163 réponses à ce sujet

[Tirfan]

^ Indeed, and I actually happen to have an extremely old and worn out biker-style leather-jacket that would look totally.. Awesome with that.

[fn_outlaw]

All I have to say is:

To say that my imagination is broken because I dislike Hawke is just ludicris. It's like saying your opinion is better than mine. It isn't.

In Mass Effect, I was fine with customizing Shepard to my liking and exploring all possible outcomes to his/her different attitudes/backgrounds.

What I don't understand is how they managed to do such a great job with a single voiced protagonist in ME and yet, fail so completely in DA2.

[TMZuk]

The problem about Hawke is that I could care less about Hawke. He's a premade character forced down my throath, and having Shepard is more than enough, I want to make my own characters! The Origins system was perfect, because you had some freedom regarding background and race, while retaining the option to have events from the past influence the game.

Since that was a huge succes, why of course I expected more chioce in DA2, not less.

And if we are to talk about finishing stories, I'd like an ending to the Warden's story, thank you very much.

[Morroian]

TMZuk wrote...

The problem about Hawke is that I could care less about Hawke. He's a premade character forced down my throath, and having Shepard is more than enough, I want to make my own characters! The Origins system was perfect, because you had some freedom regarding background and race,

Still a premade character, you just had the choice of 6 instead of 1.

[dheer]

Morroian wrote...

TMZuk wrote...

The problem about Hawke is that I could care less about Hawke. He's a premade character forced down my throath, and having Shepard is more than enough, I want to make my own characters! The Origins system was perfect, because you had some freedom regarding background and race,

Still a premade character, you just had the choice of 6 instead of 1.

True, while it wasn't perfect it made a world of difference.

[TheRealJayDee]

ItsTheTruth wrote...

RageGT wrote...
 I can only imagine what would have happened to ME2 if they have given us a new protagonist instead of Shepard, had "re-designed" all NPC companions faces, all Geths and Monsters and races, the same way they did with DA2.

When you put it this way, it really makes you wonder what the hell they were thinking; especially with a short development cycle.

"The asari look too much like just blue women with skin thingies instead of hair. We have to give them a more unique, alien look - let's start with giving them... exotic noses."

I never understood the decision for the design changes in DA2. Why establish a rich new fantasy world with a certain look if you're going to change whatever you like with the first sequel? And given the short time they had it just seems like a serious waste of resources imo.

Anyways, my dissapointment with DA2 finally made me finish ME and afterwards my previously unopened copy of ME2 . Plus I was able to give the free ME2 to a friend (who decided not to play DA2 at all). I guess I can say DA2 turned me into a devoted Shepardist.

[Slayer299]

Recycled Human wrote...

To be fair, comparing a story jump to being stiffed at a restaurant is a little asinine. It would be more accurate to compare a 3 year jump in story to a time jump in a movie or novel. I should point out it's entirely common for those things to rely on the individuals imagination to fill in the blanks. Movies do it with a montage or scene change while books just fade to black and end the chapter making each jump to the next chapter a bit of a 'fill in the blanks' moment. Thats of course excluding times when time does jump in the movie or book which isn't handled too differently.

I would have to differ with you on this, DA2 was neither a novel or a movie and both of those mediums can handle time skips a lot more efficiently than DA2 managed to do so and movies run on a much shorter time leash. 'Fill in the Blanks' moments generally aren't a problem within a game or other medium, the problem arises when it happens not once or twice but three times and with the time skips you lose seven years out of a decade to them. How does it become acceptable to have the gamer fill in the blanks for such a siginicant portion of time within the game that is lost because of bad writing/design instead of the game itself leaving this open to you?

[Morroian]

TheRealJayDee wrote...

I never understood the decision for the design changes in DA2. Why establish a rich new fantasy world with a certain look if you're going to change whatever you like with the first sequel? And given the short time they had it just seems like a serious waste of resources imo. 

Because when the development of the game was so long (essentially in a different time before the EA takeover) and they didn't necessarily think there would be a sequel. With the success of DAO they wanted to create a franchise and give it a more unique look, different from DAO's generci fantasy look.

I do agree that given the time frame it was stupid to spend a large part of the development budget on changing the look of the game.

