996 réponses à ce sujet

[Volaren]

I prefer to have a silent protagonist ONLY because it seems to allow for more choice in the dialogue and allows for more variety for the protagonist, race and country of origin in particular.

One voice does not fit all unless the protagonist is fixed (as it was for DA2), ie a human for Ferelden. But what if in DA3 (if there is going to be one) you get the choice of race and country of origin. Imagine how immersion breaking it would be if you only had one voice for vastly different characters.

It would probably be prohibitively expensive to have the best of both words, ie voiced protagonist and rich and varied dialogue options. So it seems Bioware will have to pick one or the other. I prefer to at least have the illusion of choice in a game. The dialogue wheel felt like playing roulette - you may get the line you want to say or not (mostly not).

[DxWill10]

marinerzz wrote...

If you want to fix your reputation after the complete debacle of DA2!

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

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.

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

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!

I disagree wholeheartedly.  How can you approve a completely emotionless expressionless/muted main character?

[Nexpeed]

If DA:O pc has had that list of choices of what to say and i'ts voiced acted, no one of you guys would compare DA:O and DA2 about what he/she says, even if it's a silent protagonist you guys won't have any control or "being your character stuff" of what the pc has to say, because it's already scripted in the game, voice or no voice it's the same, if the game puts in more choices like in DA:O and what if they did the same "more choices in DA2... only voiced this time

[Sabriana]

I felt that my choices were taken away.

Hawke is not *my* character, not like my Warden was (and still is). I like reading the lines that my character is actually going to say. I hate being shocked at what comes out of her mouth, most often dialogue that *my* character would never say. I can't count the times I was actually angry because the silly wheel jarred me right out of game-play.

If I want to watch a movie, I go watch one.
If I want to play an action game, I pick one to play
If I want to play a FPS, I go play one

I have a pre-set idea about what an RPG should be. To me, an RPG is a game where I choose what role my character inhabits. I want to agonize over outfitting my companions. I want to talk to them whenever I feel my character should. I want to give my character the personality *I* envision for her. I want her to say what I think is within her personality, please, for heaven's sake, don't surprise me. I don't want to be surprised. This is my character, I build her up, nurtured her, developed her, so I know exactly how she would react and what she will say.

Hawke is not my character, I just get to play a BioWare character. The Warden was my character. Good grief, even my Oblivion character feels more like my creation than Hawke does. How sad is that? The silly-wheel to *me* was like "I pressed a button, and something very silly happened."

So yes, OP. I agree with your post.

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

DxWill10 wrote...

marinerzz wrote...

If you want to fix your reputation after the complete debacle of DA2!

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

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.

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

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!

I disagree wholeheartedly.  How can you approve a completely emotionless expressionless/muted main character?

I can only speak personally, but it's simply imagination.

I read the dialogue options given to me, I read them over in my head and I choose the option that feels most appropriate for the character and/or context.

It's less cinematic than a voiced character, granted, but some things are best left to the imagination.

Modifié par mrcrusty, 08 avril 2011 - 06:45 .

[wright1978]

Nutty idea imo. Voiced protaganist was the single biggest improvement between DAO and DA2.
Don't have a problem with the dialogue wheel either.
Liked Morrigan too though, so that's a full house of disagreement from me.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Scimal wrote...

I wouldn't vote that way. Since the rendering capabilities were inevitable,

The capabilities were inevitable.  their use was never mandatory.

You can't just ignore one design choice because its convenient to do so.  One design choice drives another.  If having the detailed rendering creates a problem, the ideal solution is to eliminate the detailed rendering.  Creating a new problem to mask the old one just makes things worse.

If BW chooses to switch engines again, I wouldn't mind a silent protagonist.

I agree entirely.  I just think it's lunacy to consider the two separately at all.

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.

The desired outcome isn't reelvant.  What matters is the desired expression.  If I'm controlling the character, I want him to say things that suit him.  Whether those things produce the outcome he wants (after all, it's his preferences that matter, not mine) should be decided by the game, not by me.

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 insist that the previous games implied no tone.

I don't really want to pull out my "implication doesn't exist" essay.

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.

The DA2 system has nothing at all to do with the basics of interpersonal communication.  The old system mimicked interpersonal communication brilliantly.

