468 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

Untamed_skies wrote...

I'm pretty sure I read that they have already found the voice actors for Hawke that they intend to use. If I were to jump to conclusions I would assume pretty quickly that those actors are hired and being paid.

That just makes it a sunk cost.  Sunk costs aren't more valuable just because you use the thing you bought.

[Addai]

In Exile wrote...

Addai67 wrote...
Bioware is stating that the back and forth between listening and reading/ analyzing your responses is something they consider "broken."  I like that back and forth.  It is that break to me as the player, and the mental process that it induces, that makes it roleplaying rather than watching a movie.  Cutscenes can be effective, but if there are too many of them, I find it boring.  If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd watch a movie.

Bottom line, I'm saying:  Don't make it more cinematic, please.

Certainly, but how is that like reading? The fact that you need to add analyzing to what are doing suggests there is something more than just reading going on. To me, reading is just like a cut-scene. Role-playing as you do it is a profound kind of thinking, as you say, and reading seems completely antithetical to this.

I said reading / analyzing because that is how the dev describes it in the GI interview.  But it seems obvious to me that if i"m given the full line my PC is going to say, I have to first read it, interpret what it could mean, and decide which piece of written text best represents what I want my response to be.  So yes of course this is like reading.  It is, in fact, reading.

The new system has me choosing a three-word blurb and a pictorial icon representing a general intent.  Sure there's a mental process involved- do I want to fight this guy, or kiss him?  But I can't make any judgment regarding the nuances of the PC response, because I don't even know what those nuances might be.  I can't even make an educated guess at the nuance that might crop up in both the writers' and the voice actor's interpretation of my choice.

This is to say, you can have far more character concepts when the game is ambiguous, and the problem is not so much VO but that Bioware wants to make the game less ambiguous.

Well yes, the VO is more the symptom, though VO creates its own problems that affect playability for me.  FemShep and Leliana are two examples of Bioware voiced PCs which make me cringe.  Cringing is not exactly a stance conducive to relaxing roleplay.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Let me say this:

If the wheel in DA2 works like the wheel in ME, I'm going to need some better instruction about how to play the game, because I never really figured out how to read ME's wheel well enough to have much of an idea of what Shepard was going to say or do.

[AlanC9]

Addai67 wrote...
  I can't even make an educated guess at the nuance that might crop up in both the writers' and the voice actor's interpretation of my choice.

Actually, I think you can. As someone upthread said, anyone with a modicum of Genre Savvy can figure out where Bio is going with something. Note that I'm misusing the trope here.

It helps to think of the game as a collection of bits you've seen someplace before, typically movies though sometimes TV.

[dancrilis]

Haven't posted much lately however after hearing about the conversation wheel for the sequal I had to.

I have a solution, a solution that will keep everyone happy, such a bleedingly obvious solution that I have to assume that someone has already though of it posted it and had it criticed/slashed apart and burned by the internet masses.

Have both.

A conversation wheel with the six options choosen from feeling for people that like that, then have the character say the sentance.
And have an option to have the six options listed in full from a list to allow people that want to choose exactly what the character will say to do so (this option might then skip the voice over as redundent, or not at player option).

Everyone is a winner (except the poor unfortunately that has to code in the options, but they always have a hard time with feature requests).

[Aradace]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Let me say this:
If the wheel in DA2 works like the wheel in ME, I'm going to need some better instruction about how to play the game, because I never really figured out how to read ME's wheel well enough to have much of an idea of what Shepard was going to say or do.

What's so complicated about it?

[Hollingdale]

AlanC9 wrote...

maxernst wrote...
When I watch a subtitled film, I don't even notice that I'm reading as well as watching a film.  If anything, reading is less challenging because you're processingly only one kind of information (as opposed to both visuals--which may include text--and sound) and you can do it at whatever pace you like, and flip back a few pages if you've gotten confused about something.

I think it depends a lot on how your brain works.  I am a highly abstract thinker and I often find that movies with a lot of characters confuse me much more than books.  I have a much easier time remembering who's who by their names (which are conveniently referred to with great  frequency in books) than by their faces, and film dialog often doesn't identify people by names often enough for me.