[Aaleel]

Slayer299 wrote...

I would have to differ with you on this, DA2 was neither a novel or a movie and both of those mediums can handle time skips a lot more efficiently than DA2 managed to do so and movies run on a much shorter time leash. 'Fill in the Blanks' moments generally aren't a problem within a game or other medium, the problem arises when it happens not once or twice but three times and with the time skips you lose seven years out of a decade to them. How does it become acceptable to have the gamer fill in the blanks for such a siginicant portion of time within the game that is lost because of bad writing/design instead of the game itself leaving this open to you?

If we're counting the time up to the last scene, we had to fill in more than 7 years.  We had to fill in the first year, the 3 years between Acts 1 & 2, the three years between Acts 2 & 3, and however much time passed between the end of Act 3 and the last scene.  

They're making the gamer fill in the blanks for like 90% of the time, that is not good storytelling or good writing.

[Luvinn]

I think to a limited extent, some imagination is a great thing for a person to have in a RPG. However, the extent of imagination that you have to come up with for Hawke to be an interesting, cool, fun character that i would want to play in a new game is kind of asking a lot. Impressions are an important aspect in character judgement. I can hear how someone is an amazing sprinter, hockey player and downhill skier, but if i meet the guy and hes a 350lb slob sucking down a Big Mac, then I'm kind of left saying "wtf?". Much in the same way, i can make an amazing backstory for Hawke. I could think of his years in Kirkwall with him going on adventures, getting involved in politics, helping ferelden refugees with his wealth, but when i get to play him and hes nothing more than a glorified errand boy, im also left saying "wtf?". In other words, the famous saying "if it walks like a duck......." comes to mind. If Hawke was uninteresting to me when i played him, why would he be interesting when im not. You would think that when you actually are playing him, those would be the more important events in his/her life. If the video game was about me, it would cherry pick the best things to make me look "cool", not the daily going ons of my life.

To be fair, i don't think any character could have been interesting and fun with the way DA2 was set up. So i guess that the game itself makes Hawke a less interesting character.

Modifié par Luvinn, 04 juillet 2011 - 03:14 .

[Slayer299]

Aaleel wrote...
If we're counting the time up to the last scene, we had to fill in more than 7 years.  We had to fill in the first year, the 3 years between Acts 1 & 2, the three years between Acts 2 & 3, and however much time passed between the end of Act 3 and the last scene.  

They're making the gamer fill in the blanks for like 90% of the time, that is not good storytelling or good writing.

True, I hadn't counted the end of Act 3, just the two 3yr skips and Yr 1 arrival any, eithe way though its bad. And I agree it's neither, which makes me wonder was it a lack of time, laziness, sloppiness or a belief that we (gamers) wouldn't really notice and just try to fill in the blanks for them? 

[Morroian]

Luvinn wrote...

I think to a limited extent, some imagination is a great thing for a person to have in a RPG. However, the extent of imagination that you have to come up with for Hawke to be an interesting, cool, fun character that i would want to play in a new game is kind of asking a lot. 

And yet quite a few of us have apparently done it. And I'm not any kind of hardcore rpger.

Slayer299 wrote...

Aaleel wrote...
If we're counting the time up to the last scene, we had to fill in more than 7 years.  We had to fill in the first year, the 3 years between Acts 1 & 2, the three years between Acts 2 & 3, and however much time passed between the end of Act 3 and the last scene.  

They're making the gamer fill in the blanks for like 90% of the time, that is not good storytelling or good writing.

True, I hadn't counted the end of Act 3, just the two 3yr skips and Yr 1 arrival any, eithe way though its bad. And I agree it's neither, which makes me wonder was it a lack of time, laziness, sloppiness or a belief that we (gamers) wouldn't really notice and just try to fill in the blanks for them? 

I'll say it again if the game covered more years of the 10 it still would have been around the same length, we just would have spent shorter amounts of time in each year. So its not laziness or lack of time etc.

Modifié par Morroian, 04 juillet 2011 - 05:05 .

[Slayer299]

@Morroian - And if BW had had us spend shorter times in each year that would have alleviated a lot about Hawke since we would have actually *played* more of Hawke rather than reading about what everyeone else did during those timeskips.

