337 réponses à ce sujet

[Leon481]

JohnEpler wrote...

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.

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.

[esper]

Wulfram wrote...

Basic example of what Voiced protagonist takes away.  Hawke has to be a totally confident super-badass from the start.  The voice acting forces it.  There's no room for them to have some character developement, to grow into their heroic status, because they're set from the start.

Xilizhra wrote...

Step one: play the game more than once. Step two: console command if it's still so wholly necessary.

The first playthrough is the most important.  And messing around with console commands is hardly natural.

Eh... No. Canon Hawke: goes from a peasant village girl who just want to have everyone get along in the prolog/ act 1, to a unbending idealist who won't listen to what everyone else says because obviosuly she is right and everybody who disagree with her are evil and needs to be stopped.

Evelyn: Goes from a genuine happy go lucky person to a disillusioned champion who only retain a facade of the person who once was and no longer really bother's with anyone.

Rival: Goes from a bitter and agressive girl that just wants to hide and lash out at the world, to a person so desperatly clingly on to the last person who cares for her that she finally give up arguingand accept that she has to accept responsibilty for her kind if she wants to have anyone left in the world. 
 

[Xilizhra]

Basic example of what Voiced protagonist takes away. Hawke has to be a totally confident super-badass from the start. The voice acting forces it. There's no room for them to have some character developement, to grow into their heroic status, because they're set from the start.

There's no character growth with the Warden "growing into" their heroic status. They're also super-badasses from the very start, otherwise they wouldn't have been picked for Warden status, and lacking in confidence with that just feels extremely odd and incongruous unless it's a bluff.

The first playthrough is the most important. And messing around with console commands is hardly natural.

For me, the first playthrough is when I plow through the story and focus little on my character as such. I begin building a character during subsequent playthroughs, generally. Origins changed nothing of this.

He's a Human, With One defined village of birth, One defined family and one pre-defined voice. Nothing is vague, and the only choice the player has is to determine whether or not he's a spell caster.

How was she trained in magic, exactly, if a mage; what was that like? If not a mage, where did she learn her skills? And Lothering isn't a defined village of birth; the family had to keep moving around. Lothering is just where their time in Ferelden ended. Hawke could have been born nigh-anywhere in the country, certainly far more than each Warden origin could have.

Now lets compare that to.... the warden... who has a choice of races, a choice of origins, and no predetermined voice to halt the polayer's ability to speak through their character.

Yes, the Warden is simply unable to speak at all. Clearly far superior.

[Wulfram]

@esper A peasant village girl with an accent posher than the Queen and an incredibly superior attitude?

If you can toss out all the voice acting and substitute you're own head canon, that's great, I appaud you. But in that case, I struggle to see the point of having it.

@Xlizhra.  The Warden needs to be highly skilled and with great potential.  But, because they're not voiced, room is left for you to put you're own spin on how they're handling things.  Whether their voice rings with confidence like Hawke's does, or shows traces of nerves.

Modifié par Wulfram, 28 février 2012 - 05:31 .

[Xilizhra]

Wulfram wrote...

A peasant village girl with an accent posher than the Queen and an incredibly superior attitude.

If you can toss out all the voice acting and substitute you're own head canon, that's great, I appaud you. But in that case, I struggle to see the point of having it.

Um, her mother is a noble and her father's origin is extremely uncertain. The accent isn't much of a mismatch. And what superior attitude?

[Wulfram]

Xilizhra wrote...

Um, her mother is a noble and her father's origin is extremely uncertain. The accent isn't much of a mismatch. And what superior attitude?

The superior attitude that it is inherent in her voice acting, whatever tone you pick

[Xilizhra]

I'm really not seeing that myself. Have you any examples?

[Dragoonlordz]

Bioware will always set the tone of the interactions by a variety of choices they have written. However the one thing that concerns me in regards to their latest product (Mass Effect 3 and yes I know not DA2 but relevant to the conversation), is while prior titles let you "choose" the tone and context out of the selection at the start of each interaction, from what have seen so far in Mass Effect 3 that tone choice is removed from the players hand far more often. Chiming in and making your first selection half way through a conversation or interaction. This I am not a fan of because to me that is taking away from the player too much. Leads to the first half of the conversation being out of character or persona created by choices from previous titles.

