263 réponses à ce sujet

[Lumikki]

Ieolus wrote...

Lumikki, I'm sorry, but that is stupid. DA2 plays nothing like BG. I don't need to go through the laundry list of things removed from DA2 because it's been done to death. My point stands whether you want to agree or not.

It's stupid only because you assume so. I mean you have created this assumption how something has to be and then stand behind it like it's the way it should be. Nothing wrong to have opinion and assume something. How ever, NEVER assume that others agree with you assumptions. Like you and me have here disagreement. Every game Bioware does has something "new" different, but also alot of similarities. How different you see games, is based what game features you value a lot and what not.  Can you example say, why doesn't DA2 play like DAO?

So, it seem that we have ended in disagreement, because way "spiritual successor" meaning has been interpreted.

Modifié par Lumikki, 17 avril 2011 - 12:31 .

[jds1bio]

Siradix wrote...

Xanfaus wrote...

Hopefully,whether or not Bioware decides to charge for a more complete conclusion
to various events in DA2, they will not just evade tricky story points
as "Varric sometimes lied" or the alternative "Because we thought it
would be better if X did not actually happen."

That wouldn't surprise me, they seem to like the idea of ignoring
continuity, if it gets in the way of telling the story.

That's part of the corner they're in.  From the import-save inconsistencies, to the lock-down of the effect of choice on the main story.

Remember when David Gaider gave this response to StraightMaleGamer a few weeks ago (and I quote):

That’s why romances are optional content. It’s such a personal issue that we’ll never be able to please everyone. The very best we can do is give everyone a little bit of choice, and that’s what we tried here.
And the person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least.

Leave out the romances part, I understand his response in that context.  But if there are people at BioWare who feel that those who restrict options of others for their own self-interest are least deserving of it, then they should suggest an audit of their save-game import usage and their usage of player choice when crafting an RPG around a story like DA2's story.  They could be seen as restricting options to the paying customers that they invited to select from those options and choices in the first place. 

Consider the import save games.  A wonderful idea to keep fans following the continued saga of the Dragon Age universe.  Until, that is, certain savegame options are deemed inconsequential to the story you want to tell (and I'm not talking about bugs).  Aren't you restricting the options of others to have their DA:O + DLC game choices count for something in the future DA stories?  Was this the only way to please the supervisors of the DA IP?

Also consider DA2's main story.  BioWare tried to and did give everyone just a little bit of choice when it comes to the main story (merc or smugg servitude, resolving the qunari conundrum, relate to Anders or not, certain dialogues), and then asked us to make a large choice near the end, one whose importance they had been selling the entire game.  (Apologies if you've read this from me before.)  But other than a few tiny bits in the final battles, and the 15 seconds immediately following the final conflict and a couple of Varric lines, my Hawke's story ends with the same last few pages as everyone else's.  No matter what I chose throughout the game.

That's fine for a story, but for an RPG that promotes an innovative game mechanic regarding choice and consequence, and asks the player to make a crucial main-story choice near the end, it seems anti-climactic for the main-story choices to result in merely a one-endgame-fits-all ending that doesn't attempt to relate to the player's climactic main-story choices from Acts I, II, and III.  Which is strange, since choice and consequence were very well represented in the "optional" content - the romances and the sidequests.  Was this restricting of the effect of the player's main-story choices in favor of a singular conclusion the only way to please the supervisors of the story?

Modifié par jds1bio, 17 avril 2011 - 02:30 .

[medusa_hair]

I felt like there was both choice and consequence in this game BUT significant only where it involved your companions. I have played 2 complete playthroughs plus a bit of a third and the only real changes I have noticed were involving the companions (let's just say I experienced the maximum number of poor choices regarding companions during my second playthrough). As soon as I saw the ultimate final enemy I figured out that would be the final confrontation. In fairness, it would be difficult to alter the end point of the story...there will be a final battle and all roads will lead to it (we all had to deal with the Archdemon, as well). However, I did miss the epilogue-type ending to wrap things up, and the sequel-setting-up ending was an obvious attempt to suck us in to DA3 in order to find out what ultimately happens and get some closure to the story.

