grey Warden for real, or never play the game.

DA:O was reluctant. Duncan legally kidnaps you in your Origin if you refuse. All the Grey Wardens die, and it is either run or have Ferelden and, potentially, Thedas, overrun by the Blight. Stopping the Blight is a goal you can have without being a Grey Warden. But you can never deny you are a Grey Warden.

Sten tells you at one poin you are nothing like the Grey Warden's he hears stories about. You cannot tell Sten that is because you were never a Warden in the first place, and do not consider yourself such. Meeting Zathrian, the second you mention the Blight (while choosing none of the "I am Grey Warden!" options) he says, "Ah, you are a Grey Warden, why didn't you say so?". It always comes back to this : the game tells you that you are a Grey Warden, and you have no choice but to accept this. This is railroading of the highest order.

I am not a 'reluctant' Grey Warden. I am a victim of legal kidnapping, I hate this order with a passion, I am only working with Alistair to stop a greater evil, and that is that. But the game explicitly refuses you this.

My point to you, however, is that if you hate a writer restricting your choices, why would you want to cede greater control of your PC to the writer and add a voice actor and voice director to the mix?

Because a voice actor and voice director don't restrict them. I've tried as hard as I can to explain why that is. If you can't see it, then we can't ever see eye-to-eye, but the reality is that I honestly do not think they restrict my choice.

Modifié par In Exile, 12 juillet 2010 - 05:20 .

[AlanC9]

In Exile wrote...

I am not a 'reluctant' Grey Warden. I am a victim of legal kidnapping, I hate this order with a passion, I am only working with Alistair to stop a greater evil, and that is that. But the game explicitly refuses you this.

Does it? Not wanting to be a Grey Warden, even hating the Grey Wardens, doesn't change the fact that your character is a Grey Warden. You did the initiation. That makes you a Warden.  Bio could have let people choose death rather than the initiation, of course.

Modifié par AlanC9, 12 juillet 2010 - 05:26 .

[In Exile]

tmp7704 wrote...
Yes, it is basically this. Although i'd disagree with statement the previous dialogue system didn't allow to do this (because after all you could do this and the system didn't actually prevent you from doing it) Or rather, i'd say it was --possibly unintentional-- side-effect of that system that happened to be positive.

But it was a logically inconsistent one. To put it another way: you could imagine, after having seen a particular cut-scene, that the cut-scene happened differently from how it was portrayed in the game. I'm going to use a particularly absurd example of this, and it ties into my response to your second point, below.

You could imagine that the joining involved the sacrifice of a goat beforehand, and everyone painted their faces in goat blood before drinking the darkspawn blood. This is never explicitly mentioned again in the game, so plausibly you could imagine that this is what occured, so long as the initial fact that the cut-scene went by differently does not bother you.
 
To me, using the dialogue system in this way is no different from the above. Now, clearly in an empirical sense imagining different outcomes to a cut-scene is more strongly 'overwriting' the game that just generating contradictory counterfactuals to dialogue when the evidence is weak. To me, however, they feel the same. That is, using my imagination to overwrite dialogue feels as unnatural as using it to overwrite a cut-scene.

I'm interested how you arrive to such conclusion. After all, having your character equipped with certain, defined voice goes directly against ability to decide for yourself what sort of voice, accent and inflection mannerisms your character may have, does it not?

No. But I look to character creation differently than you do,  I look at one of these things (the accent) as a consequence of geography. Characters have whatever accent they have due to their migration history. As for inflection and mannerism, these are proxies for intenion to me. It is not the smirking versus winking that defines my character, but the fact that he is sarcastic and extroverted versus somber and introverted. If the game allows me to convey that personality, then it is my character.

To put it broadly, the core aspects of what make a character mine (dialogue-related) are personality variables that are independent from behavioural ones.

Does it mean if the game does not take time to define character's voice, you believe this character's voice has no characteristics whatsoever? Considering in such case you see (or rather hear) nothing. Or do you --maybe subconsciously-- still define it somewhat in your head?

It isn't so much that the character does not have characteristic (becuase you can define those through explicit behaviour too, so the character is brave and heroic if she saves others, and cowardly if she runs away) so much as it is that the character does not have mannerisms or tone. It's like reading for me. Which also has no tone for me. I don't read with different internal voices. I read with a narrator's voice that intellectuall recognizes different internal states. So I read "I love you!" and "Now you die!" with the exact same voice, but with an intellectual recognition of the difference in emtoional states. I can't explain it better than that. Maybe this is why I have such a different conceptualization of role-playing?

