Gatt9 wrote...
You've got multiple problems in there il.
1. Doesn't matter what he considers important when the company has spent the better part of it's life leasing a RPG rules set to make RPGs. That's like saying Michael Bay isn't an Action movie director, he's a comedy director, because his movies had comedy lines in them and he feels like it makes him a comedy director.
And that died with Jade Empire. Again, what you consider important in a Bioware game is not necessarily what they consider important. You think it's the rulesets that matter. Bioware chose otherwise. You misinterpreted their intentions and focus. You took their "rpg" mechanics as being the key, when they (and many fans) claimed otherwise.
3. Heavy emphasis on interactive story? BG2, no. KotOR only superficially at the end. ME2, not at all, because with one or two exceptions, no matter what you did, everyone had the same outcomes.
When you first open up Baldur's Gate, you're talking to Gorion. When you close KotOR, you're talking to Malak. When your character asks a question, you are talking.This is an "interactive story". If the story were non-interactive, it would simply be a cut-scene, where I have no impart on the actual events. In a Bioware game, every step of the way I (the player) am treated as a character in the story.
Emphasis on dialogue? Not really, every NPC has 6 conversations in every Bioware game. Every female character romance is pretty much identical "Oh...I'm so strong...but you melt me with 3 kind sentences and now I'm weak to you!!!". Your choices are now limited to "Good, neutral, bad" with no deviation. Contrast that to Fallout or Planescape.
So you're criticizing Bioware dialogue? Fair enough. It doesn't change the dialogue emphasis. This isn't Final Fantasy where dialogue is non-existent. Bioware games since BG have been built on the Player having input through their words. Whether you think the dialogue is weak is irrelevant.
Dialogue, character romances, plot, etc, collectively occupy a substantial portion of the Bioware experience than you are attempting to give credit. If you think it's so badly done, make a thread and see how fans would react if Bioware limited themselves to only RPG mechanics, with no dialogue or choices. I doubt responses would be kind.
5. Choices? I was 100% paragon in ME2, my friend 100% renegade, and we both had the same companions who all liked us exactly the same, same missions, same general outcomes, etc. What choice? Listen to dialogue A or dialogue B and get same result?
Did you let Cerberus take Veetor? Did you destroy the genophage data? Did you rewrite the Geth? Did you spare the Cerberus base? Did you keep Samara? Did you let Garrus kill Sidonis? These are all choices.
6. Interaction? As I said, everyone has 6 dialogues and then that's it. No one changes direction, they're all one-dimensional, everyone gets the same end results. All you're doing is listening to a different dialogue to get the exact same thing as everyone else.
Again, your subjective critique on whether the interactions are good or not is irrelevant. You are interacting with the characters in the story on a very frequent basis, hence heavy emphasis on "interaction".
Compare this to Halo, or Gears, or even a JRPG, where you control the character in combat, with little else.
7. Seriously. Quit trying to pretend like there's some long trend here. DAO was 2 years ago. ME2's the only game they've made without heavy RPG emphasis, and it was extremely weak as far as the gameplay went, corridor runs, AI from the 90's. You act like there's a decade of a different type of game development, it was one game!. Even DA2 had significant RPG elements.
Pretend nothing. Mass Effect 1 and Jade Empire were already heavily favoring a different kind of game development. Their extremely limited RPG mechanics were a clear demonstration of this, while they kept all the other Bioware elements, which I've listed repeatedly.
You want the facts? Here they are.
Every Bioware game has featured dialogue. Every Bioware game has featured interaction. Every Bioware game has attempted to make the player to feel like they have some effect in the narrative. Is it limited? Yes, which is a result of the game being unable to predict every possible outcome a player might choose, contrary to pen and paper. Is it still an enjoyable part of the experience? Well, based on your respones, I'm guessing no, in which case I'm wondering why you have stuck with Bioware for so long.
8. It's also important to note that it was the first game they made under EA, with DA2 being the second. It's a much better way to showing how EA views itself.
I think Jade Empire and Mass Effect already were indicators of how Bioware viewed itself. Neither featured a heavy emphasis on RPG mechanics. Both games were rpg-lite, with a heavy emphasis on everything else you'd find in a Bioware game, except rpg mechanics. ME2 simply took that a step further.
Yes, it is a buzz word. It's a dialogue cutscene, click a button hear a voice, Adventure games were doing this in the 90's. Once again, you act as if Bioware suddenly discovered dialogue, it's been around for decades, zooming the camera angle out slightly doesn't make it suddenly different, or new.
If you think cinematography is limited to zooming a camera in or out, then it's clear why you consider it a buzzword.
Nor do the dialogue/character interactions "Play out more like a movie", whatever that's supposed to mean. They play out the same way they've played out for around 15 years. People really need to research the industry before drinking the kool-aid. I'd suggest looking into Gabriel Knight and other Adventure Games.
Cinematic means characters do not simply stand around in one location during "conversations". It means that when I speak to a character, the camera is doing more than cutting between two separate images of our two heads in conversation. That is why Mass Effect is more cinematic. You want an example? Shepard hiding behind the wall while speaking with Saren. Shepard speaking with Thane, where the characters actually move around. These are all examples of cinematic character interactions, because the camera is actually being used to a much greater extent. Hence, it is similar to a movie.
You want the opposite scenario? Go back to pre-Mass Effect. Go back to KotOR, JE, BG, and NwN. Characters stand in one spot and the camera does nothing. That is why cinematic is not a buzz word, as it's being applied.
I should also point out, "Immersive" is completely impossible when you're staring at a screen a couple feet wide, with a wall or desk behind it, and the real world in the rest of your vision. It's a buzzword, it's physical impossible for you to be "Immersed" (Fully enveloped by) a video game without a holodeck. No game with the word "Immersive" on it is going to transform a room into another world, it's going to put pictures on a screen in front of you that occupies about 25% of your field of vision at best.
Is that a fact? Perhaps games will never be able to completely simulate the alternate reality for the player. But the notion that it is impossible to significantly alter the player's connection to the experience is a false one.
That's why Valve has never employed cut-scenes in Half-Life. It increases the feeling that you are the character. When playing Half-Life, you (the player) never exist separately from Gordon Freeman. You experience everything from his point of view, as events happen. This is the case with Bioshock. And to a lesser extent, the Darkness. Compare this to Halo, or any fps, where the player is constantly thrown from the role of Master Chief every time a cut-scene appears.
Modifié par Il Divo, 04 août 2011 - 02:40 .
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I mean, the fact that some studio does not focus on characters, dialugues, etc. as much as Bioware does not necessarily mean that these aspects are still not the most important part of their game... Especially since the term Fallout includes 1 and 2 which were excellent in these departments.
But I will most likely buy TW 3 anyway...
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) may interpret them as if all those stories, characters, dialogues, cutscenes, choices, etc. were in some kind of opposition to RPG or any other mechanics - i.e. as if having them both would not have been possible. And that is most likely not true... Like you said, it's game's accessiblity / intuitiveness that is (might be) in opposition to them.
