7 réponses à ce sujet

[JasonPogo]

 I just don't get this new attiude that  main character must be voice acted.  In an RPG like DA i feel the main character has to be silent.  I mean we are makeing our own Hawke.  Yet when you voice them they are not ours anymore they are whatever the voice actor made them.  I don't know i guess i am just a butthurt oldschool gamer but I feel that the voiced protaganist has a place. Just not in these kinds of games.  A good game is more important then a cool markating image.

Modifié par JasonPogo, 28 février 2012 - 01:01 .

[John Epler]

Yrkoon wrote...

Cstaf wrote...
 Hmm, have BioWare really said that they want to go for the more cinematic approach for the series?

Yep.   They did.       They really wanna make movies/cartoons, instead of games.  But they can't come out and just say that, since  the products they're cinematizing  are supposed to be... you know....Games.  Not Movies.

Yes, that's exactly it. Not that we're looking at how another highly visual medium, films, tell stories and trying to adapt some of their techniques to gaming, as they've been developed over a century and have a lot to say about using visuals to convey emotion, tone, that sort of thing. Nope, it's because we want to make movies and cartoons. Congratulations, you've cracked the code.

As to the OP - I don't think silent protagonist is a bad word at all. Bethesda still has a silent protagonist, and, of course, there's the Half-Life series. It's just not a direction we're choosing to go with our own games. Could that change? Maybe, although I think you're more likely to see a refinement of our voiced protagonist and the systems surrounding that, rather than a return to a silent protagonist. But it's certainly not something I'd argue has to be in every game - we just feel that it fits with our goals in terms of how we want to use the gaming medium to tell stories.

[John Epler]

Yrkoon wrote...

JohnEpler wrote...

Yes, that's exactly it. Not that we're looking at how another highly visual medium, films, tell stories and trying to adapt some of their techniques to gaming, as they've been developed over a century and have a lot to say about using visuals to convey emotion, tone, that sort of thing. Nope, it's because we want to make movies and cartoons. Congratulations, you've cracked the code.

Right.  Sarcasm.  Got it.    

There's a Huge difference between merging cinema techniques to games and.... interrupting the player's gameplay every 3 minutes to give them a cutscene.

When you loftily proclaim that we don't want to make games because of a particular stylistic and presentation choice we've made, well, I get a little sarcastic. It's a character flaw.

As to the rest - I don't think we've ever interrupted the game every three minutes to give a cutscene. Although I'd argue that, if we did, that isn't a problem inherent to the silent protagonist versus voiced protagonist. Hell, if we wanted to, we could just as easily do it with a silent protagonist as with a voiced one.

What a voiced protagonist gives us, otoh, is the ability to set pace and tone. It, in its best form (and I'll willingly admit that we weren't able to pull this off nearly as well as we would've liked in DA2), gives us conversations that look and feel natural. DA2 made some steps towards this, but we didn't really have the engine support necessary to handle a lot of what makes a conversation feel 'real'. Characters were limited as to where they could go, what they could do, how they could interact. This is a technical problem, and one we're working on.

Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with a silent protagonist. A game like Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines wouldn't have been the same experience with a voiced protagonist. Could it have worked? Sure, but I think it wouldn't have been the same game. On the other hand, I can't imagine a game like Alpha Protocol with a silent protagonist. Each offers its own advantages and disadvantages. Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses, and I think you can argue for one or the other.

Modifié par JohnEpler, 28 février 2012 - 04:46 .

[John Epler]

Wulfram wrote...

JohnEpler wrote...

What a voiced protagonist gives us, otoh, is the ability to set pace and tone. It, in its best form (and I'll willingly admit that we weren't able to pull this off nearly as well as we would've liked in DA2), gives us conversations that look and feel natural. DA2 made some steps towards this, but we didn't really have the engine support necessary to handle a lot of what makes a conversation feel 'real'. Characters were limited as to where they could go, what they could do, how they could interact. This is a technical problem, and one we're working on.

Why do you want to set the tone?  Why take that away from the player?

And how can the conversation feel natural when you're constantly fighting the game to get your character not to act totally out of character?

