1279 réponses à ce sujet

[The Masked Rog]

Amioran wrote...

The Masked Rog wrote...

Bioware gave surnames to your Wardens. Predefined surname. People of talk of their Couslands, their Aeducans, etc. Difference is there were 6 surnames in Origins and now there's only one.

In the case of a role vs. a character if you take Adecuan as the house that's a role, if you take a specific member in itself that's a character. Same difference.

As for Hawke:
He has a mother, a father, a sister and a brother who live in Lothering. His father was an apostate mage and trained Bethany (and Hawke if he's a mage) in the art. His sister is an apostate mage.
This is all background, already existing. It defines a character already present in itself. The warden was created by yourself. It didn't have a background at priori, it didn't existed in itself, it was a role, the character came after, it wasn't present in the role itself.

What more can I say? The difference it is enough evident if you want to see it. The way Bioware is relating to Hawke is completely different on how they related to the warden, and this is obvious, since the former is already a character and the latter is a role from whom you create the character, your character.

That's strange cause I clearly remember my Aeducan having a brother who plotted against him, a father who was a king, a long time friend and a bazillion of other pre defined things. Same for Couslands, you have parents and I think other relatives.

[Jedimg]

OK, so ... I read the article and I can't say there's a lot of new information there. I enjoyed the DA:O combat system but no one really says that it'll be totally different - it'll only be more responsive and react in a more realistic way. Faster moving guys on the battlefield doesn't neceserally mean a less tactical approach and, don't get me wrong I did love the way combat was in the first game, I just don't think changing it a little bit is going to ruin the experience for me.

Now ... the fact that you can only be human doesn't really bother me that much but I guess it could be a big hit for the fans of the classical RPG's. I mean in ME2 (I'm not saying that I want DA2 to be like ME2) you could only be human, you could only choose between differnet classes but I believe the world that the BioWare team created there was still pretty awesome. And I'm sure that if the story is amazing and well told (which I don't doubt even though they are trying to be more original about it) the fact that you can't be Toegoff the Berserking Elf (Toegoff's LPs pwn  ) won't really look like a huge problem that stops you from enjoying the game. 

However,  there is one thing that I don't totally agree with and that's the new way envoirments are going to look. It's just that I already have this idea about the world of DA and what it looks like so changing the envoirment, NPC's models (darkspawn and the ogre in particular look kinda ...  um ... like drawings) etc. just doesn't seem like such a good idea to me. Plus I enjoyed looking at the well- made background and I'm not sure if I'm going to be totally OK with a crappy looking field with some rocks and a sky. I agree that too many details can be frustrating but so can too few be.

That's how I feel about DA2 anyway and I'm NOT saying that everyone has to think like me ... or they will DIE *charges up lightning spell*.  

[Jedimg]

Monica83 wrote...
So in a game where are you to create your character its a bit silly tou can't control the used words.. This is why i prefear the old style...

 i don't get that at all ... I don't see the difference I mean it's not like in the first game you could actaully control his/her exact words. Yes, you could see what EXACLTY he/she would say but it's still written by the same ppl who are writing the dialogues in the 2nd game. So it doesn't really matter to me if I'm going to see " I'm not going to kill this headless chicken" or simply "No". I do agree though that they could've just included the actual text that your character is going to say (worked fine in The Witcher) so that there wouldn't be any "too much change" and "less control over your character" complains.

Modifié par Jedimg, 22 septembre 2010 - 09:21 .

[Pritos]

It's impressive how people get iluded so easily. DA2's dialog system isn't more nor less than DAO's. It's just different, but gives the same content.

[SirOccam]

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

[quote]SirOccam wrote...

I don't understand. Are we still talking about consoles vs. PC?[/quote]
Were we ever?  I thought we were talking about voiced protagonists and the ability to freely direct the PC's personality and delivery of lines.

