95 réponses à ce sujet

[Nathan Redgrave]

20x6 wrote...

Ever played Chrono Trigger for the SNES?
There was more choice in an old 16bit SNES RPG than in this game

Uh, no. There really wasn't.

Just saying.

[Zalocx]

Cajeb wrote...

Dangerfoot wrote...

Mahtisonni wrote...

The thing that mostly bothered me that pretty much all "choices" in the main story line were pretty much like this.
1. Calm/soothing response
2. Mocking response
3. Angry response

All saying the same thing with different tone of voice.
WHY WOULDN'T YOU LET ME BUTCHER MOTHER PEATRICE?!?!?
Seriously I can understand that I weren't allowed to kill him at first encounter for further story developement, but at least after killing the son of the Viscount Hawke should gain enough motivation to stab her in the face.

Oh my god YES.

She just sent me to my death and I walk into her hide out, and my character only has the option of saying "You made an enemy today." What am I intimidated by her 1 armed guard? So stupid. There were a lot of times where my characters reactions were unbelievably stupid and they were forced on me.

LOL. I actually thought we'd get the option to kill her during that quest. Seems like a Bioware staple. But we didn't get the chance...and there was no reason for it either

The same reason you can't just stab Isolde for leading you into Connor's trap. She irritated me, the guards were all dead or wounded and Bann Teagan was bleading out on the floor. Why couldn't I just stick the murder knife into her instead of only being able to sacrifice her in a blood ritual if I wanted her to die?

The plot needs to be propelled by forces/characters outside PC control. Its happened in EVERY RPG Bioware has made and without it its impossible to have any sort of fulfilling story filled with any amount of tension

[Arrtis]

20x6 wrote...

DrekorSilverfang wrote...

It's very difficult to tell a story and have it not be linear.

Ever played Chrono Trigger for the SNES?
There was more choice in an old 16bit SNES RPG than in this game and the Story was great.



What I do think though is that they are planning on milking the ever-living-***** out of this story with DLC and "expansions" to ramp up for the next-gen console edition of Dragon Age.  They made it linear so they could easily reuse this story as the basis for the next one.

Not a bad move, but as a standalone title, DA:2 left a slightly bad aftertaste on my position towards investing in bioware titles as freely as I have done before.

New consoles coming out now?
DA2 makes me wish to  obtain future titles in a manner that does not dimish my money.

[someon7x]

Everwarden wrote...

 "Champion" fits if you kill the Arishok in single combat, doesn't fit quite so much if your group kills him, and doesn't fit at all if you give Isabela over to him. 

This

[TJPags]

There are plenty of choices, they just ultimately don't mean anything.

Bioware decided what ending they wanted this time, and they gave it to us.  It's an interesting ending, but there was no way for us to avoid it.

And that makes the choices we made meaningless.

[AlexXIV]

TJPags wrote...

There are plenty of choices, they just ultimately don't mean anything.

Bioware decided what ending they wanted this time, and they gave it to us.  It's an interesting ending, but there was no way for us to avoid it.

And that makes the choices we made meaningless.

It's not just the ending. Even minor quests didn't leave you alot of choice or different approaches to solve them. You always run into a swarm of mobs and kill them all, loot the place, quest done.

[Caladors]

dreman9999 wrote...

Caladors wrote...

Clonedzero wrote...

you mean like my choice in DA:O of picking the templars over the mages that has pretty much absolutely 0 effect on the rest of the game? awesome choices like that? you know how the only real difference is change the unit type you get to summon in the end battle and epilogue slides? choices with real depth to them? like picking werewolves over dalish elves? you know choices that really change thing you know?

oh wait...

 
However your acts felt like they lead to something.
Often it was the minor quest updates that made it interesting, in dragon age origins.

In this it was.
You beat Meradith and run away.
The first had you ether using a dark way out so that no one dies.
Choosing someone else to die for you.
Or making the ultimate sacrifice.

With each of those choices the wrap up is some of the most epic pieces about it.
The funeral where Alistar balls his eyes out and your suddenly wondering where you can find Prozac is pretty epic.
Or what about the one where you see everyone off, everyone telling you how much they will miss you but they each have there parts.
And how you had your guts ripped out by Morgan because she left with your baby.