I agree that Bioware went a little too far in the opposite direction from DAO - some change was definitely needed, but not such a complete rework. One of the problems is that these forums tend to be filled with the strongly negative opinions which may not be representative of the entire player base or reflect the same intensity of the entire player base's feelings about the flaws of a particular game. I wonder if they gave too much weight to the trollers and not enough to their original vision.

Lastly, there was some discussion about story vs combat as the more important element of an RPG. The combat is what will make me throw down the controller in disgust if the mechanics of combat are awkward or it is too hard (the final Act II battle of DA2 comes to mind in terms of difficulty). The story is what keeps me coming back for more playthroughs. I don't think you can fully sacrifice one for the other, but I will finish a game with a somewhat weaker story if the combat is OK. I just won't play it again, and certainly won't recommend it to others. I think that DAO was a little unusual in that the story was vastly more gripping than the combat; in fact, in my opinion the story is what made it great. DA2 has an okay story. I could have done without the time skips, and I wish Varric had been a romance option considering that my options were limited to zealot templar-hater, cynical mage-hater (a large stumbling block if you happen to be playing a mage), and wanna-be-priest (who unfortunately happens to be both the most normal AND the best-looking). I may or may not finish this third playthrough because I feel like I have exhausted all the choices that mean anything.

I'm sorry if this post is a little disjointed. I skipped through a few pages and wanted to put in my two cents.

[Xanfaus]

medusa_hair wrote...

In fairness, it would be difficult to alter the end point of the story...there will be a final battle and all roads will lead to it (we all had to deal with the Archdemon, as well).

The difference is that in Origins it was pretty much a given that there would be a showdown with the archdemon. No choice was ever given or hinted at to join, to side, or to empathise with the darkspawn. In contrast, DA2 seemingly offers a choice but the end result is the same regardless of what path the player takes.

medusa_hair continues...

I think that DAO was a little unusual in that the story was vastly more gripping than the combat; in fact, in my opinion the story is what made it great.

A good or an excellent story acts as the major draw for Bioware games as the ones that I have played (KOTOR, ME 1 & 2, Origins, and DA2) succeeded only at having acceptable or serviceable combat. The only exception that had combat that I mostly enjoyed was Mass Effect 2, and that's because I like to play the occasional shooting game [also, 'cuz Vanguard's charge vs Ymir mechs is ]. Other than ME2, I just try to find the easiest and quickest way to get through whatever combat the game presented to get to the bit of the gameplay I actually look forward to which is namely the story and/or dialogue. As for DA2 specifically, the combat felt like a slightly more sped up version of Origin's while the story was less than entralling despite suppossedly being more intimate.

[Sidney]

Ieolus wrote...
Bioware set the expectation themselves.  BG1 --> BG2.  DA:O as "spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate series".  They heavily, heavily, marketted Origins as such.  It is almost fraud the way they threw out everything they built in Origins to give us DA2.

Except they didn't throw out everything. The game is still a point n' click, happy stats time game. There's no "shooter-izing" like ME2 did or what FO3 did to the FO series. For all the comments about "action RPG" there's no action to be had unless everything from BG1 to KoTOR to DAO was an "action" RPG as well. The game plays the same as BG1 in terms of combat and most game mechanisms.

Far too much of the whining is about stuff that doesn't matter. Race selection was a joke in DAO because it didn't matter. Same with the origins that changed the first 45 minutes of the game at most. Those could have gone away in DAO and you'd have had 97% the same story no matter what.

DA2 clearly isn't perfect but this notion that it is not in the same lines as BG2 or DAO is a total lie.

[Dragoonlordz]

iakus wrote...

DA2 did well in allowing you to shape Hawke. You could really decide what kind of "Champion" you end up being. There's plenty of rpgs out there that can't even do this well.

However, what the game really didn't do was allow this Champion to have any real effect on Kirkwall. Events were pretty much locked in, all you could do was react to them.

[jds1bio]

medusa_hair wrote...

I felt like there was both choice and consequence in this game BUT significant only where it involved your companions.

...

I may or may not finish this third playthrough because I feel like I have exhausted all the choices that mean anything.

I'm sorry if this post is a little disjointed. I skipped through a few pages and wanted to put in my two cents.

