996 réponses à ce sujet

[danteliveson]

Voiced PC for the mother****** win!!!!!

[Kane-Corr]

ItsToofy wrote...

I appreciate the semi-trolling notion, I feel good about not being consider full blown troll, but it's not semi trolling, I only defend positions that are attacked, sometimes I speak out in a sarcastic tone because, well, it entertains me and sometimes I like to join in on the fun, but you cannot say that in alot of my posts I have not made my points clear about what I disliked or what I would change about the game to bring it in line with what I think would make the game better.

I am not crapping on this game or proclaiming that this is the worst thing since the plagues in egypt. I own the game, and am willing to play it and even give it a second chance if any changes are made, but I am not going to sit here silently and not have my voice heard because I am entitled to my opinions. I try not to attack anyone that has a legitimate enjoyment of the game, I don't want to take that away from anyone, but when logic is attacked and my defense of why I dislike aspects of the game are questioned I will step in and defend those who share the same position as me. I don't enjoy trolls any more than the next guy (See: EA NEEDS TO FIRE SOMEONE OVER THIS GAME threads).

So do not, by any means, attack my maturity level because it does not fit in to your viewpoints, I do not share the same enjoyment of this game as you do, and yet you still personaly attack me when I accurately depicted why your logic had failed, I didn't call you any names, I didn't say anything about hoping the company or the game fails or prattling on and nitpicking. So do NOT attack me personaly and then question my maturity.

I said good day, sir...

Fair enough, fair enough. I wasn't trying to attack you though...I was just trying to make my own point clear. Now that I know you speak out in a sarcastic tone, I can see that you in fact DO NOT troll others. Because quite frankly, sometimes, I do the same thing.

You must forgive me though, this forum (DA2) has been plagued with so much "sarcasm" it seems, that I can't tell who is kidding and who is blatanly infected with trolliosis.

[ItsToofy]

Kane-Corr wrote...

ItsToofy wrote...

I appreciate the semi-trolling notion, I feel good about not being consider full blown troll, but it's not semi trolling, I only defend positions that are attacked, sometimes I speak out in a sarcastic tone because, well, it entertains me and sometimes I like to join in on the fun, but you cannot say that in alot of my posts I have not made my points clear about what I disliked or what I would change about the game to bring it in line with what I think would make the game better.

I am not crapping on this game or proclaiming that this is the worst thing since the plagues in egypt. I own the game, and am willing to play it and even give it a second chance if any changes are made, but I am not going to sit here silently and not have my voice heard because I am entitled to my opinions. I try not to attack anyone that has a legitimate enjoyment of the game, I don't want to take that away from anyone, but when logic is attacked and my defense of why I dislike aspects of the game are questioned I will step in and defend those who share the same position as me. I don't enjoy trolls any more than the next guy (See: EA NEEDS TO FIRE SOMEONE OVER THIS GAME threads).

So do not, by any means, attack my maturity level because it does not fit in to your viewpoints, I do not share the same enjoyment of this game as you do, and yet you still personaly attack me when I accurately depicted why your logic had failed, I didn't call you any names, I didn't say anything about hoping the company or the game fails or prattling on and nitpicking. So do NOT attack me personaly and then question my maturity.

I said good day, sir...

Fair enough, fair enough. I wasn't trying to attack you though...I was just trying to make my own point clear. Now that I know you speak out in a sarcastic tone, I can see that you in fact DO NOT troll others. Because quite frankly, sometimes, I do the same thing.

You must forgive me though, this forum (DA2) has been plagued with so much "sarcasm" it seems, that I can't tell who is kidding and who is blatanly infected with trolliosis.

take a screenshot, this sort of civility is rare on these boards.

[Scimal]

marinerzz wrote...

I want to know exactly what I'm telling my character to say, not just a summary (which gives the wrong impression often).

I would be OK with this and the current intonation (Noble/Smart-ass/Hardline) system. What you say, sometimes, isn't nearly as important as how you say it.

