436 réponses à ce sujet

[MerinTB]

Merci357 wrote...

Xewaka wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
I think Alpha Protocol was a fine RPG, and I was given a preset character (in some ways more than even ME) with voice and a dialog wheel.  That game did other things that made up for the above.

Honestly, the voice doesn't bother me so much in cases like Alpha Protocol or Deus Ex Human Revolution. After all, you're given a preset character to play with, and the voice is part of said preset character. It's when they attempt to give the illusion of making your own character just to jank the chain and force you their character once the game has begun that gets me.
Either allow me to build the character completely from scratch or have the parameters for playing the character explicit from the beginning. Don't half ass it giving the worst of both worlds.

Not that I disagee, but if you watch this panel Armando Troisi held 2010 at the Game Design Expo, it's quite obvious that BioWare thinks Shepard is a predefined character. It's a panel about ME2 interactive narrative design. It explains their view about paraphrasing, about the dialogue wheel, and about voiced vs. silent PC quite well - and least in context of the ME series. Most of it should apply to DA2 as well, it's worth a view to better understand their point of view.

I remember in context of their "there is no gay in the Mass Effect universe - the Asari are NOT female" spiel that some of the dev team for ME often said that Shepard was THEIR character, not the player's character.

I never really considered ME a "create your character" RPG.  I, personally, can barely call ME an RPG at all.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Morroian wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

MerinTB wrote...

DA2 and ME3 are not giving me reason to hope, though.

I was brielfly hopeful when I heard that ME3 had an RPG Mode, but then I learned that RPG mode is apparently the mode ME2 was in, which seems crazy to me.

So rpg mode is modelled on a game where the rpg elements are so minor as to be almost non existant 

So it would appear.

[Riknas]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
The story the developers write is merely a backdrop to the story that the player creates as he develops his character.  It's an important piece of the backdrop to be sure - a game without a running narrative to tie all the events together isn't very good - but it's still backdrop.

Cite your facts on this, otherwise you just come across as elitist with a dose of ignorance.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
That would give me too much control over the other characters and the events within the setting.  I want to roleplay within a living world.  If I design the world, how can I know I didn't design it to cater specifically to my character?

Indeed, yet you specifically are asking for encounters and options that are designed to cater to your character.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Zero is fewer.

Cute, and here I thought we were making progress.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I still maintain that the player cannot make any choices at all during DA2's dialogue.  The player can make choices about equipment and skills and travel in DA2, yes, but nothing like the literally thousands of choices available within DAO.

You can maintain a false fact all you'd like, but we both know it's not true.

Second, it's only thousands if you count picking different combinations of choices (saying a witty remark in one conversation, and then being kind in the next, as opposed to vice versa, as well as asking questions). By that logic though, you can do the same thing with DA2, sorry (even the asking questions, implemented via "Investigate" choices.)

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

That would be better (though ideally I wouldn't have to wait for to scrollover at all, and just see the full text right away), but we would still have the problem of the voice.

Nevermind the fact you're just being impatient if scrolling over is so difficult for you, you've yet to explain why your disapproval with voices is more valid than the market's preference toward it, short of them simply being "wrong", which is inherently a poor debate point.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Yes, but as soon as I'm discarding explicit content, I may as well just stop playing the game and go write fan fiction.  the effect would be the same.

The framework the game provides is important.  It's the reason I'm playing a CRPG at all, rather than just rolling dice by myself.

Indeed, but I could say the same of you telling me to edit dialogue choices in DAO. The diference is that you're being far more picky.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
The PC voice needs to be optional.

No it doesn't, but I agree, it would be a very nice option.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Having now seen ME, ME2, and DA2 use a voiced protagonist, it's clear that a voiced protagonist simply cannot work.

Except ...y'know, it can. And it does. You just don't like it, which is remarkably different.

Note: While we're at it, I've seen these polls before, and I'm willing to bet new accounts are being made to change the numbers just like people were doing during the DA2 Demo release.

Modifié par Riknas, 08 novembre 2011 - 10:09 .

[Xewaka]

Riknas wrote...
Note: While we're at it, I've seen these polls before, and I'm willing to bet new accounts are being made to change the numbers just like people were doing during the DA2 Demo release.

To support voiced, no doubt.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Riknas wrote...

Cite your facts on this, otherwise you just come across as elitist with a dose of ignorance.

