Perhaps I shouldn't have responded to the initial thread at all. The responses from some quarters are fairly predictable -- "Oh, he's being arrogant. He thinks he knows what everyone wants, but he's wrong!"
I don't, in fact, know what everyone wants, nor do I think I have all the answers. This is a field in which I have a lot of experience, however, so I'll speak to that, and in terms of how the writing team can best use the resources at hand. Resources are, after all, the reality of game development. So if I'm talking about things that you find irrelevant, that's fine. I just can't express it in any other terms, and I know for a fact that no matter what solution I end up trying it's never going to work for everyone.
To put it another way, I get that not everyone felt connected to the followers. It's not universally true, by any means, but I get some people feel that way. Regardless of the reason behind it, that feeling is valid. What seems to get on some people's goat a little is my suggestion that the cause is not
necessarily what they suggest it is. When someone says "this is the way I felt", I'll pay attention. When they move onto "and this is why", I'm a little more skeptical. They may be right, at least for them, but more often what I see is people making a comparison to something they thought was better and assuming anything that's different must be the cause. I doubt it's that easy.
Rather than repeat my mistake and talk more about what I think the real reasons
might be, I'll simply clarify a few erroneous rumors. I don't think Origins did it "wrong". I think Origins was terribly inefficient in its use of resources, but we also had a lot on hand to throw around. I think there's a better way to do it, but I can also see where DA2's method was lacking. And while I don't think agency is really the issue -- there are lots of games, some of which we've even made, where a player has no agency at all in the relationships and yet feels connected -- I do think there's something to be said about a player feeling better acquainted with their follower. If those "long rambling conversations" do anything, it's bestowing a feeling like you know a character prior to adventuring with them.
As for conversations being a thing of the past, that's simply not true. You had quite a few conversations with your followers in DA2, some of them quite lengthy. Overall the density of conversation was, in fact, higher than in Origins. When I say 'that's not going to happen again", I mean the dialogue being as weighted in favor of "tell me about" questions as it was in Origins. I'd sooner have followers
reacting to the plot more often, scenes like a follower coming to speak to you about your mother, then I would putting more resources into exposition-- which has its place, don't get me wrong, but I really don't think that's
why most people connect to a character. Perhaps the "notice" you received whenever new dialogue became available made people feel like it was always quest-related (which, if so, certainly wasn't it's intent-- the intent was to not make you feel like you had to keep returning to a follower only to get "I'm still recalibrating the weapons" dialogue), perhaps it simply
felt too structured and some level of spontaneity is required-- as in a feeling that the conversation you're having is because you wanted it to happen (whether that's technically true or not, perception is everything). There are several possibilities, not all of which can be addressed, but some might be at least on the structural level.
If anything, my comment was directed solely at those who felt the Origins method was the only possible solution, that they required lengthy and repeated conversations about nothing in particular in order to feel connected. If someone absolutely feels that's the case, my response was that they weren't likely to feel connected to a character of ours again in a game. That said, I don't feel that the DA2 method is the be-all and end-all of our development on this front, nor that everything Origins did was wrong-- while some people will mix things like plot and content volume into this argument as if they're the same thing, I think there's some very valuable information to be garnered even if I'm forced to filter it through my "I only have limited resources" lens.
If I also have to take such criticism with the caveat that it's primarily going to come from those who didn't enjoy the results, and that there are those who did... well, you can call that arrogance if you like. I seem to get called arrogant a lot these days when I disagree with someone regarding what they think Dragon Age should be. If simply having the power to form my own conclusions and act as I think best (ignoring the fact that I do not control the franchise outside of my tiny corner of it) is arrogant, then so be it. I'll simply ask you in the most snide and arrogant tone possible to keep providing such useful and thoughtful feedback. Even if it doesn't seem like we're coming to the conclusions you think we should be, it's still very much appreciated.
Modifié par David Gaider, 24 avril 2011 - 07:26 .
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): either throw enough time and money at the project to fully realize a two-sided conversation with enough branching paths to offer signifcant player input toward the development of her character and of her character's relationships, or abandon a voiced protagonist. I like the voiced PC. I think that it's a change for the better. But if this is the tradeoff, it's not worth it to me.
