337 réponses à ce sujet

[Yrkoon]

Xilizhra wrote...

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.

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I  don't have too much trouble imagining  Hawke as, say... a Dalish elf with no family or clan.

It's just that....  It's not the same, since doing so forces  the game to basically scream  "NO YOU'RE NOT!  YOU ARE   ONLY WHO WE SAY YOU ARE!".... for 50 straight hours.

And that makes my imagination sad.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 28 février 2012 - 06:27 .

[esper]

Yrkoon wrote...

Xilizhra wrote...

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.

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I  don't have too much trouble imagining  Hawke as, say... a Dalish elf with no family or clan.

It's just that....  It's not the same, since doing so forces  the game to basically scream  "NO YOU'RE NOT!  YOU ARE   ONLY WHO WE SAY YOU ARE!".... for 50 straight hours.

And that makes my imagination sad.

Right, that is because you are trying to imagine something that is so far off that is just an exercise in pointless. (And I don't really see the point of imagine Hawke as an elf since da2 is the story about a human, nobody says that roleplay have to be about every race that is possible.)

For my part I imagine how the family was in lotherng, how she feels about the situation, what she thinks, what she does in her free time, what she does in the three years time skip, how she acts with the nobles past act 1, how she learned her abilities and her specialization - Alt that is just as as who Hawke is as choosing to be elf.

[Mr Fixit]

Expanding this conversation a bit having in mind the above comment of Hawke sounding "posher then the Queen". Is there perhaps a difference in the way people react to the voiced protagonist based on whether English is their first language?

To me, it's not, and in my entire life I've spent a whole week in an English-speaking country (and that was 20 years ago, while I was a wee lad), so I am not so sensitive to that whole accent/regional affiliation thing. An English player could perhaps have a problem roleplaying a peasant speaking with an obvious upper class accent.

I also find John's comments very illuminating, and I look forward to seeing BioWare properly implement all these nifty features he wrote about. Sadly, I don't really see them for the time being. That said, I don't have a favourite when it comes to voicing the protagonist. I like both when done well. I am not a hardcore roleplayer to whom it's imperative to speak in my own voice; I'm more of a storyteller guy who enjoys a well crafted story first and foremost.

Modifié par Mr Fixit, 28 février 2012 - 06:40 .

[Monica83]

Bha people those days have problem to open their mind and dream.. They need all to be more cinematic in order to be entratained .. Honstly i think cinematics are overstimated.. I have much more immersion on the moment reading a book than see shiny and well maded video sequence..

Im not aganist the voiced character as a long is presence don't cut the opportunity to design a My character and be able to make my decision and give accurate answer when a NPC is talking to me..

The real problem of dragon age 2 is the lack of choice in what the character is going to say.. If you read the paraphrases you hardly understeand what your character is going to say..I prefear full written answer and more variation and answer in the dialogues ala baldur's gate or planescape torment..

The manner that Dragon age 2 handled the dialogues was super dumbed down.. At the end the real choice to make in those dialogues is the tone icon.. And many time no matter what you pick the answer of hawke is totally equal to the another in the other tone.. Just change the tone...

I can hardly consider dragon age 2 an Rpg for this...

Because i don't see how in dragon age 2 you can roleplay a yout character or even a defined one..

But maybe is just me..

In the end if i have to choice between Voiced but with dialogue ala dragon age 2 and Silent but with dialogues ala dragon age origins...

I chose Origins...

[esper]

Mr Fixit wrote...

Expanding this conversation a bit having in mind the above comment of Hawke sounding "posher then the Queen". Is there perhaps a difference in the way people react to the voiced protagonist based on whether English is their first language?

To me, it's not, and in my entire life I've spent a whole week in an English-speaking country (and that was 20 years ago, while I was a wee lad), so I am not so sensitive to that whole accent/regional affiliation thing. An English player could perhaps have a problem roleplaying a peasant speaking with an obvious upper class accent.

I also find John's comments very illuminating, and I look forward to seeing BioWare properly implement all these nifty features he wrote about. Sadly, I don't really see them for the time being. That said, I don't have a favourite when it comes to voicing the protagonist. I like both when done well. I am not a hardcore roleplayer to whom it's imperative to speak in my own voice; I'm more of a storyteller guy who enjoys a well crafted story first and foremost.

I am not first langue english speaking either, so no and I don't have a problem with it so, no. 

[zyntifox]

Monica83 wrote...

