337 réponses à ce sujet

[Brockololly]

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.

Eh, there is a difference between silent protagonists and non voiced protagonists. Gordon Freeman is a silent PC- he does not talk. Characters like the Dragonborn or the Warden or your PC in Bloodlines are non voiced PC's- they talk to other characters just fine- they're not mutes- the voice is just provided by the player.

JohnEpler wrote...
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.

And thats really my biggest disappointment with BioWare of late: the seeming notion that all stories told via games have to be presented in the same way, with a voiced PC, paraphrases, dialogue wheel and so forth. To me, games like Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age: Origins feel more like a novel in terms of story whereas something like Mass Effect certainly feels more cinematic. And at one point in time I loved how I thought BioWare was going to keep that variety in how they have varied approaches of telling a story - DA being the more novel like approach and ME being more cinematic.  Oops.

JohnEpler wrote...
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.

Thats one of my major issues with how BioWare has been handling the voiced PC though too. Having the artificial pauses when selecting dialogue does not help with the attempts at a more cinematic narrative. Alpha Protocol's dialogues were great IMO, because they felt truly cinematic with the timed dialogues such that they all had pacing and flow and you could see people's reactions to Thorton immediately with no pauses since you often pick the tone of the response before the other person is done talking.

Granted, AP's use of the voiced PC means far less fine control as Thorton is very much his own character but I guess thats balanced in some respect since he has choices to make with actual divergent consequences.

JohnEpler wrote...
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.

Yup, thats where I'd love having better animations, facial animations especially. Too often in BioWare games you end up with info dumps of exposition that tell and don't show. I think Skyrim and Bethesda do a masterful job of telling stories without a single line of dialogue. Like exploring a forest, coming across an abandoned cabin and finding a guy dead in his bed inside. You see a journal next to his bed where the guy was sadly documenting his declining health, mentioning his dog, who you can find roaming around the cabin. Its just a simple little thing and yet for me at least, its great storytelling without a single line of dialogue that fleshes out the world and makes it a more authentic feeling place.

Xewaka wrote...
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  chance at roleplaying in DA 2 was not the voice, was the fact that the  paraphrases robbed the player of vital information about the characters  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 don't. And  anyone who argues that being surprised by your own character (as opposed to plot developments) is in anyway conductive of good roleplaying needs to figure out what character interpretation actually means.

The paraphrases are worthless so long as BioWare is going to try to give the illusion of providing player agency in the dialogues/character creation. Either give at least the option of seeing the full text (like Human Revolution) so the player knows what the PC is going to say or go all in with a more Alpha Protocol like dialogue system that fully takes advantage of the cinematic presentation. When I don't even know what my PC is going to say, I have a hard time caring about any response by an NPC when its often a response to something I wouldn't have wanted my PC to say in the first place.

Modifié par Brockololly, 28 février 2012 - 10:42 .

[Gotholhorakh]

Monica83 wrote...
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..

Xewaka wrote...
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  chance at roleplaying in DA 2 was not the voice, was
the fact that the  paraphrases robbed the player of vital information
about the characters  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 don't. And  anyone who argues that being
surprised by your own character (as opposed to plot developments) is in
anyway conductive of good roleplaying needs to figure out what character
interpretation actually means.

Agreed. I honestly can't see any benefit to paraphrasing. while it seems harmful to the experience in the ways people have mentioned, it arguably achieves nothing else as a trade-off, whether you're in for reading everything, or in a TL;DR mood.

Every time I see a discussion of "paraphrasing" as an actual feature, I am left wondering "what are you thinking? Why do you - or would you - think anyone would want an interface to behave like this?"

It neither:

a) presents the information in a simple manner (because it does not present the information or part of it, but some other information), or

presents the information in summary, with more in-depth information being discoverable.

I think it is, as a user interface, broken in a most fundamental, conceptual way.

Modifié par Gotholhorakh, 28 février 2012 - 11:04 .

[Xilizhra]

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

[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]
[/quote]
No it's not.

[HiroVoid]

[quote]Xilizhra wrote...

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...

