Interesting interview...thanks for posting.
David Gaider:
[...] and also have the concept of the “unreliable narrator”—such as in The Usual Suspects where you’re not certain by the end of the tale whether the narrator was telling the truth.
Perhaps I'm slightly bitter about the DA:O epilogue slides being labelled as 'rumour and hearsay' when I think you might as
well have a self-declared liar narrating the entire game. At least it's out in the open that any differences between DA2, the DLC and future DA games can be attributed to a dwarf's creative liberties.
Much as I love Varric as a character and think this sort of narrative style is fine for a movie, for the most part I don't think it works for an RPG. Being left wondering if your character actually did the things you made her do isn't a satisfying experience.
David Gaider:
I think the medium is quickly moving toward being far more cinematic than it was—which is both good and bad, I think. It’s good in that we can show as much as we tell, now. Bad because we suddenly have to show, and less can be left to the imagination … something which, in many ways, we will never be able to compete with. Far be it from me to be a Luddite, however. This is the direction the technology is moving, and hopefully we’ll reach a point where creating the cinematics is inexpensive enough that we can branch out as much as we did when it was primarily text we were working with.
It's fantastic to see that issues like this are recognised, and even better than we're able to *see* Bioware recognises them. Good interview question, great answer.
The day cinematics become easy/cheap enough for them to be as branching as dialogue options will be an awesome one indeed.
Same with multiple PC VOs.
Unfortunately I am stuck in my camp of 'If you can't branch and offer diversity, don't do it! Or let me turn it off! STOP OPPRESSING MY IMAGINATION!!111!1!eleventyone!1!'
Speaking of branching stuff, when will the Flirt button become a menu leading to 5 different ways to hit on an NPC? We must have cheesy pick-up lines! XD
*ahem* Moving on...
David Gaider:
[...]It’s about the player’s story more than it is about the writer’s, or at least you need to get them to the point where they buy into your story as their own.
I can only speak for myself, but DA2 didn't manage that for me. There were a number of places where I, as the player, was given the option to refuse doing something, refuse a SECOND time, then hey presto you're doing it anyway because the Plot Says So. To name a few examples, it happened with Flemeth (refusing her help), Meredith (refusing to go after the three apostates for her), and killing Thrask.
Things like that made it feel very much like the writers' story, in which we were just allowed to paddle around in the shallow end. Puncturing the inflatable toys was not allowed, even though we kept being asked if we'd *like* to.
I know there's only so far we can deviate from the main plot before huge swathes of story would have to be rewritten, but I do have a problem with being repeatedly given options to refuse something only to have my character's responses pretty much ignored.
(I would have loved an option to tell Duncan to go screw himself in DA:O after what happened to Jory, but unless that would have led to him killing the PC in a nice little cinematic that ended the game I'm *glad* there was no option to refuse only to be told "You have no choice," to which I'd have been forced to reply, "Well, since you put it *that* way...")
Heather Rabitach:
Our cinematic design and cinematic animation teams are responsible for implementing the more dynamic conversation and cutscene system in DA2. For conversations we wanted to depart from the static “head on” style that you see in most fantasy RPGs as it didn’t fit with the more fluid approach we were taking with gameplay.
I like a lot of the cinematics in DA2, but have to say I miss the more 'casual' feel of the talking-heads style dialogue. I know it's been said by other devs that there has to be some accounting for camera angles to have dialogue (esp. with party members) just anywhere, as in DA:O, but I *really* wish there was a way to have both.
The cinematic style, while awesome, is very much staged. They are set pieces. If you want to advance with that character and complete his/her arc, you *have* to have those staged conversations.
Keep them, please, because I liked the concept. But if there's time and a way to re-introduce a little casual companion dialogue for the sake of spontaneity and pure camaraderie, that would be fan-freakin'-tastic. I miss just being able to *talk* whenever, wherever, even if I've exhausted my dialogue options and can only pash with Alistair to annoy Morrigan.
This was my biggest grievance with Awakening as well. Dialogue was reduced to events, complete with quest markers. While I understand the necessity of those quest markers since I really didn't want to be visiting everyone's separate houses to see if they finally had new dialogue to offer, can I just say I found myself doing this *anyway* in DA2?
Yeah, I'm pathetic. I missed casual conversations
that much.
Heather Rabitach:
We’ve adopted the Mass Effect-style conversation wheel, departing from our very text heavy and, at times, confusing system in Origins. One issue from fan feedback that kept coming up was that people would pick an option from the dialogue and not get the response they intended. For instance, you may accidentally flirt with a party member you had no interest in or anger an ally without meaning to.
I can't help but laugh a bit considering there were possibly *more* confusions and paraphrase-to-dialogue issues in DA2. XD
And I still think the whole Zevran debacle was 95% a case of people not reading the responses they were clicking, and then overreacting at the result they got.
Reminds me of a quest in Guild Wars: Factions, one of the few where you are given a choice and incidentally involving drinking from a chalice. The options are simple: Yes or No (drink or don't drink). 'Yes' being the first option, most people click it and are immediately sickened because they just chugged poison, forcing them to do another quest to cure themselves. A lot of people got upset at this, when really the fault was theirs for not bloody well reading the quest dialogue.
"Yay, experience points!" *click!* "Wait, what? Why are my stats lower now? Why is my character surrounded by an ugly green fog? WTF This game SUCKS!"
Sheesh, if they'd ended up in the bed of the Am Fah Captain the internet would have exploded.
(cont'd) The intention with the new system is to not only clear up those issues by implementing helpful icons but to visually simplify your options overall. The lore is still very much there in the “investigate” options, and for those who want to proceed quickly, they can avoid an overwhelming amount of text to choose from and still be clear about the story direction they have chosen.
But you can't go back to investigate stuff in a future dialogue, which is unfortunate. Due to the cinematic style, every conversation only happens once and things you might have wanted to discuss later never eventuate unless the NPC brings it up.
If swamping the PC with dialogue options and differentiating between important dialogue and 'flavour' dialogue was such a huge issue in DA:O, why not just colour the quest dialogue to make it stand out? (Yeah, I know, retrospect is a wonderful thing.)
Heather Rabitach:
I have been into games since I was a little kid tinkering on a Commodore 64, but I never realized my hobby would turn into a career for me. My aspirations after college were to become a video editor but when I graduated the new media industry was pretty unstable. So it took a few years for me to career back into the digital industry and make the move to Edmonton for BioWare (insert girlish glee). Since working in gaming, I have found I prefer working in a male dominated industry; You can wear what you want and say you like obscure Japanese cartoons and be considered “cool,” and the women’s washroom is never occupied.
You, ma'am, are awesome. And I'm jealous. XD
Modifié par Shadow of Light Dragon, 01 juin 2011 - 09:25 .
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, Anders will still like me, NPC should know I support mages and not his ideas, etc.
