360 réponses à ce sujet

[Delduwath Mordion]

Stanley Woo wrote...

Cool, people are clarifying and getting more specific on the kinds of things they want to see in a BioWare game. It seems I had misinterpreted what people were asking for.

So... people aren't asking us to recreate Baldur's Gate. They want us to create a game that will give them a similar experience of epic-ness, immersion, and sense of value as the BG series? Kind of like what we did with DAO? Is that correct?

Exactly!

[Estelindis]

Stanley Woo wrote...

So... people aren't asking us to recreate Baldur's Gate. They want us to create a game that will give them a similar experience of epic-ness, immersion, and sense of value as the BG series? Kind of like what we did with DAO? Is that correct?

Well, that would certainly be nice.    Personally, I'd modify the request to say that I wouldn't even need all the things DA:O had: lovely graphics and voice acting are great to have, but expensive to produce.  I'd like to see a game that didn't take so much dev time (and thus enabled Bioware to keep working on the other things I'm sure they want to keep working on) but otherwise delivered on the aforementioned qualities of epicness, immersion, and sense of value.  To be honest with you, though, what always appeals to me most about Bioware games, over and above even those qualities, is the writing: the plot and the relationships between characters are what stand out to me at the time of playing and over the years of memory.  I'd love to see more attention given to those in a low-budget Bioware game.  I don't see why it should be particularly unthinkable.  Independent developers can put great games together with small budgets; their problem is usually low market exposure, since so many people have never heard of them, but Bioware wouldn't have that problem.

[Cyberarmy]

bEVEsthda wrote...

The first "platformer" I  truly liked was 'Flashback', and that is not exactly a typical platform game.

I actually despised most platformers. Which makes it so much more painful now, that many games these days seem to degenerate into the  old console platformer format of gameplay.

There are good games made today. But old games that are still as good or better than most stuff today comes thirteen a dozen. Aside from mentioned old RPGs we also have stuff like Civ, Sim City, Railroad Tycoon (Amiga version), Silent Service, Red Storm, Powermonger, Lord of the Realm, Pirates (Amiga version), Lemmings, Cannon Fodder, Tomb Raider,..  The list just goes on and on.
Of course, people who thinks the "poor" graphics make them "unplayable", will never discover that. There is often also the problem of not having a platform that can still run the game. But with the amount of available games today, they don't really have to either. I just wish there was more real innovation. Cut scene movies and speaking PC isn't, really.

Cant agreee with you more but...
Curse you, why did you have to remind me Flashback (and Another World). Those 2 were the greatest platformers i have ever played.
3rd was Abe's Odyssey: Oddworld.

-Ello!
-Yello!
-Fullow me!
-Oohkay!

[stoicsentry2]

Stanley Woo wrote...

Cool, people are clarifying and getting more specific on the kinds of things they want to see in a BioWare game. It seems I had misinterpreted what people were asking for.

So... people aren't asking us to recreate Baldur's Gate. They want us to create a game that will give them a similar experience of epic-ness, immersion, and sense of value as the BG series? Kind of like what we did with DAO? Is that correct?

Make a clone of BG2 with updated graphics and rename the characters. Everyone will notice the deception, but it will still be more beloved than the fraud of an RPG that is DA2.

[Realmzmaster]

stoicsentry2 wrote...

Stanley Woo wrote...

Cool, people are clarifying and getting more specific on the kinds of things they want to see in a BioWare game. It seems I had misinterpreted what people were asking for.

So... people aren't asking us to recreate Baldur's Gate. They want us to create a game that will give them a similar experience of epic-ness, immersion, and sense of value as the BG series? Kind of like what we did with DAO? Is that correct?

Make a clone of BG2 with updated graphics and rename the characters. Everyone will notice the deception, but it will still be more beloved than the fraud of an RPG that is DA2.

Not possibe, It would take more than renaming the characters and updated graphics to make a BG2 clone. EA would have to buy a license from WotC (Hasbro) and that will not come cheaply if at all, since Hasbro still has Atari producing games under license.

[stoicsentry2]

Realmzmaster wrote...

stoicsentry2 wrote...

Stanley Woo wrote...

Cool, people are clarifying and getting more specific on the kinds of things they want to see in a BioWare game. It seems I had misinterpreted what people were asking for.

