79 réponses à ce sujet

[nikeimizhong]

Well as for me i prefer my warden, simply because of the "empty shell" which i can fill with what i like, the choices which he made did actually affect the outcome, main mission in DAO was to get allies to fight the blight, and it didnt matter what you did as long as you achieve that goal, eg: allying with werewolves or the dalish, etc, and it had many funny npc interractions, eg: like making the owner of the tavern in redcliff defend the village at night, and stealing his goods XD

while hawke is a badass, still i feel like i am playing as some action movie protagonist, which no matter what he says, he cant change the outcome of key events

so i felt like i was faaaar more connected to my human noble warden

[GuiltySource]

Lady Hawke was better. Hawke being able to join into party banter was also better than having companions talk around the Warden.

[Foolsfolly]

DA2 is Awsum wrote...

yea man, no imagination required just how i likes it.

Please, it was always a selective imagination. BioWare writes your dialogue in both games and all you do is pick between 3 or fewer choices.

[Halo Quea]

Well Hawke isn't even intelligent enough to save his mother. I mean he waits until nightfall to go into Lowtown to follow a trail of blood. Your mom's been missing for a whole day and you decide that you would start looking for her after dark? And even then with a blood trail Hawke is too stupid to put it all together.

I think my Warden would have been smart enough to go to the exact location where Ninette's hand was found without the aid of a blood trail. If Hawke was that clueless why didn't he take the Mabari to pick up the scent while it was still daytime in Lowtown?

And the way Hawke allows Anders to just lead him around gathering all of the materials he needs to blow up the Chantry. Being really dumb about Isabella and an even dumber errand boy for just about anyone with a story.

But like nikeimizhong said, Hawke is the badass, but he gets no points for being a slow witted errand boy.

[adneate]

I find myself being a bit . . . resentful . . . of all the praise BioWare got with the voiced character in Mass Effect 1. Largely because to this day I don't think they've managed to out do that game and voice acting has just become a crutch they use to tell more simplistic movie-like stories.

In Mass Effect 1 there was a good balance between Shepard as a defined protagonist and Shepard as a traditional RPG character who the player crafts. The backgrounds and reputations added an extra layer to the bare bones of Shepard and then the player's choices and attitudes in the game added the rest of the meat. The end result was a game in which despite having a fully voiced character you could still have a great deal of ownership of him or her. This ownership guided you along the story which was written for a video game first and foremost, which focused on getting the player and party to make choices and discover the universe that had been crafted for them. It allowed for some pretty varying choices and outcomes, which is always the mark of a good RPG. The game even had multiple endings, an increasing rarity in BioWare games it seems.

Both Mass Effect 2 and now Dragon Age 2 don't have the balance right. They don't want to be games they want to be movies and as such they tell their stories that way instead of using the tools of their medium. They tell their story at you while the voiced character goes along without making any real choices or having any significant input. ME2 forces the player to work with Cerberus and be okay with the idea, it treats all Shepards the same despite Sole Survivors having obvious issues with Cerberus. DA2 is more of the same, Hawke is totally pre-defined you don't get to choose a single thing that defines Hawke's background or what it was like. It's all told at you, like a movie. Any significant choice in the game is actually removed from player agency and placed in the hands of an NPC so that the interactive and unpredictable nature of the player won't frack up somebodies "Magnum Opus" of a story. Hawke doesn't cause or stir the Qunari conflict, Isabela does by taking the relic. Hawke doesn't start the Mage Templar war, Anders does by assassinating the Grand Cleric. Even the final choice at the end is a false choice since the writers rob it of nearly any suspense or variation. No matter what you do Meredith and Orsino are dead and you leave Kirkwall. Hawke and Hawke's story is almost 100% pre-defined from the moment you hit the New Game button and it's the fault of the voiced character for enabling them to stop writing for video games and start writing movies.

It just feels like we gave them an inch and now they're taking a mile. I don't want to hate voiced characters in RPGs just on principle because it's been done right before, but if ME2 and DA2 are what BioWare keeps doing with it I can't say I like where it's going.

[Fraevar]

adneate wrote...
[snip]

It just feels like we gave them an inch and now they're taking a mile. I don't want to hate voiced characters in RPGs just on principle because it's been done right before, but if ME2 and DA2 are what BioWare keeps doing with it I can't say I like where it's going.