At least one of us is horribly wrong.[/quote]
We were, for the most part, but that particular strand came from CoS Sarah's thing about "I wonder how many people who are okay with the changes play on consoles." It wasn't all quoted together, but it went like this:

[quote]SirOccam wrote...
[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
[quote]SirOccam wrote...
[quote]foodstuffs wrote...
[quote]SirOccam wrote...
[quote]CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

I'd also love to know the percentage of those that are fine and dandy with the ME makeover, what system they played DA on. I have a hunch the majority is of the console persuasion, not that it's a bad thing mind you, but there's certainly a different mindset of what makes a good rpg between the different user bases. [/quote]
I started out playing Dragon Age on the XBox 360, but I was pretty naïve about what consoles were even like. It was my first game for the XBox (in fact I owned it before I even owned the XBox; long story), and I had just gotten my first HDTV not long before that, and I thought the graphics were going to be amazing. Shows how much I knew. I played through it and even got Awakening for it, before I had heard and seen enough to convince me that it really WAS that much better on the PC. I've played it several times on the PC now and I plan on getting the PC version of Dragon Age 2 as well.

I played both Mass Effect games on the console and thought they worked rather well there. Whenever Mass Effect 3 comes out I won't hesitate to get it for the console as well.

I don't see why people have to choose sides and declare that one is better than the other. They both have their own strengths and weaknesses. Much like the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series.[/quote]
If one is indeed better than the other then why would people not declare that?[/quote]
Because one is not better than the other. That's my whole point.

Obviously people can think one or the other is better, but:
1. That does not make it so
2. It still doesn't explain why they feel like they can't appreciate the other despite its flaws
3. It doesn't explain why they have to trash people who like the other one better.[/quote]
Because the other fundamentally breaks my playstyle.[/quote]
Not if you don't play on the other. Then it has no bearing on it.[/quote]

[quote][quote]I don't know what else to say except I strongly disagree. If you want to think of each playthrough as a separate story, that's one thing, and in that case you're conceptually right, but what I'm saying is the story of Dragon Age is not changed by any player's participation any more than reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book is co-writing that book. It allows for variation, but it never loses that authorial control of the storyline.[/quote]
And I see and RPG as fundamentally unlike a Choose Your Own Adventure book.  In CYOA, all you can do is select a path through pre-written text.  Nothing you do adds anything to the narrative; you're working like a marble sculptor where you take away stone to reveal the statue, but you never add anything.

RPGs have so much more implicit content available to be resolved by the player that they allow a far more collaborative approach to gameplay.[/quote]
I see CYOAs as an extremely basic type of RPG, at least in part, when it comes to the whole decision-making aspect. It doesn't allow you to create a character and other things that I would consider crucial to a game's RPG-ness. But they maintain the central idea behind how an RPGs storyline works, in that stuff doesn't just happen, it happens based on and according to the decisions you, as reader, make on behalf of the character. You choose which path the story follows, but you can never go beyond what the author has allowed for except in your own mind. Such personal additions seem just as plausible in a CYOA as in DAO.

[quote][quote]Yes, but what I'm saying is they can't have both (or at the very least I've never seen any game have both the degree of freedom Fable gives you and the depth of character that Dragon Age: Origins gives you).[/quote]
I see no reason why the characters can't be just as deep.  I just think it would make the game too expensive to produce without sacrificing something else (I'd suggest all the fancy visuals and voice-acting).

Greater player freedom does probabaly mean the characters in the game won't be as reactive to the things going on around them, but they can still be deep, fully-realised characters.[/quote]
Yes, it's more of a practical restriction than a theoretical one. It's the same thing with form vs. function. You can have a really beautiful watch, or you can have one that does a bunch of nifty things. Obviously there's nothing saying you can't consider a very utilitarian watch beautiful, but it just kind of ends up working out in that general way. It's not that everything is forced onto one line in a graph of form vs. function (or indeed freedom vs. depth)...it's more of a scatter plot, but the general trend is still there. It's basically about where the control lies...if the author has total control (like in a book), then it has the best potential for a deep, rich storyline. But the more narrative control that is given to the player, the less able the environment will be to react and reflect the choices the player makes. Because there will be more and more variation across all players.

[quote]And there's a way around that.  Have the player freedom happen outside the towns.  Give the main plot a smaller scope so it doesn't affect everyone in the world so profoundly that they need to talk about to remain believable.  Make the main quest an individual challenge rather than a world-spanning epic challenge.