So... people aren't asking us to recreate Baldur's Gate. They want us to create a game that will give them a similar experience of epic-ness, immersion, and sense of value as the BG series? Kind of like what we did with DAO? Is that correct?

Make a clone of BG2 with updated graphics and rename the characters. Everyone will notice the deception, but it will still be more beloved than the fraud of an RPG that is DA2.

Not possibe, It would take more than renaming the characters and updated graphics to make a BG2 clone. EA would have to buy a license from WotC (Hasbro) and that will not come cheaply if at all, since Hasbro still has Atari producing games under license.

Thanks for the info. Bummer.

[AndarianTD]

Estelindis wrote...

Anyway, here's the thing: my experience playing (modded) Baldur's Gate makes me question the importance of full voice acting.  I don't mean for a minute that it's not great.  I love what it has added to Mass Effect and, minus the PC in Origins, Dragon Age.  But, when developing games, there are only ever certain limited resources available to the developer when it comes to time and money.  Writing and voice recording and lip-syncing and animating gestures is, of course, so much more resource-intensive than just writing.  Think of how much more dialogue and description could be put into the game if it was only written.  Now, I totally understand that, for a lot of game players and critics, Bioware has already overloaded their games with dialogue.  (I believe Yahtzee complained about the amount of dialogue in Mass Effect, which, to my mind, was hardly Bioware's most dialogue-intensive game.)  But, by happy coincidence, this large majority of the fandom has the large majority of money that can fund games with fewer lines that have animation and voice acting.  Maybe there's also a place for a game for the minority of fans?  Said fans would have less money to spend on it, but it would also cost less to develop.  Of course, there are other money-sinks like modern graphics, but a stylised approach can allow a game to look charming or scary (or what-have-you) in a non-photo-realistic manner that costs less and still looks great.

I guess I'd love to see Bioware devoting a small team to producing a game that was more about the writing than anything else and was cheap to produce.  The company is already so diversified, with Dragon Age Legends, multi-player added to ME3, and its highly-anticipated entry into the world of MMOs, that I don't see anything wrong with diversifying one step further.  As it stands, Bioware has already given us games that we can mod to our heart's content, so we can use those tools to enjoy each other's writing via low-resource games.  All the same, I'd love to see Bioware writers producing work like that again.  Perhaps one could even contemplate work that goes further on the writing front: something like an interactive novel with gaming elements.

I have to say that I couldn't agree more with Este on this. It's one of the things I tried to bring up when I attended the DA Builder's Event in 2009, and one of the reasons why I personally haven't yet moved on to modding for Dragon Age. When I started modding Neverwinter Nights, what captured me about it was the idea of developing what at its core was a form of interactive prose fiction: one in which style, description, and narrative were interwoven with dialog, much as it is in a good novel. This in turn could be interwoven and enhanced with combat, gameplay, and cutscenes, but the framework of the gaming experience was constructed around a core that was more of a literary and reading experience than a cinematic one. You interacted with characters by reading dialogs, with objects by examining them and reading their descriptions, and read journal entries. It was like reading a book that came alive for you with drama and battle at just the right times.

I understand and can definitely appreciate the more cinematic focus of the voice-acted games that have come to predominate in recent years. Mass Effect in particular was a brilliant example of this, and I'm certainly looking forward to new titles done in that style. Yet speaking personally, as both a reader and a writer, I think I would still prefer to play a game that was built more around a literary paradigm than a cinematic one -- in the style of the community modules for Neverwinter Nights, if it were well done. There's something about interactive prose vs. interactive cinema that I find less passive and more engaging. And as Este pointed out, it's also less difficult to produce, and more literary content could be created for a given number of "zots" worth of resources.

I recently had a discussion about my modding work with an acquaintance who is knowledgeable about neurophysiology, and he offered an observation about this that I found very interesting. After showing him video captures of a scene from my mod, he immediately remarked on how significant it was that I was presenting the story not in audible form using voice acting, but in visual form via prose reading. He explained that the brain processes information presented in those two modalities (audial and visual) in very different ways. In particular, audial information is processed sequentially across time, whereas visual information is processed more spatially and in parallel. That got me thinking about the differences between the two styles of gaming, and how voiced dialogs essentially shut down my experience of the rest of the game in order to follow the conversation in time. With text reading I find that I have a greater ability to pause, think, look around, bring my imagination more actively to bear, and in general take in the story and play experience more in parallel than when it's being presented to me in a voiced and cinematic format.

