996 réponses à ce sujet

[Killjoy Cutter]

AlanC9 wrote...

Strangely Brown wrote...
No I agree with Sylvius.  Of course it is not open role playing.  You still have to play under the confines of the script written for the game etc.  But really if you are playing the role of the character you should be choosing the dialogue appropriate to that role.  That is the whole point of choice here.  If they truly wanted you to select the dialogue that the writer wanted to say there would be no dialogue choices just a non-interactive cutscene.

Sure, you pick the dialog that's appropriate to the character. But you only have the options that the writer put there. Not the ones that a creative misreading of the text might give you.

A creative misreading of the text? 

[Tpiom]

I'm going to give you an interview with Zeschuk of Bioware (whoever that is) that multiplayerblog.mtv did.


"Multiplayer: If people's last point of reference for BioWare is "Mass Effect," they may recall the quality of the voice acting and the fact that you could even choose the gender of your character and have a separate voice track to listen to. Also, the conversation was triggered by mood and not knowing the line that the character would deliver. In "Dragon Age" it seemed that your lead character has no voice and you're literally selecting what line you say next rather than picking the emotion. So how should people interpret that you guys have undone some of the things you did in "Mass Effect," and why is there a difference?

Zeschuk: So the way the voice and the voice of the protagonist works: Our belief, and the reason we make a wide variety of games at BioWare (we actually have a quite a few in development), they come in different flavors. "Mass Effect" is incredibly cinematic and flowed a certain way based on the protagonist's voice and the way we did the dialogue system. When we looked at "Dragon Age" we sat back and thought we wanted the player to reflect their own inner voice. This was a very conscious decision. It actually harkens back to our roots and it's actually what we've done in all our games up until "Mass Effect." And things like "KOTOR" have been pretty well-loved by the fans. [smiles] There's a lot of choices in this game about how you portray yourself and how you experience it. We wanted players to have an additional sense of -- even though I'm picking a line -- I'm the one saying it in my head"


The DA system worked fine in Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II and Knights of the Old Republic. Why reinvent the wheel? What happened to the inner voice - we can't even read the line until we make a choice, all we get is a small phrase that is representing the line. Personally, I find it a bit silly to change systems in a franchise.

Not to mention that character development was sometimes done through the lines.
For example, an NPC is asking you to collect some flowers:
1. I won't help you - but I like flowers anyway...
2. I will help you - because those flowers mean hope in Highever, my birthplace.
3. Go away! Flowers are for elves only.

We get four facts with this: 
* The PC likes flowers.
* He was born in Highever
* The flowers in Highever resembles hope
* Elves love flowers.

It doesn't matter what you pick - all of them are correct.

Modifié par Tpiom, 12 avril 2011 - 08:25 .

[AlanC9]

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

A creative misreading of the text? 

Sure. If a text has multiple possible interpretations, you can pick between them even if you don't really believe that the speaker intended the meaning you're picking. You see this a lot in constitutional law.

Edit: I didn't mean to imply that constitutional law has this going on any more than other types of discourse. I just bring it up because it's the sort of thing that tends to shock people.

Modifié par AlanC9, 12 avril 2011 - 08:29 .

[chezblue81]

Jman5 wrote...

Respectfully, I disagree with all your points. I thought the dialogue wheel was fine; the voice acting for the main character was excellent; and the non interactive cinematics were not immersion breaking.

Just registering a vote for this above opinion.  I loved the wheel, and agree the acting was fantastic.  Loved the cinematics. 

To me this felt like an evolution in the sense that it was closer than ever to interactive fiction merging with classing gaming and RPG elements.  It was something of its own.  It's a very different experience than say Fallout 3 / NV where your head fills in a lot of the story.  I love that kind of gaming too, but think there's room in the world for both. 

[AlanC9]

Strangely Brown wrote...
Yes but it stands to reason that if you are given a choice of dialogue to say based on the type of character you are playing, you want the character to say what you chose.  That is why the dialogue wheel is misleading and doesn't always translate well to gameplay.

I don't see this as a problem unless the wheel somehow makes me pick an option that's worse for my character than one of the other options at that node. If I end up with the character saying the best available line, the wheel hasn't harmed anything.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Dark83 wrote...

The "my character says it as I want to" view fails because no game accommodates that. It is always "How did the writer mean this line to be said?"

Of course, that's nonsense.  All of BioWare's silent protagonist games accommodated the free expression playstyle.

I've run into a case once or twice where the way I thought a line was said is completely different from how it was actually said, judging by the response.

The response isn't reliable, though, unless you have access to the reasoning system used by the listener.  And you don't.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

Sylvius, I rarely say this to you, but that's silly. Picking from a list of pregenerated options and trying to recast one in whatever tone makes it fit your character best is simply not an in-character activity.

That's not what I do.  I establish my character's state of mind based on previous events, and the line to which he's expected to respond, and then I read the options to determine whoch of those could be used in a way that is consistent with that established mental state.

Once I've discarded the options that cannot be used, I make an in-character decision among the options that remain.

And again, the character says what the Bio writer thought he did when you pick that option, not what you thought the line was or ought to have been.

This simply isn't true.  I don't understand why you think this position is at all justified.

What the character says and how he says it isn't made explicit by the game.  As such, it's absurd to suggest that there is one correct interpretation of any given PC line.  It's not even clear that the PC line even matches the wording of the dialogue option, let alone the delivery imagined by some writer months earlier.

Edit: hey, how come I haven't seen you advocating a TES-style keyword system? That really would allow RP-ing the way you say you do it.

It would, and i've made that point before.  But advocating that would cause people to point out the other failings of TES (which are irrelevant, but they'd derail the argument), and I frankly prefer full-length sentences to keywords.  They're no less abstract, but they are more detailed.

