245 réponses à ce sujet

[PsychoBlonde]

In Exile wrote...
The problem is that KoTOR II relied on certain NPC revelations for the plot to make sense. There is no problem, I think, with the PC being absolutely swept up by a plot he/she does not understand. Nevertheless, I insist that on a meta-game level, I as the player should be able to understand the plot of the game. KoTOR II was very bad at this.

KotORII was produced by OBSIDIAN.

A major part of any RPG is the buy-in for the setting.

Wrong!  I've played (and run) plenty of RPG's where the setting was completely disregarded, in fact, most of the ones I write myself are this way because then I can fill in stuff that seems cool as needed.  I haven't found it's necessary to get buy in on ANYTHING prior to the game.

If you'd said, since I'm a setting-****, I snootily won't have anything to do with a product that doesn't cater to my particular tastes, that would have been true.  But setting buy-in is optional.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

I don't read with tone.

Nor do I.  But I also don't listen with tone, so I still find the two equivalent.

Alodar wrote...

Not if you are brave enough to turn off subtitles and allow yourself to be immersed in the game.

If the lip-sync were good enough fo me to follow the dialogue without the subtitles, I'd give that a try.

I do plan to play DA2 without the subtitles if I can find a way to mute Hawke's VO.

PsychoBlonde wrote...
But every story has to introduce people to new info, that's why every story has an exposition, even if it's just "what are the names of these characters and what is their relationship to each other".  Weaving your exposition into the narrative is part of the skill of a writer, as well as deciding how much exposition is necessary.  All of these things are optional and the way you portray them can be as varied as the medium itself.  This is why I'm so opposed to this silly intrinsicism of "you must have a manual the size of a phone book" and "you must have a codex".  No, you must do what will make your game the best product you can produce according to your standards.

But in a game environment, the player is expected to make in-character decisions right from the start of the game.  How can he do that if he's unfamiliar with that character's basic knowledge?

In Exile wrote...

The problem is that KoTOR II relied on certain NPC revelations for the plot to make sense.

I admit I don't remember KotOR2 very well.  I didn't really like the game.

I insist that on a meta-game level, I as the player should be able to understand the plot of the game.

And, of course, I disagree.

I also wish we had more moments where the character could actually say a think he/she should know. I think the most brilliant line in ME1 was right at the start where Shepard could ask about the Terminus systems, and instead of being absolutely ignorant about the entire political situation despite it being his job, he can say "If the Terminus systems attacked it would be an act of war."

I'll agree with that, but the problem in ME was that Shepard would sometimes do that when I didn't want him to (either because I wanted him to hide the information he had, or because I didn't think he held the opinion he was claiming he did).

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 08 novembre 2010 - 10:01 .

[PsychoBlonde]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

PsychoBlonde wrote...
But every story has to introduce people to new info, that's why every story has an exposition, even if it's just "what are the names of these characters and what is their relationship to each other".  Weaving your exposition into the narrative is part of the skill of a writer, as well as deciding how much exposition is necessary.  All of these things are optional and the way you portray them can be as varied as the medium itself.  This is why I'm so opposed to this silly intrinsicism of "you must have a manual the size of a phone book" and "you must have a codex".  No, you must do what will make your game the best product you can produce according to your standards.

But in a game environment, the player is expected to make in-character decisions right from the start of the game.  How can he do that if he's unfamiliar with that character's basic knowledge?

Expected by whom?  And what constitutes as "right"?  This should be written as: "I would like to be able to predict the results of my actions with much greater accuracy by having a lot of background information prior to starting the game".  This is a personal preference.  Some of us actually enjoy having things turn out not quite how we expected (and are quite willing to backtrack if it turns out that way.)

I appreciate that there were times in ME where Shepard did something and I was like, whoa, that's not what I wanted!  But I also have times where I look down the list of conversation options for non-voiced games and say, I don't want ANY of these!  (Actually, that's most of the time.  Maybe even all of the time.)  Then I have to pick the one that is LEAST objectionable.  So, as far as I'm concerned, there's not a big difference between these types of objectionable, and at least the surprise objectionable of the voiceover version has the benefit that I don't feel like I'm being forced to settle.  I can relax and enjoy the fact that I'm not really steering this railroad quite as much as I'd like when it's so much more obvious.

Sylvius:  I also appreciate that with you being tone deaf (you are tone-deaf,right? I didn't misremember?), with the voiceover you totally feel like you're giving up the vast options of text-only to get . . . nothing.  That's gotta suck, like a blind person being told that their favorite radio show is cutting down episode time by 3/4 so they can become a TV show.