As to your first point, we've always set the tone. Unless you're building an entirely player-driven, emergent narrative, we are, at some point, setting the tone. I'm not really talking about the tone of the player's dialogue, by the way - it would work just as well if we had the player silently mouthing their lines but never speaking. It comes down to how conversations have 'beats', and you can use those natural beats to change the tone of the story.

As to the second, well, I hate to use the line, but that's a matter of opinion. We seem to have at least as many fans who don't feel that they're fighting the conversation, who prefer the cinematic approach and feel that it is, overall, more natural. I'm not arguing that, for some people, a silent protagonist really is the only way they can feel in control of the conversation. What I will argue, however, is that it's a universal truth.

[John Epler]

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

With all due respect Mr. Epler, what a voice protagonist gives you guys is a out to shoehorn one set outcome regardless of player choice. Anders being a prime example in DA2 where regardless if you warn the templars or not, the same outcome happens. Same thing siding with the templars or mages, it doesn't matter because the game plays out the exact same way.

It used to be Bioware titles at least gave an illusion of your choices actually mattering, this is no longer the case and the voiced protagonist makes this even more a narrow situation imo at least.

And I think you're conflating two separate things. Voiced protagonist and choice (or lack thereof) have very little to do with each other. The stumbling block to presenting wildly different outcomes is rarely, if ever, the voice acting. Even in DA:O, you had the choice of becoming a Grey Warden.. or becoming a Grey Warden, but reluctantly. We've always presented bottlenecks where, regardless of your choice, X happens. Were they perhaps more noticeable in DA2? I don't think you'll see much disagreement on this side. But they've always existed. The voiced protagonist has little to do with it - just that, by virtue of being in one of our games where these bottlenecks are most common and noticeable, people tend to associate the two. I can see why, but it's not really an accurate assumption.

[John Epler]

Leon481 wrote...

I respect your drive in trying to refine you cinematic storytelling, but there really is no reason why a main character can't be both silent and fit in well with cinematic storytelling. A good example of this that always stuck with me was Suikoden V for the PS2. The main character in that game was silent and fit in well with some very cinematic moments. They managed this by either having the other characters carry most of the conversation and letting you make choices on how to react, or in moments where the main character was the focus and his dilema was key, they told his story through body language and facial expressions and there was no need for dialogue to tell us what was going on in that scene. A good example is after his parents are murdered and his sister is kidnapped, he sits alone in his room with his head bowed. Flashbacks of the encounters he had with his family pass over his head. Once they stop, he gets a hard look and stands up facing the camera and the scene ends. We saw him mourn his family and find his resolve to avenge them and save his sister without a single word being uttered and there was no confusion to what was going on.

I'm not opposed to voiced characters or anything. Either works for me as long as they are done well. My point is, there are ways you can incorporate a silent character into cinematic storytelling if you find ways to compensate. It's not an either or scenario. Like most things, it just requires some creativity and work.

Maybe add some body language or facial expressions to go with slient choices or just in their reactions to other character's actions. It would add expressiveness without forcing tone, though may require some work to avoid awkwardness. Maybe you can add an action prompt to certain situations to move things along rather than having an action chosen by dialogue. The character can be a part of cinematic action while still not uttering a word out loud. The interrupts in Mass Effect are a good example of this, also mostly requiring little to no dialogue. It's all possible and already in line with things you've already done.

And I don't disagree that, yes, cinematic storytelling -is- possible with a silent protagonist. But the biggest problem with trying to bring the two sides together is that a silent protagonist means that you will -always- have missing time in a conversation. Whenever you choose a response, as a cinematic designer, you have to assume that no one said or did anything during that time. This means that characters can't cut each other off, people can't react to a line before it's done - it creates a weird meta-space where everything pauses as the player says their line. And to head off the inevitable, no, we didn't use this time as effectively as we could in DA2. That doesn't mean it isn't a valid space to explore.

I definitely agree that you can do a lot of storytelling without a word of dialogue. Though I think this has less to do with voiced versus silent as it does with just knowing and making use of the nonverbal cues and body language that we, as a species, have been developing for thousands of years. Is it easy? No - direct is always easier than subtle. But I'd say it's worth doing, and I'm hoping we can show moer of it going forward.

[John Epler]

Leon481 wrote...

