832 réponses à ce sujet

[HTTP 404]

I dont disagree with you Gatt9, my comments were more generalized for gaming as a whole not just DA2. the risk that bioware took is to open up the rpg. whether they succeeded is up to debate. My argument is that I like to see companies take risks since the only thing at risk for myself is the 60 bucks to shell out. Companies taking risks have their jobs on the line, in the gaming community, a game can make or break you and your career after investing 2 or 3 years (or more) of your life. for me, as a consumer, I have choices, if I dont like it and wasted 60 bucks, oh wells, moving on to the next company that may produce a game I like.

[Hatchetman77]

Akka le Vil wrote...

Seriously ? If anything, this is the WORST POSSIBLE example you could have ever used, as Civ5 is THE sister case of DA2, with the exact same problems of debasing a licence to go into a dumbed down version, and the exact same "coincidental" praise by the review sites and being spanked by the fanbase - probably even MORE spanked and hated by the fanbase, in fact, considering how strongly it was rejected.

I wasen't aware of any Civilization outrage.  I thought it was great, combining Civilization with Panzer General, two of the best games ever and I don't see how it was dumbed down at all.  I remember reading rumblings when Civilization III was going to be released when they were thinking of going to go with RTS combat but decided not to. They never caved into what was popular at the time.  I can't say I've agreed with every decision they made with the games but they always stayed true to their core and that was enough for me.  If you can find a computer to run it, load up Civilization I and then play Civilization V and explain to me how the game has been "dumbed down" over the years.  At it's core it is still the same game. 

Now Master of Orion II to Master of Orion III would have been a bad example... 

Modifié par Hatchetman77, 21 mars 2011 - 12:51 .

[LTD]

I says this interview sees Mike Laidlaw  doing the same old "mistake" virtually everybody including myself keeps repeating on these forums again and again. "RPG" as a classification of a (video)game genre doesn't mean a squat anymore. In 90's, when devs said " We have made an RPG!" it used to mean something to the gamer. No more!  The genre has become so bloated and vague it serves little purpose to use it as a classification.  RPG can mean a million different things now. Anything and everything starting from  Zelda, Pokemon or DA II to likes of Baldur's Gate, Torment, or Bethesda games gets classified as an RPG. These games are so different there is no reason why they should belong in same genre. It is about as informative and accurate as deciding Super Mario 3, Devil may Cry and Mirror's Edge are all " jumping games"

Ever since it became possible and later on necessary to make ambitious RPGs on consoles, the genre has gotten violated, ravaged and stripped.  Bioware and many others keep releasing  these modern  new awesome smash button  non-RPGs and for some reason persistently keep calling them RPGs, efficiently turning the genre more and more vague.

Obviously it is a-okay to " evolve" and improve a genre, standstills are depressing! However,it shouldn't be too difficult to know when you've gone " too far".  If you release a game that is disconnected enough from the original ideas of the  genre, it isn't necessarily you changing and evolving the  genre but rather you making a game that belongs in some other genre.
Some dinosaurs evolved into birds. That doesn't mean we get to/have to call pigeons and Hawks as dinosaurs hmhm? Doesn't do the term justice, misleads.

....And yeah sure dinosaurs are pretty much extinct right now. That does NOT mean it wouldn't be ****ing AWESOME to watch Tyrannosaurus Rex waking up from some sort of Cthulhuesque otherworldy slumber. I constantly dream of Rex DEVOURING  these anime haired ladyman Hawke pigeons that are defecating their " Awesome things happen when buttons get pressed1!- droppings all over my park.


On a bit less drivel infested note, it would be AMAZING to see somebody giving birth to something people felt need to call Infinity Engine II. Would love it if one morning,pile of eager devs were to wake up and go "Hmmz, could it be that fully voice acted game with dialogue wheels isn't the ultimate Jesus afterall:o " Sadly in this day and age, true experimenting could easily mean making an AAA game that explores the nearly forgotten possibilities and freedoms WRITTEN and READ TEXT offer. When speaking of story and way it is told,it would be amazing to have somebody taking the approach Torment had: Stop pursuing the look and feel of  an episode in Anime series. Instead,  try how this stale new century would cope with an RPG that delivers look and feel of playing through a uh, living book of sorts. Like PST with eyecandy and excellent soundtrack.

Making things faster,easier,sexier cooler and  more accessible can't be a good thing in long run. It is not evolution, it is what killed dinosaurs:l Dinosaurs are wesome and need to be resurrected.

Modifié par LTD, 21 mars 2011 - 01:01 .

[Moving808s]

LTD wrote...