If the consumers want to roleplay a character, then they want the old system.

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.

It's the expectations of the investors that have changed.  15 years ago, games were highly profitable selling 200,000 copies.

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.

How many times did you play the game?  Naturally if you play a character that BioWare foresaw then the cutscenes will work.  But if you play repeatedly with the specific intent of playing significantly different characters, the game is guaranteed to fail.

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.

The characters and story hit my character emotionally.  Playing my character invests me intellectually.  That's all an RPG can ever do, and that's all I want from it.  But if I'm not controlling the character, then I have no idea how he's reacting to the characters and story.

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.

I despise action combat.  Having player reflexes determine in-game outcomes is antithetical to the RPG.  Under no circumstances is that acceptable (one of many reasons I cannot stand ME2).  But I take your point.  For that experience, I can play Alpha Centauri (which is a brilliant game, and I replay it fairly often).

[Sylvius the Mad]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

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.

Whether it was an accident is immaterial.  It was a feature that is now gone.  that they weren't necessarily aware they were including is no reason why they can't put it back now that it's been pointed out.

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.

Again, this is a good reason to scrap the extensive voice-acting altogether.  That would also allow the PC's name to be used in dialogue as a variable again.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

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.

That's your choice, though.  You've seen me making this point for many months.

That you chose to view the unvoiced dialogue options as literal representations of actual words is something you did.  You chose to limit your possible interpretations.

There is nothing about those full-text options that is necessarily any less abstract that the keyword systems used in Morrowind or Ultima IV.

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.

The problem is that it doesn't allow more detailed characters than the broad archetypes you've described.  If I want to play a nerd who tries to sound like a badass but fails, I can't do that.  If I choose the badass options in DA2, Hawke sounds like a badass.  But if I don't choose those options, then he's not saying badass things.

DA2 basically forces Hawke to succeed at whatever he does all of the time.  That's a boring character.

[Sylvius the Mad]

DxWill10 wrote...

I disagree wholeheartedly.  How can you approve a completely emotionless expressionless/muted main character?

I don't.  But in a game like DAO, if your character is emotionlesss then it's your fault for not giving him any emotions.

Emotions are things that are felt.  Expressions are things that are expressed.  There's no necessary connection between the two.  If you want the game to have the character's emotions expressed, then yes the game needs to decide what those emotions are.

But surely there the cure is worse than the disease.  If the game is playing the character for you, what is the point of playing the game at all?

[Sylvius the Mad]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

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. 

Which is why they need to make the voices optional - both the PC and NPC voices, ideally separately so the player can have one or the other or both or neither as suits his preferences.

[Shazzie]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

DxWill10 wrote...

I disagree wholeheartedly.  How can you approve a completely emotionless expressionless/muted main character?

I don't.  But in a game like DAO, if your character is emotionlesss then it's your fault for not giving him any emotions.

Emotions are things that are felt.  Expressions are things that are expressed.  There's no necessary connection between the two.  If you want the game to have the character's emotions expressed, then yes the game needs to decide what those emotions are.

But surely there the cure is worse than the disease.  If the game is playing the character for you, what is the point of playing the game at all?

Ooh. I agree wholeheartedly. This is absolutely and completely true for me.

In DA:O, I felt the emotions of my character, my Warden, as they developed from the explicit choices I made. i was required to supply them, and I did. In spades.

In DA2, I watched Hawke get emotional via my best-guess responses ... but I seldom got emotional, myself.  I never had to.  I just guessed at the responses and watched my guesses play out. I never had to get invested, and I was never given enough information to truly invest myself, anyway.

[Monica83]

I have nothing aganist a vo character but i hate the damned wheel

[mdugger12]

I totally understand the silent protagonist argument. Personally one of the things I didn't like about DA:O was a mute Warden just sitting there during conversations. But it sounds like the issue here is how much of the game should be left to the players imagination. At that point it comes down to personal taste more than right and wrong. I think it's fair for the player to have the option for their character to speak or not. The dialog wheel really wouldn't matter at that point.