[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]
[/quote]
No it's not.[/quote]
This would unfortunately go into the story and gameplay segregation that Bioware really need to improve.  The thing in DAO was that with the encounter with Cauthrien which is incredibly difficult to get through is that they're harder to beat than Flemeth and others because of superiority in numbers as well as ambushing you.

[Xilizhra]

I think it's doomed to exist forever as long as they have level scaling.

[Wulfram]

Brockololly wrote...

Eh, there is a difference between silent protagonists and non voiced protagonists. Gordon Freeman is a silent PC- he does not talk. Characters like the Dragonborn or the Warden or your PC in Bloodlines are non voiced PC's- they talk to other characters just fine- they're not mutes- the voice is just provided by the player.

The Dragonborn is damn near a silent PC.  There's no real pretense of actual conversation in Skyrim.  It shouldn't be compared to the Warden, or other Bioware protagonists.

[Xewaka]

Gotholhorakh wrote...
Agreed. I honestly can't see any benefit to paraphrasing. while it seems harmful to the experience in the ways people have mentioned, it arguably achieves nothing else as a trade-off, whether you're in for reading everything, or in a TL;DR mood.
Every time I see a discussion of "paraphrasing" as an actual feature, I am left wondering "what are you thinking? Why do you - or would you - think anyone would want an interface to behave like this?"
It neither:
a) presents the information in a simple manner (because it does not present the information or part of it, but some other information), or
presents the information in summary, with more in-depth information being discoverable.
I think it is, as a user interface, broken in a most fundamental, conceptual way.

Now, to be fair, paraphrases do solve subvocalization issues: that is, people who find reading the text then listening to it unbearingly repetitive. Playtesting showed that people were skipping the voice acting because of this. Since they've spent a lot of zots in voice acting and want people to listen to it, they put the paraphrases in place to solve subvocalization issues. I'm still baffled they actually consider it the better option given the host of disadvantages it has, but they did have a reason to put them in. It's just a reason I find ridiculously flimsy when compared to the very real disadvantages it causes.

[HiroVoid]

Didn't Deus Ex: HR include an option to see the whole sentence before clicking it?

[Halarid]

K.
I dislike voiced protagonists because it makes me feel more detached from my character.


So, what does Bioware want? Are we more like spectators or are we more like players in their games?


Players who are offered meaningful choices, players who decide what path to follow in a world that is not a level scaled farce - killing or getting killed in the process.... and dealing with the consequences?


Or


Spectators who watch a theatrical performance on a level scaled stage? Sure, you get to move the actors around a bit, but they always end up on the same position.

[Xewaka]

HiroVoid wrote...
Didn't Deus Ex: HR include an option to see the whole sentence before clicking it?

Yes, it did. Incidentally, it also included dialogue boss battles, my favourite part of the game.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Xilizhra wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

If the mechanics say it's true, then it's true.

No it's not.

What are the rules of the setting, then?  How are we supposed to make decisions on behalf of our characters if the rules of the setting are inconsistent?  Is a dagger a laughably ineffective weapon, as the mechanics say it is, or is it an unstoppable killing machine, as the cutscenes say it is?  When our character is presented with a dagger, upon which reality should her reaction be based?

All we have to inform us of the rules of the setting are the game mechanics.  The game mechanics must therefore describe the rules of the setting. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Xilizhra wrote...

I think it's doomed to exist forever as long as they have level scaling.

Why accept the level scaling as an immutable truth of game design?

I certainly don't.

[CuriousArtemis]

Gotholhorakh wrote...

Every time I see a discussion of "paraphrasing" as an actual feature, I am left wondering "what are you thinking? Why do you - or would you - think anyone would want an interface to behave like this?"

I actually really like the paraphrasing  Now I do wish some of the paraphrases would relate more closely to what Hawke actually says.  Sometimes I click something, thinking he'll say something funny, and he ends up saying something ... inappropriately flirtatious lol

But I like the paraphrases because it doesn't give away immediately what he's going to say, and I can laugh or gape with pleasant surprise when he actually says it.  It's a more enjoyable experience for me.  It's like watching a movie or reading a book.  I like to remove myself as much as possible from these scenes; although I do like controlling what Hawke says, of course, I also want to view the scene as if it were a film ... just sit back and enjoy, basically.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Xewaka wrote...