Modifié par PsychoBlonde, 08 novembre 2010 - 10:12 .

[Fortlowe]

Maker! Sylius and I actually agree on something. No doubt, nugs will begin flying shortly.

[Fishy]

I like codex.Because my character should know why Mabari are important to Ferelden without having some NPC reminding him.Sure you can pretend you know everything.But i love reading the codex .. Like a prologue before a book.So i know what kind of protagonist i am going to follow.

[PsychoBlonde]

Suprez30 wrote...

I like codex.Because my character should know why Mabari are important to Ferelden without having some NPC reminding him.Sure you can pretend you know everything.But i love reading the codex .. Like a prologue before a book.So i know what kind of protagonist i am going to follow.

Erm, your character should know how to swing a sword without an NPC reminding him, too.  You need a codex entry for that?  And how to walk down a street?  Every concievable thing that your character "ought" to know?  The logic of this statement leaves something to be desired.

There are also times in the games when it's apparent that your character DOESN'T know the stuff that's in the codex entries, although I think the worst offender in this regard was in Mass Effect with the Rachni codex, which you could get long before they were officially "introduced" and your character was still baffled when you encountered them regardless.  Inconsistencies like these REALLY Get Up My Shorts, which is yet another reason why I wants the codex GONE.

[LTD]

leonia42 wrote...

....but due the organisation in the codex portion of the journal decide to give up when they can't find the one they just picked up.

This is only problem I had with codex. There isn't convinient way to immediately find"that book I looted 2 mins back.
"Arrange entries by date added" or some such would have worked wonders.

All in  all I loved the Codex. It brings so much depth and detail, makes world more alive. Voice acted Codex or better yet, a companion who is bit of a bookworm of sorts would have been lovely.  Imagine having useless-in-combat scribe, bard* or monk who randomly goes "Hey Warden, see what I found..*Reads passages from Life&Times of Andrasta, Volume IX" It would be very subtle and efficient way to teach player the history/culture of the world. Specially with a good voice actor.

Having said all that, presentation of databanks in Bioware games have been stale as hell for a decade  now. 
This is part of a larger problem: way inventories are made in modern games. It's a small wonder people have begun making FUBAR suggestions like removing/trivializing item managment in RPGs when modern  inventories are in such god awful state.

Inventory of any game made with Infinity engine feels like a more evolved version of..well, any inventory Bioware has created since 2003 or some such. Ever since it became mandatory to stop ignoring consoles and their god awful controllers, inventories have been nothing but these dull excel sheets created with somewhat convinient browsing with pad in mind. Ye Olde Infinity inventories did better job with giving you a look and feel  of hauling actual items about. Modern Bioware inventories settle with offering a feeling of moving data between two excel sheets. WIth modern  inventories, it doesn't seem possible to offer player a book he could actually carry, open and read. Instead, everything written the player loots must exist in some seperate out-of-physical-space-and-time codex. For me, it is bit of a turn off.

TL:DR Overall quality of actual content within DA:O Codex was extremely high! However, I want to own and read books, not seperate excel documents. This is not possible with current devolved inventories. In oder to fix this. Bioware must
A) bring back infinity era inventories
Start a campaign to seek, destroy and burn down all modern consoles**


*Bard in traditional sense of the word, not Bioware's or AD&D's combat oriented version.
** Everything released after SNES

Modifié par LTD, 08 novembre 2010 - 11:02 .

[Stick668]

Addai67 wrote...

--- I don't understand why text should be considered an inherently inferior method of storytelling.  Especially since it happens to be my favorite.  Being a game, I expect there to be visual and audio storytelling, too, but variety is a good thing.  I also reject the idea that it represents creative gimping.  Just because you don't favor it doesn't make it lazy or un-creative.

Not attempting to speak for PsychoBlonde here, just riffing on generalities...

Text is not inherently inferior in a novel or a text adventure, where it makes up the entire actuality of the work.

In an "interactive moving picture with sound" situation, text by definition is not core gameplay. It's immersion-breaking. It's a sideline. It's extracurricular reading. No, there's nothing wrong with that. I love frivolous off-hand throwaway texty bits, as any of the five people who played in my NWN campaigns could tell you. But showing off your clever world-building should be done by showing off your clever world-building. Not by making your blueprints public reading material.

If we go with the assumption that you can reallocate zots from supplemental text to improve actual in-game information density... of course that would be preferrable.