Truer words were never spoken. I really would like to see them stop and try going back towards the ME1 balance here, because sometimes the holes that this lack of player agency causes can be really immersion breaking. Like Sole Survivor Shepards in ME2 showed, the writers just ignoring the issue does not mean players don't care about it.

[allankles]

Hawke is more of a defined character which helps. Mainly it's the voice that lends the character more substance than the Warden.

[allankles]

It's like comparing a complete canvas painting, to a pre-painting pencil outline. The voice is a big deal.

[Fredvdp]

The Warden has no personality. He/she just stands there staring.

[txgoldrush]

adneate wrote...

I find myself being a bit . . . resentful . . . of all the praise BioWare got with the voiced character in Mass Effect 1. Largely because to this day I don't think they've managed to out do that game and voice acting has just become a crutch they use to tell more simplistic movie-like stories.

In Mass Effect 1 there was a good balance between Shepard as a defined protagonist and Shepard as a traditional RPG character who the player crafts. The backgrounds and reputations added an extra layer to the bare bones of Shepard and then the player's choices and attitudes in the game added the rest of the meat. The end result was a game in which despite having a fully voiced character you could still have a great deal of ownership of him or her. This ownership guided you along the story which was written for a video game first and foremost, which focused on getting the player and party to make choices and discover the universe that had been crafted for them. It allowed for some pretty varying choices and outcomes, which is always the mark of a good RPG. The game even had multiple endings, an increasing rarity in BioWare games it seems.

Both Mass Effect 2 and now Dragon Age 2 don't have the balance right. They don't want to be games they want to be movies and as such they tell their stories that way instead of using the tools of their medium. They tell their story at you while the voiced character goes along without making any real choices or having any significant input. ME2 forces the player to work with Cerberus and be okay with the idea, it treats all Shepards the same despite Sole Survivors having obvious issues with Cerberus. DA2 is more of the same, Hawke is totally pre-defined you don't get to choose a single thing that defines Hawke's background or what it was like. It's all told at you, like a movie. Any significant choice in the game is actually removed from player agency and placed in the hands of an NPC so that the interactive and unpredictable nature of the player won't frack up somebodies "Magnum Opus" of a story. Hawke doesn't cause or stir the Qunari conflict, Isabela does by taking the relic. Hawke doesn't start the Mage Templar war, Anders does by assassinating the Grand Cleric. Even the final choice at the end is a false choice since the writers rob it of nearly any suspense or variation. No matter what you do Meredith and Orsino are dead and you leave Kirkwall. Hawke and Hawke's story is almost 100% pre-defined from the moment you hit the New Game button and it's the fault of the voiced character for enabling them to stop writing for video games and start writing movies.

It just feels like we gave them an inch and now they're taking a mile. I don't want to hate voiced characters in RPGs just on principle because it's been done right before, but if ME2 and DA2 are what BioWare keeps doing with it I can't say I like where it's going.

NPCs can also make decisions...it works. Its a step foward for WRPGs...most WRPGs have the world bow down to the players decisions, but DA II goes forward and says...other characters can make decisions too, how do you react to that?

[Merced652]

Fredvdp wrote...

The Warden has no personality. He/she just stands there staring.

:innocent:

[Clonedzero]

Halo Quea wrote...

Well Hawke isn't even intelligent enough to save his mother. I mean he waits until nightfall to go into Lowtown to follow a trail of blood. Your mom's been missing for a whole day and you decide that you would start looking for her after dark? And even then with a blood trail Hawke is too stupid to put it all together.

I think my Warden would have been smart enough to go to the exact location where Ninette's hand was found without the aid of a blood trail. If Hawke was that clueless why didn't he take the Mabari to pick up the scent while it was still daytime in Lowtown?

And the way Hawke allows Anders to just lead him around gathering all of the materials he needs to blow up the Chantry. Being really dumb about Isabella and an even dumber errand boy for just about anyone with a story.

But like nikeimizhong said, Hawke is the badass, but he gets no points for being a slow witted errand boy.

The Warden was just as much of an errend boy. "hey look i have a treaty that legally and politically obligates you to help me..oh you want me to solve ALL your cities issues before agreeing even though i dont have to? well i guess so...."

"hey your tribe has to help me, this treaty says so"  "we got werewolves" "oh dammit more errends!"