Este and I may be somewhat in the minority, but those are some of the reasons why I personally would spend as much or more of my money for a game experience that was perhaps less resource intensive, and more "literary" in style than the more cinematic games of recent years.

Modifié par AndarianTD, 28 novembre 2011 - 06:08 .

[AmstradHero]

AndarianTD wrote...
Este and I may be somewhat in the minority, but those are some of the reasons why I personally would spend as much or more of my money for a game experience that was perhaps less resource intensive, and more "literary" in style than the more cinematic games of recent years.

Very interesting point, especially given my recent experiences with Skyrim and The Old Republic beta, both of which are fully voiced games, albeit very different in other respects.

I came to The Elder Scrolls series in Morrowind, which many people consider the highpoint.  It took me several attempts to get into it. The convoluted (if not outright ridiculous) levelling system combined with the very unfriendly and unforgiving nature of the setting and interface meant it was really challenging to get into. It was the strength of the setting that drew me into the game, the complexity of the world and the multitude of details present in power struggles and history that pushed me to keep going. I wanted to find out what was happening with Red Mountain, who Nerevar was, what was behind the struggles between the various houses, who the Morag Tong were and what they were up to...

Fast forward to Skyrim, and these details are still there, but they are less potent.  You don't get the same depth of interaction out of the characters or the long-winded (and the hideously chronological) journal entries of Morrowind, though there are still bucketloads of books recounting the history of the world, including past games. Some of that depth has been lost due to the transition to a completely voice acted world, though the level design and exploration aspects have increased in quality vastly to compensate for this.

Taking SWTOR, the voice acted characters actually help push the quests and stories as a stronger part of the MMO, particularly in a party when you can feel as though you're having an actual "group" conversation with your party members.  People are care about and became invested in the stories being told as compared to something like WoW, Everquest or even Lord of the Rings online, because it's presented in that interactive form that's more than just "read this blob of text to find out why you're running off to kill enemies/retrieve the macguffin". This presentation encourages people to care about the story in a gaming medium that has typically seen players ignore it in previous titles.

The simple point is that voice acting loses breadth and depth of content because of its associated expense. For some players, however, the benefit is that they become more invested in the story.  The question then is: how many players care about the potential immersion that voice acting provides for this to justify the cost of losing that breadth and depth of content?

If a company spends $15 million on creating a game with full voice acting but less content, how many players will that garner compared to a company that spends $15 million on a game with no voice acting but more content? Ultimately that is the question that is being asked by the people providing the funding, and apparently at this point in time, the voice acted titles are seen to offer the larger player base. Without a modern AAA title without voice acting against which to provide a comparison, there is no real way to counter this way of thinking.

How many people here read all the codex entries in Dragon Age (Origins/2) or Mass Effect (1 or 2)? Who read the planet descriptions in Mass Effect? How many people pedantically read every book they could find in Skyrim?  I have a number of friends who loved Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment, but there's no way they'll contemplate doing that reading in modern games. I do, but I also know that I'm in a very small minority. Furthermore, I'd contend if you don't do those things, then you're paying lip service to the "old school way", but you don't actually enjoy it or want it back. This is the evidence that publishers and developers have. We can hardly blame them for adhering to popular choice and what the majority of the player base is actually interested in doing.

Edit: Addition - Just to be clear, I really wish that I could have more content at the expense of voice acting. I really do appreciate what voice acting brings to the table, and I think it can offer a really interesting and engaging experience, but I would love to see more non-voice acted titles with the huge depth and breadth of content that was presented in some older games. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll see a return to AAA titles with that sort of approach any time soon.

Modifié par AmstradHero, 28 novembre 2011 - 07:58 .

[Firky]

I read item descriptions. *cries*

(Also, I think you guys are making excellent points. I don't have much to add, but I'm reading.)

[Wozearly]

AmstradHero wrote...

If a company spends $15 million on creating a game with full voice acting but less content, how many players will that garner compared to a company that spends $15 million on a game with no voice acting but more content? Ultimately that is the question that is being asked by the people providing the funding, and apparently at this point in time, the voice acted titles are seen to offer the larger player base. Without a modern AAA title without voice acting against which to provide a comparison, there is no real way to counter this way of thinking.