I've seen serious film critics argue that all foreign films should be dubbed because reading takes a person out of the film, and state this as if it was an obvious truth.. I feel like you do about such films, which makes me think that there really is some sort of difference between how people handle information.

On a complete sidenote I'm pretty sure there is a connection between nationalism and dubbing. I find it somewhat satisfying to see two different types of irrationalism hold hands!

Sylvius: I agree with the stuff you pointed out and I want to add that it can be very frustrating to play a character who isn't strictly good or evil as the nuisances of the options are hidden until you've chosen them. Still I don't see why someone who seems to put such emphasis on roleplaying (judging from your defition of the ''key elements'' I take it you value the roleplaying quite high) isn't  more annoyed by the requirement of a finished personality in order for the voice acting to sound believable. That kills a lot of what I would call roleplaying as regardless of whether youre evil, good or something in between you are nonetheless very much doing everything the same way. You may have Shephard spare someone or you may have Shephard may kill that someone, insofar there is choice. Regardless of what you pick however it will be carried out in a ''Shephardesque'' manner. As such the kind of roleplaying where you imagine the intents and thoughts of your character is effectively killed since the VO in his/her way of acting clearly shows that he has no such intents nor thoughts behind his action whereas if the options manifest themselves only in the responses they yield (as is the case without a VO) it is not shown how exactly the choicen option was delivered vocally and thus there is room for roleplaying. The is no escape from this problem less you imagine the VO suffers from schizophrenia or you just happen to roleplay, in your mind, exactly like the VO acts in the game. This is were a book versus movie metaphore may be fitting but I shall refrain from such as I believe it just limits the discussion.

My conclussion is that for those who want to do this particular kind of roleplaying (Could be called Meta-roleplaying perhaps? Although I think it was common enough to be normative once hence not deserving such a title) which I've mentioned where you go beyond merely choosing between alternatives but also add to them your own motives and philosophies a VO is undesirable.

Modifié par Hollingdale, 19 juillet 2010 - 07:11 .

[Warheadz]

To me, the complication was that Shepard's actions were unpredictable. If i just wanted him to scold someone, he might have stabbed him. This is the problem that paraphrasing presented, at least in Mass Effect. I just hope they improve it somehow instead of copying it straight from ME.

[Aradace]

Warheadz wrote...

To me, the complication was that Shepard's actions were unpredictable. If i just wanted him to scold someone, he might have stabbed him. This is the problem that paraphrasing presented, at least in Mass Effect. I just hope they improve it somehow instead of copying it straight from ME.

*shrugs* Meh, I see where you're coming from I think....And I do agree, the paraphrasing was a bit ummmm....."Off" in alot of cases I guess a "watered down" term would be lol....Yea, definately needs improving.  And to do that, it's real simple: Fire the current person who does the paraphrasing and hire someone with more experience in that area

[Addai]

AlanC9 wrote...

Addai67 wrote...
  I can't even make an educated guess at the nuance that might crop up in both the writers' and the voice actor's interpretation of my choice.

Actually, I think you can. As someone upthread said, anyone with a modicum of Genre Savvy can figure out where Bio is going with something. Note that I'm misusing the trope here.

It helps to think of the game as a collection of bits you've seen someplace before, typically movies though sometimes TV.

Sooo... you advocate the dialogue wheel because you're jaded about games and consider it all the same crap recycled anyway?  I mean, you could reduce any story to tropes if you want, but I guess I'd still rather know more than less about what my PC is going to do.

Modifié par Addai67, 19 juillet 2010 - 07:15 .

[Addai]

dancrilis wrote...

Haven't posted much lately however after hearing about the conversation wheel for the sequal I had to.

I have a solution, a solution that will keep everyone happy, such a bleedingly obvious solution that I have to assume that someone has already though of it posted it and had it criticed/slashed apart and burned by the internet masses.

Have both.

A conversation wheel with the six options choosen from feeling for people that like that, then have the character say the sentance.
And have an option to have the six options listed in full from a list to allow people that want to choose exactly what the character will say to do so (this option might then skip the voice over as redundent, or not at player option).