I don't see how it forces your character to be a "<3 Wardens" sort of a person. You can't stop being a Warden once you're forced to go through the Joining becase the taint that makes you one does not go away -- it's like getting blinded and then declaring one doesn't want to be blind anymore, it just won't work. It does not however mean you are forced to have nothing but love for the order itself. The Howe analogy is curious here because as human noble you do get to utilize Howe's resources in your Awakening campaign. But i suspect few players would see it as sign their noble is all "<3 Howe" because of it and they think any better of him.

I just want to preface this by saying that I find our conversation on dialogue far more interesting, and for the sake of time, if you don't mind, I would like to self this portion of the conversation. It's your call. I have a response below.

I disagree very strongly with the blind analogy. I look to it as a religion. A child may be circumsized or baptized, but that does not mean the adult that grows up has to be Jewish or Chrsitian. In the former case, you are physically different from everyone else. But to me, the mere fact that you have the darkspawn taint does not make you a Grey Warden. To me, being a Warden (being anything, really) is more than just taking part in the ritual. It is internalizing the belief that you are a member of the group.

The mere fact I was forced into the joining does not mean I am a Grey Warden, and as Alistair proved, there is a way to escape that (by being crowned King). So I'm sorry, but I Wardens is forced on you. I mean, even if you are right,  #!@** Wardens was never a dialogue option you had. So to me, that is a clear sign of writer on board telling you that you want and have internalized the role of a Warden, so tough beans to you.

Howe's keep is make a property of the grown and then gifted to the Warden order; insofar as property rights are concerned, Amaranthine is no longer a part of Arl Howe but rather of the Warden order.

As for motivation... it can be the same motivation which made the character fight the darkspawn in the first place even though they don't care about the Wardens -- the darkspawn is there and its presence is threatening whatever may be precious to the player. And this threat won't go away if the player says "but i don't want to be a Warden" because they don't actually care about the player and their viewpoint.

No, that's different. The threat was never the darkspawn. It was the blight. The blight is more than just a horde of darkspawn. It's a corruption on the land; it is an endless invasion of darkspawn. It is an immortal creature, potentially a twisted god that pushes like a force of nature across the land.

In Awakening, all you have are broken darkspawn that haven't fleed to the deep road. Someone else's problem.

[In Exile]

AlanC9 wrote...

Does it? Not wanting to be a Grey Warden, even hating the Grey Wardens, doesn't change the fact that your character is a Grey Warden. You did the initiation. That makes you a Warden.  Bio could have let people choose death rather than the initiation, of course.

It is like religion. If someone was baptized as a child and claimed later to be an atheist, would that make them a self-loathing Christian? I think not. So I don't see how the mere fact you were kidnapped into the order makes you a part of it. It has nothing to do with choosing death.

[Jimmy Fury]

AlanC9 wrote...

In Exile wrote...

I am not a 'reluctant' Grey Warden. I am a victim of legal kidnapping, I hate this order with a passion, I am only working with Alistair to stop a greater evil, and that is that. But the game explicitly refuses you this.

Does it? Not wanting to be a Grey Warden, even hating the Grey Wardens, doesn't change the fact that your character is a Grey Warden. You did the initiation. That makes you a Warden.  Bio could have let people choose death rather than the initiation, of course.

I think one of the aspects that Exile may be refering to is that at the end of Origins you get to decide what you will do now that the Blight is over. The Wardens are no longer needed. If you're a Cousland you can return to Highever, If you're a mage you can return to the circle, If you're a dwarf I assume you can return to Orzamar, etc.
These were suitable endings for those characters who did not want to be Wardens and did not want to remain with the order.
Yet if you load your character into Awakenings this choice is stripped from you. My elf mage who never wanted to be a Warden in the first place was asked, by the Queen, what he wanted to do now. All he wanted was to return to the tower and help rebuild his home.
The minute I ported him into Awakening that choice was gone. He was now a Grey Warden Commander helping rebuild the order. He abandoned his people, his friends, his family, for this group he never wanted to be a part of anyway.

[tmp7704]

In Exile wrote...

But it was a logically inconsistent one. To put it another way: you could imagine, after having seen a particular cut-scene, that the cut-scene happened differently from how it was portrayed in the game. I'm going to use a particularly absurd example of this, and it ties into my response to your second point, below.

(..)
 
To me, using the dialogue system in this way is no different from the above. Now, clearly in an empirical sense imagining different outcomes to a cut-scene is more strongly 'overwriting' the game that just generating contradictory counterfactuals to dialogue when the evidence is weak. To me, however, they feel the same. That is, using my imagination to overwrite dialogue feels as unnatural as using it to overwrite a cut-scene.