It's called "emergent narrative".  Do some reading.

Indeed, yet you specifically are asking for encounters and options that are designed to cater to your character.

No, I'm asking for encounters and options that cater to no character in particular, not even one the designers had in mind.

You can maintain a false fact all you'd like, but we both know it's not true.

Second, it's only thousands if you count picking different combinations of choices (saying a witty remark in one conversation, and then being kind in the next, as opposed to vice versa, as well as asking questions).

Every set of dialogue options offers a choice in DAO.  But not in DA2, as you can't know what the options are.

By that logic though, you can do the same thing with DA2, sorry (even the asking questions, implemented via "Investigate" choices.)

Even the investigate options failed, as they weren't consistently even questions.  Many of them produced spoke lines that made assertions.  Declarative sentences and interrogative sentences are different in kind.  Surely you cannot be saying that the player is choosing for Hawke to make a factual statement by selecting an apparently interrogative paraphrase.  Because that would be insane. 

Nevermind the fact you're just being impatient if scrolling over is so difficult for you

All aspect of gameplay move at the speed of my decision-making.  Having now to wait for a needlessly complicated UI element would be really irritating.

you've yet to explain why your disapproval with voices is more valid than the market's preference toward it, short of them simply being "wrong", which is inherently a poor debate point.

I've explained that at great length.  Voices force a specific delivery upon the player.  The lack of voice does not.

Indeed, but I could say the same of you telling me to edit dialogue choices in DAO. The diference is that you're being far more picky.

You could do that, but hat would require then that you view UI elements as in-game content.  Try applying that position universally and see how far you get.  Watch what happens when you expect the characters in the world to be aware of the user interface.

You're simply not following your own arguments to their logical conclusions.

No it doesn't, but I agree, it would be a very nice option.

For the game to be useful as a platform for roleplaying, yes, the voice needs to be optional (or just not there).

Note: While we're at it, I've seen these polls before, and I'm willing to bet new accounts are being made to change the numbers just like people were doing during the DA2 Demo release.

Now that's a baseless claim.  It's possibly a true claim, but you have no evidence to support it.

[Wozearly]

Riknas wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
The story the developers write is merely a backdrop to the story that the player creates as he develops his character.  It's an important piece of the backdrop to be sure - a game without a running narrative to tie all the events together isn't very good - but it's still backdrop.

Cite your facts on this, otherwise you just come across as elitist with a dose of ignorance.

Isn't asking for facts in this case fallacious?

To argue the opposite is to say that a story that the developers write is all there is, that the player can't / shouldn't make decisions or hold any views about what their character's motivations might be for acting in a certain way.

That might be true in an interactive novel where the story is entirely predestined and the player has no input at all, but as soon as your choices and consequences matter than the motivations you placed on your character influence the story.

Unless the story goes on to explain why your character 'actually' made those choices afterwards, you as a player are deciding why they did those things - or, arguably, deciding not to worry about why they did those things and acting from a metagame perspective (whether that's actually roleplaying could be debateable).

Riknas wrote...

Nevermind the fact you're just being impatient if scrolling over is so difficult for you, you've yet to explain why your disapproval with voices is more valid than the market's preference toward it, short of them simply being "wrong", which is inherently a poor debate point.

I'm not personally convinced that there is a demand-led market preference towards voiced PCs. This poll, and discussions about voiced PCs on this forum and on the forums of other RPGs seems to suggest divided opinions amongst fans.

There are also divided approaches amongst RPG developers. Bioware is clearly taken with the voiced PC model given what's being done with ME, DA and TOR. On the other hand, Bethesda doesn't seem to be overly bothered by the absence of a voiced PC in the Elder Scrolls series.

Xewaka wrote...

Riknas wrote...
Note: While
we're at it, I've seen these polls before, and I'm willing to bet new
accounts are being made to change the numbers just like people were
doing during the DA2 Demo release.

To support voiced, no doubt.

Cynics, the both of you.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Wozearly wrote...

or, arguably, deciding not to worry about why they did those things and acting from a metagame perspective (whether that's actually roleplaying could be debateable).

I argue strongly that it is not, though that does appear to be the playstyle for which DA2 (and the ME games) were designed.

[Malanek]

As you may have heard, ME3 is experimenting with different game modes named "action", "rpg" and "story". Would it be a good idea to abolish the dialogue wheel for one of these modes in DA3? How much extra work would be involved and would there be enough interest? Probably not much extra work as all the lines are available for subtitles anyway, but not sure about the interest.