But here people fall by the way side and...
You hooked up with someone.
That's it.

You did feel anything when the people you sided with turned on you?
You pick the side of the Mages....They can't be all blood mages?.....The first encanter turns out to be a blood mage and turns hims self in to a monster.
My be siding with the Temples is better. The head temple is not crazy.......Nope, she crazy and turn on you because of and over powered sword.
Is it great all your choice is walking into hell.

Yes I felt something.
But it was more annoyance than anything.
I felt more during act two rushing to beat the Arishock and when he killed the Viscount.
I felt a lot then, I was “He was useless but you didn't have to kill him, I can't let to you run now!”
Or when Merriel came to me after my mother died and how she awkwardly but confidently attempted to console Hawke and if you said the wrong thing you felt bad.
And even if she was 90% turned away, “I don't speak elven” and “She should be here” she stays with you because she is determined to help you.

But at the end of the game the game simply ends.

Did you and Merriel make it?
What happened to Kirkwall?
Did Varric let himself be captured, I kept half expecting Hawke to come out of the shadows after he was done talking and ask if he should go.
But no there is no resolution there is a conflict but no resolution.

[Oneiropolos]

Let me start by saying I enjoyed DA2.

But I did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed DA:O. And this isn't a nostalgic "But.. but.. its' not the same *whines*" this is a "No, they went backwards on things". All these people saying to get this outcome you need to do ____ are wrong.

If you could save Leandra, you would not be less pissed at the blood mage who tried to kill her and DID butcher all those other women. You just wouldn't have one horrific moment in the game of actually having your mother die in your arms. I think that was something we should have been able to prevent. It did not start the war. Bravo, however, to the writers for tying it in even when Sebastian says you're doing the right thing on siding with the Templars. That you say you're sorry for his loss, and he comments that you've both lost a mother to mages. It was good continuity.... but it was not necessary to have the original problem for the story. I'm fine stopping a murderer without him killing my mother first. Really.

Second of all, the MAJOR Turning point in the story which lots argue can't be changed and lots are upset happened and we could do nothing about. :Anders blowing up the chantry. There was one VERY SIMPLE change that could have been made to still allow for a blown up chantry, the horror, but to have made a difference in your party. You talk him down out of it, but it's A) either too late, things are already in motion or You talk him down from it, he abadons the idea, you think everything is fine, but BAM, one of his friends from the mage underground picks up the idea and also the ingredients Anders gathered and does it FOR him. All eyes land on Anders to blame, even though you and Anders both know he didn't do it. The fact is, the story would still say he -did-. It would be Varric having to correct Cassandra and go, "Everyone thought he did it. But Hawke had talked him out of it. At the end of the day, though, a Chantry was blown up and Anders was the only one people had to blame." This still creates a dilemma of a war having been started, and an even harder issue of whether you make Anders an -actual martyr- to appease the people of Kirkwall since public opinion would be that he did it even though he didn't, or whether you stand by your friend and risk getting slammed by people wanting you out of the city too. One keeps the peace and order, one is loyalty to a friend neither are 'fair' because in that scenario, he really wouldn't be guilty. So players who took that path end up with what could be an even more heart wrenching decision. But it does not change the course of the game in terms of what has to happen next.

These are just two examples of decisions in the game which we SHOULD have been able to influence, and yet could have kept the storyline the way it had to be. Obviously, we know things have to happen because this a storyline being told by Varric AFTER it all did. But that doesn't mean he can't stop and reveal the 'truth' of moments that are different than what the public thinks.

[In Exile]

Everwarden wrote.
The thrust of the original post is still spot on, though. You almost always have to fight the Arishok, and the following scenes make no sense at all with the one choice you can make.

"Yup. Go ahead and take the lady. No skin off my back." 
Arishok drags Isabela off.
The people: "..ooh. ahh." 
Meredith: "Well, it looks like we have a new champion!"

 "Champion" fits if you kill the Arishok in single combat, doesn't fit quite so much if your group kills him, and doesn't fit at all if you give Isabela over to him. 