As Stan Woo so often points out, no design choice is made in isolation.  All of these problems you foresee can be dealt with by changing other features.[/quote]
I don't think that's really getting around it, though. It's just one particular way to try to balance the two. If more freedom means these outside quests are less relevant, then is it really worth the tradeoff? If you fill up the outside world with standalone quests, then I think that's making the story less cohesive and deep.

Modifié par SirOccam, 22 septembre 2010 - 09:28 .

[Jedimg]

Pritos wrote...

It's impressive how people get iluded so easily. DA2's dialog system isn't more nor less than DAO's. It's just different, but gives the same content.

I second that. Cheers!
Oh and about Hawke being VO ... umm they didn't do it in early RPG's because they probably didn't have time and money for that. Apart from that I don't really see the big difference. It's a story that the team wants to tell. When the voice actor is being recorded the writers are there and they tell them how exactly they want the specific line to sound so everything is going to be the way they wanted it to be. If hearing Hawke speak is going to be so hard for you then just skip his lines ...

[soundchaser721]

Jedimg wrote...

 the fact that you can't be Toegoff the Berserking Elf (Toegoff's LPs pwn  ) won't really look like a huge problem that stops you from enjoying the game. 

However,  there is one thing that I don't totally agree with and that's the new way envoirments are going to look. It's just that I already have this idea about the world of DA and what it looks like so changing the envoirment, NPC's models (darkspawn and the ogre in particular look kinda ...  um ... like drawings) etc. just doesn't seem like such a good idea to me. Plus I enjoyed looking at the well- made background and I'm not sure if I'm going to be totally OK with a crappy looking field with some rocks and a sky. I agree that too many details can be frustrating but so can too few be.

That's how I feel about DA2 anyway and I'm NOT saying that everyone has to think like me ... or they will DIE *charges up lightning spell*.  

Haha toegoffs LP's are indeed very entertaining. However if you've seen both his Origins LP's and his Mass Effect 2 one you'll notice that he's much more emotionally invested in Origins because Toegoff was his character that he built from scratch while he merely stepped into the shoes of Shepherd.

[Sylvius the Mad]

SirOccam wrote...

We were, for the most part, but that particular strand came from CoS Sarah's thing about "I wonder how many people who are okay with the changes play on consoles."

I see.  Sorry about the confusion.

I see CYOAs as an extremely basic type of RPG, at least in part, when it comes to the whole decision-making aspect. It doesn't allow you to create a character and other things that I would consider crucial to a game's RPG-ness. But they maintain the central idea behind how an RPGs storyline works, in that stuff doesn't just happen, it happens based on and according to the decisions you, as reader, make on behalf of the character. You choose which path the story follows, but you can never go beyond what the author has allowed for except in your own mind. Such personal additions seem just as plausible in a CYOA as in DAO.

I don't object to the idea what CYOAs are a basic type of RPG, but then the characteristic that makes the RPG less basic would be the collaboration.

Again, I think it simply isn't possible to roleplay a character whose personality you didn't create.  There's no other way for you to know enough about the character to make a coherent set of decisions on his behalf.

That coherence is of the utmost importance.  An incoherent character is not compelling.

Yes, it's more of a practical restriction than a theoretical one.

So it's something to strive for.  It is not something to be discarded.

But we won't strive for it if one of the features is thrown away never to be seen again.

It's the same thing with form vs. function. You can have a really beautiful watch, or you can have one that does a bunch of nifty things. Obviously there's nothing saying you can't consider a very utilitarian watch beautiful, but it just kind of ends up working out in that general way. It's not that everything is forced onto one line in a graph of form vs. function (or indeed freedom vs. depth)...it's more of a scatter plot, but the general trend is still there. It's basically about where the control lies...if the author has total control (like in a book), then it has the best potential for a deep, rich storyline. But the more narrative control that is given to the player, the less able the environment will be to react and reflect the choices the player makes. Because there will be more and more variation across all players.