I don't want my PC to have a voice because it will never sound exactly how my character does in my mind and makes the character less my own.

Turn on Subtitles and hit the Mute button.

Problem solved.

On a serious note, I always found that having a silent protagonist was fine when the technology wasn't capable of rendering interations appropriately. You never saw, in detail, the face of your BGII character. The silent protagonist was fine then. It's be sort of funky to hear a voice and no reaction.

On the flip side, I always found it annoying when the technology caught up to the point that facial animations were realisitc that choosing an option resulted in my silently staring at an NPC and the message was telepathically received.

I don't mind a voiced protagonist. Sometimes the VO's aren't that great, due to whatever reason, but with the current generation of technology - where I can see the facial animations and reactions of characters nearby - I'd rather have my Hawke say something than do a creepy blank stare.

All the non-interactive cinematics destroy immersion because I'm no longer controlling my character.

I actually liked the stylized, narrated interludes. Well, at least the presentation. The story is a separate matter.

Other than that, there are only a handful of cinematics - mostly kill sequences on big baddies - that take the ability to respond away.

I suppose you could just skip them, though.

Fix these problems, i.e. make DA3 like DA:O but without a dumb romance character who only likes you if you're cartoonishly evil like Morrigan was, and you can start making good games again. Don't fix these problems and you will fail sooner rather than later!

Actually, I'd rather just have them write better stories with more characterization and depth. I could personally care less if the protagonist is voiced, if there are occasional cinematics that take control away for 30 seconds, or if it's set in an Isometric viewpoint or 1st person.

I will enjoy a game that hits me both intellectually and emotionally. I wasn't invested in DA2's plot until my sibling got involved in the fight between Mages and Templars (and subsequently killed in the Deep Roads, so there goes that). I was re-invested when I romanced one of the NPCs who had a firm stance on the issue, but only marginally so until their side-quest - which generally enjoyed for each character.

I was most invested in Act 3 - when my romanced NPC was nervous, but determined. I thought to myself during the last stand in the Gallows, "This NPC has been with my character for years. There's no way in hell I'm letting my Hawke's lover die at the hands of a stupid intersection of ideologies! Time to kick butt!" Everything from then on was exciting, and I was poised on the edge of my seat.

That's what I play BW games for. Those moments where I'm genuinely interested in the outcome, waiting to see the ramifications of my choices, and knowing the characters through their interactions (party banter being one of my favorites) to the point that I get that rush when I pull off the Epic Bad Ass moves.

It's also what I play Half-Life for, Halo for, and a few other games for.

Luckily, opinions are mere opinions. If you don't like what BW is doing, you're not obligated to buy their next product. Perhaps your premonition will come true - that BW will fall due to voice acting, caricatures instead of characters, and cinematics. Maybe BW will turn into Square Enix.

I just don't think you are, unless BioWare botches the stories and emotional impact during its next few releases.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Scimal wrote...

On a serious note, I always found that having a silent protagonist was fine when the technology wasn't capable of rendering interations appropriately. You never saw, in detail, the face of your BGII character. The silent protagonist was fine then. It's be sort of funky to hear a voice and no reaction.

On the flip side, I always found it annoying when the technology caught up to the point that facial animations were realisitc that choosing an option resulted in my silently staring at an NPC and the message was telepathically received.

Clearly then what they should have done was eschewed the advanced facial animation.  Then you wouldn't have had that unpleasant dichoyomy, but we also wouldn't have had the loss of player control required by the voice.

As for hitting mute and turning on subtitles, we're stll then required to guess at the line with the paraphrase system.  The only way this would really work is if we mute the voices and turn off the subtitles, allowing the abstract wheel options to stand on their own.

Unfortunately, then there's no way to know what the NPCs are saying, so the game isn't really playable.  This is why they shouldn't have bundled together the PC voice and  the NPC voices, or the PC subtitles with the NPC subtitles.  Allowing us to disable one or both of those for the PC only would go a long way toward fixing the problems in DA2's dialogue system.