JohnEpler wrote...
And I don't disagree that, yes, cinematic storytelling -is- possible with a silent protagonist. But the biggest problem with trying to bring the two sides together is that a silent protagonist means that you will -always- have missing time in a conversation. Whenever you choose a response, as a cinematic designer, you have to assume that no one said or did anything during that time. This means that characters can't cut each other off, people can't react to a line before it's done - it creates a weird meta-space where everything pauses as the player says their line. And to head off the inevitable, no, we didn't use this time as effectively as we could in DA2. That doesn't mean it isn't a valid space to explore.

I definitely agree that you can do a lot of storytelling without a word of dialogue. Though I think this has less to do with voiced versus silent as it does with just knowing and making use of the nonverbal cues and body language that we, as a species, have been developing for thousands of years. Is it easy? No - direct is always easier than subtle. But I'd say it's worth doing, and I'm hoping we can show moer of it going forward.

I see what you mean. It never really occured to me as most game have dialogue that reacts after a character speaks and rarely during. Even when they attempt an interrupt a lot of times there's this unnatural lag. It starts to seem natural in these games. Going for more realistic conversations in regular gameplay is something to look forward too I guess, even if it limits choices down the line.

Still, as far as keeping role playing options with a voiced protaganist, the attitude choices were a good start. I hope you attempt to do more with that as well. I would really love to see both the cinematic aspects and the overall attitude changes work together more naturally. there were some awkward moments in DA2.

And I'm not going to sit here and argue that there weren't awkward moments in DA2. A large part of that is, for most of us, this is all new territory. Fully voiced conversations with choice have existed before (the original Deus Ex being the most immediate example I can think of), but most of the time, cinematics were handled by a dedicated animation team, and happened primarily where the player didn't have any choice. It's sitll an evolving craft, and we've only really been doing it since ME1.

We tried to push things a little further in the DLC - it's always easier to do more when it's a short module, as you tend to have more time for polishing and experimenting. I think we managed it to a certain degree - characters moved around more, although it's still far from natural. And we could still stand to do a lot more with reactions -before- lines of dialogue. Our FaceFX are structured in such a way that they're, by and large, tied to lines of dialogue. Ideally, we'd like people to start reacting at more natural moments - EG, if a character tells another character 'You're an idiot, and I sincerely hope you rot in hell' - well, the other character's going to start reacting at 'You're an idiot'. Right now, they wait until the line is done and then react. There are other examples, of course, but that's one of the most apparent.

[John Epler]

[quote]Imrahil_ wrote...

[quote]JohnEpler wrote...
Yes, that's exactly it. Not that we're looking at how another highly visual medium, films, tell stories and trying to adapt some of their techniques to gaming, as they've been developed over a century and have a lot to say about using visuals to convey emotion, tone, that sort of thing. Nope, it's because we want to make movies and cartoons. Congratulations, you've cracked the code.
[/quote]
This is just a terrible approach.  IMO, obviously.  All sarcasm from your post aside, granted, you should not be looking to movies/films to tell your story.  You should be looking to the *future* of computer games, specifically cRPGs.  You should be innovating that medium.  Leading that medium.  Not looking to the past/present of movies.  If you do that, you'll only make games that lag behind movies instead of games that are at the forefront of cRPGs.
[/quote]

Why shouldn't we look to film and television? Our medium has its unique strengths - it's interactive, it's driven by the consumer (whereas television and film involve a passive consumer), but there's a reason why films and television employ certain storytelling methods. There's a reason that Western cinema shows left to right as a forward progression and right to left as a setback, for example. Or why a low angle is used to convey power and grandeur, while a high angle is used to make a character seem diminuitive. They're based on a library of techniques and tactics that are shown to evoke a particular emotion or thought process in the consumer, and I fail to see why we shouldn't look to other mediums to inform us on the aspects of our games that most closely resemble them. [quote]
[quote]When you loftily proclaim that we don't want to make games because of a particular stylistic and presentation choice we've made, well, I get a little sarcastic. It's a character flaw.[/quote]
To be fair, you aren't allowed to do that, more-or-less.  You have the power to ban people.  With great power comes great responsibility. You'll literally never get banned or even warned for anything you say.  You need to conduct yourself on a higher level. Suck it up. No character flaws allowed. Sorry.  It is what is.[/quote]

Tell you what, spend a year and a half on these forums, weathering torrents of abuse and then remain entirely civil at all times. I have a fairly thick skin, but yes, even I have a limit. For what it's worth, the worst anyone would ever get if they used that kind of sarcasm on another user (or myself, for that matter) would be a gentle warning. I ban over direct insults or other violations of the ToS, not sarcastic remarks. 