But conversely, the more narrative control the author has the less able the protagonist will be to react to his specific motivations imparted to him by the player.

I don't think that's really getting around it, though. It's just one particular way to try to balance the two. If more freedom means these outside quests are less relevant, then is it really worth the tradeoff? If you fill up the outside world with standalone quests, then I think that's making the story less cohesive and deep.

They'd be less relevant to people unaffected by them, but that's a perfectly reasonabe expectation of believable characters.  The characters affected by a quest, who would likely be few in number, would react to it, but not to others, and those wouldn't affect them.

There may well be a grand overarching quest which affects everyone, but if no one is aware of it until the end then this problem never arises.  Just like now, all the characers will react together at the end.

The individual parts, which allow player freedom, can have a smaller scope.

In a different discussion about how urgency in the main quest can often make the completion of side-quests hard to justify from a roleplaying perspective, I suggested that the obvious solution was to avoid having an urgent main quest.  David Gaider responded with this question: "What if the sort of story we want to tell is an urgent story?"

The problem there is that that type of story requires certain other sacrifices, and those aren't sacrifices that I think makes for a strong game.  As such, I don't think the story should be allowed to drive the rest of the game's development.

The same is true with an epic story that requires global reactivity to remain credible.  Yes, epic stories can be fun, but they require significant other design sacrifices that I don't think are worth it.

I would suggest that game design should start with the setting, and the rules of that setting.  Then, within that setting and obeying those rules, the next step should be the gameplay.  In what sort of gameplay do you want players to engage?  And then, with that gameplay objective in mind, write a story that produces that gameplay as credible in-character behaviour.  Visual art should come last.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 22 septembre 2010 - 11:31 .

[Tsuga C]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I would suggest that game design should start with the setting, and the rules of that setting.  Then, within that setting and obeying those rules, the next step should be the gameplay.  In what sort of gameplay do you want players to engage?  And then, with that gameplay objective in mind, write a story that produces that gameplay as credible in-character behaviour.  Visual art should come last.

Simply excellent, Sylvius.

[foodstuffs]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I would suggest that game design should start with the setting, and the rules of that setting.  Then, within that setting and obeying those rules, the next step should be the gameplay.  In what sort of gameplay do you want players to engage?  And then, with that gameplay objective in mind, write a story that produces that gameplay as credible in-character behaviour.  Visual art should come last.

Everything you have listed will, at some point during production, create conflicting interests, forcing the need to re-write ideas from time to time.  Things will become even more complicated when trying to put paper to computer because of translation issues (written text into code), especially when trying to produce a live-action world.  The developers will need to continue to tweak things out in an attempt to create some semblance of balance in their world.  Sometimes rules need to be bent a little, but they should not be flat out broken. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

foodstuffs wrote...

Everything you have listed will, at some point during production, create conflicting interests, forcing the need to re-write ideas from time to time.

No.  Follow the hierarchy.  Each step's rules are established by the sum of the previous steps.

I specifically mentioned art at the end because some of DA2's features have been justified for reasons of art.  And I think that's entirely wrong.

If the art can't manage some feature of the setting, you can remove features as long as you don't break the setting (disallowing all polearms for example), but ideally you just go ahead with an imperfect visual representation: like the Rogue backstabbing animatons in DAO when weilding maces.  The way those maces were used was absurd from a visual perspective - no one is ever going to stab with the end of a mace.  But if teh cost of a separate set of animations is too high, there is left a choice between allowing the silly visuals, or disallowing the use of blunt weapons.  I'm saying that since disallowing blunt weapons breaks the setting, that choice should never be considered.

If at all possible, compromises should be compromises of presentation rather than content.

Sometimes rules need to be bent a little, but they should not be flat out broken.

There's no difference.  Either you broke a rule or you didn't.  There's no such thing as bending.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 23 septembre 2010 - 01:10 .

[SirOccam]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I don't object to the idea what CYOAs are a basic type of RPG, but then the characteristic that makes the RPG less basic would be the collaboration.

Again, I think it simply isn't possible to roleplay a character whose personality you didn't create.  There's no other way for you to know enough about the character to make a coherent set of decisions on his behalf.