Everyone is a winner (except the poor unfortunately that has to code in the options, but they always have a hard time with feature requests).

Such an idea has been posted in the forum already, numerous times, but it's not a solution.  The rationale behind the new system is in part so that the PC can act spontaneously and in a back-and-forth manner with NPCs.  It isn't possible for all that to be put in a text selection.

Nor is it a win-win when those who don't want a voiced PC have to pay for one anyway, getting less return on our investment than we got in Origins.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I would think these are very different discussions.  In that thread we're mostly discussing voice-over.  This thread is explicitly about the wheel.

Okay. Just wanted to be clear on my intention.

But the player isn't directing the bahviour.  That's my point.  The obfuscatory nature of the wheel prevents the player from knowing what it is he is choosing.

But you grant that VO does not deny the option to choose behaviour?

Again, this deals more with the VO that with the wheel, so I don't really understand why you're bringing it up.  The wheel, regardless of the presence of VO, causes gameplay problems that vanish immediately upon the removal of the wheel.

I bring up VO because I make the claim that VO requires a paraphrase system like the wheel precisely because the player has to drive behaviour in a visible way versus a way. So VO is neccesary for the claim, because I believe VO is sufficient for paraphrase.

Also, I find your point nonsensical.  The character's thoughts aren't represented on the screen.  Does this mean you think the character does not have thoughts?

Yes, as it happens. I have thoughs, which for the purpose of the game are the only thoughts the character has. It is like when you asked me whether or not I think they eat or use the bathroom. This is why I am often shocked when I am told it has been months in a game, when I quite cleary have been no indication that more than a few days has passed.

If the implementation of the wheel in ME were intended to be clear, then dialogue options that were short enough to fit on the wheel would have been shown there.  I'm sure you agree that there is no better way to indicate what a sentence will say than to show that exact sentence.

I agree that there is no better way to indicate what words the sentence will have than to show the exact sentence, but I disagree that showing the exact sentence provides the player with all the information needed when there is VO.

But even in cases where Shepard's line was only a couple of words and needed no context to give it meaning, the wheel option did not show it.  the wheel option always differed from the uttered line, even when there was no reason for it to do so.  Therefore, assuming that BioWare actually used the wheel as they intended, their intent must have been to hide the spoken line from us, regardless of UI concerns.

I think that supposing that the wheel was implemented exacty as Bioware wanted is not a correct assumption to make. Put another way, I think Bioware was still in an experimental stage with both VO and the wheel, and there will be a long time before we can say that the concept has been meaningfuly refined in a way that achieves everything they wanted initially.

ME's dialogue wheel was intentionally obfuscatory.  To conclude otherwise assumes incompetence on BioWare's part.

Not incompetence, but failure, which I don't think is the same thing. But yes, I'm of the opinion Bioware wanted to do something different with the wheel than they did, and I think Mass Effect 2 illustrates a series of improvements (interrupts now indicate actions, which are separate from the wheel; there are now unqiue dialogue options for each choice; choices telegraph intention better).

And there are still failures, like an inconsistent Shepard because everyone was writing Shepard and no one could agree on who he was.

[In Exile]

Addai67 wrote...
I said reading / analyzing because that is how the dev describes it in the GI interview.  But it seems obvious to me that if i"m given the full line my PC is going to say, I have to first read it, interpret what it could mean, and decide which piece of written text best represents what I want my response to be.  So yes of course this is like reading.  It is, in fact, reading.

I'm sorry, but I simply do not read this way. All of this is automatic. When you read, do you consciously consider what each sentence could mean? That aside, the bolded portion is true for any game that has dialogue choice whether RPG or no, and quite unlike any book.

The new system has me choosing a three-word blurb and a pictorial icon representing a general intent.  Sure there's a mental process involved- do I want to fight this guy, or kiss him?  But I can't make any judgment regarding the nuances of the PC response, because I don't even know what those nuances might be.  I can't even make an educated guess at the nuance that might crop up in both the writers' and the voice actor's interpretation of my choice.