I says this interview sees Mike Laidlaw  doing the same old "mistake" virtually everybody including myself keeps repeating on these forums again and again. "RPG" as a classification of a (video)game genre doesn't mean a squat anymore. In 90's, when devs said " We have made an RPG!" it used to mean something to the gamer. No more!  The genre has become so bloated and vague it serves little purpose to use it as a classification.  RPG can mean a million different things now. Anything and everything starting from  Zelda, Pokemon or DA II to likes of Baldur's Gate, Torment, or Bethesda games gets classified as an RPG. These games are so different there is no reason why they should belong in same genre. It is about as informative and accurate as deciding Super Mario 3, Devil may Cry and Mirror's Edge are all " jumping games"

Ever since it became possible and later on necessary to make ambitious RPGs on consoles, the genre has gotten violated, ravaged and stripped.  Yet, Bioware and other devs releasing these new  non-RPGs persistently keep calling them RPGs, efficiently turning the genre more and more vague.

Obviously it is a-okay to " evolve" and improve a genre, standstills are depressing! However,it shouldn't be difficult to know when you've gone " too far".  If you release a game that is disconnected enough from the original ideas of the  genre, it isn't necessarily you changing and evolving the  genre but rather you making a game that belongs in some other genre.
Some dinosaurs evolved into birds. That doesn't mean we get to/have to call pigeons and Hawks as dinosaurs hmhm? Doesn't do the term justice, misleads.

....And yeah sure dinosaurs are pretty much extinct right now. That does NOT mean it wouldn't be ****ing AWESOME to watch Tyrannosaurus Rex waking up from some sort of Cthulhuesque otherworldy slumber. I constantly dream of Rex DEVOURING  these anime haired ladyman Hawke pigeons that are defecating their " Awesome things happen when buttons get pressed1!- droppings all over my park.


On a bit less drivel infested note, it would be AMAZING to see somebody giving birth to something people felt need to call Infinity Engine II. Would love it if one morning,pile of eager devs were to wake up and go "Hmmz, could it be that fully voice acted game with dialogue wheels isn't the ultimate Jesus afterall:o " Sadly in this day and age, true experimenting could easily mean making an AAA game that explores the nearly forgotten possibilities and freedoms WRITTEN and READ TEXT offer. When speaking of story and way it is told,it would be amazing to have somebody taking the approach Torment had: Stop pursuing the look and feel of  an episode in Anime series. Instead,  try how this stale new century would cope with an RPG that delivers look and feel of playing through a uh, living book of sorts. Like PST with eyecandy and excellent soundtrack.

Making things faster,easier,sexier cooler and  more accessible can't be a good thing in long run. It is not evolution, it is what killed dinosaurs:l Dinosaurs are wesome and need to be resurrected.

Your avatar and post fit very nicely together.

I like what you are saying, but complex RPGs are definitely possible on the consoles, Bioware just can't make them. 

Also, I want to be a dinosaur. 

[MonkeyLungs]

Nice post LTD. Bravo. I also prefer written text to voiced dialogue but I'm so far in the minority on that preference that I have no hope for seeing a game that wants to be more like a book than a movie.

[Aurgelmir]

I'm just utterly perplexed as to why DA2 needed to be dumbed down. When other games are using RPG elements, why is DA2 removing them from theirs?

Modifié par Aurgelmir, 21 mars 2011 - 01:11 .

[SphereofSilence]

You know what. If Bioware intends to massively reach out to a wider audience, a way to do it is to have absolutely kick ass graphics, while keeping the Origins formula for the most part intact. Use the Crysis 2 engine, or ask Crytek (which is also owned by EA) to make a modded engine for BW, or maybe license CD Projekt's The Witcher 2 engine. Of course they'd be sizeable cost of money as well as time upfront but the payoff may be worth it if it manage to generate at least a million more sales.

Ah don't mind me, just having a bit of wishful thinking here.

Modifié par SphereofSilence, 21 mars 2011 - 01:22 .

[Bourne Endeavor]

HTTP 404 wrote...

look at the Japanese gaming industry, they are a good example of gaming companies that don't take risks. Someone tell me they are doing better than they were in the 90s.

Uh, in spite of all the controversy associated with Final Fantasy XIII. It has comparable numbers to Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins. The entries preceding, namely Final Fantasy X and XII respectively, outsold both by a considerable margin; two to one in the case of FFX.

Square Enix may be in a downward spiral, especially with the horrendously lackluster release of Final Fantasy XIV but their sales still rival BioWare's. Coincidently, taking risks is precisely why Square could well collapse. The FF series is a shell of what it once was and their profits are dropping significantly. Most fans of the series want them to return to FFVII through FFX, where the series had its heyday.