That coherence is of the utmost importance.  An incoherent character is not compelling.

I agree with all of this. But to bring it back to the subject of DA2, I don't think simply hearing the lines being read is enough to impose upon your character to such an extent that roleplaying is made significantly more difficult. As I mentioned to someone else, they're already making you choose from a list of responses, rather than typing in your own (even in DAO where you can see every word). That, to me, seems like a hugely more fundamental restriction on roleplaying than just hearing them saying in addition to reading it. And if we've made it over that hump okay, then this just feels like a pebble in comparison.

Yes, it's more of a practical restriction than a theoretical one.

So it's something to strive for.  It is not something to be discarded.

But we won't strive for it if one of the features is thrown away never to be seen again.

I don't see it as discarding freedom, only trading one small part of it for a bigger payoff in another area that is also desirable in the game.

It's the same thing with form vs. function. You can have a really beautiful watch, or you can have one that does a bunch of nifty things. Obviously there's nothing saying you can't consider a very utilitarian watch beautiful, but it just kind of ends up working out in that general way. It's not that everything is forced onto one line in a graph of form vs. function (or indeed freedom vs. depth)...it's more of a scatter plot, but the general trend is still there. It's basically about where the control lies...if the author has total control (like in a book), then it has the best potential for a deep, rich storyline. But the more narrative control that is given to the player, the less able the environment will be to react and reflect the choices the player makes. Because there will be more and more variation across all players.

But conversely, the more narrative control the author has the less able the protagonist will be to react to his specific motivations imparted to him by the player.

Agreed. The balancing act is trying to fit as much of both as you can in, even though that might sometimes include giving up a little of one to get more of the other. Personally I value the storyline over the freedom aspect, so it's easier for me to accept concessions from the latter area. If they were going the opposite way, I imagine I'd feel much as you do.

I don't think that's really getting around it, though. It's just one particular way to try to balance the two. If more freedom means these outside quests are less relevant, then is it really worth the tradeoff? If you fill up the outside world with standalone quests, then I think that's making the story less cohesive and deep.

They'd be less relevant to people unaffected by them, but that's a perfectly reasonabe expectation of believable characters.  The characters affected by a quest, who would likely be few in number, would react to it, but not to others, and those wouldn't affect them.

Well of course it would be nice if they could put in all sort of varying sidequests (the replay value would be amazing), but I just don't think that's a practical way of going about it. They have to start with the core plot and then just add what they can from there. But they're always (for the forseeable future) going to run out of time/money before reaching this critical mass where it becomes this magical fusion of freedom and story. The more time and money they spend on one quest, the less there is to spend on another. So some are more important than others. So you can go for quality or quantity, or, naturally, somewhere in between.

There may well be a grand overarching quest which affects everyone, but if no one is aware of it until the end then this problem never arises.  Just like now, all the characers will react together at the end.

The individual parts, which allow player freedom, can have a smaller scope.

This would be worth seeing, and I would love to give something like that a try. But I don't think it needs to be how all games are designed. It definitely sounds cool...it would be like Origins if instead of like a 5%/95% ratio of Origin to main storyline, it was more like 75%/25%. It would be very interesting. But that's a really specific requirement.

In a different discussion about how urgency in the main quest can often make the completion of side-quests hard to justify from a roleplaying perspective, I suggested that the obvious solution was to avoid having an urgent main quest.  David Gaider responded with this question: "What if the sort of story we want to tell is an urgent story?"

The problem there is that that type of story requires certain other sacrifices, and those aren't sacrifices that I think makes for a strong game.  As such, I don't think the story should be allowed to drive the rest of the game's development.

The same is true with an epic story that requires global reactivity to remain credible.  Yes, epic stories can be fun, but they require significant other design sacrifices that I don't think are worth it.

I see no issue with it being taken on a game-to-game basis. Epic stories can be fun, as you say. That's not to say that all stories have to be epic in scope.