You fought your way there and negotiated a peace. That's still being a champion. Of sorts.

[Darth Obvious]

Moondoggie wrote...

Is anyone else noticing the huge lack of choices? 

Wait... there were choices?

I must have missed that part. 

[Sarkus]

There are choices and the game supports more variation in a number of areas then I was really expecting, but there are also unavoidable points and the ending pretty much goes where they need it to for the next game. So there is some replayability, but not as much as DAO.

On the other hand, how much did DAO have, anyway? Different origins, to be sure, but you can't avoid the basic points of the plot. In the end the army is still defeated at Ostagar and you have to form some sort of army and defeat the Archdemon, and that means resolving those four areas one way or the other. It does have the two distinct endings, though.

So, I'd argue that DAO isn't all the much different, outside of the ending. Both games have plenty of walls that force you to stay within a relatively narrow path.

[20x6]

Arrtis wrote...

20x6 wrote...

DrekorSilverfang wrote...

It's very difficult to tell a story and have it not be linear.

Ever played Chrono Trigger for the SNES?
There was more choice in an old 16bit SNES RPG than in this game and the Story was great.



What I do think though is that they are planning on milking the ever-living-***** out of this story with DLC and "expansions" to ramp up for the next-gen console edition of Dragon Age.  They made it linear so they could easily reuse this story as the basis for the next one.

Not a bad move, but as a standalone title, DA:2 left a slightly bad aftertaste on my position towards investing in bioware titles as freely as I have done before.

New consoles coming out now?
DA2 makes me wish to  obtain future titles in a manner that does not dimish my money.

The XBox 360 is getting pretty dated and I would bet that 1/2 of the sales of Dragon Age has come from this console.  (PC and PS3 taking up the other half).  Last actual number I saw was 57% by XBox360 owners - which probably explains the combat changes made in DA2.  It's much more console friendly than before since that's their largest audience.

On a straight-out business decision, I would continue to make a yearly or bi-yearly DLC / Expansion release for DA2 and use the time and funds to make DA3 an exclusive title for one of the new consoles.  They can reuse the same DA2 engine and churn out some decent content until that time (Which would also explain why this game was more linear than DA:O.)

The word right now is that Next-Gen XBox is looking at 2013/2014 for a release.  That would put Bioware in an excellent position for making DA3 a PC / Microsoft Console exclusive.  Just saying.

Microsoft is in a bad position right now since the PS3 hardware dwarfs the 360.  Then again, the PS3 is in a bad position if Microsoft comes out with a power-house console that aligns with current PC hardware.

The next few years in the gaming industry will be interesting.  If I was a betting man, I'd bet that game developers have seen this coming a long time ago and had a 5 year plan to position their big-name releases for this time-frame.

[Dangerfoot]

I'm kind of surprised a new console hasn't come out yet. It's been 6 years, and typically they come up with a new one every 5 or 6. Yet there doesn't seem to be anything on the horizon except stupid motion sensor technology that is marginally better than the motion sensor technology on the NES two decades ago. The 360's graphics and processing power seems to get more and more dated. I'm not looking forward to spending $300 but come on, are we going to be using these dusty old things for a whole decade?

[tanerb123]

i really could have used an "execute every last one of templars" quest after they took bethany away

Modifié par tanerb123, 18 mars 2011 - 03:25 .

[Medhia Nox]

Be fair - you get to choose who to romance.

[Dean_the_Young]

The choices you had in Origins were meaningless to the plot progression, both in Origins and Awakening. History, and plot, marched forward regardless, with only cameos and wording changing.

Since there were no choices of game-changing implications in the first place, no. I do not notice the huge lack of adding something that was never there.

Even ignoring the more... focused role of DA2, being situated in and around a city state rather than an entire country, had there been epilogue slides at all you could still well justify a great number of changes and variations based on what you do.

[Cadeym]

DA:O presented itself rather well, and often gave the illusion that you had a choice, which is to me rather important for the immersion.

I would have liked to have the feeling, that the choices I made during the game shaped the outcome. Take for example Orsino turning all necro/blood psychotic on me when I was actually on his side, would it not have been better if this only happenend if I helped the templars in the majority of the quests where mages were involved, and vice versa with Meredith.