[AkiKishi]

The issue with voice protagonists is one of rudundancy. If you already know what you are going to say because the full dialogue is listed, do you really need to hear it said ?
Rather I would focus on the NPC responses.
Where "silent" falls appart is in cutscenes. In cutscenes it's very obvious that your character is lacking. Outside of cutscenes, not a problem.

I'd like to see a "test" of part voiced. Keep the voice for the cinematics, lose it for the "choices". I've seen in JRPG's and I don't really miss the voices in the less dramatic parts of the game.

The other way is to make everything front loaded. Choose your characters personality at the start of the game, then have the character play itself within those criteria.

A simple personality test at the start of the game would do the trick. It's been done many times before.

Modifié par BobSmith101, 08 avril 2011 - 10:57 .

[Sacred_Fantasy]

Sigh... I never had any issue communicating with my character in my role-play before. This new disease of dysfunction personification voiced over protagonist add a N virus to my PC turning my PC into a NPC and my story into a movie interactive viable trough hack n slash element. If these feature are what modern JRPG player worshipped so much, then I would rather go back in time to play my silent voice protagonist first person perspective narrative. I never get into this voicing and third person perspective anyway. I could not understand the need to follow a specific pre-defined character story for the cost of $60 when you can easily watch movie or read novel for $10 or less which feature thousand times far convincing personality professional actors. If action and interactivity is what merit to play a game, then we already have CoD, Medal of Honor, thousands of adventure games, GTA and other genre as well. If a role-player refuse to journey his own character creation and development inside the realm of fantasy which DM or developer design for him then what the purpose of playing a RPG? What the purpose of imagine yourself as Luke Skywalker when all you do is hiding behind Mark Richard Hamill, watch Star Wars movie bundled with illusion of choice dialogue wheels and button mashing awesomeness?

Modifié par Sacred_Fantasy, 08 avril 2011 - 11:06 .

[Sabriana]

BobSmith101 wrote...

The issue with voice protagonists is one of rudundancy. If you already know what you are going to say because the full dialogue is listed, do you really need to hear it said ?
Rather I would focus on the NPC responses.
Where "silent" falls appart is in cutscenes. In cutscenes it's very obvious that your character is lacking. Outside of cutscenes, not a problem.

I'd like to see a "test" of part voiced. Keep the voice for the cinematics, lose it for the "choices". I've seen in JRPG's and I don't really miss the voices in the less dramatic parts of the game.

The other way is to make everything front loaded. Choose your characters personality at the start of the game, then have the character play itself within those criteria.

A simple personality test at the start of the game would do the trick. It's been done many times before.

NWN 2 does that in a way. The protagonist is silent, but the NPC's only speak for a limited time, such as cut-scenes. And I quite liked it that way.

[fchopin]

erynnar wrote...

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.

As soon as i heard what my character was saying after selecting the heart option i reloaded and always selected the broken heart for all companions.
 
There is no way i would do a romance with all the crap coming out from my characters mouth.
 
Its like the text says Friday and my character says Sunday, no relation from text to speech.

[nicethugbert]

marinerzz wrote...

If you want to fix your reputation after the complete debacle of DA2!

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

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.

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

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!

Absolutely ****ing NOT!

I don't want to go back to slow, mute, unsurprising games.  Sandal had more personality than The Warden in DA:O.

Modifié par nicethugbert, 08 avril 2011 - 11:16 .

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

nicethugbert wrote...

marinerzz wrote...

If you want to fix your reputation after the complete debacle of DA2!

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

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.

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

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!

Absolutely ****ing NOT!

I don't want to go back to slow, mute, unsurprising games.  Sandal had more personality than The Warden in DA:O.

You gave me sad face.

A decent compromise would be to have the option of a voiced protagonist or not and have fully written out responses instead of the wheel. Basically, Origins but with the choice of voiced out responses. Don't see what's wrong with that.

Modifié par mrcrusty, 08 avril 2011 - 11:19 .

[AkiKishi]

Sacred_Fantasy wrote...