I don't mind a voiced protagonist. Sometimes the VO's aren't that great, due to whatever reason, but with the current generation of technology - where I can see the facial animations and reactions of characters nearby - I'd rather have my Hawke say something than do a creepy blank stare.

I'd rather not have the cinematic conversations.  Just because the technology allows close-ups of facial animations is no reason to require the games actually include such features.

I suppose you could just skip them, though.

But if you don't know what happened during them, then you can't make any decisions about what to do next that make any sense.  A non-interactive cutscene might reveal who a villain is, but if I skip the scene then I'll never know and I can't advance through the game (I never use the journal - too much meta-game information).

I will enjoy a game that hits me both intellectually and emotionally.

I don't think DA2's dialogue system can invest me intellectually because I was never really controlling my character.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 08 avril 2011 - 07:32 .

[Dr. wonderful]

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

[quote]Scimal wrote...

On a serious note, I always found that having a silent protagonist was fine when the technology wasn't capable of rendering interations appropriately. You never saw, in detail, the face of your BGII character. The silent protagonist was fine then. It's be sort of funky to hear a voice and no reaction.

On the flip side, I always found it annoying when the technology caught up to the point that facial animations were realisitc that choosing an option resulted in my silently staring at an NPC and the message was telepathically received.[/quoet]
Clearly then what they should have done was eschewed the advanced facial animation.  Then you wouldn't have had that unpleasant dichoyomy, but we also wouldn't have had the loss of player control required by the voice.

As for hitting mute and turning on subtitles, we're stll then required to guess at the line with the paraphrase system.  The only way this would really work is if we mute the voices and turn off the subtitles, allowing the abstract wheel options to stand on their own.

Unfortunately, then there's no way to know what the NPCs are saying, so the game isn't really playable.  This is why they shouldn't have bundled together the PC voice and  the NPC voices, or the PC subtitles with the NPC subtitles.  Allowing us to disable one or both of those for the PC only would go a long way toward fixing the problems in DA2's dialogue system.

[quote]I don't mind a voiced protagonist. Sometimes the VO's aren't that great, due to whatever reason, but with the current generation of technology - where I can see the facial animations and reactions of characters nearby - I'd rather have my Hawke say something than do a creepy blank stare.[/quote]
I'd rather not have the cinematic conversations.  Just because the technology allows close-ups of facial animations is no reason to require the games actually include such features.

[quote]I suppose you could just skip them, though.[/quote]
But if you don't know what happened during them, then you can't make any decisions about what to do next that make any sense.  A non-interactive cutscene might reveal who a villain is, but if I skip the scene then I'll never know and I can't advance through the game (I never use the journal - too much meta-game information).

[quote]I will enjoy a game that hits me both intellectually and emotionally.[/quote]
I don't think DA2's dialogue system can invest me intellectually because I was never really controlling my character.
[/quote]

Okay, I'll bite.

When did YOU ever felt like controlling the character you spent a year and a half working on?

[Aumata]

I really don't care about the voice characters. I role play both, with the difference being that I don't have to create a voice when I play a rpg with a voice. So it really doesn't bother me, nor is it the biggest problem for DA2.

[OrlesianWardenCommander]

Oh go cry the voice acting is one of the redeeming features of the game I couldn't stand my mute wardens. Tons of people wanted voice they get great voice actors and people complain and people wonder why bioware takes opinions on theses forums with a grain of salt you people don't fcking know what you want.........

[Scimal]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Clearly then what they should have done was eschewed the advanced facial animation.  Then you wouldn't have had that unpleasant dichoyomy, but we also wouldn't have had the loss of player control required by the voice.

I wouldn't vote that way. Since the rendering capabilities were inevitable, I'd rather have VO's than the creepy stare. If BW chooses to switch engines again, I wouldn't mind a silent protagonist.