If it was not laziness or lack of time or any other reason I gave for the poor choice of the timeskips and the effect on Hawke, than what was it?

I consider the timeskips and the effect on Hawke akin to me writing a book for 4 chapters about Joe and then stopping before telling the reader that the story picks up in the next book several years later and they can read about Joe's continuing adventures in the next one.

[erynnar]

@Morrian it wasn't so much an inability to use my imagination with Hawke, it was more a case of why bother? Hawke did not have enough blanks for me to fill in, nor was she a compelling enough person to inspire me to do so.

@Slayer99 Yeah, making us fill in the blank dead space for them means BioWare should have paid me. Or at least made the game cost less than DAO. It has a lot less content than it's predecessor and cost more.

[Morroian]

Slayer299 wrote...

@Morroian - And if BW had had us spend shorter times in each year that would have alleviated a lot about Hawke since we would have actually *played* more of Hawke rather than reading about what everyeone else did during those timeskips.

If it was not laziness or lack of time or any other reason I gave for the poor choice of the timeskips and the effect on Hawke, than what was it?

IMHO they deliberately wanted to structure it that way and by keeping it to 3 acts minimise the possible disjointedness. As I said its not laziness or lack of time because the amount of writing wouldn't have changed.

Slayer299 wrote...
 
I consider the timeskips and the effect on Hawke akin to me writing a book for 4 chapters about Joe and then stopping before telling the reader that the story picks up in the next book several years later and they can read about Joe's continuing adventures in the next one.

Except DA2 is the complete book, its not like you're buying each act separately. I've read lots of books with big time jumps within the books.

[Tirfan]

Morroian wrote...

Luvinn wrote...

I think to a limited extent, some imagination is a great thing for a person to have in a RPG. However, the extent of imagination that you have to come up with for Hawke to be an interesting, cool, fun character that i would want to play in a new game is kind of asking a lot. 

And yet quite a few of us have apparently done it. And I'm not any kind of hardcore rpger.

 I'd say having quite a bit of imagination is essential in playing an CRPG, at least, if you want to rp an character, and this might be because of my background and how I want things to be done, and I'm what most of you would likely call "hardcore RP:er", I could not come up with anything to make Hawke an interesting, cool, fun character I would want to play, I know, and I can accept the basic premises for Hawkes character, that he is attached to his family, and his motivation is to survive, but after this I felt like the game never threw me the ball again, never gave me anything to work with to make Hawke an in interesting character with some development, had I been able to in normal conversations with the mother been able to choose and say something along the lines of "I love you, no matter what" as it seems their relationship was a bit strained after getting to Kirkwall it would have made all the difference for me, given me something to work with to make that family-aspect more real, or I could have said something rather dismissive and play a Hawke that grows further and further away from his family-connections.

Then there is the sociopathic-thing that I have covered previously, I have to take what information I get in-game, this isn't a PnP where I can choose every action I make, so the game really needs to give me those situations where I can express certain kinds of feelings and opinions if I so desire for me to be able to make a character with vertain opinions and feelings, what good are imagining having them, if I not even once during the game get to express them? 

But well, then there is the voiced-thing and all that jazz so having those options might not have made so much difference for me, I hope this makes any sense, and I would really like to know if someone else actually thinks this way, or am I alone?

[Vengeful Nature]

Slayer299 wrote...

Vengeful Nature wrote...

You win the 2011 Best Rant Award.

Your prize is absolutely nothing, because you can imagine it or some sh!t, I dunno, I was too lazy to think of a prize. IMAGINATION!

Vengeful you missed the point. Granted Gleym was ranting a bit there after a while, but his point wasn't about "him" being able to imagine, but Howl's point that anyone who complains about Hawke. That Hawke being seen by players as  being lifeless, limp, unreactive, *insert adjective here* it was the fault of the player, as those people who complain about Hawke have no *imagination* to fill in the 3 yr time skips and Hawke's behaviour and not bad writing on BW's part.  

I can agree with Gleym about Howl's comment that if you don't like Hawke as he was in DA2 you the player have no imagination, just not the overall tone of the rant itself.

Hey I just found the rant funny. My point doesn't go further than that.

For the record, I agree with Gleym. I just put a little friendly prod in there for good measure.

