4 réponses à ce sujet

[Kevin Lynch]

Just finished watching the newest dev diary "Story" and a particular point has me curious about the dialogue options vs. what is said. At 4:16 of the vid, Hawke has three choices to speak:

This isn't helping.
You're right, but settle down.
Shut up!

The player chooses "Shut up!" and the spoken line is "I'm in charge, you do what I say."

From my perspective, the spoken line fits the least with the "Shut up!" option. I expected Hawke to actually get angry and tell his brother to shut up. Instead, it's more of a neutral (or mildly irritated) attitude. Wouldn't a dialogue option of "You do what I say" be a more obvious fit than what it currently is?

It may seem like a minor detail and a minor point in the story, and perhaps most dialogue will be more accurately reflected in the choices, but the dialogue tree choices in games have always been a pet-peeve of mine when I don't seem to be able to anticipate the writer's intention. Perhaps it's fully mitigated by the use of the icon showing what attitude the choice means, but I'd still rather have dialogue reflected appropriately in the choices.

Hoping it won't amount to much in the final tally; I've managed well enough in other games that use the abbreviated choices, although not without annoyances at times. Another reason to save often.

[DavidSims]

The reason the paraphrase doesn’t exactly match the spoken line, or use exact words that are in the spoken line, is that we don’t want it to be redundant with the spoken line. More than just not be redundant though, a good paraphrase will flow naturally into the spoken line, so when the player reads one then hears the other they blend into a single phrase.

If you find yourself troubled by a disconnect between the paraphrase and the spoken line, try imagining that Hawke is actually saying both, and we’re just cutting past the paraphrase because you’ve already heard it. I think you’ll find the way the NPCs react is consistent with this approach. At least that’s been my experience.

Like the origins system where some people found the lack of PC VO very jarring in the previews but much less so while playing because they filled the gaps with what they read, the DA2 experience isn’t perfectly replicated by watching videos. Reading and selecting a paraphrase is an important part of experiencing the conversation.

Modifié par DavidSims, 11 janvier 2011 - 05:22 .

[David Gaider]

TonyTheBossDanza123 wrote...
The "art" of paraphrasing hasn't been mastered yet because paraphrasing is inefficient by nature. It's barely acceptable in logical discussion, let alone fiction or narrative.

Uh-huh.

I think you might have to accept that the system's just not going to work for you. My impression is that the more someone feels the need to micro-manage their responses, the more they're going to view the paraphrases as a loss of control -- even though the "full line" system comes with its own (albeit different) weaknesses.

There are things that paraphrasing simply does that are stronger, and those are the advantages we're interested in when it comes to having a voiced player. And "well don't do that, then" is not an option. If someone has feedback about how to better implement the system, that's awesome (barring the fact that nobody's actually played DA2's version of it, yet, and arguing over one line out of context is hardly useful). Feedback about how you just don't want something and reject it utterly -- less awesome, but knock yourself out.

[David Gaider]

TonyTheBossDanza123 wrote...
I think you're confused. I wasn't assaulting the system implemented in DA2, I was assaulting the very nature of paraphrasing.

I also find it inappropriate on this subject to say "We haven't played it yet" when we have played something very similar, by many a previewers own words, Mass Effect.

Sorry, but you're confused. The only thing that somebody playing DA2's implementation of the dialogue system will help is with their feedback. If your feedback is "the very nature of paraphrasing" because you personally see no value in it (or in voiced dialogue, I assume), then that's grand-- but utterly useless to us. If you don't care about being useful, that's fine, but we're hardly going to cater to someone who wants something fundamentally different than what we're making. Sorry.

But would you care to specify some things that paraphrasing does stronger? I'm curious as to the merits you place on it.

Yeah... no, I'm not going to get into an argument about it, especially in a thread where everyone's mind is already made up and now they're just going to make sweeping declarations about it. Feel free to carry on with your discussion, however.

Modifié par David Gaider, 11 janvier 2011 - 07:37 .

[David Gaider]

CarlSpackler wrote...
Was kind of thinking the same thing reading down through the forum.  Maybe I missed something but David seems kind of cranky.

I'm not cranky at all. I've said my piece-- and there's no real interest in a discussion here, so no reason to continue discussing it in such a toxic thread. If people wish to keep talking about it themselves, however, they're free to do so. Simply keep it civil, please.