It might be a loss of some control, but it never really bothered me. Unless the dialog options were drastically out of sync with my preferred choices, the voice was pretty much discarded in my head during the more involving scenes. I'd choose the option with the desired outcome, Hawke would talk his lines, and then I'd say mine to make up for the gap.

As for hitting mute and turning on subtitles, we're stll then required to guess at the line with the paraphrase system.  The only way this would really work is if we mute the voices and turn off the subtitles, allowing the abstract wheel options to stand on their own.

I suppose. However, I never found it more bothersome than having my lines delivered in an intonation differently than the choice implied in previous BW games.

I'd like to see a melding of the systems, personally. Maybe have the first three words of the dialog option, and then when you mouse over it or select it, the rest of the text appears. This, combined with the "symbols as tones" system would be pretty much what I'd want.

I'd rather not have the cinematic conversations.  Just because the technology allows close-ups of facial animations is no reason to require the games actually include such features.

No, the technology doesn't require it. The consumer requires it. You are in a miniscule minority who'd prefer a silent protagonist and basics of interpersonal communications deferred to text options.

BioWare is a company. They must make a profit. There isn't any profit in your market with the current expectations of gamers. If that chanes, then technology will shift to accomodate.

But if you don't know what happened during them, then you can't make any decisions about what to do next that make any sense.  A non-interactive cutscene might reveal who a villain is, but if I skip the scene then I'll never know and I can't advance through the game (I never use the journal - too much meta-game information).

You're correct, but I rarely found your point justified. There are occasions where my character has done something I found to be blatantly out of character simply by fiat, but they were rare - and I can't remember any particularly heinous examples in DA2.

I don't think DA2's dialogue system can invest me intellectually because I was never really controlling my character.

The dialogue system never did that for me. Silent protagonist with a list of fully-elaborated options or otherwise.

The story hits me intellectually, or the universe hits me intellectually. The characters and story will hit me emotionally. I don't read the journal that much, and I've just never been a big fan of the incredibly generic world BW uses for Dragon Age. Because of that, I'm not really intellectually stimulated by DA:O or DA2. Instead the characters and story are left to make me emotionally invested, which happened after Act 1 to varying degrees.

I consider that a success, because that's the bar I set.

If I want to be intellectually and emotionally stimulated by a game that has a silent protagonist, no risk of choosing the wrong dialog option, no immersion-breaking cutscenes, and an epic storyline, I'd be playing Half-Life 2.

The only reason I'm not is because I just finished another run through a few weeks ago and get angry every time I do because Episode 3 isn't out yet.

Then again, most people here wouldn't consider that a proper RPG, so I guess I'm just left to enjoy it on my own.

[Ryllen Laerth Kriel]

Pariah00 wrote...

Mike on the wheel:

"It also provides what I see as the prize behind every door insofar aswhen you read a line of Origins dialogue for comparison, you see everything you could potentially say. In your brain, you've done the totality of that conversation. Whereas looking and saying, "Oh, I know that's going to be a smart-aleck line, but I don't feel it'd be right to use it," you're left with that temptation or that urge to pick it because you can't tell exactly what you'll say."

And he's spot on. DA2's dialogue is based on gut reaction.  In Origins, conversations emerged from the brain not from the gut.  We all know what substance is produced from the gut. 

What I don't understand is this idea that the player being utterly surprised by what their character says is a good thing but that at the same time the player should always know what will happen as a result of picking an option. This means I can't use my brain to contemplate the motives driving my character evidenced by the content of a dialogue option nor can I use my brain to navigate a potential problem that dialogue might solve.  Why should I know- be straight up told by the game- that option X will end in combat?  Isn't that for me to figure out by using my brain in the game?  That is where I want to be surprised. 

As far as sarcasm not translating in text thus icons are needed, I don't see what is wrong with making a sarcasm marker that would have worked in DAO.