It's like people sometimes imply during comparisons of DAO and ME. Two very different games, with very different feels. But they are both great, in my opinion. I wouldn't want every game to be designed like Mass Effect, nor indeed even like Origins, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate them all the same. I love the cinematic feel of Mass Effect...I was not surprised in the least to hear that they're making a film about it. Now if they announced the same about Dragon Age Origins, I would be shocked.

It's the same reason I can love this and this and this and this with probably a nearly equal level of affection. I enjoy them all, but would stop short of saying any one of those is how music should be.

I would suggest that game design should start with the setting, and the rules of that setting.  Then, within that setting and obeying those rules, the next step should be the gameplay.  In what sort of gameplay do you want players to engage?  And then, with that gameplay objective in mind, write a story that produces that gameplay as credible in-character behaviour.  Visual art should come last.

See above. I'm not against a game being designed this way. I just think it's not necessarily the way all RPGs need to be. It's okay to have some more focused on a story and some more focused on the setting or on giving the player more freedoms. I identify so strongly with DAO over games like Fable, as was mentioned, because, as also mentioned, I tend to lean more toward story.

Modifié par SirOccam, 23 septembre 2010 - 01:28 .

[Rendar666]

DA 2 Seems pretty sick, but I really hope they don't make it like ME 2, where everything from ME 1 that people said needed work they took out completely. I'll pissed if this game isn't a crowning achievement. Bioware... you must not dissapoint your loyal fans.

[SirOccam]

Rendar666 wrote...

DA 2 Seems pretty sick, but I really hope they don't make it like ME 2, where everything from ME 1 that people said needed work they took out completely. I'll pissed if this game isn't a crowning achievement. Bioware... you must not dissapoint your loyal fans.

The loyal fans who demand that BioWare please them or else......[undefined implicit threat here]?

[soundchaser721]

SirOccam wrote...

Rendar666 wrote...

DA 2 Seems pretty sick, but I really hope they don't make it like ME 2, where everything from ME 1 that people said needed work they took out completely. I'll pissed if this game isn't a crowning achievement. Bioware... you must not dissapoint your loyal fans.

The loyal fans who demand that BioWare please them or else......[undefined implicit threat here]?

I actually think Gaider had a pretty funny quote regarding the demands made by the fans who seem to think their demands will be met with the game 5 months from release 

Modifié par soundchaser721, 23 septembre 2010 - 02:47 .

[Onyx Jaguar]

my God why have the demands stopped!

[foodstuffs]

@Sylvius

Something I like about dnd is the fact that 100 different dungeon masters may interpret the rules in 100 different ways. Your idea does not seem to promote this. Your idea feels rather draconian (for want of a more appropriate description), whereas I believe in the right of interpretation. This is not intended as an insult or anything, rather we just have conflicting ideas on how things should work.

EDIT:  If we were to work on something together, in your way, we would eventually run into conflicts of interest as I noted, because of our conflicting ideas on how things should work.  This is the problem when you have multiple people working on a project.

Modifié par foodstuffs, 23 septembre 2010 - 04:37 .

[CoS Sarah Jinstar]

SirOccam wrote...

Rendar666 wrote...

DA 2 Seems pretty sick, but I really hope they don't make it like ME 2, where everything from ME 1 that people said needed work they took out completely. I'll pissed if this game isn't a crowning achievement. Bioware... you must not dissapoint your loyal fans.

The loyal fans who demand that BioWare please them or else......[undefined implicit threat here]?

I wouldn't go that far, however it would be nice to at least get some development consideration considering being long time loyal customers.

There's such a thing as streamlining to make better and flat out stripping out whole components of a series and calling it streamlining. Unfortunately ME2 followed the latter and with all the comparions to ME2 so far with the early previews some people are concerned it may be happening again. Some of what Mike replied with does set my mind a little at ease, though it would be nice to just get some gameplay footage so we can put the arguements to rest.  (Oh and good looking high res Lady Hawke wallpaper )

[Kail Ashton]

lol oh good, we were needing a half assed article to send the lunatic fringe doomsayers into a soap box rant of how DA2 will cause the end of the world in 2012 somehow, thank you pcgamer!

[Amioran]

The Masked Rog wrote...