Sigh... I never had any issue communicating with my character in my role-play before. This new disease of dysfunction personification voiced over protagonist add a N virus to my PC turning my PC into a NPC and my story into a movie interactive viable trough hack n slash element. If these feature are what modern JRPG player worshipped so much, then I would rather go back in time to play my silent voice protagonist first person perspective narrative. I never get into this voicing and third person perspective anyway. I could not understand the need to follow a specific pre-defined character story for the cost of $60 when you can easily watch movie or read novel for $10 or less which feature thousand times far convincing personality professional actors. If action and interactivity is what merit to play a game, then we already have CoD, Medal of Honor, thousands of adventure games, GTA and other genre as well. If a role-player refuse to journey his own character creation and development inside the realm of fantasy which DM or developer design for him then what the purpose of playing a RPG? What the purpose of imagine yourself as Luke Skywalker when all you do is hiding behind Mark Richard Hamill, watch Star Wars movie bundled with illusion of choice dialogue wheels and button mashing awesomeness?

It's something that has only come up since cinemtatics have become a big part of games. JRPGs obviously used cinematics much eariler on , hence them going the non intereractive character route (as far back as FFVII).
It's more recent in CRPGs as cutscenes have become the prefered way of advancing the story, over the BG "text" method.

Quite why we need the JRPG method when we already have JRPGs , well your guess is as good as mine.

Modifié par BobSmith101, 08 avril 2011 - 11:21 .

[mdugger12]

Well don't throw out the wheel. On the console I found it way easier to use than the lines of dialogue. Speaking optional, I'm with you.

lol Oh and what is the opposite of button mashing awesomeness?

Modifié par mdugger12, 08 avril 2011 - 11:27 .

[Nassegris]

For me, I thought I’d hate the voiced dialogue but it was a mixed bag. I loved the female voice-over and can’t stand the male one, but the issue is with the wheel and not the voice itself.

First, I want more choices. I don’t necessarily need to know every single word that’s going to be said, but instead of the three choices of ‘peaceful, silly and aggressive’, I’d like some short guidelines of what’s going to be said and more alternatives. Such as writing out a short thing like maybe… 1: hesitant: “why would you think that?” 2: angry: “that’s a stupid thing to say!” 3: humorous: “Cute, you’re like a talking doll.”, 4: avoiding: “I’d rather we didn’t talk about that…” etc, even maybe combining such as hesitant/flirty or angry/hurt, giving more of a hint of your character’s personality and giving more options and a more in-depth conversation… at this point, I feel my character falls flat not so much because I like or dislike the voice but because the choices are so dang narrow. By the end of the game I barely knew who she was, and I should have known best of all. No need to write out the whole dialogue but show more of it than now, and more variety.

Anyway, I don’t know. I still preferred how it was done in Origins but I can see that they want to change it and if they want to change it, I’d love it if they could at least move in a direction where I get to have more of a say in who she is and why.

Modifié par Nassegris, 08 avril 2011 - 11:41 .

[mdugger12]

Nassegris wrote...

For me, I thought I’d hate the voiced dialogue but it was a mixed bag. I loved the female voice-over and can’t stand the male one, but the issue is with the wheel and not the voice itself.

First, I want more choices. I don’t necessarily need to know every single word that’s going to be said, but instead of the three choices of ‘peaceful, silly and aggressive’, I’d like some short guidelines of what’s going to be said and more alternatives. Such as writing out a short thing like maybe… 1: hesitant: “why would you think that?” 2: angry: “that’s a stupid thing to say!” 3: humorous: “Cute, you’re like a talking doll.”, 4: avoiding: “I’d rather we didn’t talk about that…” etc, even maybe combining such as hesitant/flirty or angry/hurt, giving more of a hint of your character’s personality and giving more options and a more in-depth conversation… at this point, I feel my character falls flat not so much because I like or dislike the voice but because the choices are so dang narrow. By the end of the game I barely knew who she was, and I should have known best of all. No need to write out the whole dialogue but show more of it than now, and more variety.

Anyway, I don’t know. I still preferred how it was done in Origins but I can see that they want to change it and if they want to change it, I’d love it if they could at least move in a direction where I get to have more of a say in who she is and why.

Having more choices and being able to combine options is actually a pretty good idea. A little more variety couldn't hurt. I guess combine the wheel with some sort of tree system? That might be cool for DA 3.

[Wulfram]

If anything, I find Hawke less emotional than the warden - in Origins you didn't get the close ups, so you could fill in your own expression for the warden, while in DA2 you can see and hear the lack of reaction.