Clearly the button-awesome connection is a great direction for the RPG. /sarcasm

But seriously, I want the brain-awesome connection.

Yeah, I'm not so sure Mike understands the difference between a roleplaying game and a role witnessing game. Roleplaying requires some sort of input to the character decisions. I don't want to be suprised either by what the character is about to say, I want to decide what options I have for my character to say. Why call it a roleplaying game if everything is guesswork and chance and decisions that don't matter? They just need to fold and make a cgi movie and get it out of their system.

[upsettingshorts]

*shrug*

I don't see the features as all that different, hence why I can see what Mike Laidlaw is saying when he and others speak about an evolution of the mechanic - though others, for example this thread, see it as a radical departure.

I have always chosen from a predetermined number of selections written by the writers in advance, based upon character paths the game allows for. Whether or not this is presented to me via text in a list or a paraphrased voice acting on a wheel doesn't matter to me.  BioWare games have always been implicitly third person to me, until ME1-2 and DA2, they became explicitly third person.  I have no issue with this.  If you played them as first person narratives, their other games supported that playstyle more but I'm not entirely convinced that that wasn't an accident, especially given their more recent releases.

The only thing I'm sure I hate is when everyone else in the game talks and my character doesn't. That's why I'd say DA:O's way of handling it was worse than both Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age 2. The inconsistency kills it for me, not having a voice or the game being silent in general. It's one of the many examples of immersion being subjective.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 08 avril 2011 - 04:41 .

[MelfinaofOutlawStar]

Eurypterid wrote...

I don't mind the protagonist being voiced. But I REALLY want to know what he/she is going to say when I click on my choice of response. Being jarred right out of the roleplay due to the surprise of "WTH is coming out of your mouth? I didn't want you to say THAT" is annoying as hell.

It was wasn't it? Diplomatic Hawke was often times a push over, very unlike a Paragon Shepard.

Anders: Can I move in?
Hawke: *Choose "Yes" get...* We'll be together until the day we die!

This is a fantasy/action game. Not a Twilight novel.

Modifié par MelfinaofOutlawStar, 08 avril 2011 - 04:40 .

[Sheonite]

MelfinaofOutlawStar wrote...

This is a fantasy/action game. Not a Twilight novel.

That's what the entire Anders romance felt like. D:

[Ryllen Laerth Kriel]

I don't really see it as inconsistancy though because it engages me, allowing to give my character his or her own voice to the text instead of sticking me with one pre-defined voice actor who conveys only a certain type of persona. Voicing a character is fine if that character isn't supposed to be customized and is supposed to have one type of personality or past. But DA 2 is kind of half-way to me between having the customized hero and sticking to a canon, set hero so it feels quite sloppy in it's presentation and there isn't much replay value to me in such a game.

[MelfinaofOutlawStar]

Sheonite wrote...

MelfinaofOutlawStar wrote...

This is a fantasy/action game. Not a Twilight novel.

That's what the entire Anders romance felt like. D:

The romances in general were painful to watch play out. They made it so Hawke flirted with the subtly of a cat in heat. It's like the people on the writing and vocal direction teams got their advice from the cast of Jersey Shore.

[upsettingshorts]

Ryllen Laerth Kriel wrote...

I don't really see it as inconsistancy though because it engages me, allowing to give my character his or her own voice to the text instead of sticking me with one pre-defined voice actor who conveys only a certain type of persona.

That's why it's subjective.  I don't feel like unvoiced text is any less limiting.  The words are still predetermined, I don't get to decide them like I would in a PnP game.  To me, voicing isn't any more inherently predefining aside from the fact that the expense probably limits the player to only one racial selection.  Beyond that, it's the same to me.  Someone already wrote and accounted for the words, intent, and tone - I'm just picking them. 

Ryllen Laerth Kriel wrote...

Voicing a character is fine if that character isn't supposed to be customized and is supposed to have one type of personality or past. But DA 2 is kind of half-way to me between having the customized hero and sticking to a canon, set hero so it feels quite sloppy in it's presentation and there isn't much replay value to me in such a game.