[Ross42899]

a voiced protagonist just limits possible conversation choices and it kills a lot of the immersion

No. It doesn't. It adds a lot more atmosphere.

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

Sure, you pick the dialog that's appropriate to the character. But you only have the options that the writer put there. Not the ones that a creative misreading of the text might give you.

I insist it is you who is misreading the text by perceiving an intended meaning.

[the_one_54321]

<- doesn't like that his replies have been ignored.

[TEWR]

Strangely Brown wrote...

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...

Strangely Brown wrote...

I only agree with the OP's first point. As for voice acted, I prefer it and I don't mind the non-interactive cut scenes. The one thing I do wish though...is that during the damn cut scenes you could pause it, I always seem to get interrupted during the longer ones, miss half of it and then have to re-watch it....very irritating.

Are you playing on PC, PS3, Xbox360, or Mac?

Xbox 360

hmm... well on the PS3 I can press the Playstation button that brings up the X-menu thingy. that pauses it. Does the Xbox360 have a similar button?

[TEWR]

the_one_54321 wrote...

<- doesn't like that his replies have been ignored.

you'll get used to it. I had to

[Sylvius the Mad]

AlanC9 wrote...

I don't see this as a problem unless the wheel somehow makes me pick an option that's worse for my character than one of the other options at that node. If I end up with the character saying the best available line, the wheel hasn't harmed anything.

I disagree with you here, too.

When choosing any line, I need to know what it is my character hopes to achieve, or prevent, in uttering that line.  The paraphrase system means that I can't know what the line is until after I've chosen it, so I can't possibly know what the character's specific goals were until after the line is selected.  The paraphrase and voice effectively force me to reverse-engineer my own character's thought process with every line chosen to work out what her state-of-mind was when she decided to say that exact thing.

And I need to do that in order to make an informed choice at any future decision hub (dialogue or otherwise) in the whole game.

[Dr. wonderful]

I prefer atomsphere then immersion. Make of that what you will.

[Sidney]

For all the hot air about "not knowing what is said" people are either terrible at reading or not native speakers. I've had as many "oops not what I wanted to say" moments with full text as with the wheel and the addition of the emotion/intent really eliminates much room for misunderstanding. Since the numbered options don't ever let you pick what you want to say anyways - unless you just happen to be channeling the writers of the game - all your are doing is picking moods and intent anyways so get over it.

[Ryllen Laerth Kriel]

Strangely Brown wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Strangely Brown wrote...
No I agree with Sylvius.  Of course it is not open role playing.  You still have to play under the confines of the script written for the game etc.  But really if you are playing the role of the character you should be choosing the dialogue appropriate to that role.  That is the whole point of choice here.  If they truly wanted you to select the dialogue that the writer wanted to say there would be no dialogue choices just a non-interactive cutscene.

Sure, you pick the dialog that's appropriate to the character. But you only have the options that the writer put there. Not the ones that a creative misreading of the text might give you.

Yes but it stands to reason that if you are given a choice of dialogue to say based on the type of character you are playing, you want the character to say what you chose.  That is why the dialogue wheel is misleading and doesn't always translate well to gameplay.

My main issue is the lesser number of options. The pay-off is supposed to be a more immersive story, one with more depth because they player character is essentially more Bioware's and less the player's. I didn't see any of that in DA 2. What was taken away was far greater than what was questionably gained. It's deffinitely not progress of any sort to take away previously existing options from the consumer and expect your product to be a success, especially when the current product does not live up to it's hype.

Sure we don't have total freedom to roleplay in DA:O, but the options were greater than what was offered in DA 2. A voiced protagonist with badly paraphrased dialogue wheel, non-interactive cinematics and moving to one origin only limits those options more and disallows for the creativity of the player. To me this is not progress at all.

[PurpleJesus]

Jman5 wrote...

Respectfully, I disagree with all your points. I thought the dialogue wheel was fine; the voice acting for the main character was excellent; and the non interactive cinematics were not immersion breaking.

Did you know that you were the main character . I bet you didn't . At least the sentence above where you describe your view. You see you were the main character, or were you ? do you see the problem ... "The Main Character"

The story was told for you , it was set in stone before you even bought the game. And the dialog was done for you also ,in a voice not your own.  

The wheel was yet another means to chip away and immersion. I will hear my voice say the lines when i read them . 
When i hear some other voice , insta kill on immersion . 

I'm not interested hearing about some other guy, in his voice who did a bunch of boring crap. 

[steve3194]

Sidney wrote...

For all the hot air about "not knowing what is said" people are either terrible at reading or not native speakers. I've had as many "oops not what I wanted to say" moments with full text as with the wheel and the addition of the emotion/intent really eliminates much room for misunderstanding. Since the numbered options don't ever let you pick what you want to say anyways - unless you just happen to be channeling the writers of the game - all your are doing is picking moods and intent anyways so get over it.

true

[Vicious]

Honestly, I think:

If the game is sufficiently awesome, people will be less bothered by a voiced protagonist.

But since DA2 failed, on many levels, many of the hardcore fans here want to go back to the 'tried and true'-ness of DA:O.

I don't blame them, even if I disagree on voiced protagonist. [which was, really, the only thing I liked about DA2 better than DA:O. Everything else DA:O did better. Everything.]

[Dragoonlordz]

Sidney wrote...

For all the hot air about "not knowing what is said" people are either terrible at reading or not native speakers. I've had as many "oops not what I wanted to say" moments with full text as with the wheel.

That speaks a lot more about the lack of your reading skills than others.

Modifié par Dragoonlordz, 13 avril 2011 - 01:26 .