There is if you look outside of the RPG / action-RPG genre. Dawn of War hasn't used a voiced PC, even in DoW2 which had an obvious opportunity to do so (one character, one gender, all other companions fully voiced). The Sims uses generic emotive voices rather than a fully voiced model to preserve the complexity of potential interactions. Rift launched without voiced player characters.

RPGs have been moving steadily in the direction of cinematography, having the player play through the game as if it were an interactive movie. This could, in principle, be a reflection of what players want to see. My personal concern is that its being driven this way in order to make use of the increasing tendency towards voiced PCs and the (mistaken?) belief amongst developers that games without a voiced PC are somehow inferior quality. A case of the tail wagging the dog if the decision to voice the PC isn't thought through to make the best use of what it can deliver.

AmstradHero wrote...
How many people here read all the codex entries in Dragon Age (Origins/2) or Mass Effect (1 or 2)? Who read the planet descriptions in Mass Effect? How many people pedantically read every book they could find in Skyrim?

Guilty as charged.

[bEVEsthda]

Wozearly wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...
How many people here read all the codex entries in Dragon Age (Origins/2) or Mass Effect (1 or 2)? Who read the planet descriptions in Mass Effect? How many people pedantically read every book they could find in Skyrim?

Guilty as charged.

I fast-read/glossed the codex in DA:O. I soon ignored them in DA2.
But I do pedantically read every book I find in Skyrim.  And many of them are entertaining enough.

[Bryy_Miller]

stoicsentry2 wrote...

Stanley Woo wrote...

Cool, people are clarifying and getting more specific on the kinds of things they want to see in a BioWare game. It seems I had misinterpreted what people were asking for.

So... people aren't asking us to recreate Baldur's Gate. They want us to create a game that will give them a similar experience of epic-ness, immersion, and sense of value as the BG series? Kind of like what we did with DAO? Is that correct?

Make a clone of BG2 with updated graphics and rename the characters. Everyone will notice the deception, but it will still be more beloved than the fraud of an RPG that is DA2.

We get it, you don't like Dragon Age 2. 

However, that isn't a productive post, no matter what you think.

[Stanley Woo]

Sareth Cousland wrote...

All good and valid points. I have picked out number 4 for one criticism - the problem is that innovation for innovation's sake is just not sensible. You have to innovate for your target group, or for a newly defined target group that is at least as large as your old target group.

I agree with that.

With DA2, you left the soul of the Dragon Age franchise behind. Over-the-top arcade action and JRPG elements do not fit at all into the DA world, and they do not appeal to your average DA gamer. Sales figures for DA2 should have proven that by now, but I'm wondering how focus group testing could have yielded such terribly wrong results.

Many people are using the results of our decisions to try and "prove" that ourdecisions were wrong, and I disagree with that. by my way of thinking, we made decisions that weren't terribly popular and ended up not succeeding either at all or not as much as we would have liked. but those decisions were, in all ways, ours to make, and at the time we made them, they were good ones. Up until release, there is no way to determine how such decisions would affect sales, or even if they would. Would our core audience accept them? would we succeed in attracting a new audience with these changes? Obviously, we would have had a positive opinion.

And i still don't understand where the "JRPG" is in Dragon Age II. i can see where "over-the-top arcade action" comes in, even though i think that phrase to be a little exaggerated, but "JRPG"? i just don't see it.

Look at the target group of DA:O, and get back to the soul of Origins. DA2 was a revolution, when an evolution would have been preferable. Go back to DA:O, realize what people loved about it, and refine the experience for DA3. DA2 was a good game, but it was such a large step into the wrong direction that I would really recommend to start anew from DA:O and not create a hybrid that is not going to please either fanbase.

An entirely fair comment, and we have heard it many times. it's a great way to summarize some of the problems people had with DA2, and I wish more people in the community could just say it like you did instead of freaking out about it.

Thank you for your comments, Sareth Cousland.

[AndarianTD]

Sareth Cousland wrote...

All good and valid points. I have picked out number 4 for one criticism - the problem is that innovation for innovation's sake is just not sensible. You have to innovate for your target group, or for a newly defined target group that is at least as large as your old target group.

Not necessarily. You do have to create for a clearly defined target audience, but as Este and I have tried to explain it doesn't necessarily have to be a larger one. A smaller target group that you do a better job of satisfying can be a good business model tha generates revenue and customer loyalty.