Bha people those days have problem to open their mind and dream.. They need all to be more cinematic in order to be entratained .. Honstly i think cinematics are overstimated.. I have much more immersion on the moment reading a book than see shiny and well maded video sequence..

Im not aganist the voiced character as a long is presence don't cut the opportunity to design a My character and be able to make my decision and give accurate answer when a NPC is talking to me..

The real problem of dragon age 2 is the lack of choice in what the character is going to say.. If you read the paraphrases you hardly understeand what your character is going to say..I prefear full written answer and more variation and answer in the dialogues ala baldur's gate or planescape torment..

The manner that Dragon age 2 handled the dialogues was super dumbed down.. At the end the real choice to make in those dialogues is the tone icon.. And many time no matter what you pick the answer of hawke is totally equal to the another in the other tone.. Just change the tone...

I can hardly consider dragon age 2 an Rpg for this...

Because i don't see how in dragon age 2 you can roleplay a yout character or even a defined one..

But maybe is just me..

In the end if i have to choice between Voiced but with dialogue ala dragon age 2 and Silent but with dialogues ala dragon age origins...

I chose Origins...

It's hardly just you. I played DA2 before i played origins. When i played DA2 i never did consider it an RPG game, but more like a action/adventure game with some RPG elements. And as an action/adventure game i thought it was above average, no doubt. The disappointment of the game never really did come to me until i bought and played DA:O and it's DLCs. Which to me is the best game i played since Baldur's gate 2.

[JasonPogo]

It kinda boggles the mind why you went this way however. You have all the bells and whistles you are looking for already in ME. Why then would you want to clone out that tipe of game and story telling to all your other games? Seems to me you had a game for people who like the movie action and what not in ME and people where buying it in droves. But you had DAO which was more classical and done in a dif way that people were buying up in droves. Just seems to me you would want to put out different kinds of games. Not make all your games just like the other ones...

[Leon481]

JohnEpler wrote...

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.

I look forward to what you come up with. I'm already a big fan of what you accomplished in DA2. The companions really felt far more alive than I'm used to due to the work you did with cinematics, facial expressions, and well as their slightly more realistic movements and reactions in scenes, especially with so many branching character paths to give them a bit more depth. Each character also seemed to have their own unique expressions and body language which really gave them each their own flavor. It's not something you usually see quite to that degree.

Even if this is new territory, you still did an excellent job. Really, the only complaints I can really raise against this game have nothing to do with the cinematics. That was the strong point, even if it wasn't perfect.

The awkwardness I speak of is more along the lines of how body language and facial expressions didn't really change too much based on the reactions to Hawke him/herself. There were occasions where it did, mainly in the friendship/rivalry path scenes, but not really to Hawke's general attitude. Even Hawke's body language didn't change too much when delivering different attitudes in most cases. Facial expressions were done well in that regard for the most part, but body language didn't change much. I seem to remember very subtle things, like arm movements, but general countenance was the same no matter what.

Still, that's a minor complaint. It wouldn't even have been noticable if you hadn't done such a stellar job in general in the first place.

[zyntifox]

JasonPogo wrote...

It kinda boggles the mind why you went this way however. You have all the bells and whistles you are looking for already in ME. Why then would you want to clone out that tipe of game and story telling to all your other games? Seems to me you had a game for people who like the movie action and what not in ME and people where buying it in droves. But you had DAO which was more classical and done in a dif way that people were buying up in droves. Just seems to me you would want to put out different kinds of games. Not make all your games just like the other ones...

This is something that strikes me as odd aswell. When comparing origins first year sales with DA2 first year sales, or even just looking at the total sales of origins you could clearly see that they had a winning formula. You would think that the rational approach to the sequel would be to keep it close to the original with some small changes, not doing an 180.

Now i can understand that perhaps origins, even though it sold many copies, weren't as profitable as they would have want due to the long development time and that long development time wasn't available for the next game. You would still think that having the system of origins as the basis for the new game with a minor upgrade of the graphical enginge would suffice and be more profitable than all the changes they did in DA2.

[Mr Fixit]

Cstaf wrote...

This is something that strikes me as odd aswell. When comparing origins first year sales with DA2 first year sales, or even just looking at the total sales of origins you could clearly see that they had a winning formula. You would think that the rational approach to the sequel would be to keep it close to the original with some small changes, not doing an 180.

Now i can understand that perhaps origins, even though it sold many copies, weren't as profitable as they would have want due to the long development time and that long development time wasn't available for the next game. You would still think that having the system of origins as the basis for the new game with a minor upgrade of the graphical enginge would suffice and be more profitable than all the changes they did in DA2.