Indeed, you could do that. I'm going to replace your example with something slightly different -- you could imagine that Dark Ritual with Morrigan involved more than a quickie on a bed that the cutscene shown. You could imagine there was some magic rituals involved, some blood even. Maybe it was even blood of a goat.

The kicker? According to David Gaider such imagining would be actually correct (maybe not as far as the goat goes)  Dark Ritual is supposed to be quite more elaborate than what was shown in the cutscene, they simply didn't manage to portray it for whatever reasons.

My point here being, adding your own spin to the things in lack of evidence to the contrary does not need automatically be unnatural, or for that matter even wrong.

No. But I look to character creation differently than you do,  I look at one of these things (the accent) as a consequence of geography. Characters have whatever accent they have due to their migration history.

And then you run into characters like Sketch who is said to lack the accent of city elves even though technically he's one. As result not of geography but personal history which had nothing to do with migration but everything to do with mingling with different crowd.

As for inflection and mannerism, these are proxies for intenion to me. It is not the smirking versus winking that defines my character, but the fact that he is sarcastic and extroverted versus somber and introverted. If the game allows me to convey that personality, then it is my character.

I'd argue inflection and mannerism also play a role in defining the character. The sing-song delivery of Claudia Black for example sets her character quite apart from others who might have very similar personalities but simply sound different. Although if it doesn't make difference for you then i can see why you'd treat the voice as not relevant to customization.

I just want to preface this by saying that I find our conversation on dialogue far more interesting, and for the sake of time, if you don't mind, I would like to self this portion of the conversation. It's your call. I have a response below.

Sure, no problem. Since the replies get quite long as it is i'll just skip this part then, if that's ok. 

[AlanC9]

In Exile wrote...

It is like religion. If someone was baptized as a child and claimed later to be an atheist, would that make them a self-loathing Christian? I think not. So I don't see how the mere fact you were kidnapped into the order makes you a part of it. It has nothing to do with choosing death.

No, it isn't like religion. Being a Grey Warden is an objective fact. If someone can kill the Archdemon, he's a Grey Warden, regardless of what he believes.

And even if it was like religion, not all religions give people the right to resign. In fact, I think it's fairly uncommmon.

From Wikipedia; itals mine:

All religious denominations of Judaism agree that a person may be a Jew either by birth or through conversion. The halakhic definition based on Leviticus 24:10 is that a Jew is a person born to a Jewish mother, or who is a convert to Judaism. No other way to recognition is allowed for.The halakhic ruling is that the mere acceptance of the principles and practices of Judaism does not make a person a Jew. However, those born halakhicly Jewish do not lose that status because they cease to be observant Jews, even if they adopt the practices of another religion. As the various denominations of Judaism differ on their conversion processes, often, conversions performed by more liberal denominations are not accepted by those who adhere to halakha.

Not strictly on point since it looks like a converted Jew can still leave, but you see the point. 

Modifié par AlanC9, 12 juillet 2010 - 06:20 .

[AlanC9]

Jimmy Fury wrote...

The minute I ported him into Awakening that choice was gone. He was now a Grey Warden Commander helping rebuild the order. He abandoned his people, his friends, his family, for this group he never wanted to be a part of anyway.

I guess your way to avoid that is to not import him into DAA in the first place.

[javierabegazo]

Please move discussion to here, a thread that is also discussing the new direction BioWare's DA team is taking DA2 to.

http://social.biowar.../index/3099230A

[angelgaidin]

tmp7704 wrote...

angelgaidin wrote...

Who cares whether there's a smirk or an arched eyebrow?  Holy crap, are you serious, you're concerned that you can't *imagine* a smirk or an arched eyebrow?  Is that really what this is about?  I certainly hope not, because I can't imagine a more inane thing to be disappointed with.  I'm not flaming or trolling, I'm seriously flabbergasted that anyone could be concerned about a minor facial detail surrounding the delivery of a line.

I don't know who cares about details this small. That particular example wasn't mine, i was just going with it to explain the principle. Maybe you'd be less flabbergasted if you took time to actually read the threads you're responding to beyond the last couple of posts? It could save you such head scratching and wondering if "that's really what this is about".

I'm not flaming or trolling either, this is genuine advice.

The answer to your question is simple:  I stopped caring about the arguments against change.  It was only worth so much of my time and interest to read the complaints of individuals whose particular grievances at this point I will never share.  On the same token, I've ceased arguing as well, as it's fruitless at this point.  It's just that your particular post just jumped out at me as using a particularly ridiculous argument.  My apologies for attributing the example to you.  However, I would be very unwilling to take someone seriously if they actually used that particular example as an argument against the changes.