As for "silent vs voiced", there are benefits for different sides of the fence and this is separate as far as I am concerned to the aforementioned tone and context set by choices. For some including myself the benefit of silent protagonist is when we read the words, those words are being read aloud in our minds in our own voice. This adds to character immersion within the boundaries of choices given to us. Some people do not actually read aloud in their minds when reading a book or dialogue, for them having a voiced character is preferable.

There is also the different preferences of play styles, from my group who create a character to mimic themselves within the world the game creates using multiple methods from our own voice, character creator and picking choices closest to how we would really respond if we was in the position of the character.There will always be a limitation of that form of roleplaying but such features allow it's style/use to be more in depth. There is the other form of roleplaying where instead of roleplaying as yourself (as much as is possible) in those worlds the developer creates, they roleplay the persona of another character in the game or create an alternative persona to control (Shepard/Hawke is me vs Shepard/Hawke is him/her). Having a different voice to their own does not detract from this style.

This is just my opinion though, others are bound to see it differently.

Modifié par Dragoonlordz, 28 février 2012 - 05:43 .

[AntiChri5]

Apples are definately better then Oranges and it is in no way a subjective matter of personal taste.

[Wulfram]

Xilizhra wrote...

I'm really not seeing that myself. Have you any examples?

It's in everything they say, if you don't hear it, I guess you don't hear it.  But I can't not hear it.

[esper]

Wulfram wrote...

A peasant village girl with an accent posher than the Queen and an incredibly superior attitude.

If you can toss out all the voice acting and substitute you're own head canon, that's great, I appaud you. But in that case, I struggle to see the point of having it.

Accent is because of her family, she was raised by a  former noble woman and an well educated mage after all, and attitude no: My Hawke certainly doesn't act superior to any one. I don't get where you get that from, she just assumes that role her father forced her into when he died.   

[esper]

AntiChri5 wrote...

Apples are definately better then Oranges and it is in no way a subjective matter of personal taste.

No, organges are best because they are orange.

Modifié par esper, 28 février 2012 - 05:39 .

[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.

[Yrkoon]

Xilizhra wrote...

He's a Human, With One defined village of birth, One defined family and one pre-defined voice. Nothing is vague, and the only choice the player has is to determine whether or not he's a spell caster.

How was she trained in magic, exactly,

  Mage Hawke Begins the game as an adult, level 1 Mage.   We literally witness his training from the getgo.  So no.

Now lets compare that to.... the warden... who has a choice of races, a choice of origins, and no predetermined voice to halt the polayer's ability to speak through their character.

Yes, the Warden is simply unable to speak at all. Clearly far superior.

It is.  Lets not forget that we are discussing an RPG, NOT a movie.    In an RPG, the  whole point is to role play according to your imagination.   In Origins, my Dwarf noble did not have a pre-defined voice.  He was in-game silent.  This allowed me to Role play  a schtick I had in mind,  and imagine him with  a low, deep voice he got from a lifetime of drinking the strongest dwarven Ales Orzamar had to offer.

Had Bioware voiced all his dialogues, I wouldn't have been able to  do any such thing, would I (unless the voice actor they chose just happned to coincidently possess a  low, deep  whiskey-induced voice.  In which case, I wouldn't have been able to successfully roleplay my Second Dwarf Noble....

Modifié par Yrkoon, 28 février 2012 - 05:46 .

[Xilizhra]

Mage Hawke Begins the game as an adult, level 1 Mage. We literally witness his training from the getgo. So no.

Gamist convention, unless you believe that an Act 3 street gangster is really stronger than the Ancient Rock Wraith as well.

It is. Lets not forget that we are discussing an RPG, where the whole point is to role play according to your imagination. In Origins, my Dwarf noble did not have a pre-defined voice. He was in-game silent. This allowed me to Role play and imagine him with a low, deep voice he got from a lifetime of drinking the strongest dwarven Ales Orzamar had to offer.

Dwarven ale in Origins is stated canonically to suck, just so you know. Also, imagination has its place, but I don't agree that that place is in a video game where imagination isn't used anywhere else. I feel it's best for tabletops when you have to imagine everyone's voice.

[Wulfram]

With a voiced protagonist, you've got added time.  Because you've got the time when you're deciding what to say, and then the time when you're listening to what actually comes out of the PC's mouth.

Unless you continue the trend of turning the PC into auto-dialogue zombies, anyway.