I just don't see a voice as linked to a predetermined personality, eg "a badass sounds like X but a nerd sounds like Y."  But that's subjective, I imagine.

Don't get me wrong, I don't feel as if the paraphrased dialogue wheel and voiced protagonist is perfect.  All I'm really saying is that as a system it just doesn't come across to me as diametrically opposed to traditional BioWare conversation systems as its critics argue it does.  It just makes an implicit narrative approach more explicit, at the cost of harming a playstyle that may have not been intended by the developers in the first place.  There's two sides to that, one is the obvious conclusion that something is lost when you make something clear that used to be vague if people used to enjoy the freedom created by that ambiguity.  The other side is that it's not unreasonable to say that such folks are probably not going to agree with BioWare itself over what a "spiritual successor" to one of those games actually means.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 08 avril 2011 - 04:58 .

[Imrahil_]

Zcorck wrote...
But that more than 2 companions can interact with each other in those banters is an improvement from BG2 though. it is however expected considering the number of years that have passed since then.
If you meant conversations as in talking to them, whenever you want. Still the same unless you mod BG2.

It needs to be pointed out that all of the above is false.  In vanilla, unMOD'ed BG2, you could have 3-way conversations between NPC's, sometimes more if you include CHARNAME, who could occasinally interject in their banters.  You could also talk to the NPC's whenever you wanted to.  They might not have a lot to say if you'd already covered their main options, but you could still talk to them, much like in DA:O if you'd already asked them about everything they were willing to talk about at the time.

The number of years that have passed have seen diminished interaction, not expanded.

[Ryllen Laerth Kriel]

I know what I said is subjective, I never pretended otherwise. That's why I said things like "to me."

It's just my opinion that the spoken voice protagonist is a lesser path because it feels (once more to me) to take away creativity from the player in acting out the role of the character which we are encouraged to have a hand in creating. Voicing a character does limit such things as Origins because a human noble, a dalish elf or a dwarf commoner likely would not sound exactly the same. If Bioware goes down this road, we'll likely be stuck with a single, set protagonist from here on out because it would be too extensive to record (at a minimum) three male and three female voicesets for the entire dialogue of the protagonist in a game. I would much prefer text and the money being spent on other areas of gameplay.

[upsettingshorts]

Ryllen Laerth Kriel wrote...

I know what I said is subjective, I never pretended otherwise. That's why I said things like "to me."

Oh I'm agreeing with that much. 

To sum up, I'd rather they spend the money on it for one reason.  I don't like how DAO did it, and there's no way they're going back to Baldur's Gate-style full text - or at least, I really doubt it - so given the choice between the protagonist being silent only, or having everyone speak I'm picking the latter every time.  If the choice was literally full text or full speech, I'd have to think about it more.  

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 08 avril 2011 - 05:07 .

[erynnar]

Sheonite wrote...

MelfinaofOutlawStar wrote...

This is a fantasy/action game. Not a Twilight novel.

That's what the entire Anders romance felt like. D:

OMG! I think I vomited into my mouth when that "Twilight " crap came out of my Hawke's mouth. GAH! If that is the kind of swill that they write for my "voiced protagonist" I will gladly pass.

I didn't have a problem with my mute, or "cardboard" cut out as others seem to. I guess I read so much to me, reading what my Warden said is like me reading a book where I "hear" the voice anyways. Sorry, addicted to the written word, not the 'Idiot box" (aka TV). I prefer to imagine in my owh head, rather than being shown in a computer simputlated movie with combat thrown in.  Must be  generational thing... I guess.  While I was reading and imagining, others were sat in front of a TV and told what they were watching ( not meant to be snarky, just an observation).