Well, there's an obvious answer (whether it's true is another matter altogether) - by the time DA:O amassed all those sale numbers, it was too late to change the general direction of DA2 development. As far as I know, DA:O was delayed several months while the game was being ported to consoles. It stands to reason that BioWare was already neck-deep in DA2 by the time they realised just how enormous a hit they had on their hands. It's quite possible they themselves were surprised by the success of a game that represents a throwback to an earlier time.

Modifié par Mr Fixit, 28 février 2012 - 07:44 .

[Fast Jimmy]

One of my main issues with a voiced protagonist doesn't stem from immersion or connectivity, but to the inherent chains it puts on changing the story.

I refuse to believe that, at late stages, story is as easily changed with a voiced PC as it is with a non voiced one. We are told that originally there was a way to save Leandra if you took the right steps, but testers saw ber dying as 'losing' and would just reload and try again. So the option to save her was removed.

Instead of just removing the scene, wouldn't it have been easier to just rewrite some of the story to have multiple outcomes, all in which SOMETHING was lost? Either by saving Leandra or losing something equally as important, to either gameplay or story. With a silent PC, it would just be changing some dialogue options. With a voiced PC, it involves recording new dialogue (six different times, mind you). So the only option is, instead off change for the better, to scrap the choice altogether and give a default outcome for everyone.

That sounds like what some have been complaining happened throughout all of DA2, doesn't it?

[Xewaka]

JohnEpler wrote...
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.

Monkey Island 3 did it first, in 1996. Simon the Sorcerer 2 did it one year earlier, in 1995. Probably there were others before as well, but my memory fails me right now. Though I won't blame you for thinking of RPGs only and not of graphic adventure games.

JohnEpler wrote...
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.

You know what would even be better? Knowing if my character will call another an idiot if I pick certain dialogue option BEFORE picking said option, rather than AFTER. What killed any chance at roleplaying in DA 2 was not the voice, was the fact that the paraphrases robbed the player of vital information about the character's actions. What the character says matter. If you can't know what will be said beforehand, you cannot in good sense say that you've had, at any point, controlled the character.
Oh, and before you say you're working on improving the paraphrases, let me save you the time: they can't, by their very nature, be improved. The simple fact that paraphrases have a ludicruously low character space means they can never convey enough information pertaining the choice about to be made, thus they'll either be useless or directly misleading. There are people that is happy with vague hints and the flimsiest barebone structure of dialogue, to avoid running into subvocalization issues. I'm not. And anyone who argues that being surprised by your own character (as opposed to plot developments) is in any way conductive of good roleplaying needs to figure out what character interpretation actually means.

Modifié par Xewaka, 28 février 2012 - 11:34 .

[rolson00]

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.

i think apples are not always green
there are many ways to make every game a different way while i do prefer the silent speech (as it lets you use your imagination) i also understand that games also need to evolve the silent speech i oetdated for todays market, speech actinG wouldnt be a problem if it didnt take up so much space, until hardware space problems are solved we're all going to be haveing this same argument til we're all old men.

[Sylvius the Mad]

JohnEpler wrote...

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.

Both action games.

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.

It can't work, John.  You cannot tell stories through games.  You can allow us to tell stories within your games, but as soon as you're the one telling the story it's no longer a game.

Your games used to allow the player to create his own story through the choices made by his character.  When do we get that back?

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 28 février 2012 - 09:41 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

JohnEpler wrote...

What a voiced protagonist gives us, otoh, is the ability to set pace and tone.

That's the problem.  The player should get to decide that, not you.  Never you.  It's the player's reality.  He crafted the main character.  Only the player knows that character's motivations or even his core objectives.  You cannot set pace and tone without usurping the player's control.

[Shevy]

Although I prefer the silent protagonist, I can live with a voiced one, when executed well enough. The problem I had with DA II on this regard was that male Hawke was voiced by the same actor who voiced Zevran in Origins. ( German version) So, I never managed to complete the prologue with the male version, it was too awkward. Also nearly every cameo wasn't voiced by the Origins actor. Kind of ruined that.

[Sylvius the Mad]

JohnEpler wrote...

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.

A player-driven, emergent narrative is what RPGs are.  That's what they've always been.  The player is the one who decides what happens and why.  What you guys do is populatte the world in which this occurs.