"dudes sick? guess i gotta go all over the damn country to find a cure for him instead of kicking teagan in the balls and making him man up and take control of the arl, but whatever more errends yay!"

also i like the fact the Warden just has his hand held the entire time "ok buddy, now we're gonna be a warden" "but i dont wannna!" "TOO BAD!" , "oh look you gotta go save the world now" "but i have absolutely no reason to want to do that in my established origin backstory?" "well thats too bad, make something up so our story makes sense! ITS AN RPG AFTERALL!"

my problem with the Warden is people say you create your own character, and role paly them that way, but i can't do that. my options are SEVERELY limited. so i cant get into the "character" because any character i actually imagine would need an actual motivation, which goes against the entire point of having an origin backstory.

[thenemesis77]

Fredvdp wrote...

The Warden has no personality. He/she just stands there staring.

LMFAO, such BS. The Warden had more  personality, it just took a mind to use it, give me a break. Seems most of you like simple is..simple do. HAHA.

Modifié par thenemesis77, 19 mars 2011 - 11:06 .

[Clonedzero]

txgoldrush wrote...

adneate wrote...

I find myself being a bit . . . resentful . . . of all the praise BioWare got with the voiced character in Mass Effect 1. Largely because to this day I don't think they've managed to out do that game and voice acting has just become a crutch they use to tell more simplistic movie-like stories.

In Mass Effect 1 there was a good balance between Shepard as a defined protagonist and Shepard as a traditional RPG character who the player crafts. The backgrounds and reputations added an extra layer to the bare bones of Shepard and then the player's choices and attitudes in the game added the rest of the meat. The end result was a game in which despite having a fully voiced character you could still have a great deal of ownership of him or her. This ownership guided you along the story which was written for a video game first and foremost, which focused on getting the player and party to make choices and discover the universe that had been crafted for them. It allowed for some pretty varying choices and outcomes, which is always the mark of a good RPG. The game even had multiple endings, an increasing rarity in BioWare games it seems.

Both Mass Effect 2 and now Dragon Age 2 don't have the balance right. They don't want to be games they want to be movies and as such they tell their stories that way instead of using the tools of their medium. They tell their story at you while the voiced character goes along without making any real choices or having any significant input. ME2 forces the player to work with Cerberus and be okay with the idea, it treats all Shepards the same despite Sole Survivors having obvious issues with Cerberus. DA2 is more of the same, Hawke is totally pre-defined you don't get to choose a single thing that defines Hawke's background or what it was like. It's all told at you, like a movie. Any significant choice in the game is actually removed from player agency and placed in the hands of an NPC so that the interactive and unpredictable nature of the player won't frack up somebodies "Magnum Opus" of a story. Hawke doesn't cause or stir the Qunari conflict, Isabela does by taking the relic. Hawke doesn't start the Mage Templar war, Anders does by assassinating the Grand Cleric. Even the final choice at the end is a false choice since the writers rob it of nearly any suspense or variation. No matter what you do Meredith and Orsino are dead and you leave Kirkwall. Hawke and Hawke's story is almost 100% pre-defined from the moment you hit the New Game button and it's the fault of the voiced character for enabling them to stop writing for video games and start writing movies.

It just feels like we gave them an inch and now they're taking a mile. I don't want to hate voiced characters in RPGs just on principle because it's been done right before, but if ME2 and DA2 are what BioWare keeps doing with it I can't say I like where it's going.

NPCs can also make decisions...it works. Its a step foward for WRPGs...most WRPGs have the world bow down to the players decisions, but DA II goes forward and says...other characters can make decisions too, how do you react to that?

exactly, its far more interesting when things dont work out exactly how you want them to. instead of controlling everything, you're reacting to everything. makes the story far more believable and immersive for me.

some random D-bag walking in and completely changing and having total control over the entire dwarven civilizations political atmosphere is just stupid. they gave the player too much control over that, its unrealistic and completely immersion breaking for me. i mean they didnt even want to let you in the city because they didnt want an outsider to see them politically weak, but then suddenly you're deciding the political future for the dwarves? ridiculous. laughable. worse than ANYTHING in DA2. yes, worse than orisnos blodo magic turn or merediths crazy lyrium sword. it goes against the entire lore of the dwarves, their culture EVERYTHING.

i dont get why so many people accept that part of the game as making any sense AT ALL. yeahh, i know the whole "vote of a paragon" thing, but the way they just roll over with absolutely no solid evidence is silly. the entire thing. even allowing the player the ability to stroll into orzrimmar and do that willy nilly is stupid and undermines the entire integrity of the dwarven lore within the world.

[Clonedzero]

thenemesis77 wrote...