It's important to note that there would not be extra content for not having main character voice acting because all the voice acting would still have to be done. The advantage would purely be that you know exactly what you were to say, the game would play faster, and your vision of the character would not be ruined by a voice you didn't like.

[Shadowlit_Rogue]

Every time I pop onto these forums, I find myself agreeing emphatically with Sylvius. My preference is for an unvoiced PC for the exact reasons he stated. You can get your voiced/paraphrase technique down to a science, but it doesn't change the fact that you can never truly know how your character is going to respond in a conversation, which, in and of itself, represents a massive loss of control over a PC you're meant to role-play.

Like that infamous response: "I want to be a dragon!" Now... randomness aside, you can probably predict that Hawke's response will be something sarcastic or facetious according to the situation - and you'd probably predict that very accurately. But you shouldn't have to predict anything your character is going to say. From a role-playing perspective, that is a very obtuse degree of separation that's very unwelcome in a series that didn't launch with it in the first place.

I'm pretty much just reiterating everything Sylvius said, but I just wanted to make it clear that I support that side of the debate. In DA:O, you could respond to situations amiably, but there were various degrees of amiable. You could respond negatively, but there was negative, violent, dismissive, etc. In DA2, that range of options was limited to three tones of what was very frequently the same response.

tl;dr - Unvoiced. xD

[Sylvius the Mad]

Malanek999 wrote...

As you may have heard, ME3 is experimenting with different game modes named "action", "rpg" and "story". Would it be a good idea to abolish the dialogue wheel for one of these modes in DA3?

I certainly think so.  When I first heard of ME3's RPG mode, I hoped that BioWare had finally seen the folly of the voiced protagonist, but apparently that's not yet the case.

How much extra work would be involved and would there be enough interest? Probably not much extra work as all the lines are available for subtitles anyway, but not sure about the interest.

There would be some extra UI design, but most of the extra work would be QA testing.

It's important to note that there would not be extra content for not having main character voice acting because all the voice acting would still have to be done. The advantage would purely be that you know exactly what you were to say, the game would play faster, and your vision of the character would not be ruined by a voice you didn't like.

That's easily more than worth it.  I think DA2 would have been a vastly better game if I could have just turned off the voice and paraphrasing.  The game has some other issues, but just those two changes would have taken it fro a 4/10 to a 7/10 in my estimation (those are rough numbers - I haven't formalised a quantitative measure yet).

Shadowlit_Rogue wrote...

But you shouldn't have to predict anything your character is going to say.

This neatly sums up the problem with both the paraphrasing and the voice.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 10 novembre 2011 - 05:31 .

[Killjoy Cutter]

Malanek999 wrote...

As you may have heard, ME3 is experimenting with different game modes named "action", "rpg" and "story". Would it be a good idea to abolish the dialogue wheel for one of these modes in DA3? How much extra work would be involved and would there be enough interest? Probably not much extra work as all the lines are available for subtitles anyway, but not sure about the interest.

It's important to note that there would not be extra content for not having main character voice acting because all the voice acting would still have to be done. The advantage would purely be that you know exactly what you were to say, the game would play faster, and your vision of the character would not be ruined by a voice you didn't like.

What's this about "game modes", now?  I need to go see if there's a thread about it. 

Why does ME3 sound worse and worse the more learn about it?

[Pedrak]

I just posted this in another thread, but it might be useful to re-post it here:

http://www.escapistm...ice-vs-Choice.1

Voice versus Choice: an argument against full voice acting in RPGs.

As for the impact of a voiced PC, unless I'm hallucinating I distinctly remember posts by devs on these forums, years ago, as Origins was being made, that explained how having a voiced PC would definitely and greatly affect the game length.
.

Modifié par Pedrak, 10 novembre 2011 - 06:11 .

[FedericoV]

Pedrak wrote...

I just posted this in another thread, but it might be useful to re-post it here:

http://www.escapistm...ice-vs-Choice.1

Voice versus Choice: an argument against full voice acting in RPGs.

As
for the impact of a voiced PC, unless I'm hallucinating I distinctly
remember posts by devs on these forums, years ago, as Origins was being
made, that explained how having a voiced PC would definitely and greatly
affect the game length.
.