Modifié par Vengeful Nature, 04 juillet 2011 - 10:13 .

[Slayer299]

Morroian wrote...

Slayer299 wrote...

@Morroian - And if BW had had us spend shorter times in each year that would have alleviated a lot about Hawke since we would have actually *played* more of Hawke rather than reading about what everyeone else did during those timeskips.

If it was not laziness or lack of time or any other reason I gave for the poor choice of the timeskips and the effect on Hawke, than what was it?

IMHO they deliberately wanted to structure it that way and by keeping it to 3 acts minimise the possible disjointedness. As I said its not laziness or lack of time because the amount of writing wouldn't have changed.

Slayer299 wrote...
 
I consider the timeskips and the effect on Hawke akin to me writing a book for 4 chapters about Joe and then stopping before telling the reader that the story picks up in the next book several years later and they can read about Joe's continuing adventures in the next one.

Except DA2 is the complete book, its not like you're buying each act separately. I've read lots of books with big time jumps within the books.

Than I have to say that DA2 does not *feel* like a whole book but rather a story that gives me the main characters name, height and the color of her eyes and I have to come up with the 90% of the events of the book on my own. If, as you say, it is intentional, then that is crappy design on Bioware's part, IMO.

The Acts aren't seperate but they might as well have been they way it was desgined and implemented.

Modifié par Slayer299, 04 juillet 2011 - 12:58 .

[Aaleel]

Morroian wrote...

Slayer299 wrote...

@Morroian - And if BW had had us spend shorter times in each year that would have alleviated a lot about Hawke since we would have actually *played* more of Hawke rather than reading about what everyeone else did during those timeskips.

If it was not laziness or lack of time or any other reason I gave for the poor choice of the timeskips and the effect on Hawke, than what was it?

IMHO they deliberately wanted to structure it that way and by keeping it to 3 acts minimise the possible disjointedness. As I said its not laziness or lack of time because the amount of writing wouldn't have changed.

The game would have flowed better if they allowed you to play more it, and connected the parts more.  It would have felt less like one story of raising money for an expedition, one story dealing with Qunari, and one story dealing with mages and Templars.

It would have let you see more of the important moments in Hawke's story, as well as carry the mage/templar conflict through the entire game instead of it being in the background until the third act.

Modifié par Aaleel, 04 juillet 2011 - 02:45 .

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

It's a scale issue.

If they had presented the game with a timeline of say, 5 years, then had around a dozen cutscenes with Hawke interacting with major NPCs (Arishok, Cullen, Viscount, Meredith, companions, family, etc) during the interludes to enforce a political, proactive, apathetic, whatever kind of Hawke you want with variations in the dialog or cutscenes based on the decisions you made during the game, that would probably soothe a lot of complaints on the issue.

Hindsight is of course, 20/20. But having a game span for 10 years, then letting the player only be apart of a year or so of game time, then removing player input from the rest of the timeline. Well... that's just asking for complaints.

Imagine if Origins had you coming back from the Deep Roads and finishing off the Orzammar questline. Cut to black. A short clip play of what happens in the world, doesn't mention you, doesn't allow you to interact with anything. Then all of a sudden, you're back at camp, it's 6 months later, the Darkspawn have taken over Redcliffe and Loghain has a firm grip over the Bannorn.

You'd be sitting there going "well, wtf..."

Not as bad as that in Dragon Age 2 or anything.... but it happens more than once.

Modifié par mrcrusty, 04 juillet 2011 - 01:44 .

[Pasquale1234]

Aaleel wrote...

Morroian wrote...

Aaleel wrote...

This was my whole problem.  You have to fill in the first year, and both three year gaps.  Then you only actually play through what, less than a year? If I'm going to have to fill in 90% of the time I might as well write a fan fic, which I ended up doing.  That's just way too much to make the player account for.  

The game is disjointed as it is with 3 large acts, creating more would add to that issue. Maybe they should have shortened the timeline to say 5 years or I guess they could have done something like have a prologue for each act with maybe say 1-2 quests that acts as a summary for what hapened in the gap.

I don't agree with this.  The framed narrative was not used used nearly enough. 