Admittedly, excluding the waning FF series. The JRPG market has stagnated notably.

MonkeyLungs wrote...

Nice post LTD. Bravo. I also prefer written text to voiced dialogue but I'm so far in the minority on that preference that I have no hope for seeing a game that wants to be more like a book than a movie.

While I may thoroughly enjoy my old RPG titles. I cannot completely agree. One of the features I fancied about DA2 was a voiced Hawke. A solid voice actor can really establish life into the character. The qualm this industry has always had is lackluster voice actors. Fortunately, BioWare is one of the few companies who seeks quality.

I much prefer voiced Hawke to blank staring Warden.

Modifié par Bourne Endeavor, 21 mars 2011 - 01:24 .

[cephasjames]

MonkeyLungs wrote...

So because the perceived audience for more traditional role playing experience is not large enough the game has to evolve to attract a wider audience.

Yes. A crowd too small can only do so much.

[Wulfram]

I don't think DA2 was a particularly big departure from Origins. Aside from the voiced protagonist and associated stuff, anyway.

[Moving808s]

My prediction - Dungeon Siege 3 by Obsidian, being billed as an actual action rpg, will smash DA2 to little pieces.

[cephasjames]

LTD wrote...

Dinosaurs are wesome and need to be resurrected.

Dinosaurs may be awesome but they're dead because they could no longer survive in the changing environment they lived in.

[MonkeyLungs]

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

MonkeyLungs wrote...

Nice post LTD. Bravo. I also prefer written text to voiced dialogue but I'm so far in the minority on that preference that I have no hope for seeing a game that wants to be more like a book than a movie.

While I may thoroughly enjoy my old RPG titles. I cannot completely agree. One of the features I fancied about DA2 was a voiced Hawke. A solid voice actor can really establish life into the character. The qualm this industry has always had is lackluster voice actors. Fortunately, BioWare is one of the few companies who seeks quality.

I much prefer voiced Hawke to blank staring Warden.

That's probably how most people feel. I don't have any delusions that people are suddenly going to enjoy reading again and stop clamoring for full voice acting. In fact ever since voice acting started to become more and more prevalent I've always thought it has been at a detriment to the genre.

I never thought of my warden as a blank staring guy/gal. To me he was always saying his lines.

Modifié par MonkeyLungs, 21 mars 2011 - 01:37 .

[Iwasdrunkbro]

Yes genre death by creating a new audience for their games. This is basically saying we dont want our current fans we want new fans and we dont care if you dont like it.

[Sarakinoi]

That's nonsens. Up to now Bioware has built a reputation of making the best deep RPGs. So all RPG players would buy and play Bioware's games.

Now by trying to reach the short attention span players of consoles, they might lose this reputation and see a sale decrease on the long term. And DA2 sales figures can't be taken into account since a lot of people bought the game blindly since it was a Bioware game and they had expectations. In the future people will be more careful and that's when they will see sales decrease.

What they should have done is stay true to the pillars of DA, and create a new game to experiment with making flat action RPGs to conquer the console market.

[cephasjames]

Nah, its just saying that the fanbase for traditional rpgs isn't big enough to support the "modern" traditional rpg. Therefore they are trying to reach out in a way that will hoepfully allow them to continue making rgps.

One of the quotes I liked from the article is "the simple truth, when you have things that make you go, 'if I could go back, I would do this,' then you immediately start staring forward and say, 'Great, so these are lessons to be learned for the future. We can do this better.'"

The response they are getting from DA2, both postivie and negative, will teach them. They are a smart group of people that want to keep making rpgs. They just need to figure out how to balance the old and the new crowd. I tip my hat that they are willing to experiment though to see what works and what doesn't.

[cephasjames]

Sarakinoi wrote...

That's nonsens. Up to now Bioware has built a reputation of making the best deep RPGs. So all RPG players would buy and play Bioware's games.

Now by trying to reach the short attention span players of consoles, they might lose this reputation and see a sale decrease on the long term. And DA2 sales figures can't be taken into account since a lot of people bought the game blindly since it was a Bioware game and they had expectations. In the future people will be more careful and that's when they will see sales decrease.

What they should have done is stay true to the pillars of DA, and create a new game to experiment with making flat action RPGs to conquer the console market.

Who made those pillars? The fans? Nope. BioWare.

[Firky]

cephasjames wrote...

The response they are getting from DA2, both postivie and negative, will teach them. They are a smart group of people that want to keep making rpgs. They just need to figure out how to balance the old and the new crowd. I tip my hat that they are willing to experiment though to see what works and what doesn't.