I've read the article you quoted in the other post and I was thinking about the issue... why not something in between? I mean, a system where voice over is used during the more important, epic and defining moments and that turns off during the rest of the game. It would be cheaper and the clear advantage would be to have more $$$ to develop freeform quests.

Modifié par FedericoV, 10 novembre 2011 - 07:53 .

[SirOccam]

Shadowlit_Rogue wrote...

In DA:O, you could respond to situations amiably, but there were various degrees of amiable. You could respond negatively, but there was negative, violent, dismissive, etc. In DA2, that range of options was limited to three tones of what was very frequently the same response.

Do you have any examples that show this? I don't recall DAO offering so many options. In fact, I dare say that you could probably represent the vast majority of DAO dialogue with a dialogue wheel with few problems.

[Fallstar]

SirOccam wrote...

Shadowlit_Rogue wrote...

In DA:O, you could respond to situations amiably, but there were various degrees of amiable. You could respond negatively, but there was negative, violent, dismissive, etc. In DA2, that range of options was limited to three tones of what was very frequently the same response.

Do you have any examples that show this? I don't recall DAO offering so many options. In fact, I dare say that you could probably represent the vast majority of DAO dialogue with a dialogue wheel with few problems.

The majority of dialogue trees in Origins had at least four responses and often more, + extra investigative options,which were an approprite mixture of positive, negative, sarcastic, with varying tone. In DA:2 we are limited to only three + extra investigative options. And you would almost always have five or six options at a time when speaking to companions.

Also you had skill based dialogue options, which made the dialogue system deeper in general.

[Fallstar]

Also an update on the poll:

Voiced PC with paraphrasing: 253 votes, 52%
Silent PC with full dialogue trees: 232 votes, 48%

If you do a hypothesis test, that difference is irrelevant at the 5% confidance level, so we can say that statistically speaking, the BSN is perfectly split on this matter. Kinda funny.

[Nighteye2]

DuskWarden wrote...
Also an update on the poll:

Voiced PC with paraphrasing: 253 votes, 52%
Silent PC with full dialogue trees: 232 votes, 48%

If you do a hypothesis test, that difference is irrelevant at the 5% confidance level, so we can say that statistically speaking, the BSN is perfectly split on this matter. Kinda funny.

Especially if it'd be representative of the Bioware fan base. That'd give them headaches, I'd imagine

[Sylvius the Mad]

Nighteye2 wrote...

Especially if it'd be representative of the Bioware fan base. That'd give them headaches, I'd imagine

I suspect they're aware that they've created a monster.

[Xewaka]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Nighteye2 wrote...
Especially if it'd be representative of the Bioware fan base. That'd give them headaches, I'd imagine

I suspect they're aware that they've created a monster.

Specially if you consider that they had already reached a balance (Mass Effect series with voice acting and an almost-fixed protagonist, DA:O with "old school" dialogue presentation and character flexibility), and then decided to scrap it.

Modifié par Xewaka, 13 novembre 2011 - 01:16 .

[Lynata]

 My personal opinion on the subject:

The voiced protagonist is one of the few changes in gameplay Bioware did right with DA2. Whilst there were one or two instances (that I could recall) where I would have appreciated to know what the character was going to say on a particular option beforehand, all in all I prefer to be sort of "surprised" by the exact line my Champion would say. Just like Mass Effect, I enjoy the idea of the Dragon Age franchise being an epic interactive movie where I have influence on the lead character and his/her personality, and just like with a movie, knowing the exact script before you watch it takes a bit of fun away.

I also think this is due to the great voice acting that went into both (fem)Shep and (fem)Hawke - I just love to hear them say their stuff. My opinion might be otherwise if the voice acting would be sh**ty, but it just happens to fit to the idea I had in my head. I can understand why other players would dislike it because it doesn't line up to their interpretation of the character, however, and if the poll is anything to go by, the community is almost equally split on the issue.

That being said, whilst I would like DA3 to have the very same paraphrased voice-acting as DA2, I also think that making it optional would be a rather easy solution to appease almost everyone. After all, the lines are written either way, so a "classic" mode would consist of nothing other than suppressing the character's voice and replacing the personality options with the actual responses.

My two copper pieces!

Modifié par Lynata, 13 novembre 2011 - 06:00 .