I understand what you mean.  What's the point of selecting certain dialogue choices, just to hear a second of two of (maybe) different words, when the resulting happenings are going to happen no matter what you chose.

No need to apologize, thanks for your feedback.

[GRX Dragon]

Khayness wrote...

Great read there.

Every fleshed out questlines are about combat (even the so called dating service one eventually boils down to it aswell), and you can't really interact with your companions that much like in previous games. The highlight of each new act for me was to check up on the folks.

In ME1/2 you can spend hours doing nothing but touring the ship and talking with people, not to mention DA:O, even JE had it to some degree. And there are many non combat quests to fool around with (like the Hub worlds in ME1/2, in DA:O they were mostly fetch quests, but atleast most of them had a short story arc, no "Hi, I've found the body of your dead aunt, this must be yours" quests).

No innovation isn't the true genre death, adopting the conveyor belt like "let's push out games mad fast" attitude is, which isn't really compatible with RPG development.

This.

jds1bio wrote... That's fine for a story, but for an RPG that promotes an innovative game mechanic regarding choice and consequence, and asks the player to make a crucial main-story choice near the end, it seems anti-climactic for the main-story choices to result in merely a one-endgame-fits-all ending that doesn't attempt to relate to the player's climactic main-story choices from Acts I, II, and III.  Which is strange, since choice and consequence were very well represented in the "optional" content - the romances and the sidequests.  Was this restricting of the effect of the player's main-story choices in favor of a singular conclusion the only way to please the supervisors of the story?

That's exactly the point, too.

DA2 was promoted as a western RPG, a sequel to DAO, a game with choices that'd affect the story, a choic to side in the end that should logically affect the outcome.

[Ieolus]

Sidney wrote...

Ieolus wrote...
Bioware set the expectation themselves.  BG1 --> BG2.  DA:O as "spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate series".  They heavily, heavily, marketted Origins as such.  It is almost fraud the way they threw out everything they built in Origins to give us DA2.

Except they didn't throw out everything. The game is still a point n' click, happy stats time game. There's no "shooter-izing" like ME2 did or what FO3 did to the FO series. For all the comments about "action RPG" there's no action to be had unless everything from BG1 to KoTOR to DAO was an "action" RPG as well. The game plays the same as BG1 in terms of combat and most game mechanisms.

DA2 clearly isn't perfect but this notion that it is not in the same lines as BG2 or DAO is a total lie.

What?  The game plays the same as BG1 in terms of combat?  Did you actually play DA2?

[jds1bio]

At least this game gave you the choice of pressing attack buttons or pausing and setting up tactics.

[erynnar]

Ieolus wrote...

Sidney wrote...

Ieolus wrote...
Bioware set the expectation themselves.  BG1 --> BG2.  DA:O as "spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate series".  They heavily, heavily, marketted Origins as such.  It is almost fraud the way they threw out everything they built in Origins to give us DA2.

Except they didn't throw out everything. The game is still a point n' click, happy stats time game. There's no "shooter-izing" like ME2 did or what FO3 did to the FO series. For all the comments about "action RPG" there's no action to be had unless everything from BG1 to KoTOR to DAO was an "action" RPG as well. The game plays the same as BG1 in terms of combat and most game mechanisms.

DA2 clearly isn't perfect but this notion that it is not in the same lines as BG2 or DAO is a total lie.

What?  The game plays the same as BG1 in terms of combat?  Did you actually play DA2?

Um, yeah, BGI? I am playing BG1 and DA2 battle is nothing like it.  Thanks for playing Sydney...we have these lovely parting gifts...<_<

[ZombiesAteHim]

DA:O got boring after the 4th playthrough. The combat was incredibly dull, and your choices did not change the game as much as everyone seems to conveniently remember. As to the DA2 ending, your choices are clearly influencing the 3rd game, so you won't see those changes until the next game.

[nightscrawl]

jds1bio wrote...

So much of their RPG experience in the last decade has been with games built around increasingly-accessible battle systems, with tacked-on "skills" or "good/bad scales" that have less to do with the roleplaying and more to do with being a "good-natured" combatant or an "agressive-evil" combatant, or more to do with completing only very specific quests.  So when the player is disappointed by the limited role-playing options in a game that may also overrule their prior decisions, they tend to seek solace in the combat experience.