As a (very) old school RPG fan, this sums up my thoughts too. ^

I loved DAII. I do miss the camera and the 100 words of backstory for every little item, but I'm looking forward to going with these guys wherever they want to take us. They are a smart bunch of people and they are passionate about RPGs (IMO).

I think it was a good interview, anyway. I don't know what some of you guys would have wanted/expected Laidlaw to say, but if he'd said "Oh noes, what the hell? OK, we'll throw DAII out the window and make Origins with slightly better graphics," that would have made me way sadder. I'm not sure how they are going to wade through all of this confusing, and sometimes downright mean "feedback," but I'm sure they will.

Modifié par Firky, 21 mars 2011 - 02:13 .

[Sarakinoi]

cephasjames wrote...

The response they are getting from DA2, both postivie and negative, will teach them. They are a smart group of people that want to keep making rpgs. They just need to figure out how to balance the old and the new crowd. I tip my hat that they are willing to experiment though to see what works and what doesn't.

I agree, and I respect that. But as I said in another post it is not the new ideas thing that bothers people, it is the decrease in quality.

Example I love the new combat. I love some of the smaller ideas like the junk folder and one button to sell all of it. The companion bases. The fast travel. The skill system and class affinity.

Very bad ideas include removal of different consequences for different choices, 90% of the time you end up with the same outcome. The copy and paste level design. The enemies appearing out of nowhere. The wheel system where you choose something and hawk says something completely different. Those are not ideas to reach new markets, they are just flaws in the game itself and the game design going down hill.

[Acet]

RPGS can be redefined in good or bad ways... it all depends on that.

[Nozybidaj]

CRISIS1717 wrote...

So basically Mike Laidlaw wants to make rpgs for people who don't play rpgs.

Reading between the lines that is basically what I got out of it.  And that's fine and all, BW doesn't want to make RPG's anymore, I don't find that to be a big secret or anything.  Luckily there are other companies out there that do to fill that space for me.  And I can always come to BW for action adventure story games when they make one that interests me.  Win-win far as I am concerned.  Except they haven't made one that interested me in a while, but you never know what the future brings.

BobSmith101 wrote...

Do you know why Dynasty Warriors is successful ? Because it makes what people who want to play the game want. New people come to it because of that, not because it tries to be something it's not.

Oh, that's the best post I've seen around here in a while.  Well said.

Modifié par Nozybidaj, 21 mars 2011 - 02:35 .

[cephasjames]

Sarakinoi wrote...

cephasjames wrote...

The response they are getting from DA2, both postivie and negative, will teach them. They are a smart group of people that want to keep making rpgs. They just need to figure out how to balance the old and the new crowd. I tip my hat that they are willing to experiment though to see what works and what doesn't.

I agree, and I respect that. But as I said in another post it is not the new ideas thing that bothers people, it is the decrease in quality.

Example I love the new combat. I love some of the smaller ideas like the junk folder and one button to sell all of it. The companion bases. The fast travel. The skill system and class affinity.

Very bad ideas include removal of different consequences for different choices, 90% of the time you end up with the same outcome. The copy and paste level design. The enemies appearing out of nowhere. The wheel system where you choose something and hawk says something completely different. Those are not ideas to reach new markets, they are just flaws in the game itself and the game design going down hill.

The bold part is where I think people seemed to be confused. DA2 is just one game. One game cannot make a whole company's idea of a genre go down hill. If DA3 continues down the path that runs away from traditional rpgs then I think "going down hill" can be used. But DA2 is just one game where they chose to try something different to see if it would work - for the sake of rpgs as a whole. Some will say it worked, some will say it didn't. BioWare will now look at that and learn. Will they get it immediately? I don't know. Will they make Origins 2? I don't know. But they'll learn from it. RPGs (since BioWare really is the rpg king) are not dead because of one game. Especially when so many people are vocal about it.

[vinak]

cephasjames wrote...

LTD wrote...

Dinosaurs are wesome and need to be resurrected.

Dinosaurs may be awesome but they're dead because they could no longer survive in the changing environment they lived in.

not many species could survive a 6 mile across rock smashing into ones ecosystem.

but some managed to survive and evolved into birds and are now one of the most successful species on the planet with over 10,000 varieties.

The key word here is evolve, not lobotomize. 

----------
I am also unsure why some people seem to think a particular demographic/fan base is stagnant. This is impossible by definition. A group of individuals who like a particular type of game evolves and  grows(or shrinks) over time just like everything else.

Modifié par vinak, 21 mars 2011 - 02:46 .