I can do without the voiced character as it is the voice of the first character I make, which will always have that voice and I will associate it with them. Which means it is hard for me to make a new character to go with that voice So replay is almost nil after that. I really have nothing to offer in a solution to this. I HATE the wheel, I LOATHE it with the passion of a thousand suns. It suits sci fi but not DA. It looks as noob as you can get , DA in ME drag.

[AlanC9]

erynnar wrote...
Sorry, addicted to the written word, not the 'Idiot box" (aka TV). I prefer to imagine in my owh head, rather than being shown in a computer simputlated movie with combat thrown in.  Must be  generational thing... I guess.  While I was reading and imagining, others were sat in front of a TV and told what they were watching ( not meant to be snarky, just an observation).

Pretty much everyone playing the game grew up with TV. I'm 47 and we had TV all the time. And much worse TV than the kids have got nowadays.

[San Diego Thief]

agree with the original poster 100%....I felt like I was watching a movie for much of the first part of the game instead of being the hero

[erynnar]

I keep wondering WTF? I LOVE to read. I love reading dialogue, the codex entries, the lore. For me a non voiced protagonist was fine. DAO was like reading a book that had animated scenes and battles I could fight. It was like playing a book. A "choose your own adventure" book...anyone else remember those or am I just too old for most of the crowd here? ROFL!

Then I hear all these people who complain about walls of text and reading. And the mute protagonist. LIke everything should be a visual movie and no one uses their imaginations anymore...show us. We don't want to picture it in our heads ourselves. We need visuals, hold our hands, tell us the story! Is it just me? I am addicted to the written word, It never once struck me to worry over a "cardboard" cutout of a protagonist because Kai was my portal in the book to the world of DA. I stepped into her skin and saw through her eyes the way I do in any book. She didn't need a voice, because like any book I read, I hear the voice speaking the lines of text in my own head.

But so many clamor for a voiced protagonist, how boring they don't talk! Mine talks just fine, in my head. And each of my DAO orginis has their own voice. What happened to imagination? Even Einstein said imagination was more important than IQ or brains.

And yes, if I want to watch a flippin' movie I will go to the theater or pop in a blue ray. I don't need to have a sodding movie for my video game.

Modifié par erynnar, 08 avril 2011 - 05:59 .

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

None of these elements by their own are all that bothersome, but when combined, you feel less like playing a game, but rather playing through a movie. A consequence of which, is that it's very restrictive in what can actually happen, what you can say, what you can do. As if everything is fit into a mold before you even start up the game.

I understand that all games are like that to varying degrees, but I've always believed that an RPG was less about playing a pre-determined role, and instead playing one that you made. With certain traits, certain skills and yes, a certain voice that you had for him/her. It was your character, no one else's. Playing through someone else's shoes with a pre-defined personality, pre-defined voice and pre-determined path and actions, that's more the territory of action, adventure or even Japanese role-playing games.

I can fully understand if other people disagree and enjoy playing a game with a voiced PC and non specific dialogue options (saying what you feel rather than thinking through what your character would say). There's nothing wrong with that. It works just fine in many games. It's just not for me, especially in an RPG.

Not making a dig at DA 2 in particular, but I wouldn't be comfortable if many more "traditional" RPGs took this path.

Modifié par mrcrusty, 08 avril 2011 - 06:16 .

[Shazzie]

If the character is saying things I never wanted her to say, and catching me by surprise, then it is not my character any longer. It's the game's protagonist, which I happen to be attempting to control by flipping switches and clicking buttons. But it's not my character, it's not me. Immersion is impossible.

*I* want to be the one making my character angry, or indignant, or forceful, not relying on 'best guess' options and never knowing what the character will be saying.

Having a voiced protagonist isn't too bad. And I did even like the dominant personality thing, a lot. But... having no idea what the character will say changes it from 'my character' to 'the character'. Hawke will never be 'my Hawke', not like the Warden was 'my Warden'. For my Warden, I made choices, I built her personality, and each of my Wardens are distinct on their own in my memories. The Hawkes I played will always be some character I steered through options to see the game's ending.