The best example I can think of is Mass Effect 2's ambient incidentals. Yes, the background ads and announcements in the Citadel and on Illium. It made me gasp at times, because it just wouldn't let up.

"Hey, that's something I did in ME1. Wow, this place is nuts. Hang on, what that game salesman is saying sounds awfully familiar. Oh god. 'This one wonders whether its heat sink is over capacity.' Mwahah, individually targetted intrusive adverts." And so on.

How'd this translate to the Dragon Age setting where public address systems consist of waving your hands and raising your voice? Not sure. More random rambly party conversations? More time spent on perfecting facial animations and body language? More random encounters? Fleshing out the Board Quests a bit?

Hmmm... now that I write it, I sort of confirm my own suspicion that it probably wouldn't be that easy in practice. A song lyric writer that can't play music on his own will never be a one-man band. You can't just take X person-hours of Writing and apply them to the totality of the work. Be nice if you could, of course.

To stay on the ME2 examples: I found the pure-text character background files available in Lair of the Shadow Broker to be an absolute hoot. Time well spent. And I get why. It's a fairly "low-impact" way of creating some additional content. In the sense that you don't need fifteen other people to script, animate, code, score and voice-act what you scribbled. I appreciate that.

But in a perfect world? I'd still prefer a DLC called Jack's Forum Adventure. Not to mention Legion Appropriatez The Inexperienzed and Catsuit Lawson Goes Looking For Trouble...

[Vaeliorin]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

In Exile wrote...
Moreover, it may be information my character should know. A mage should know the Schools of Magic without having to have someone sit them down and start with, "As you know, the foundation of all magic...."

This was information that should have been available to the player prior to starting the game.  In a book of lore or something that accompanies the manual, perhaps (even if it's just a PDF).

I agree with everything here except the PDF part (I hate trying to read books on a computer screen...it makes my eyes hurt.)  I find it virtually impossible to develop a character without having sufficient knowledge of the setting (this, incidentally, is why I always had a problem developing characters for KOTOR, because I don't have enough knowledge of the setting to know anything about where my character might be from or what it would be reasonable for him to have as a past.)

Since we're not likely to get this sort of thing, however, I appreciate the setting information that exists in the Codex, and I would be annoyed if we were to lose it.

[PsychoBlonde]

Stick668 wrote...

If we go with the assumption that you can reallocate zots from supplemental text to improve actual in-game information density... of course that would be preferrable.

Not on a 1-for-1 basis, certainly, and certainly not with older games.  If you're going to do a book of the movie, though, then do a book of the movie.  Don't include it in the middle of the freaking movie.  And don't have pop ups in the middle of the movie that tell you to go read X passage in the book if you want to know more.

Granted, in a game where they had a "buy the DLC to do this quest!" salesman in the bloody party camp, maybe I'm asking too much.

[RyuAzai]

For me, in the beginning of the game I read almost all the codex entries.



But the more I play the story the less I read. I am more involved what is going on currently then the text. The exception is if a particle story element I am interested in pops up with more information I'll go read that.



But for lore wise, going back to actually learn about Thedas I really enjoy them as a resource and would miss them if they went away.

[Anarchosyn]

Just.. please fix the codex on the console versions (perhaps "don't make the same mistake" is closer to the spirit I wish to evoke than "fix"). I was heart broken to see it was impossible to get an overview of unread entries unless they happened to be close to the top of the list (scrolling, as well we know, selected an entry and made it virtually impossible to tell which entry was new or updated unless you caught the codex entry prompt in time).

[In Exile]

PsychoBlonde wrote...
KotORII was produced by OBSIDIAN.

I'm aware. But KoTOR II was a game that relied on giving the story through the perspective of the characters. If you didn't gain influence with Kreia or Atton (for example) you missed their plot content. With Kreia in particular, not gaining approval with her meant that you would miss out on her content,which translated into a very broken and haphazard understanding of the game's story.

Wrong!  I've played (and run) plenty of RPG's where the setting was completely disregarded, in fact, most of the ones I write myself are this way because then I can fill in stuff that seems cool as needed.  I haven't found it's necessary to get buy in on ANYTHING prior to the game.

For a video-game? I guess you could go ahead and believe that you're a shapeshifting alien from planet Zetablorg 7 and the blight is a mass delusion introduced by an evil pharmaceutical company... but then why are you playing the game?

If you'd said, since I'm a setting-****, I snootily won't have anything to do with a product that doesn't cater to my particular tastes, that would have been true.  But setting buy-in is optional.