I can see where you're coming from,and why it is a loss. But to me (and others) role-playing independent of the dialogue syste is exactly this: general intent, what I want to achieve, which line best achieve. A quite rapid process, and identical across VO and non-VO. In fact, now that I think about it, I think this playstyle is what could be predictive of whether or not you like VO.

[Tsuga C]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Let me say this:
If the wheel in DA2 works like the wheel in ME, I'm going to need some better instruction about how to play the game, because I never really figured out how to read ME's wheel well enough to have much of an idea of what Shepard was going to say or do.

Regardless of your interpretation of the forthcoming dialogue, selecting your choices from one o' clock, three o' clock, and five o' clock was meant to yield (with a few exceptions, I understand) boyscout, mercenary, a**hole.  Your mileage may vary.

Modifié par Tsuga C, 19 juillet 2010 - 07:47 .

[In Exile]

Addai67 wrote...

The writing was on the wall with Awakening, where the writers kept insisting that the dialogue system in Origins was broken and where clicking on a tree or being surprised by an NPC follower was being presented as somehow more dynamic than deciding where and when to probe your followers for conversation.  It is, apparently, too much to ask of players that they control the pacing of their own story.

I think we had some impact. The word is now that they are doing a mixed system, where there will be some find random tree (I didn't even know there was dialogue in the game away from camp until I held tab for another reason and Anders started chatting with me).

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

But you grant that VO does not deny the option to choose behaviour?

No, I do not.  I just think that's beyond the scope of this discussion.

I also think the VO will be a much easier thing for the player to remove (assuming the option to turn it off isn't included), so whether it limits choice is less relevant.  Optional fatures are optional.

I bring up VO because I make the claim that VO requires a paraphrase system like the wheel precisely because the player has to drive behaviour in a visible way versus a way.

What?  I don't understand this at all.  Are you saying that if the player chose full dialogue options, he wouldn't be directing behaviour in a visible way, but with the wheel he is (even if the lines and conematics are unchanged between the two examples)?

This makes no sense to me.

Yes, as it happens. I have thoughs, which for the purpose of the game are the only thoughts the character has. It is like when you asked me whether or not I think they eat or use the bathroom. This is why I am often shocked when I am told it has been months in a game, when I quite cleary have been no indication that more than a few days has passed.

Right.  You constantly meta-game.  But why are you forcing that gameplay style on others? 

I wonder to what extent you can replay the game as an entirely different character - with different motives and preferences, with different reactions to NPC personalities.

I agree that there is no better way to indicate what words the sentence will have than to show the exact sentence, but I disagree that showing the exact sentence provides the player with all the information needed when there is VO.

Whether there is VO is immaterial.  The content of the line doesn't change.  Your ability to choose the line isn't affected by how the line is subsequently delivered.  You're using reverse causation again.

Not incompetence, but failure, which I don't think is the same thing. But yes, I'm of the opinion Bioware wanted to do something different with the wheel than they did, and I think Mass Effect 2 illustrates a series of improvements (interrupts now indicate actions, which are separate from the wheel; there are now unqiue dialogue options for each choice; choices telegraph intention better).

I'm playing ME2 somewhat differently from how I played ME, so I can't make a direct comparison, but it does appear that the written options do correspond better to the delivered line (I've heard the complaint about multiple options leading to the same line before, but I fail to see why that was any more of a problem given that we couldn't see the line anyway - you'd have to meta-game to know that you would have said the same thing even when choosing differently).  However, I'm encountering different sorts of problems from those I encountered before.  In ME2 I'm trying to pay attention to the Paragon-Renegade positions on the wheel (in ME I mostly just read the line), but I find them very inconsistent.  I was under the impression that Paragon would lead to more polite responses, but this isn't true when dealing with people the game thinks are bad.  So in order to play a polite character (I'm reduced to choosing characteristics this broadly, and still I fail) I have to jump back and forth from Paragon to Renegade based on the game's impressions of the NPC, and I'm not always aware of those.