[quote]
[quote]As to the rest - I don't think we've ever interrupted the game every three minutes to give a cutscene.[/quote]
Just to digress a moment, do they teach a class in Going Literal To Combat A Point 101 at Bioware?  You know as well as everyone reading that that he didn't literally mean "every three minutes".  Y'all do this a lot.  I mean *a lot*.[/quote]

It's part of engaging with someone in honest debate, rather than simply trying to make your point with as much hyperbole as possible. I try to avoid hyperbole in my remarks - I never make wild, inaccurate claims and all I ask is that others not be disingenuous when they're entering into discussion with me. You're certainly welcome to complain about my pointing out hyperbole when it comes up, but it's not a tactic well-suited to serious debate. If that's not what people are looking for, fair enough. I'll recuse myself from the discussion.  But I like to think that when people are engaged in a discussion with me, they're doing so honestly.

[quote]
[quote]What a voiced protagonist gives us, otoh, is the ability to set pace and tone.[/quote]
This is disturbing.  You shouldn't set pace or tone. You should accomodate pace AND tone. The player should set pace and tone. I'm with Sylvius on this issue, even if he is mad. Really, this sort of defines the contention. If I had to level one defining, all-encompassing criticism at DA2 & the direction Bioware is heading in, it'd be "stop trying to define anything". Pace & tone included.[/quote]

We've always defined pace and tone. By the very nature of a game, it's an authored experience. Sure, some people like to distance themself from the authored side of things as much as possible. It's awesome that some games let you do that. But if you don't think that the vast majority of developers aren't, while making their games, trying to evoke a certain pacing or tone in particular elements of that game - well, I'd say you're mistaken. Whenever you interact with any piece of authored content - there's a tone that they're trying to evoke, either with gameplay elements, with writing, with audio, or with visuals. If you're able to disassociate yourself from that, you've either found one of the rare games where they aren't trying for that, or you've managed to avoid the authorial intent.

[quote]Make an awesome world with deep characters for us to advernture in. Stop telling us who our character is. Stop telling us what he says. Stop telling us how he reacts to events. Go back to making awesome worlds to interact with however we choose to interact with them.
[quote]JohnEpler wrote...
Unless you're building an entirely player-driven, emergent narrative, we are, at some point, setting the tone.[/quote]
As has already been pointed out, a good RPG is exactly that: "an entirely player-driven, emergent narrative". Bioware used to be the pinnacle of entirely player-driven, emergent narratives. It's... somewhat astounding... that you don't even want that anymore. That you think that's something you *shouldn't* be making. That you think that's something that people don't want.[/quote]

There's room for a lot more player-driven narrative than we had in DA2, I'll grant you that. But again. We've never made games that we're entirely player-driven, emergent narratives. We've always tried to tell stories in our games. If you're looking for an entirely player-driven, player-authored experience - well, that's not what we make. It's not what we've ever made. There's always an overarching plot. There are always unavoidable narrative events if you want to progress further. Yeah, I'll agree that DA2 went a little too far away from giving the player the chance to drive their own narrative, but we're not in the business of truly player-driven emergent narratives. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but it's true.

[quote]I started playing BG2 again recently.  I have dialogues that are dependent on my character's build, or stats, or what I did previously.  I'm playing a CG Mage character right now, &, having played this game enough times, I now look forward to playing again as a NE Fighter/Cleric so I can play through the Bodhi stuff instead of the Aran Linvail stuff, & handle quests differently, & pick up different companions, which means I'll probably have an easier time in the Underdark because I won't role-play the same urgency to go after Imoen ASAP. Etc. Etc. Etc.

And you don't think people want an entirely player-driven, emergent narrative? That's exactly what we want.[/quote] And here it seems we're arguing at cross purposes. When I say player-driven, emergent narrative, I mean, essentially, a game that has one entirely vague goal, and very little propelling you towards that goal. I definitely think the player needs to have agency, and we've already talked about how we want to do a lot more in the future in terms of the world reacting to your character's build and choices. DA2 lacked this, and I doubt you'll see anyone on this side disagreeing. But that's different from an entirely player-driven narrative. BG2 had an end goal, and it had waypoints along the way that you had to hit. 

