6 réponses à ce sujet

[MerinTB]

Sarcastic Gamer has an interview with Mr. Gaider.

http://sarcasticgame...html#more-60514

snippet

Why did you take the decision to have just one main character for DA2 as opposed to the multitude of main character options in  Origins?

Part of that is budgetary. If you look at Origins each of those origin stories was a huge undertaking. That kind of expense is great, as long as there is some impact to it and I think we got that in Origins. I think it was really important as Origins had to introduce the world and introduce every slice of life to the player. For the DA2 story, we
actually started off with multiple starting points but we found that prevented us from telling the tale we wanted to tell and not to mention led to an extra expense. Splitting the story at the start diluted the story we wanted to tell further down the line. For example, if the player was a Dwarf you could not have a Mage in the family. For every variation you have to provide a whole new path. One day we just sat down and said, budget aside, what is more important to us?

When I first found out we were concentrating on one main character, as a writer I wasn’t exactly thrilled. From a writing perspective it narrows down the character. It does give you the opportunities to hook a story onto a character when they are a little bit more defined and now I do find after playing DA2, I have a really hard time going back and playing Origins.

Edited so the full response is there - it wasn't my intention to imply anything, just randomly grabbed something from the early part of the interview...

Modifié par MerinTB, 06 janvier 2011 - 09:06 .

[David Gaider]

tmp7704 wrote...
Truly, that there's games at all which feature AI-driven cars, motorcycles, tanks, planes, ships and even actual horses, it's nothing short of a miracle.

The issue's actually more involved with having a party on horseback. Having a group of horses maneuver behind you is infinitely more difficult to pathfind-- that's why such games generally feature a single controllable mount. Even so, it's do-able. Nobody's claiming it's not. You can design levels around the fact that someone could be riding a horse, for instance. The issue is really just how important it is to the game you're making for such a feature to be accomodated. One day I'd like to do a game where it plays enough of a role in the gameplay to warrant the work.

Incidentally, when I said "concentrating on one main character" I suppose I meant one version of the main character. I tend to think of the different threads a player can pick up as different characters, and from a story perspective they sort of are.

Modifié par David Gaider, 07 janvier 2011 - 03:30 .

[David Gaider]

Night Prowler76 wrote...
I mean they had the 6 variations in DOA, but its not feasable, cost wise in DA2? LMAO.

Perhaps you need to read the interview again.

[John Epler]

That's it. I'm petitioning for the next game to include talking horses. And by 'include', I mean 'every PC and NPC is a talking horse'.



We'll call it... 'Dragon Neighge'.



LOOK WHAT YOUR HUBRIS HAS WROUGHT.



On a rather more serious note, though - when you bring in horses, you add an extra factor to the game (one that affects combat, conversations, content creation - the alliteration there was unintentional). And that takes resources from all corners of the team. As David said - it'd be nice to make a game where horses add more than the extra resources required would take away from other content. However, adding horses so we can say 'Now with HORSES!' on the back of our box isn't really the best allocation of resources.

[David Gaider]

Dudalizer wrote...
How do you guys plan on doing it in The Old Republic?  Aren't there going to be mounts/vehicles AND companions?

I have no idea what their plan is. Once again, however: if the payback is worth it, so is the expense. I imagine a large part of MMO's is traveling over vast areas... so transportation becomes much more impactful.

[John Epler]

TurboTwistedFire wrote...

JohnEpler wrote...

That's it. I'm petitioning for the next game to include talking horses. And by 'include', I mean 'every PC and NPC is a talking horse'.

We'll call it... 'Dragon Neighge'.

Shoot I'd  buy it. =D

JohnEpler wrote...
LOOK WHAT YOUR HUBRIS HAS WROUGHT.

On a rather more serious note, though - when you bring in horses, you add an extra factor to the game (one that affects combat, conversations, content creation - the alliteration there was unintentional). And that takes resources from all corners of the team. As David said - it'd be nice to make a game where horses add more than the extra resources required would take away from other content. However, adding horses so we can say 'Now with HORSES!' on the back of our box isn't really the best allocation of resources.

Yeah I see what you mean. Although, would even making a statue of a horse just to show that horses DO exist in the game cause all that? Or maybe just an unselectable horse grazing in a pasture behind a impenatrable fence?
I mean, even if you can't do anything with them, horses still make everything awesome.

*Owns two horses*

The argument there, unfortunately, quickly becomes 'HEY THERE'S A HORSE BEHIND THAT FENCE. Can I ride it? What? I can't ride horses! This game is stupid!' If you show players something that they can't use (that would make some logical sense for them to use), they're going to wonder why they can't use it.

If you don't bring it up, however, sure - some people will ask you 'why can't I ride a horse?' and ask all sorts of questions about what this perceived lack of horses means, but the majority of people won't ever give it a second thought. I've played games before where you couldn't use any vehicles, but there were (seemingly) functional vehicles scattered all over the landscape. And I wondered 'why can't I get into that truck that is apparently fully fuelled (as I just siphoned gas from it), hit the gas and just ram my way through the enemy checkpoint? Certainly it'd be easier than all this shooting nonsense'.

Sometimes, it's just better to avoid pointing out these things.

[David Gaider]

tmp7704 wrote...
That is, the unicorns.

And give the alicorn competition? The hell you say.