That's strange cause I clearly remember my Aeducan having a brother who plotted against him, a father who was a king, a long time friend and a bazillion of other pre defined things. Same for Couslands, you have parents and I think other relatives.

You are talking here about a character, not the house it represents. If you take Endrin's son, then he is a character, if you take the house (in nobility a name implies also an house, so a role) then that's a role. Aeducans are both a set of characters and an house (so a role), they contain both, it depends on which of the two you base your point of view.

Modifié par Amioran, 23 septembre 2010 - 06:20 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

SirOccam wrote...

I agree with all of this. But to bring it back to the subject of DA2, I don't think simply hearing the lines being read is enough to impose upon your character to such an extent that roleplaying is made significantly more difficult. As I mentioned to someone else, they're already making you choose from a list of responses, rather than typing in your own (even in DAO where you can see every word). That, to me, seems like a hugely more fundamental restriction on roleplaying than just hearing them saying in addition to reading it. And if we've made it over that hump okay, then this just feels like a pebble in comparison.

The paraphrase option is only equivalent if there's zero loss of meaning and detail when compared to the full line.

I would suggest that the paraphrase and full line should be interchangeable salva veritate.

And then, yes, the paraphrase isn't a problem.

The problem with the voice is it turns the line of dialogue from an abstraction to explicit content within the game world.  In DAO, the player can choose the abstraction (the full line) that best suits his character, and since it's a abstraction it's never going to break his characer concept unless it direct contradiction of some principle the character holds dear, and I can't imagine all of the available options ever doing that, so the player shouldn't have selected that one.

Compare that to Mass Effect where the player selects a paraphrase option, and then is presented with an explicit line that is possible out of character, and the player had no way to ensure the line wasn't out of character because he couldn't see it.

DA2 may well have wonderfulyl written paraphrase options, thus eliminating half of the problem, but the explicit nature of the lines is fixed by the voice and the cinematic presentation.

I still fail to see why cinematic presentation is a good thing.  Cinema only does authored narrative.  Films aren't told in the second person.

I don't see it as discarding freedom, only trading one small part of it for a bigger payoff in another area that is also desirable in the game.

It's hard to get features back once they've gone away.  As soon as their viewed as old-fashioned, marketing fears them.

Agreed. The balancing act is trying to fit as much of both as you can in, even though that might sometimes include giving up a little of one to get more of the other. Personally I value the storyline over the freedom aspect, so it's easier for me to accept concessions from the latter area. If they were going the opposite way, I imagine I'd feel much as you do.

I'd say I value only the roleplaying, but what you call story offers the character a milieu in which to live, so it's also important.

We're not so far apart.

I see no issue with it being taken on a game-to-game basis. Epic stories can be fun, as you say. That's not to say that all stories have to be epic in scope.

Right.  But show me a BioWare RPG that didn't have an epic story.

I've got one: Baldur's Gate.  That was a story with limited regional impact, and a primarily personal focus.

It's like people sometimes imply during comparisons of DAO and ME. Two very different games, with very different feels. But they are both great, in my opinion. I wouldn't want every game to be designed like Mass Effect, nor indeed even like Origins, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate them all the same. I love the cinematic feel of Mass Effect...I was not surprised in the least to hear that they're making a film about it. Now if they announced the same about Dragon Age Origins, I would be shocked.

It's the same reason I can love this and this and this and this with probably a nearly equal level of affection. I enjoy them all, but would stop short of saying any one of those is how music should be.

What makes me enjoy something can be reduced to its likeable characteristics.  That's how I can tell whether I enjoyed something relative to something else.

I would say the same is true with music (in fact, I have said that somewhere on the BioBoards).

See above. I'm not against a game being designed this way. I just think it's not necessarily the way all RPGs need to be. It's okay to have some more focused on a story and some more focused on the setting or on giving the player more freedoms. I identify so strongly with DAO over games like Fable, as was mentioned, because, as also mentioned, I tend to lean more toward story.

Fable, I would suggest, mostly followed that pattern, though it pretty much skipped the story part.  But, it also provided a very shallow settting, and its gameplay objectives were lousy.