The interrupts frighten me.  That they offer only one at a time means that I have to choose an option without having any information about what the other options are.  The one interrupt I've chosen did actually do what I hoped it would, but I wasn't at all confident about that when I triggered it.  And I shouldn't fear my character's behaviour.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Aradace wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Let me say this:
If the wheel in DA2 works like the wheel in ME, I'm going to need some better instruction about how to play the game, because I never really figured out how to read ME's wheel well enough to have much of an idea of what Shepard was going to say or do.

What's so complicated about it?

If I knew that, I wouldn't be asking for help.

In Exile wrote...

In fact, now that I think about it, I think this playstyle is what could be predictive of whether or not you like VO.

You're probably right about that.

Tsuga C wrote...

Regardless of your interpretation of the forthcoming dialogue, selecting your choices from one o' clock, three o' clock, and five o' clock was meant to yield (with a few exceptions, I understand) boyscout, mercenary, a**hole.  Your mileage may vary.

I'd say there were quite a few exceptions.  Sometimes Shepard would say basically the same thing (for example, agreeing with a suggestion) three different ways.  Sometimes Shepard would actually say different things (accepting a mission vs. rejecting a mission) based on wheel position.

And there was literally no way to know which sort of wheel you were facing.

[GurkBoll]

17thknight wrote...

1. It limits how many words can be displayed

I completly agree, I hated when the wheel said "I'll help" and Shepard endeed up saying something like "If you want I can sneak around the back and throw large pink rocks at the majors window"

In dialog it should always be "What you see is what he/she will say" in cases of RPG tutorials. In mass effect it feels like you stand next to shepard and tells him what to say, then he paraphrases it losely.

I would also like to say I have a problem with the main character beeing voiced, this makes you feel even more detached. Great games never voice main characters.

Half-life - Greate game, not voiced. Makes you feel like you are Freeman.
Dragon Age - Greate game, not voiced. Makes you feel like you are... whoever.
CoD - Good series of games, not voiced.
The Elder Scrolls - Wonderfull and not voiced.
Fallout 3 - Not voiced.
And so on...

In short: Wheel makes dialog feel detatched (and since DA consists of soooo much dialog this is not good at all) and voiced main character works nicely for all of the 5% of players that can relate to the voice.

[dancrilis]

Addai67 wrote...
Such an idea has been posted in the forum already, numerous times, but it's not a solution.  The rationale behind the new system is in part so that the PC can act spontaneously and in a back-and-forth manner with NPCs.  It isn't possible for all that to be put in a text selection.

Figured it would have had to have been went looking briefly before and after and spotted some.
However the purpose of a dialogue system is so the 'PC can act spontaneously and in a back-and-forth manner with NPCs' in Mass Effect I often spent minutes wandering what I was going to say to an NPC before picking, and in Dragon Age I often spent minutes wondering how the NPC was going to take the comment before picking (i.e would it be seen as a serious comment or a joke).
In game time the conversation is spontaneously, in reality it is not so, for me at least regardless of the system.

Addai67 wrote...
Nor is it a win-win when those who don't want a voiced PC have to pay for one anyway, getting less return on our investment than we got in Origins.

I think you are looking at that the wrong way, I don't want a voiced PC as such having the option not to have one is a bonus over solely having a wheel, an add-on if you will.

[Narreneth]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Let me say this:
If the wheel in DA2 works like the wheel in ME, I'm going to need some better instruction about how to play the game, because I never really figured out how to read ME's wheel well enough to have much of an idea of what Shepard was going to say or do.

The reason for this has already been touched upon briefly by the devs.

Shepard is a character that has already been defined.  Rather than picking Shepard's general personality you simply make his/her decisions.  You can investigate and engage in dialogue, and you'll notice Shepard always acts (at least somewhat) like a hard ass.  It has been mentioned that since Shepard is supposed to be a hard ass military personality that the options all in some way reflect that.  Hawke is not so defined as Shepard so if you pick something that's supposed to be sarcastic you're not going to roll your eyes then stab someone in the throat.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I also think the VO will be a much easier thing for the player to remove (assuming the option to turn it off isn't included), so whether it limits choice is less relevant.  Optional fatures are optional.

