73 réponses à ce sujet

[IanTheTexan]

Dear BioWare,

Let me open by saying that I love your games, thank you for your years of hard work and I am excited to see what the future will bring. I am writing out of concern for myself and what I am sure are a quiet minority of gamers in the hope that our interests can at least be considered as you develop future titles. 

I am an arachnophobe. Arachnophobia is the most common phobia, and it is often irrational. The image of a spider is enough to trigger a fear response, anxiety, etc. depending on the picture and the condition of the viewer. While I love Dragon Age II, it's not doing much to help fight these fears. If anything, it's made things a bit worse. Relax, I'm not suing you or suggesting that anyone should. I am asking that at the very least, when you are thinking up your enemies for these wonderful fantasy games, you come up with something a little bit more original than a scary thing on steroids. I think you can take the scary aspects of the world and use them without making them frightening. I am not afraid of bears, but crossing paths with one too soon in Oblivion was enough to send my character running in the opposite direction. That was scary and it was fun, and it's the kind of experience I look forward to in gaming.

There is an important difference in what I mean when I say something is scary versus something that's frightening. Something scary can be shocking, surprising, unusual, and in the context of the game threatening but not something that should create genuine fear. An example would be the alien xenomorph from the 'Alien' franchise. It's scary without being frightening. 'Frightening' is something that creates a genuine fear response, makes you look or run away or at the very least removes the player's ability to be rational. 

Playing off of arachnophobia is not new, Valve did it very successfully with their spider headcrabs in Half Life 2, as did Bethesda with their Spider Daedra in Oblivion (they would later drop the ball in a major way for Fallout 3, but that's another letter), and you yourselves did an excellent job with it in Mass Effect with the Rachni. Is it too much to ask that you take that same creative talent and apply it to this fantasy setting? There must be a way to incorporate scary villains that aren't frightening. Tension, setting and music can do just as much or more of the scare work, but there is still a reason why I have no problem facing down an endless horde of zombies at the drop of a hat, but a romp through a cave outside Kirkwall gives me pause. 

I'm asking as a gamer, and as a fan, please give us something more than just grotesques, and if you insist on them give us the option either in-game or through an optional patch/mod of disabling the arachnids so that we can have as much fun playing as our fellow gamers. I do not want to demean the hard work of everyone who brought those spiders large and larger to life in the game, but for once I believe you've done too good a job. If it would genuinely be too difficult at this point to add an option to change scripted spawn commands from spiders to darkspawn, and queen spiders to trolls, I understand, but as I mentioned earlier, at the very least consider this point of view as you move forward making the games so many of us sincerely love.

Faithfully,

A Fan 

[Asdara]

Kudos to you for bringing up an issue that may not apply to the general masses, but is certainly worthy of attention, in a calm and rational way.

[IanTheTexan]

Thank you, that's much appreciated.

[templar706]

Interesting. I like spiders. But its a good point.

[Lord Gremlin]

I miss being able to summon a spider... I actually like these creatures. While I understand that that's an issue for people with arachnophobia, it's really hard to come up with a substitute for spiders.
Any, well, direct suggestions?

Modifié par Lord Gremlin, 30 mars 2011 - 06:06 .

[Malja]

This was certainly presented very well. I now wish I had something more thoughtful to contribute other than I hope this gets read by the devs, fairly persuasive.

[Arppis]

You did have some really good ideas there. I hope they are listening.

[dgcatanisiri]

Yeah, those monstrous spiders do absolutely nothing to help my arachnophobia. Mom always said that 'you're bigger than them, what's to be afraid of?' Now I can just point her at those things that are bigger and wider than everything else in the entire game.

[Asdara]

Those lizard-things from the deeproads, Deepstalkers maybe? I forget - would be appropriate in cave settings in lieu of spider creatures. Or any lizard actually, they like caves. Perhaps a gremlin-type creature without resemblance to real world things?

Heck, watch the Planet Earth (Discovery, great series, shameless plug of something I like) on Caves and there's a whole buffet of creatures you could make super-huge and angry.

[Forst1999]

You have my sympathy. Phobias can get you, sometimes unexpected. I've seen an acrophobe play the ME2 mission with the ship wreck on a cliff. It wasn't a pleasure. Thing is, there are many different phobias, so it must be extremely hard to avoid all of them. And even if Bioware replaced spiders with something more creative, that isn't a guarantee that it isn't frightening to others. I hope that someone reads your post, and has a good idea how to deal with this stuff.

[Nukenin]

I agree. Spiders should be small, pouring forth from every nook, cranny, and cutscene, and never once acknowledged by the game's NPCs.

Yes. Yes, I am a bad dwarf.

[groundhogie]

I have to agree with the OP, I really enjoy DA2 and have now started my second play through, but... I remember having to shut the game down and go do something else when I walked into a Sundermount cave in Act II and the monstrous spider came out of the ceiling.

Something scary can be shocking, surprising, unusual, and in the context
of the game threatening but not something that should create genuine
fear.

This sentence sums up how I feel about the spiders in the game. Playing Dead Space, for example, I never found the necromorph's frightening.  They did cause a tension and shock factor that was enjoyable after certain scenes but never did I feel unnerved enough to switch off the game.

Guess it sounds silly to those who like spiders or can bear them, but there ya go. That's my small contribution to this thread.