[LinksOcarina]

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

JohnEpler wrote...

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.

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.

The outcome of player choice in a linear game was always a myth though. I am not sure why you are complaining about this at all. I mean, every RPG BioWare has made was always a linear progression. From Baldurs Gate to Dragon Age II, the freedom of making choices is how you act within the confines of the choices; so for example, side quests for extra gold, items, and rapport with PC characters is really the role-playing experience that people would look for outside of the story.

Do you help the peseants or no, do you turn in the escaped convict? Do you lie to someone to get an advantage over them in combat? That is just as much as playing a role as selecting which response out of six-seven choices you want to say to a NPC. If anything, BioWare has been making cut-scenes since 1998, the only difference now is that the cut-scenes are flashier and have a character with a voice instead of pre selected text choices. Set outcomes like defeating Sarevok, destroying Soverign, or Anders' act of terrorism showcase a simple distinction over most games, the story always trumps the choices in the end. What shapes the experience is the choices in-between, do you plead with Anders and show pity on him for what he did? Do you sacrifice human lives for a somewhat xenophobic council of aliens? These type of choices reflect the actions of the player moreso than a line of text telling you what you say and do, and seeing them acted out in-game is how its interpreted now in a modern era of gaming.

RPG games live or die not by the freedom of choice given, but by the restrictions of choice allowed. In other words, a world with no restriction to the rules or choices given (like Skyrim, for example) is a nice world to be in, but it suffers from the facet of telling too much at once and relying on pure ambiance of the world, instead of the craft and balance of the rules. Games like the 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons suffer the same problem, its designed to throw in everything but the kitchen sink and say "go play with this." The best campains from DnD come from the homebrew campaigns, the ones that actually restrict things when necessary, instead of allowing free range all over the place.

I guess my point is that, regarding the silent vs voiced protagonist, is that its a natural progression given the strong story-telling medium that Bioware is a part of. The question of freedom of choice pertaining to what the character says to me is kind of silly in this regard, because since the beginning BioWare was giving you the choice of what to say to begin with, they just have a voice now to give more emotional weight and neuance to the storyline that is in-game. It is a restriction that is necessary for the type of RPGs Bioware has made for the past 14 years, and I find it unusual that people bicker over the semantics of bits such as this.

[Yrkoon]

Xilizhra wrote...

Mage Hawke Begins the game as an adult, level 1 Mage. We literally witness his training from the getgo. So no.

Gamist convention

You have your answer.

And this whole aspect of the discussion is retarded.  Hawke is ridiculously more  pre-defined  (front-loaded is the official term Bioware uses, I believe) than the Warden, in just about every singe way imaginable.

Xilizhra wrote...
 Also, imagination has its place

Indeed it does.  Its place is in an RPG.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 28 février 2012 - 05:55 .

[Xilizhra]

Indeed it does. Its place is in an RPG.

If you're unable to use your imagination with Hawke, I may question how much you have.

[AydinPaladin]

Mr Fixit wrote...

AydinPaladin wrote...

I disagree, but if that was your experience, then I can't argue with that.
That is an unusual response though. People are generally able to identify with the nonvoiced avatar better. This is known in social psychology as proteus theory or to a lesser extent social presence theory. I study this effect and am in the process of publishing a paper on proteus theory with avatars in computer mediated communication and online roleplaying. 
Obviously it is YMMV to some extent, but social psychological research backs up the avatar as being a more relatable medium for acclimation to a deindividuated virtual enviroment. 

As Phillipe Willaume would no doubt say: "Tres interessant".

Could you please elaborate on that. What specifically is the root cause of it?

 Deindividuation was most famously identified by Zimbardo's 1971study on group behavior in prisons. Deindividuation in Computer Mediated communication can be loosely identified as "trolling" or sometimes munchausens by internet but is more complicated, defining the process in which a person losses the sense of self when a computer acts as a medium.  The cause is the lack of face to face interaction and thus lack of social cues, tendency to assimilate to percieved group norms and tendency to ignore general social normative behavior.
 The Proteus effect, identified by Yee and Bailenson (2007), is a subset of deindividuation wherein an individual takes on the role of a charcter that represents them via an avatar. They become the role they are placed into, specifically.  They see the avatar as themselves and take on characterisitcs when interacting through that avatar that suit the character.
 The Yee & Bailenson article specifically gave participants an avatar to fill. They provided an already created avatar. My research compares two groups of participants, one of which creates an avatar, the second of which is given one and then comparing the amount of which the participants acclimate to the characteristics of that avatar via Proteus effect. 
For example, a tall, burly avatar and a boisterous/outgoing personality compared with a small, fraile-looking one and a meek personality.
This specific effect was demonstrated in the Yee & Bailenson study. My research is meely an extension of it. 