Excellent description!

But until the disgruntled fans are willing to move beyond combat features to seek out role-playing, and BioWare is willing to move beyond an immutable story shape, they will remain huddled up in their respective corners without being able to meet.

The bolded is the key part there. For me, the story is the most important aspect. My first play of DA2 was on Casual. Laugh if you want, but the story is what concerned me initally, and I didn't want to worry about planning out fights, or dying, or whatever.

Looking at the various nightmare threads, I think it's good that Bioware can develop a game that can please the story-oriented audience as well as the more hardcore "push my skills to the max" crowd of gamers. I think most game companies try to do both of those things.

I'm not sure if a company can make a game that is 100% RP vs 100% combat, instead of having 50/50. They might lose too much of their audience going too far either way.

jds1bio wrote...

Remember when David Gaider gave this response to StraightMaleGamer a few weeks ago (and I quote):

That’s why romances are optional content. It’s such a personal  issue that we’ll never be able to please everyone. The very best we can do is give everyone a little bit of choice, and that’s what we tried here. And the person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least.

Leave out the romances part, I understand his response in that context. But if there are people at BioWare who feel that those who restrict options of others for their own self-interest are least deserving of it, then they should suggest an audit of their save-game import usage and their usage of player choice when crafting an RPG around a story like DA2's story. They could be seen as restricting options to the paying customers that they invited to select from those options and choices in the first place.

You cannot "leave out the romances part" if you are quoting that statement, because it was essential to his response. I find it offensive that you are comparing his response to what was homophobic biggotry to game development. David Gaider's stance on a moral issue has nothing whatever to do with his (or Bioware's) game development philosophy.

Please don't make me invoke Godwin's Law to prove how ridiculous it is to take quotes out of context.

Modifié par nightscrawl, 18 avril 2011 - 10:15 .

[jds1bio]

nightscrawl wrote...

jds1bio wrote...

Remember when David Gaider gave this response to StraightMaleGamer a few weeks ago (and I quote):

That’s why romances are optional content. It’s such a personal  issue that we’ll never be able to please everyone. The very best we can do is give everyone a little bit of choice, and that’s what we tried here. And the person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least.

Leave out the romances part, I understand his response in that context. But if there are people at BioWare who feel that those who restrict options of others for their own self-interest are least deserving of it, then they should suggest an audit of their save-game import usage and their usage of player choice when crafting an RPG around a story like DA2's story. They could be seen as restricting options to the paying customers that they invited to select from those options and choices in the first place.

You cannot "leave out the romances part" if you are quoting that statement, because it was essential to his response. I find it offensive that you are comparing his response to what was homophobic biggotry to game development. David Gaider's stance on a moral issue has nothing whatever to do with his (or Bioware's) game development philosophy.

Please don't make me invoke Godwin's Law to prove how ridiculous it is to take quotes out of context.

Thank you for your feedback.  I didn't leave out the romances part when quoting that statement, the quote is all there.  Gaider, and the rest of the royal "we" he uses, made a game design decision "to give everyone a little bit of choice", based on not being able to please everyone's personal tastes - without addressing bigotry directly.  Then he implies that StraightMaleGamer deserves to have his preferences the least because he would readily dismiss  the options and preferences of others by dismissing much of the romance options from the game.

That dismissing of options may point towards homophobic bigotry in StraightMaleGamer's case, but that dismissing is not actually happening in this game.  Anyone of ANY persuasion can play ANY of the romance options with either gender of Hawke however they see fit. 

But, a dismissing of options IS happening in this game, and it has to do with the import save games and the main-story choices.  And people ARE offended by it, particularly after spending dozens of hours in DA:O to make choices from some of those options. 

So when making my point, I "left out the romances" because the romances and bigotry were not going to be brought up. What was brought up was the mechanic of restricting options that were already implemented in the games, in order to establish someone else's preference first and foremost.  I didn't take the quote out of context, I just pointed out that what he said about restricting choices actually exists within the game now.  I then questioned whether the people who made those decisions for DA2 felt justified, knowing that some players might be maligned by the treatment their choices received.

Modifié par jds1bio, 18 avril 2011 - 06:25 .