I don't think my hierarchy guarantees a good game, so pointing to a bad game produced by it isn't really a counter-point.  A good game that didn't follow it, however, would be.

So that makes it a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 23 septembre 2010 - 06:26 .

[Amioran]

Bryy_Miller wrote...

I fail to see how a Dwarf born into nobility is any different from a guy fleeing a burning city in the sense of what role they are playing. 

No, it is different. The role and the dwarf character are not the same thing, they aren't tied. You don't get to play as a noble dwarf at priori, with a background. The character is created AFTER the role, it is not present in itself at beginning. The two are not tied togheter, nor one cannot exist without the other.

If you would take the dwarf origin by itself and already existent in itself in the role at beginning then it could have been the representation of a character, yes. However the warden in itself is a role, not a character. Being that there are several choices and not only the dwarf one, and that the dwarf noble is created after the role, then the dwarf noble is just an aspect of a character used to explain the role.

While the dwarf noble can indeed be taken as a character in itself (not considering all the rest), it is indeed a role, because the background itself of the role you play automatically subvert the character itself, if there's one, and if you want it (or the authors do it as in the case of the warden). For Hawke this doesn't happen because its role and its character are the same thing and the narrative doesn't take the role as the point of evidence, but the character.

A case would be interpeting Otello for the role of the same, but discarding the character in itself. With Otello it is possible because the role can be different in itself from the character. Same with Lear. However this doesn't happen with Macbeth, where the role and the character are tied togheter closely.

Modifié par Amioran, 23 septembre 2010 - 07:06 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

foodstuffs wrote...

@Sylvius

Something I like about dnd is the fact that 100 different dungeon masters may interpret the rules in 100 different ways. Your idea does not seem to promote this. Your idea feels rather draconian (for want of a more appropriate description), whereas I believe in the right of interpretation. This is not intended as an insult or anything, rather we just have conflicting ideas on how things should work.

That's why many of the rules are incomplete and require the DM to fill in the gaps.

Plus, house rules can easily override the extant rules.  I certainly don't object to that.  But that creates a different set of rules which needs to be obeyed.

Rules that are applied inconsistently are not rules.

EDIT:  If we were to work on something together, in your way, we would eventually run into conflicts of interest as I noted, because of our conflicting ideas on how things should work.  This is the problem when you have multiple people working on a project.

All conflicts are resolved by appealing to the hierarchy.

[AlanC9]

Amioran wrote...

In the case of a role vs. a character if you take Adecuan as the house that's a role, if you take a specific member in itself that's a character. Same difference.

You keep repeating this without making what you're getting at any clearer.

As for Hawke:
He has a mother, a father, a sister and a brother who live in Lothering. His father was an apostate mage and trained Bethany (and Hawke if he's a mage) in the art. His sister is an apostate mage.

We know all of these factors for the human and dwarf nobles and  the dwarf and elf commoner in DAO. We have somewhat less background for the mage, and it's conceivable that the Dalish elf has relatives we don't see in the game. 

This is all background, already existing. It defines a character already present in itself. The warden was created by yourself. It didn't have a background at priori, it didn't existed in itself, it was a role, the character came after, it wasn't present in the role itself.

What more can I say? The difference it is enough evident if you want to see it. The way Bioware is relating to Hawke is completely different on how they related to the warden, and this is obvious, since the former is already a character and the latter is a role from whom you create the character, your character.

If you can't explain yourself, don't blame us.

Edit: unless your whole point is merely that DAO had six characters to play with as opposed to DA2's one.

Modifié par AlanC9, 23 septembre 2010 - 08:20 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Amioran wrote...

As for Hawke:
He has a mother, a father, a sister and a brother who live in Lothering. His father was an apostate mage and trained Bethany (and Hawke if he's a mage) in the art. His sister is an apostate mage.

But we still get to decide everything about how Hawke feels about any of those things.  Hawke's opinion of Bethany is left up to us.  We've been specifically told that we're not required to care for her.

No one gets to choose who his family is, but each of us can choose whom we acknowledge as family.

The same is true with Hawke.