It's nerdy stuff but it's intersting.

Yee, N; Bailenson, J. (2007). The proteus effect: The effect of transformed self-representation on behavior. Human Communication Research

[zyntifox]

AydinPaladin wrote...

Mr Fixit wrote...

AydinPaladin wrote...

I disagree, but if that was your experience, then I can't argue with that.
That is an unusual response though. People are generally able to identify with the nonvoiced avatar better. This is known in social psychology as proteus theory or to a lesser extent social presence theory. I study this effect and am in the process of publishing a paper on proteus theory with avatars in computer mediated communication and online roleplaying. 
Obviously it is YMMV to some extent, but social psychological research backs up the avatar as being a more relatable medium for acclimation to a deindividuated virtual enviroment. 

As Phillipe Willaume would no doubt say: "Tres interessant".

Could you please elaborate on that. What specifically is the root cause of it?

 Deindividuation was most famously identified by Zimbardo's 1971study on group behavior in prisons. Deindividuation in Computer Mediated communication can be loosely identified as "trolling" or sometimes munchausens by internet but is more complicated, defining the process in which a person losses the sense of self when a computer acts as a medium.  The cause is the lack of face to face interaction and thus lack of social cues, tendency to assimilate to percieved group norms and tendency to ignore general social normative behavior.
 The Proteus effect, identified by Yee and Bailenson (2007), is a subset of deindividuation wherein an individual takes on the role of a charcter that represents them via an avatar. They become the role they are placed into, specifically.  They see the avatar as themselves and take on characterisitcs when interacting through that avatar that suit the character.
 The Yee & Bailenson article specifically gave participants an avatar to fill. They provided an already created avatar. My research compares two groups of participants, one of which creates an avatar, the second of which is given one and then comparing the amount of which the participants acclimate to the characteristics of that avatar via Proteus effect. 
For example, a tall, burly avatar and a boisterous/outgoing personality compared with a small, fraile-looking one and a meek personality.
This specific effect was demonstrated in the Yee & Bailenson study. My research is meely an extension of it. 

It's nerdy stuff but it's intersting.

Yee, N; Bailenson, J. (2007). The proteus effect: The effect of transformed self-representation on behavior. Human Communication Research

Puh, im so glad im studying statistics and math.

[AlexXIV]

We don't have our own Hawke. We can decide the look and 'what mood Hawke is today'. Other than that Bioware is telling the story and we are listening with the only exception being the last decision in which we say 'templar' or 'mage'. Just to clear that up ahead.

However, as John said, voiced protagonist has many advantages that enables the devs to create a much more 'lifelike' experience for the player. Silent protagonist has always been a bit weird. I only played the KoA demo, not the actual game but this and for example Bethesda games are what shows why silent protagonist is worse than voiced protagonist.

It is mostly a question and answer game. Player asks questions, NPC answers and the other way round. If you look at it closely it is sort of poor tbh. I much prefer dialogues like they did it in DA2, just with real choices for Maker's sake, and not just pick your the tone of your answer and follow the arrows.

[Leon481]

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 games have dialogue that reacts after a character speaks and rarely during, voiced or not. 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.

It's also nice to hear you're considering pursuing nonverbal scenes. Those somehow always seem to have more impact when done well, at least in my experience.

Modifié par Leon481, 28 février 2012 - 06:04 .

[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.

[Arppis]

I have to say, I hate Silent Protagonists.

But in RPG's they work. Because you can actualy voice yourself trough dialogue choices. Still, in any other medium, I hate it, because when character doesn't interact with the enviroment, I stop caring about the story. If they don't have any reaction to their old friend dying in front of them, it just makes me think that the protagonist doesn't give a damn.

It's also impossible to take their place, as they are still usualy established characters, like Gordon Freeman and John-117.

But as I said, in RPG, they work because you can choose the lines. That said, I like what Bioware is doing here and voicing the protagonist, it works for me.