Fredvdp wrote...

The Warden has no personality. He/she just stands there staring.

LMFAO, such BS. The Warden had more  personality, it just took a mind to use it, give me a break. Seems most of you like simple is..simple do. HAHA.

DA:O dialogue choices

1. Clarifying question
2. Alternitive clarifying question
3. sarcastic dialgoue continuing option
4. diplomatic / nice dialogue continuing option.
5. Mean dialogue continuing option
6. Stab the guy randomly.

stop acting like it's complex or deep. its not. i've played DA:O like 5 times. your wardens personality of dialogue choices never shines through EVER. you be sarcastic the entire half of the game it effects ZERO of the second half ot he game if you decide to be a jerk. it never changed dialogue choices. it wsn't personality it was DIALOGUE CHOICES.

if im sarcastic in DA2, the more i am, the more it effects my dialogue and my characters reactions to things. thats fantastic for an RPG because your ROLEPLAYING of hawke as a sarcastic character is portrayed on the screen rather than simply in your mind.

[adneate]

txgoldrush wrote...
NPCs can also make decisions...it works. Its a step foward for WRPGs...most WRPGs have the world bow down to the players decisions, but DA II goes forward and says...other characters can make decisions too, how do you react to that?

It's not so much that NPCs are making decisions it's that pretty much only NPCs are making decisions in DA2. Nothing I did as a player made a single difference to anything or felt significant. Even siding with the Templars or Mages feels empty because both encounters turn out almost exactly the same in the end. It's not some great revolutionary advance BioWare just invented with DA2, this is just movie style storytelling. It's been around for about a century now and is a pretty established way of telling a story.

If I wanted to pick something that really was revolutionary for RPGs I would probably point to the Original Fallout, in that game the player character and the choices you make have real agency. You can go the whole game without killing a single person and talk the final boss into killing himself, you also could set your intelligence so low that your character would be too stupid to talk to others beyond just grunting at them. I wouldn't really call making a movie where the person watching it can flick between 3 seperate scripts some great coup for Video Games as a medium and RPGs as a genre. We should be using the mediums one unique attribute, interactiviy, as much as possible and building a story around it rather than just borrowing techniques from established mediums and jury rigging them to fit our needs.

Dragon Age 2 is really two products in one, a somewhat mediocre action game and a semi-interactive movie with a pretty good script. The game doesn't sync up very well with the movie and the movie seems to prefer to pretend the game doesn't exist.

[Clonedzero]

adneate wrote...

txgoldrush wrote...
NPCs can also make decisions...it works. Its a step foward for WRPGs...most WRPGs have the world bow down to the players decisions, but DA II goes forward and says...other characters can make decisions too, how do you react to that?

It's not so much that NPCs are making decisions it's that pretty much only NPCs are making decisions in DA2. Nothing I did as a player made a single difference to anything or felt significant. Even siding with the Templars or Mages feels empty because both encounters turn out almost exactly the same in the end. It's not some great revolutionary advance BioWare just invented with DA2, this is just movie style storytelling. It's been around for about a century now and is a pretty established way of telling a story.

If I wanted to pick something that really was revolutionary for RPGs I would probably point to the Original Fallout, in that game the player character and the choices you make have real agency. You can go the whole game without killing a single person and talk the final boss into killing himself, you also could set your intelligence so low that your character would be too stupid to talk to others beyond just grunting at them. I wouldn't really call making a movie where the person watching it can flick between 3 seperate scripts some great coup for Video Games as a medium and RPGs as a genre. We should be using the mediums one unique attribute, interactiviy, as much as possible and building a story around it rather than just borrowing techniques from established mediums and jury rigging them to fit our needs.

Dragon Age 2 is really two products in one, a somewhat mediocre action game and a semi-interactive movie with a pretty good script. The game doesn't sync up very well with the movie and the movie seems to prefer to pretend the game doesn't exist.

yeah, and fallout also has three specific plot points and can LITTERALLY be beaten in under ten minutes. its 95% sidequests. lol.

[adneate]

Clonedzero wrote...
Yeah, and fallout also has three specific plot points and can LITTERALLY be beaten in under ten minutes. its 95% sidequests. lol.

How does that make it a bad game though? Are games good only based on how much padding they have? Are they only good based on how much they hold your hand and lead you from one point to the other?