[shaneho78]

Use the console cheat. Every time spiders appear, enter "runscript killallhostiles".

Modifié par shaneho78, 30 mars 2011 - 06:27 .

[IanTheTexan]

True that we can't expect the Devs to plan on every phobia out there (and much respect to your acrophobic friend for playing through that mission in ME2, that level was a perfect example of setting establishing tension, and a great experience in something being both scary and fun) but in this case, arachnophobia is the world's most common. I get that giant spiders are tropes of the fantasy genre, but there have to be alternate creatures, real or imagined, that get the job done just as well.

As for using a console cheat, that doesn't actually solve the problem. Moreover, I would rather play the game for what it is without having to resort to the console. I still want the challenge of the fight, just different opponents.

[Gamer Ftw]

I am scared of rodents every rpg seems to have them. please delete them from every game that ever existed thank you.

[Malja]

Gamer Ftw wrote...

I am scared of rodents every rpg seems to have them. please delete them from every game that ever existed thank you.

/facepalm

[hoorayforicecream]

Here's a mod that turns all spiders into mabari.

[Chrumpek]

Just mod it.

[Vuokseniska]

Dear bioware,

I have Agoraphobia. Could you please stop making cities with large empty spaces? I am just afraid of them. you never know who might jump out of a corner.

sincerely,
Vuokseniska

[David Gaider]

To the OP:

Personally, I thought we overused the giant spiders a bit-- as an enemy, I agree they're not that original, and if there's any reason to use them less (I doubt we'll ever get rid of them *entirely*) that would be the biggest one. While I'm not sure we would ever add in a toggle to remove a creature we've added in, it's certainly worth noting that not everyone finds spiders scary in a good way.

Thanks for taking the time to write.

[Maverick827]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

Here's a mod that turns all spiders into mabari.

I was half expecting that to be a masked link to a scary spider picture.

Is the really giant spider model it's own model, or does the engine scale models?  I guess what I'm asking is, is the really giant spider in game, with that mod, a really giant mabari?  If so I'm downloading it instantly.

[Oneiropolos]

Mr. Gaider,

Thank you for considering this issue. I personally am not really bothered by spiders, but my boyfriend is terrified of them. On the flipside, snakes scare the hell out of me to the point I was paralyzed in the middle of questing in an MMO because I was surrounded by these sea-snake things and I literally was full of adrenaline and trembling. He had to help me through that section because of it. Yet, I'm not bothered when people create snake-like creatures. Add thin legs to them, and they are no longer a 'snake' and so no longer trigger such instinctive fear in me. I suspect people with fear of spiders would react the same way. Give them some elements where they are no longer 'spiders' and you've created the fantastical. Enough on-edgeness to harken back to the primal fear of them, but not have that fear be such a negative experience.

I truly do appreciate seeing someone on the staff take this into consideration, even if in this case, it wasn't something that bothered ME. I just know how it is, and it's definitely not pleasant.

[Punahedan]

David Gaider wrote...

To the OP:

Personally, I thought we overused the giant spiders a bit-- as an enemy, I agree they're not that original, and if there's any reason to use them less (I doubt we'll ever get rid of them *entirely*) that would be the biggest one. While I'm not sure we would ever add in a toggle to remove a creature we've added in, it's certainly worth noting that not everyone finds spiders scary in a good way.

Thanks for taking the time to write.

I'm glad you guys are aware of this, and thank you OP for posting this... My fear's not as intense as some people's, but I find it incredibly difficult. Those caves and Deep Roads take me longer to go through than the rest of the areas becuase I need to keep stopping and get some distance.

[Tarante11a]

Whilst I don't quite have the wall-climbing, fainting kind of arachnaphobia, spiders do scare me quite a bit (in fact my internet aka is a kind of reference to it, if a bit of a silly one). I really do sympathize with the OP. About 45 mins into the game when I realized it was going to be a bit spider heavy, I adopted a tactic where I would pause and 'send' a companion to a spot if I thought it might spawn a spider frenzy, then re-select my PC and stand well back. This meant I wasn't up close and personal with the initial wave and helped with the jumps a bit.

Ironically, just before I headed for the Deep Roads I had thought 'gosh I'm glad they don't make them much bigger' and then of course nearly jumped out of my skin.. And didn't like the Queen much either but I stood on the ledge while everybody else stood below me.

I don't really mind getting frights in games, but I'm not big on scares, and did once or twice find myself having to stop the game to regain a bit of composure and relax a bit.

I didn't like the Half-life head crabs much either. And for Andraste's sake, if you ever play the Star Wars Galaxies main quest through to it's latter end... well, don't if you really don't like our eight-legged pals.

Not sure what my point is really - I'm not sure I want spiders to be taken out or not, but I just wanted to say 'I hear you' to the OP.

[IanTheTexan]

Dear Mr. Gaider,

I am elated that you found the time to respond. Thank you. If the arachnids are up for reduction in future titles, literally and figuratively, then I am as happy as I can be. While the mobs of spiders are certainly one thing, it's the queen spiders that I would prefer to never see again, should there ever be a debate about which to keep.

As for a toggle to remove something you have for artistic and creative reasons deliberately placed in the game, I offer that it simply be a switch to a different type of enemy, something like the mabari mod that another poster offered, or even just a switch for the boss levels. Either way, I am thrilled that this point of view is at least in your consideration.