With DA2, you left the soul of the Dragon Age franchise behind... Look at the target group of DA:O, and get back to the soul of Origins.

I've debated this too many times on the BSN to care to do so again, so I'll just say for the record that I disagree. I found DA2 to be an excellent innovation that moved the genre forward in important ways.

Modifié par AndarianTD, 28 novembre 2011 - 10:48 .

[TheRealJayDee]

Stanley Woo wrote...

Many people are using the results of our decisions to try and "prove" that ourdecisions were wrong, and I disagree with that. by my way of thinking, we made decisions that weren't terribly popular and ended up not succeeding either at all or not as much as we would have liked. but those decisions were, in all ways, ours to make, and at the time we made them, they were good ones. Up until release, there is no way to determine how such decisions would affect sales, or even if they would. Would our core audience accept them? would we succeed in attracting a new audience with these changes? Obviously, we would have had a positive opinion.

You agree that the results of your decisions weren't necessarily positive, but you claim they were good decisions when you made them? I agree they were entirely yours, but if the results aren't good maybe, just maybe they weren't good decisions to begin with. And I still find the "satisfy existing audience/attract new audience" thing pretty risky the way you handled it, exactly because of the sitaution we're in now with the split fanbase. And I would really love to take a look at how and by whom the decisions for the new dircetion of DA2 were actually made. But I can't and I guess we'll have to disagree on the "good decisions at the time" part.

Stanley Woo wrote...

Sareth Cousland wrote...
Look at the target group of DA:O, and get back to the soul of Origins. DA2 was a revolution, when an evolution would have been preferable. Go back to DA:O, realize what people loved about it, and refine the experience for DA3. DA2 was a good game, but it was such a large step into the wrong direction that I would really recommend to start anew from DA:O and not create a hybrid that is not going to please either fanbase.

An entirely fair comment, and we have heard it many times. it's a great way to summarize some of the problems people had with DA2, and I wish more people in the community could just say it like you did instead of freaking out about it.

What he said is more or less what I'd say most of the DA2 critics have been saying since (and sometimes before) release. What will be interesting to see is wether you agree with what he said and try to follow his advice. To get me excited for DA3 you definitely would have to.

Modifié par TheRealJayDee, 28 novembre 2011 - 11:08 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Stanley Woo wrote...

And i still don't understand where the "JRPG" is in Dragon Age II. i can see where "over-the-top arcade action" comes in, even though i think that phrase to be a little exaggerated, but "JRPG"? i just don't see it.

I suspect it has to do with the player's inability to affect the direction of the narrative, or even substantively control the personality of the PC.

JRPG PCs are (usually) entirely pre-written.  The player doesn't have any control over the PC's personality at all.  This same complaint has been levelled against DA2 numerous times.

Similarly, the overall plot of JRPGs are typically quite linear and set-in-stone.  Many JRPG players play those games just to experience the story, and telling a story is explicitly what DA2 is trying to do (often to the exclusion of allowing meaningful roleplaying).

Personally, I don't like JRPGs.  I've played only one (FF7), but by all accounts the things I didn't like about it are the features that define the genre.  And most of those features appear in DA2.

[Realmzmaster]

Stanley Woo wrote...

Many people are using the results of our decisions to try and "prove" that ourdecisions were wrong, and I disagree with that. by my way of thinking, we made decisions that weren't terribly popular and ended up not succeeding either at all or not as much as we would have liked. but those decisions were, in all ways, ours to make, and at the time we made them, they were good ones. Up until release, there is no way to determine how such decisions would affect sales, or even if they would. Would our core audience accept them? would we succeed in attracting a new audience with these changes? Obviously, we would have had a positive opinion.

Maybe Mr. Woo instead of saying they were good decisions which many seem to take issue with say it was the best decision to make at that time or the lesser of two or more evils.

It is easy to say a decision is bad once all the results are in, but at that moment when a decision has to be made Bioware may have made the best decision based on the circumstance. Hindsight is always 20/20.

[vania z]

Stanley Woo wrote...

And i still don't understand where the "JRPG" is in Dragon Age II. i can see where "over-the-top arcade action" comes in, even though i think that phrase to be a little exaggerated, but "JRPG"? i just don't see it.

Swords larger than humans, probably? 

[Zanallen]

vania z wrote...