I never really felt as if the choices I made caused a difference, recieving a letter and/or a quest that does not affect anyone, does absolutely nothing for me.

Someone mentionend the quest you recieved by sparing the blood mage at the rose, but this quest had no effect, noone used those books if you did nothing.

Letting the blood mage who is tracking the necromancer go (Du Puie or whatever his name was), doesn't alter the outcome of the quest to find your mother. Lets say you let Du Puie go, resoulting in you arriving just as the necromancer chops off your mothers head, or something, and what if you killed Du Puie, resoulting in a later arrival, letting you have a chat with your mother before she dies off.

Again, I am not looking for completely different quest outcomes, I simply want variations on what really happenend.

Modifié par Mouseraider, 18 mars 2011 - 04:19 .

[Dokarqt]

Mouseraider wrote...


Someone mentionend the quest you recieved by sparing the blood mage at the rose, but this quest had no effect, noone used those books if you did nothing.

Letting the blood mage who is tracking the necromancer go (Du Puie or whatever his name was), doesn't alter the outcome of the quest to find your mother. Lets say you let Du Puie go, resoulting in you arriving just as the necromancer chops off your mothers head, or something, and what if you killed Du Puie, resoulting in a later arrival, letting you have a chat with your mother before she dies off.

Again, I am not looking for completely different quest outcomes, I simply want variations on what really happenend.

Its worth mentioning that you can still find and interact with the "evil tomes" in the same way even if you kill Idunna.

The second point is also worth mentioning, in my first playthrough I killed Dupuis and then the second I made a point to spare him realistically expecting the conclusion of the white lilly quest to be somewhat altered. I wasn't really expecting your mother to survive etc but just anything would've been nice, maybe the assistance of dupuis in the fight?

[Morogrem]

Tleining wrote...

uh, what happens if you let the Arishok take Isabela?

Also, you might want to take a look at the other quests. Feynriel and Magisters Son, Support Templars or Mages. There are a lot of choices which have some influence in later Acts.

hes talking about non-side quests. you know, decisions that actually matter.

all the choices in this game determine if you see a character again, the only one that actually effects the story, and even then it doesnt that much, is the choice to side with the mages or the templars

[Dean_the_Young]

The decisions that actually mattered didn't matter, however.

An epilogue slide about how Feynriel went on to become a great mage who restored eleven pride/rights, or was possessed by a sloth demon and was a bum forever more, 'matters' as much as which dwarf's cheeks warmed the Aeducan Throne. The effects of helping the corrupt magistrate defend his son, and having him willing to intervene on your behalf following the end of Act 1, is just as meaningful as which army helps you. The game proceeds, and succedes, regardless.

[20x6]

Actually... yeah

Xbox 360 was developed on a 10 year plan.
So was PS3.


I do a lot of analysis of my industry (not gaming, but the practice is similar in most areas) and market to predict where I should be heading (1, 2, 5 and 10 year plans) and I briefly put myself in a game developer's "shoes" and figured if I wanted to go big on the next round of my best products I'd move to a lot of design reuse until I had the tools and team to tackle the next big thing.  Hit them with something familiar from my product line and leverage my reputation to nail some exclusives.


Here's some food for thought though... imagine they made an exclusive DA or ME title for a console and they included development tools like they did for Neverwinter nights and a network where we could post our modules to?  User generated content is the future of gaming  Neverwinter Nights was the best thing to ever come to PC gaming.


Anyhow, I went way off topic... but not really.


I think DA2 seemed somewhat "unfinished" because they wanted to move the story in a direction where they could take advantage of what they have and reuse it to make a solid foundation for the next generation of *CONSOLES*.  I say consoles since Mass Effect and Dragon Age have become much more console friendly rather than seeming like a PC port.

Minimum effort, maximum content and quality with maximum profits.  Excellent strategy.

The only thing I think they should *REALLY* try to work on is to try and make the character conversation animations less like that "Dollars for Gold guy" and more like an actual person... =D

Modifié par 20x6, 19 mars 2011 - 10:05 .