I magine if you had played the first year, and at the end when you did whatever the last mission was that earned you your name.  Cut to Varric and Cassandra talking "The champion had made a name for himself/herself, he/she had even caught my eye as well and I knew then that he/she would be a great ally in the future.  But I didn't know how good a friend....

Straight into the next act, smooth transition.  You know how you earned your name, and why Varric respected you enough to bring you in on the expedition in the next act.

If you're going to use the framed narrative, use it.

I've often wondered how that first year might play out, especially since you would be taking an apparently 'lawful good' companion into various illegal activities.  It may be that Aveline would accept that role for reasons of survival, the need to earn her keep, or simply some sense of loyalty to Hawke, but it always seemed rather odd to me that she would just step right into an enforcement position with no repercussions.  I would think she would have collected enough evidence in that first year to arrest and prosecute several people, were she so inclined.  Then again, it may have been a mutual non-blackmail arrangement (I won't prosecute you if you don't tell anyone I was ever involved in it).

It would have been very interesting, imho, to play through the story that the writers would have created if they had not skipped over this year in actual gameplay.

[SirGladiator]

There was a lot that was skipped that might've been interesting, but ultimately for me its the lack of meaningful choies that I dislike the most. If I want all the major stuff to happen the same no matter what I do then I reckon I'll go play FF13, the reason that game got old is because it just doesn't feel like what you're doing matters. Of course its hard to top DAO for that, such an insanely huge number of meaningful choices, one of the major reasons why it was considered by many the greatest RPG of all time. But certainly DA2 could've done a WHOLE lot better than it did. As it is, I don't really find Hawke that interesting, and the lack of ways of making her interesting is the main reason for that. I suppose if the storyline had been better that would've helped, but its not like DAO's storyline was the greatest of all time, the key was your ability to influence it in a big big way. Thats whats missing from DA2, and hopefully we'll get it back in DA3 with a much cooler and more interesting main character.

[Pasquale1234]

Tirfan wrote...

Morroian wrote...

Luvinn wrote...

I think to a limited extent, some imagination is a great thing for a person to have in a RPG. However, the extent of imagination that you have to come up with for Hawke to be an interesting, cool, fun character that i would want to play in a new game is kind of asking a lot. 

And yet quite a few of us have apparently done it. And I'm not any kind of hardcore rpger.

 I'd say having quite a bit of imagination is essential in playing an CRPG, at least, if you want to rp an character, and this might be because of my background and how I want things to be done, and I'm what most of you would likely call "hardcore RP:er", I could not come up with anything to make Hawke an interesting, cool, fun character I would want to play, I know, and I can accept the basic premises for Hawkes character, that he is attached to his family, and his motivation is to survive, but after this I felt like the game never threw me the ball again, never gave me anything to work with to make Hawke an in interesting character with some development, had I been able to in normal conversations with the mother been able to choose and say something along the lines of "I love you, no matter what" as it seems their relationship was a bit strained after getting to Kirkwall it would have made all the difference for me, given me something to work with to make that family-aspect more real, or I could have said something rather dismissive and play a Hawke that grows further and further away from his family-connections.

Then there is the sociopathic-thing that I have covered previously, I have to take what information I get in-game, this isn't a PnP where I can choose every action I make, so the game really needs to give me those situations where I can express certain kinds of feelings and opinions if I so desire for me to be able to make a character with vertain opinions and feelings, what good are imagining having them, if I not even once during the game get to express them? 

But well, then there is the voiced-thing and all that jazz so having those options might not have made so much difference for me, I hope this makes any sense, and I would really like to know if someone else actually thinks this way, or am I alone?

I have the same problem, and find Hawke very difficult to role-play.  For a primary motivation of taking care of the family and keeping it together, you have an epic failure.  If the primary motivation is to accumulate wealth, you achieve that early in the game - but then what do you do with it?  If you want to 'rise to power' - well, the game really does not give you the means to flex much political muscle or influence (other than some occasional lip service to being the 'Champion') beyond the events of Act 2.

The only motivations that have worked for me is the fact that Hawke can help some NPCs, rid the world of some evil or harmful characters, and have a positive influence on a few companions (although there are still 2 that you cannot dissuade from their paths).

Overall, I find the game to be entertaining in some ways, but rather frustrating in others.

[Alex Kershaw]

How brave you are, with Alistair hate on these forums...