Something sandbox games do badly, I think, is they create a world in which nothing happens without the player causing it.  That's a static world, and it doesn't feel real.  A well designed RPG setting, like those we see in most BioWare titles, has events taking place in it regardless of what the player wants.  But the player needs to be the sole and final arbiter of basically every detail of the PC's participation in those events.

And that's what you took away in DA2.  In DA2 you had Hawke behaving independently of the player's preferences.

It comes down to how conversations have 'beats', and you can use those natural beats to change the tone of the story.

If the PC is involved in the conversation, then you can't have control of that, either.  You don't know how any line will be interpreted by the player.  As such, you cannot presuppose any reaction on the part of the PC.

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.

Then let us turn off the damn voice.

[Aradace]

Hey, OP. Check out the link in my signature. Any delusions you may have about any DA game going back to a silent progat will be squashed. Check out the dev's post about half way down. Trust me, this dicussion's been had before and the "silent protag" camp will lose every time.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Aradace wrote...

Hey, OP. Check out the link in my signature. Any delusions you may have about any DA game going back to a silent progat will be squashed. Check out the dev's post about half way down. Trust me, this dicussion's been had before and the "silent protag" camp will lose every time.

We haven't lost until we give up.

Proof there will NOT be a silent protag for the next DA game.

I don't think you understand what the word "proof" means.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 28 février 2012 - 09:59 .

[Tsuga C]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

JohnEpler wrote...

What a voiced protagonist gives us, otoh, is the ability to set pace and tone.

That's the problem.  The player should get to decide that, not you.  Never you.  It's the player's reality.  He crafted the main character.  Only the player knows that character's motivations or even his core objectives.  You cannot set pace and tone without usurping the player's control.

*sustained applause for Sylvius*  The more that the game designers try to impose a uniform experience upon our PC, the less their cRPG emulates a tabletop RPG.  As I hold replay value in high esteem, I'm a big fan of player agency in games that purport to be roleplaying games and I take a dim view of being constantly forced into a one-size-fits-all experience.  If letting us chose from 3 to 5 different tones/paths means shortening the game somewhat so as to allow for choices that are not simply cosmetic, so be it.

[Aradace]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Aradace wrote...

Hey, OP. Check out the link in my signature. Any delusions you may have about any DA game going back to a silent progat will be squashed. Check out the dev's post about half way down. Trust me, this dicussion's been had before and the "silent protag" camp will lose every time.

We haven't lost until we give up.

Proof there will NOT be a silent protag for the next DA game.

I don't think you understand what the word "proof" means.

No, I do quite well know what it means, you're simply delusional but thank you for playing 

[Sylvius the Mad]

JohnEpler wrote...

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.

But the combination of the voice and the paraphrase meant that the way Hawke agreed to do something wasn't necessarily the sort of agreement that made sense for our Hawke.

Moreover, the voice alone severely reduces the likelihood that the game offers an option that suits any give n Hawke.  An unvoiced PC allows the player to imagine the exact delivery of a line that makes that line work for his character.  By voicing the PC, DA2 took that away.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 28 février 2012 - 10:04 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

[quote]Xilizhra wrote...

Gamist convention, unless you believe that an Act 3 street gangster is really stronger than the Ancient Rock Wraith as well.[/quote]
If the mechanics say it's true, then it's true.[/quote]

[Sylvius the Mad]

JohnEpler wrote...

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.

The PC also shouldn't use non-verbal cues or body language without direct input from the player.

[Fast Jimmy]

I knew it was a matter of time before Sylivus was on the scene with this conversation.

I agree with his points, particularly his last one. Even the overall tone of a response is taking away choice. If I choose a Comedic response, but I imagine the line delivered with a light, non-harmful tone but my voiced PC delivers it with a sarcastic, rakish delivery, it makes me feel like my character is behaving like an ****. Or vice versa.

Granted, with a silent PC, the NPC will react exactly the same, regardless of how I imagine my silent PC delivers the line. The difference is that I can attribute that to the NPC misreading my intentions, not from my PC behaving in a way I didn't want and causing the NPC to react negatively.

With the silent PC, I see this as an honest communication error, that can happen in real life. With the voiced PC, I see it only as forced narrative and game limitation.

And, again, I reinforce my previous point that design cost and flexibility are hindered much more by a voiced PC than a silent one. Until the day comes when a computer can generate a voice with that can follow directions by the player such as tone and inflection, then a voiced PC will always be an interpretation of someone else, not a choice a player can make. It will always be design and cost prohibitive to record ACTUAL dialogue to give as much freedom as just reading non spoken text gives.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 28 février 2012 - 10:26 .