Swords larger than humans, probably? 

You mean the swords that, other than the DLC Razor, were the same size as those in DAO?

[Realmzmaster]

vania z wrote...

Stanley Woo wrote...

And i still don't understand where the "JRPG" is in Dragon Age II. i can see where "over-the-top arcade action" comes in, even though i think that phrase to be a little exaggerated, but "JRPG"? i just don't see it.

Swords larger than humans, probably? 

Actually Greatswords could range anywhere fron 4.5 feet to 6 feet in length with some ceremonial swords up to 7 feet. The actual length is the same as the DAO swords. Now there could be a difference in width, but I do not think so.

Modifié par Realmzmaster, 29 novembre 2011 - 02:03 .

[devSin]

Personally, I think that picking at decisions except for the most general is pretty useless for common folk. All the decisions were tainted by the one to rush to market with a sequel, so who's to say which was truly bad and which was only bad because they didn't do it right.

Luckily, they get paid to figure that stuff out, so I don't even have to think about it.

AmstradHero wrote...

How many people here read all the codex entries in Dragon Age (Origins/2) or Mass Effect (1 or 2)? Who read the planet descriptions in Mass Effect?

I do!

What's worse, I have to read any one that shows up, and because in Origins it auto-selects the first entry of a given category, I have to read the initial entries like 50 times per playthrough.

I hate for all time the person who thought to select the first accessible codex page of a section when expanding the section. For all time, whoever you are.

Zanallen wrote...

You mean the swords that, other than the DLC Razor, were the same size as those in DAO?

Razor? You mean the one that's mounted on the end of a barstool? :-)

Modifié par devSin, 29 novembre 2011 - 02:49 .

[AmstradHero]

I'm impressed to see a few people who do read all the information/description/codices/etc in a game. Yet if we did the numbers, I'm sure we'd still see:
People who read all that < people who want "old school rpgs" < people who enjoyed "old school rpgs" but also enjoy "modern rpgs" < total audience of "modern rpgs".

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Stanley Woo wrote...

And i still don't understand where the "JRPG" is in Dragon Age II. i can see where "over-the-top arcade action" comes in, even though i think that phrase to be a little exaggerated, but "JRPG"? i just don't see it.

I suspect it has to do with the player's inability to affect the direction of the narrative, or even substantively control the personality of the PC.

JRPG PCs are (usually) entirely pre-written.  The player doesn't have any control over the PC's personality at all.  This same complaint has been levelled against DA2 numerous times.

Similarly, the overall plot of JRPGs are typically quite linear and set-in-stone.  Many JRPG players play those games just to experience the story, and telling a story is explicitly what DA2 is trying to do (often to the exclusion of allowing meaningful roleplaying).

Personally, I don't like JRPGs.  I've played only one (FF7), but by all accounts the things I didn't like about it are the features that define the genre.  And most of those features appear in DA2.

I have to agree with Sylvius on this one. It does feel more like a JRPG than any other BioWare title to date, and that's even because of some design decisions I don't mind.

I don't mind companions having a fixed appearance, but that feels like a JRPG trait. I assume the physical appearance of Fenris doesn't help here either - he does feel like he has a JRPG character "vibe".  In fact, I'd say that the art style in general lends itself to JRPG comparisons.

You feel more railroaded upon the main plot, and are unable to stop certain key events from happening even if you don't really aid the people that bring those events to pass, which again feels like a JRPG trait.

It feels more as though you're "assigned" the members of your party rather than you being able to choose which ones you want. If you don't like someone, you're still forced to ostensibly have them as a "follower" even if you completely ignore them. You can't leave them imprisoned, tell them to go away, or kill them before they join you as you could in DAO.

I don't mind Hawke being voiced, but that feels like a JRPG trait.It feels more as though you're being assigned a protagonist rather than making one. Admittedly this happens in Mass Effect, Alpha Protocol and the Witcher as well, but when combined with other factors, it helps push people towards the "it's a JRPG" comparison.