[quote]

[quote]I'm not really talking about the tone of the player's dialogue, by the way - it would work just as well if we had the player silently mouthing their lines but never speaking. It comes down to how conversations have 'beats', and you can use those natural beats to change the tone of the story.[/quote]
No, you should stop this. You should stop tyring to set/change the tone of the story. You should set up events, worlds, characters, politics, even items, which may or may not change the tone of the story, depending on what the player chooses to do.

Then let us adventure through it, changing the story as we go. Setting the tone as we go. Stop rail-roading. Stop trying to play the game for us.
[/quote]

Unless we put everything in the control of the player (and I mean everything - even the NPCs), we're going to be setting the tone at some point. If what you're looking for is a sandbox where the player sets all the rules, I'm not sure I can think of any game that does that. I don't think that's what you want, though. Eventually, no matter what you play, you're going to lose some control. Of course, our job is to make that loss of control as unobtrusive and unnoticeable as possible. Sometimes, we succeed. Other times, not so much. But by its very nature, a CRPG is going to be an authored experience to at least some degree. What degree, of course, depends on the game in question. And maybe it's true that we author that experience too much for you. That's unfortunate - I like to see as many people enjoying our games as possible - but that's the path we've chosen. We can't make everyone happy, as much as we'd love to, and the only thing I can point to is our work. I can discuss and talk however long I want, but in the end, the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

[quote]
[quote]As to the second, well, I hate to use the line, but that's a matter of opinion. We seem to have at least as many fans who don't feel that they're fighting the conversation, who prefer the cinematic approach and feel that it is, overall,
[/quote]
No, you don't.  Granted, of the people who bought DA2, that audience is split on a lot of things. Voiced protagonist, "cinematic approach", iconic companions, sure - the audience that bought DA2 is split on a lot of the changes DA2 made, But what you're forgetting/ignoring is that *DA2 lost about 3 million customers from DA:O*. Possibly more.  I'm assuming DA2 hit 2 million in actual sales.

You are literally ignoring the 3 million+ buyers of the original that didn't buy the sequel & instead focusing on half the people that did buy the sequel. And for every new buyer of DA2 who didn't play DA:O, that's en extra person that didn't buy the sequel. It's not split. It is not the case that 50% like voiced & 50% like silent. What is true is that after the 3 million drop in sales, 50% of the people who bought DA2 like voiced & 50% don't. This is important. Don't try to pretend that the Dragon Age fanbase is split. It's not. 50% of the 60%-drop-off is split  Which means 20% of your original buyers like DA2, not 50%.

You are going down the wrong path, & it's disappointing to me because it means you won't be making games I like anymore. As things stand now, from what we know, I will not buy your next game. I actually bought ME2 for the sole reason that "hey, that game was made by the DA:O" people. I knew nothing about it except that "the Bioware people made it", so I figured I'd give it a shot - turned out I didn't really like it much, but I don't regret the purchase.

I bought every single DA:O DLC, except Darkspawn Chronicles (didn't like the concept), because I wanted to support that game. I love BG1 & 2. I replay them sporadically (like now, as I mentioned).  I replay DA:O every once in a while.  Just sayin' I'm not a hater. I love Bioware. It just seems like you are determined to make games I don't like anymore.  It's not me, it's you.

Eh, that's all I can do. Thank you, John, for reading this, assuming you did. Thank you for even replying on the forums. Thank you for listening. If nothing else, you don't seem to roll a 20-sided die to determine when to lock a thread, so if nothing else, you've got that going for you.[/quote]

And again. I hope that we can change your mind as to the games we're making. I don't think we can please everyone, not by a long shot, but I like to think that we'll move more towards something that fans like yourself can enjoy in the future. If not, though? That's unfortunate, but it's your money, and you should spend it supporting games you enjoy. Aside from giving feedback (which, by the way, I appreciate that you did in a respectful fashion), that's the biggest thing you can do.

Modifié par JohnEpler, 29 février 2012 - 05:32 .