Then let's drop the discussion.

What?  I don't understand this at all.  Are you saying that if the player chose full dialogue options, he wouldn't be directing behaviour in a visible way, but with the wheel he is (even if the lines and conematics are unchanged between the two examples)?

This makes no sense to me.

No. I am saying that to be able to predict what the character would do, once we have VO and scripted behaviour, the player requires more information than the line of dialogue.

Your original complaint about ME was that the dialogue wheel paraphrase failed to let you meaningfully predict what the line would do. I am saying that even if you were given the line, you would still have this disconnect.

The solution to the failed implementation of the wheel is not the full line if you retain VO and cinematic visual behaviour.

Right.  You constantly meta-game.  But why are you forcing that gameplay style on others?

I don't consider that a meta-game. That aside, I am not forcing that playstyle on anyone, any more than you are forcing yours. I am simply pointing out that our playstyles are mutually exclusive, and trying to relate how ME and the dialogue wheel and VO can all be envisioned as things that enhance role-playing.

In short, Bioware has to assume a gameplay style when designing their game. I am trying to illustrate how it is that they could assume mine yet still consider themselves producers of RPGs.

I wonder to what extent you can replay the game as an entirely different character - with different motives and preferences, with different reactions to NPC personalities.

Remember that what I may consider a different character, with different motives, and different reactions, is not what you may consider a different character.

As of right now (putting aside characters I've deleted) I have 8 playthroughs for 205 hours. Actually, I'm usually playing DA:O whenver I'm on this forum; using my laptop for the forum and playing DA:O on my

Whether there is VO is immaterial.  The content of the line doesn't change.  Your ability to choose the line isn't affected by how the line is subsequently delivered.  You're using reverse causation again.

No, this is a different debate. What I am saying is that with VO, the line will now be said with a particual tone. 'Great idea' could be both sarcastic or serious, depending on tone. The player must know this. The player could embrance someone or maintain distance; the line must now convey this.

This isn't about our theories regarding the literal meaning of words in a silent-VO game. It is about the neccesary information to avoid your precise complaint about the dialogue wheel in ME.

'm playing ME2 somewhat differently from how I played ME, so I can't make a direct comparison, but it does appear that the written options do correspond better to the delivered line (I've heard the complaint about multiple options leading to the same line before, but I fail to see why that was any more of a problem given that we couldn't see the line anyway - you'd have to meta-game to know that you would have said the same thing even when choosing differently). 

This would actually be a good source of discussion, but I want to avoid it precisely because it would sidetrack us too much.

However, I'm encountering different sorts of problems from those I encountered before.  In ME2 I'm trying to pay attention to the Paragon-Renegade positions on the wheel (in ME I mostly just read the line), but I find them very inconsistent.  I was under the impression that Paragon would lead to more polite responses, but this isn't true when dealing with people the game thinks are bad.  So in order to play a polite character (I'm reduced to choosing characteristics this broadly, and still I fail) I have to jump back and forth from Paragon to Renegade based on the game's impressions of the NPC, and I'm not always aware of those.

That's a problem with the writing. More than one person wrote Shepard and the writers seem wholly unable to agree what it is that paragon, renegade and even the Shepard is. So sometimes a 'charm' option is an out of character (even for the established game, taking Shepard to be a fixed character which I do not believe Shepard is) option and utterance, like with the elcor Vendor on Omega where Shepard threatens to break his knees.

The interrupts frighten me.  That they offer only one at a time means that I have to choose an option without having any information about what the other options are.  The one interrupt I've chosen did actually do what I hoped it would, but I wasn't at all confident about that when I triggered it.  And I shouldn't fear my character's behaviour.

The paragon interupts are impossible to predict, but are not insane, which is a positive. I find the renegade interrupts very easy to predict, since it they are effectively the context appropriate punch the reporter button.

[Narreneth]

GurkBoll wrote...

17thknight wrote...