There's no one single design feature that pushes people towards this attribution, but a combination of factors. I found DA2 enjoyable, but there were numerous factors where it seemed to fall short:

• Writing felt a lot more forced than any previous BioWare title - cameos that felt pointless or like blatant fan-service, and a plot that made the player feel powerless
• An erratic difficulty curve in the combat with boss fights - due to no fights training players how to develop the skills needed to succeed)
• NPCs that felt far more shallow from their interactive content - much of their personality comes through in roaming commentary, and many players feel that you cannot get a good sense of their personality in a single playthrough.
• Rushed and shallow romances - and the associated character "development" from the "past three years" codex entries (which applies to all party NPCs)
• Level design with bland, undecorated enviroments and extensive recycling - The DLCs have recognised this, but really and truly, this was a hideous and incredibly obvious flaw. This alone helped contributed to a large percentage of the "rushed!" catch-cries, and I can't honestly say I disagree in this respect.

I could come up with a more comprehensive and detailed discussion if you wanted.  I know some of the these have been identified as areas of concern and where the DA team would like to improve, but I'm afraid I don't religiously watch the forums for all designer feedback and response.

I still liked DA2, but it didn't quite live up to my expectations based on pre-release information, and didn't match my expectations of the series that had been set from Origins and all its content. Not matching player expectations is perhaps one of the hardest difficulties to address and overcome, and isn't always a fault of the design of an individual game, but as a result of marketing and a game's pedigree.

Wozearly wrote...

AmstradHero wrote...

If a company spends $15 million on creating a game with full voice acting but less content, how many players will that garner compared to a company that spends $15 million on a game with no voice acting but more content? Ultimately that is the question that is being asked by the people providing the funding, and apparently at this point in time, the voice acted titles are seen to offer the larger player base. Without a modern AAA title without voice acting against which to provide a comparison, there is no real way to counter this way of thinking.

There is if you look outside of the RPG / action-RPG genre. Dawn of War hasn't used a voiced PC, even in DoW2 which had an obvious opportunity to do so (one character, one gender, all other companions fully voiced).
The Sims uses generic emotive voices rather than a fully voiced model to preserve the complexity of potential interactions. Rift launched without voiced player characters.

RPGs have been moving steadily in the direction of cinematography, having the player play through the game as if it were an interactive movie. This could, in principle, be a reflection of what players want to see. My personal concern is that its being driven this way in order to make use of the increasing tendency towards voiced PCs and the (mistaken?) belief amongst developers that games without a voiced PC are somehow inferior quality. A case of the tail wagging the dog if the decision to voice the PC isn't thought through to make the best use of what it can deliver.

None of those games have the depth of writing or the classic storytelling legacy of what many term the "old school RPG". RTS games have a story-telling element, but the story is more a means to justify the various set pieces and link the various maps that facilitate the game's mechanics. The Sims has no story whatsoever, and is only a piece of storytelling in so much as what the player makes happen within the scope of their control. MMOs may have a story and setting (of varying depth and complexity), but these are so readily ignored and overlooked by the vast majority of players in their search for more and better loot and the next quest that in many cases it may as well not be there.

Also, it's not simply about voiced player characters. It's about voiced characters at all. As soon as you've got characters spouting long dialogue and/or cutscenes at the player, you've got the overhead of recording those lines and all the associated funding, not to mention the presentation of those characters speaking. Publishers and people providing funding view that people who are willing to read the equivalent of a novel (or several) while playing a game in order to obtain an enjoyable gaming experience is a smaller market than those who will take a more movie-like approach with less content. 

Is there an audience of 3 or 4 million worth of gamers across all three platforms willing to read a few hundred thousand words in order for their gameplay to make sense? Imagine Planescape Torment was never released, but instead that it was released for the first time today with a modern engine and graphics. You'd probably get some of the fans of the original picking it up and enjoying it just as much. Heck, you might even get a few critics who like it and encourage a few more people to buy it, but when players read reviews telling them how much they are going to have to read in order to enjoy the game... current evidence says it's not going to do anywhere near as well in sales as Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age Origins or even DA2.

I think this kind of market is now the realm of an indie RPG. I'd honestly love to be part of a group to make such a game, but for better or worse, I just don't think it's still the realm of a AAA title.

Modifié par AmstradHero, 29 novembre 2011 - 07:38 .

[vania z]

Realmzmaster wrote...


Actually Greatswords could range anywhere fron 4.5 feet to 6 feet in length with some ceremonial swords up to 7 feet. The actual length is the same as the DAO swords. Now there could be a difference in width, but I do not think so.

Check this out
http://imageshack.us.../screen7pc.jpg/
http://imageshack.us...7/screen9o.jpg/