Fallout is still a really good example of how to use interactivity to tell a story and how to craft a game that gives as little or as much as the player wants to draw from it. I personally would prefer an experience like that than the plot railroad that is DA2. I'll still remember Fallout for years to come but I'll probably forget all about DA2 by the end of the year.

[Galbatorex]

I for one am enjoying playing as Hawke. The Warden has already saved the world several times over and become a legend, it just doesn't make sense to me for him to be running errands for people and slashing his way through darkspawn trash after he has killed an Archdemon.
I'm hoping (and some of what I have read has indicated) that the Hawke story could become just as awesome and spread out over several DLC.

Hawke might become a Grey Warden in the future and join the old warden in bringing the Grey Wardens back to greatness. Each new game could be like an origin of each of the wardens rise to greatness.

[Clonedzero]

adneate wrote...

Clonedzero wrote...
Yeah, and fallout also has three specific plot points and can LITTERALLY be beaten in under ten minutes. its 95% sidequests. lol.

How does that make it a bad game though? Are games good only based on how much padding they have? Are they only good based on how much they hold your hand and lead you from one point to the other?

Fallout is still a really good example of how to use interactivity to tell a story and how to craft a game that gives as little or as much as the player wants to draw from it. I personally would prefer an experience like that than the plot railroad that is DA2. I'll still remember Fallout for years to come but I'll probably forget all about DA2 by the end of the year.

i never said it was a bad game, its actually one of my all time favorite games.

however its a completely different style of storytelling than anything bioware has done. bioware games tend to be more character driven. fallout has zero character development. zero character relationships, zero character friendships. (those dozen line of dialogue throwaway followers dont count lol) they're completely different games, they both happen to be RPGs but they're nothing alike.

its like comparing halo to call of duty or something. same genre, completely differnt.

[Zing Freelancer]

I like the characters in DA2 (most of them) but not the game. There is just that feeling of... pointless/nothingness when you play DA2. As if every single decision was predefined before you ever encountered it.

[SkittlesKat96]

I agree, don't get me wrong though I still liked The Hero of Ferelden.

[Thalorin1919]

Halo Quea wrote...

Well Hawke isn't even intelligent enough to save his mother. I mean he waits until nightfall to go into Lowtown to follow a trail of blood. Your mom's been missing for a whole day and you decide that you would start looking for her after dark? And even then with a blood trail Hawke is too stupid to put it all together.

I think my Warden would have been smart enough to go to the exact location where Ninette's hand was found without the aid of a blood trail. If Hawke was that clueless why didn't he take the Mabari to pick up the scent while it was still daytime in Lowtown?

And the way Hawke allows Anders to just lead him around gathering all of the materials he needs to blow up the Chantry. Being really dumb about Isabella and an even dumber errand boy for just about anyone with a story.

But like nikeimizhong said, Hawke is the badass, but he gets no points for being a slow witted errand boy.

You're...just...I don't even know what to say.

[Fraevar]

I do think Hawke has one advantage over BioWare's other voiced protagonist in that Hawke actually has a personality and she has to self-reflect. I loved that this was put in and that Hawke has to deal with stuff pertaining to herself, not just be a problem-solver for everyone else. This is a big thing, which I hope the various BioWare teams will start learning from - a voiced protagonist *needs* a personality and they need to have qualms and conflicts of their own, that aren't necessarily just gameplay challenges.

[Foolsfolly]

Clonedzero wrote...

thenemesis77 wrote...

Fredvdp wrote...

The Warden has no personality. He/she just stands there staring.

LMFAO, such BS. The Warden had more  personality, it just took a mind to use it, give me a break. Seems most of you like simple is..simple do. HAHA.

DA:O dialogue choices

1. Clarifying question
2. Alternitive clarifying question
3. sarcastic dialgoue continuing option
4. diplomatic / nice dialogue continuing option.
5. Mean dialogue continuing option
6. Stab the guy randomly.

stop acting like it's complex or deep. its not. i've played DA:O like 5 times. your wardens personality of dialogue choices never shines through EVER. you be sarcastic the entire half of the game it effects ZERO of the second half ot he game if you decide to be a jerk. it never changed dialogue choices. it wsn't personality it was DIALOGUE CHOICES.

if im sarcastic in DA2, the more i am, the more it effects my dialogue and my characters reactions to things. thats fantastic for an RPG because your ROLEPLAYING of hawke as a sarcastic character is portrayed on the screen rather than simply in your mind.

Nail meets hammer.

Bravo, sir or madam. Bravo.