[Skadi_the_Evil_Elf]

Silent with full dialogue, please. The voiced protagonist is something I honestly do not want to see for DA3.

ESPECIALLY get rid of the paraphrasing. I prefer to know exactly what the hell I am going to say, and the general tone/intent symbols really failed to convey it half the time.

[Marvin_Arnold]

I'm on the fence about this. These were two different experiences to me:

With the "anonymous" silent character in DA:O, I felt like role-playing. The PlC was "me".

With a voiced character, I felt like a movie director telling an actor what to do. It was an entertaining experience, but it wasn't role-playing. The protagonist was Mr. Hawke, played by Nicholas Boulton, and I directed him through this movie. He did a good job, as did his "face". A cinematic experience. Nice dialogues, nice acting. But not "my" dialogues.

Since the DA series is advertised as RPG, not as interactive movie, I'd go with silent, entertaining as the acting was in DA2.

[Fallstar]

Next update: percentages have remained the same, but more people have voted for silent than voiced since last time.

Voiced PC with paraphrasing: 258 votes 52%
Silent PC with full dialogue trees: 242 votes 48%

[Wozearly]

DuskWarden wrote...

Also an update on the poll:

Voiced PC with paraphrasing: 253 votes, 52%
Silent PC with full dialogue trees: 232 votes, 48%

If you do a hypothesis test, that difference is irrelevant at the 5% confidance level, so we can say that statistically speaking, the BSN is perfectly split on this matter. Kinda funny.

Its a bit tricky to use statistical significance when there's only one variable...but if you assume that the null hypothesis is that results are a 50/50 split (ie, no preference either way), then a difference of 2% in a sample size of 485 is only significant at a 40% level.

For the people who aren't stats geeks here, that's a mathematical way of saying that there's a 40% chance that the difference between the figures is entirely due to random sample errors based on who is responding. Any researcher faced with those figures would junk the hypothesis that there is any preference for one over the other amongst the wider community.

In any case, I agree - players are completely divided.

Modifié par Wozearly, 14 novembre 2011 - 11:56 .

[Wozearly]

FedericoV wrote...

Pedrak wrote...

I just posted this in another thread, but it might be useful to re-post it here:

http://www.escapistm...ice-vs-Choice.1

Voice versus Choice: an argument against full voice acting in RPGs.

.

I've read the article you quoted in the other post and I was thinking about the issue... why not something in between? I mean, a system where voice over is used during the more important, epic and defining moments and that turns off during the rest of the game. It would be cheaper and the clear advantage would be to have more $$$ to develop freeform quests.

Great article, for those who haven't read it yet.

I think the in-between approach (the article references Morrowind as an example) actually works pretty well when used for NPC voicing whilst having a silent PC, because it gives a hint of the character's voice and tone whilst intentionally not voicing every line - generally only greetings, farewells and particularly notable dialogue outcomes.

The earlier Fallout series used a similar approach - main NPCs were fully voiced with talking heads (literally), everyone else had text dialogue.

Its not a complete coincidence that this was most heavily used in freeform games. I'm trying in my mind to imagine how Dragon Age, or KOTOR, would have been if the NPCs hadn't been voiced at all, or had only partially been voiced, but I'm really struggling. Intuitively my feeling is that they worked well with that level of cinematography, because the games were designed with it in mind.

I'm definitely on the side of "Nooooooo!!!" when it comes to voicing the PC - for the record, I felt DA:O struck the right balance for the DA series by fully voicing NPCs but only using incidental voicing for the PC. 


I suppose the real question raised by the article is what people want from the game's dialogue and player - NPC interaction system.

Assuming an unchanging budget, if you want everyone to have a voice, then you have to limit scope and scale both in terms of the size of the world and the options available to the player to progress through dialogue and interaction opportunities. That works better with a cinematic, interactive movie approach - DA2 may railroad you and give you relatively few options throughout, but a lot of effort was put into the relationships and characterisation of party members.

On the other hand, if you value breadth of decision-making, greater player freedom and a larger game world that is populated by a significant number of NPCs, then you're realistically taking the non-voiced route. Again, the two naturally complement one another.

Its not an accident that Bioware is pursuing the voice-heavy model while Bethesda remains comparatively, voice-light...although even Bethesda is introducing voices more and more - with its insidious effect on scale and depth in what were previously very open worlds.

Modifié par Wozearly, 15 novembre 2011 - 12:45 .