1. It limits how many words can be displayed

I completly agree, I hated when the wheel said "I'll help" and Shepard endeed up saying something like "If you want I can sneak around the back and throw large pink rocks at the majors window"

In dialog it should always be "What you see is what he/she will say" in cases of RPG tutorials. In mass effect it feels like you stand next to shepard and tells him what to say, then he paraphrases it losely.

I would also like to say I have a problem with the main character beeing voiced, this makes you feel even more detached. Great games never voice main characters.

Half-life - Greate game, not voiced. Makes you feel like you are Freeman.
Dragon Age - Greate game, not voiced. Makes you feel like you are... whoever.
CoD - Good series of games, not voiced.
The Elder Scrolls - Wonderfull and not voiced.
Fallout 3 - Not voiced.
And so on...

In short: Wheel makes dialog feel detatched (and since DA consists of soooo much dialog this is not good at all) and voiced main character works nicely for all of the 5% of players that can relate to the voice.

CoD and Half-Life are not RPGs so they are not really good examples.    Also, you're kind of making generalizations in saying that having a voice makes you feel less like the person you're playing.  That may be true for you but it isn't true for everyone.  Some people voiceovers will work better for, others lack of voiceovers, and others still will be able to feel like they are their character with or without voices equally.   To say great games never voice main characters is not true in the slightest; especially being that great game is a relative term.  What you think of as a great game I may not.  CoD is a perfect example of this.  I don't really like the CoD series.  I hated the first three, liked the 4th, thought World at War was just okay, and Modern Warfare 2 again, just okay.  On the other hand, you didn't mention GTA4 which I think is a stellar game.  You may not.  

I've got no problem with you having a differing opinion from me, but you need to understand that what you're saying is only true for you and whoever agrees with you.  There are legions of people who will have different perspectives.

[Riona45]

17thknight wrote...
You'll all be here ****ing the day after the game comes out saying "I clicked on ______ dialogue option and my character killed someone! WTF!!!" 

But that didn't happen to me in ME2.

[Addai]

dancrilis wrote...

Addai67 wrote...
Such an idea has been posted in the forum already, numerous times, but it's not a solution.  The rationale behind the new system is in part so that the PC can act spontaneously and in a back-and-forth manner with NPCs.  It isn't possible for all that to be put in a text selection.

Figured it would have had to have been went looking briefly before and after and spotted some.
However the purpose of a dialogue system is so the 'PC can act spontaneously and in a back-and-forth manner with NPCs' in Mass Effect I often spent minutes wandering what I was going to say to an NPC before picking, and in Dragon Age I often spent minutes wondering how the NPC was going to take the comment before picking (i.e would it be seen as a serious comment or a joke).
In game time the conversation is spontaneously, in reality it is not so, for me at least regardless of the system.

I understand you might take a while to think about what you want to choose, but the point is that they are promoting the new system by saying that some of the "work" of the exchange is being taken away from the player.  This is being presented as an advantage, because it allows for scenes to flow in a way they couldn't before.  I find it a distinct disadvantage, especially since "flow" never bothered me in Origins.

Addai67 wrote...
Nor is it a win-win when those who don't want a voiced PC have to pay for one anyway, getting less return on our investment than we got in Origins.

I think you are looking at that the wrong way, I don't want a voiced PC as such having the option not to have one is a bonus over solely having a wheel, an add-on if you will.

Well the voiced PC and the dialogue wheel are being presented as a package that works together to achieve what the devs think is a better game experience.  According to them, it won't work as it's intended without one or the other.  Though I might be missing your point here.

[soteria]

The interrupts frighten me. That they offer only one at a time means that I have to choose an option without having any information about what the other options are. The one interrupt I've chosen did actually do what I hoped it would, but I wasn't at all confident about that when I triggered it. And I shouldn't fear my character's behaviour.

In general, I found they did about what I expected them to do. A renegade interrupt almost always involves taking violent action. A paragon interrupt, from what I saw, almost always results in compassionate acts.

I would also like to say I have a problem with the main character beeing voiced, this makes you feel even more detached. Great games never voice main characters.

The Witcher, Thief, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect.... and so on? I think you mean, "I don't like games with voiced main characters."