I'm sorry? This seems very rude. I think a central part of the RPG (indeed, of any make believe) is a common belief in what the context of the story is. You said you played and ran in RPGs where the setting was disregarded. That's cool. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I' d bet whatever you invented to replace it, everyone who RPed with you believed in it. No one stood up and said "No, you're wrong! I suffer no damage because I realize you are all mass halucinations and I am in fact an accountant working for BP. Now, I roll initiative on thisT4..."

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Nor do I.  But I also don't listen
with tone, so I still find the two equivalent.

I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean you ignore tone when people speak? Not listening suggests you can't hear it which is... physically difficult for me to comprehend.

[Taritu]

Not a fan of voiced codexes, unless the VA is really good. I read really fast, so I always wind up reading it through way before the VA finishes. (Which is why I turn off subtitles when possible.) However, am a huge fan of codexes. I like to have background for the world, it makes me feel much more like I'm there. One of the things that's frustrating me with Fallout New Vegas right now is that the loading pages have what amounts to the codex info, and my computer is high end, so they flash by before I can read them.

[Sylvius the Mad]

PsychoBlonde wrote...

Expected by whom?  And what constitutes as "right"?

By "right at the start" I meant "immediately".

Sylvius:  I also appreciate that with you being tone deaf (you are tone-deaf,right? I didn't misremember?), with the voiceover you totally feel like you're giving up the vast options of text-only to get . . . nothing.

I am not tone-deaf, but I simply don't think tone conveys meaning in the spoken language.  So yes, I'm giving up the full text options and receiving nothing at all in return.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Vaeliorin wrote...

Since we're not likely to get this sort of thing, however, I appreciate the setting information that exists in the Codex, and I would be annoyed if we were to lose it.

If we have to collect the information in game (as the DAO codex works), then by the time we get it it's too late.  we need it before we start playing.

Sure, I'd rather have a printed manual, too, but publishers and retailers want packages with a lower mass to reduce shipping costs.  We're not going to get a 250 page manual back...

...unless those 250 pages are digital.

Try a Kindle.  Apparently those are easy to read.

[ErichHartmann]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I am not tone-deaf, but I simply don't think tone conveys meaning in the spoken language.  So yes, I'm giving up the full text options and receiving nothing at all in return.

Tone might not convey meaning but it certainly reflects attitude, context, and feelings. 

[upsettingshorts]

What was great about ME1-2's Codex wasn't that it had a VO. It was great because I could actually find the goddamned article I wanted to read because they had titles.

[Sylvius the Mad]

ErichHartmann wrote...

Tone might not convey meaning but it certainly reflects attitude, context, and feelings.

Unreliably.

It's not a useful tool.

[Onyx Jaguar]

Yeah information was very easy to find in the ME codex. Which is kidn of perplexing because you kind of need the information that was in Dragon Age's codex at times to solve puzzles and have any clue to what was going on.

[addiction21]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Try a Kindle.  Apparently those are easy to read.

The newest one are worlds better in that aspect. Back to lurking I go.

[upsettingshorts]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

ErichHartmann wrote...

Tone might not convey meaning but it certainly reflects attitude, context, and feelings.

Unreliably.

It's not a useful tool.

I might slip using a hammer and smash my thumb.  Is the hammer useful in that it, most of the time, can be used to hammer nails?

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 09 novembre 2010 - 05:06 .

[AtreiyaN7]

As long as they come up with a system better than numbers in tiny rectangles, I'll be a lot happier with the Codex.

[Maria Caliban]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

I might slip using a hammer and smash my thumb.  Is the hammer useful in that it, most of the time, can be used to hammer nails?

Presumably, you always know when you've hit your thumb instead of a nail and can then proceed to actually hammer in the nail. With tone, you can only hope that you interpret tone correctly.

[upsettingshorts]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Presumably, you always know when you've hit your thumb instead of a nail and can then proceed to actually hammer in the nail. With tone, you can only hope that you interpret tone correctly.

If it's an active conversation, you could always ask for clarification. 

"Wait, you were serious?"

My point was that we use unreliable tools all the time.  Hopefully the fact we're conscious of their unreliability allows room for doubt, but that doesn't make them useless.  Language itself in its raw form is itself susceptible to being misinterpreted due to ignorance or bias.

However, Sylvius has denied the existence of cognitive intuition before so I imagine he disagrees.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 09 novembre 2010 - 05:14 .