Now, to be fair, paraphrases do solve subvocalization issues: that is, people who find reading the text then listening to it unbearingly repetitive. Playtesting showed that people were skipping the voice acting because of this. Since they've spent a lot of zots in voice acting and want people to listen to it, they put the paraphrases in place to solve subvocalization issues.

Except they don't actually care if people listen to the voices.  They say they do, and yet they're happy to let us skip the lines.  

I'm still baffled they actually consider it the better option given the host of disadvantages it has, but they did have a reason to put them in. It's just a reason I find ridiculously flimsy when compared to the very real disadvantages it causes.

The reasons are made even more flimsy by BioWare's willingness to disregard them by letting us skip lines.

[Sylvius the Mad]

motomotogirl wrote...

But I like the paraphrases because it doesn't give away immediately what he's going to say, and I can laugh or gape with pleasant surprise when he actually says it.  It's a more enjoyable experience for me.  It's like watching a movie or reading a book.  I like to remove myself as much as possible from these scenes; although I do like controlling what Hawke says, of course, I also want to view the scene as if it were a film ... just sit back and enjoy, basically.

I can't imagine watching a 60-hour movie with this simple a plot (and a main character whose behaviour I don't understand at all) and thinking it was interesting the whole way through.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 29 février 2012 - 12:03 .

[Xilizhra]

What are the rules of the setting, then? How are we supposed to make decisions on behalf of our characters if the rules of the setting are inconsistent? Is a dagger a laughably ineffective weapon, as the mechanics say it is, or is it an unstoppable killing machine, as the cutscenes say it is? When our character is presented with a dagger, upon which reality should her reaction be based?

What daggers have you been playing with that are laughably ineffective?

All we have to inform us of the rules of the setting are the game mechanics. The game mechanics must therefore describe the rules of the setting.

Um, no. For that, we have things like the Codex, and lore in general. Were we to take the mechanics alone as gospel, it would mean, for instance, that nobody eats in most games.

[Chiramu]

Serge from Chrono Cross was an awesome silent protagonist XD.

I think if the script is written for the protagonist to be silent that it'll be fine. You don't need dialogue to do things. Bioware could make our next protagonist a mute (a serious mute, one that doesn't have a tongue and can't speak at all) and they should be able to make it work.

All Bioware needs to do is just make the silent protagonist work with the script, like just write the protagonist to not speak.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Xilizhra wrote...

Um, no. For that, we have things like the Codex, and lore in general. Were we to take the mechanics alone as gospel, it would mean, for instance, that nobody eats in most games.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The mechanics don't describe eating.  That doesn't mean that eating doesn't happen, merely that eating (if it occurs) takes place off-screen.

[Addai]

JohnEpler wrote...

CoS Sarah Jinstar wrote...

*snip*

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.

I left a piece of the original post because it seems to me the poster was commenting on lack of choice generally and saying the more limited character made that feel even more obvious and constraining.  If you have less input on and identification with your character, to have little or no input on how her story evolves just adds to the frustration and the sense that there's no need for the player to be there at all except to manage combat.

I'm playing Witcher 2 now and I have no trouble with Geralt being a voiced protagonist because I have no expectation that he's my character.  That means I probably will never get absorbed in that kind of game as much as an open RPG where I'm telling my own story.  However it's still enjoyable because my input has significant impact on what happens on the screen.  I stay alert in dialogues because I know that it will matter what I choose.

[Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut]

Addai67 wrote...
I'm playing Witcher 2 now and I have no trouble with Geralt being a voiced protagonist because I have no expectation that he's my character.  That means I probably will never get absorbed in that kind of game as much as an open RPG where I'm telling my own story.  However it's still enjoyable because my input has significant impact on what happens on the screen.  I stay alert in dialogues because I know that it will matter what I choose.

Yeah, Witcher 2 worked a lot better for me for some reason. I feel part of it is because, as you said, Geralt's an established character. Also, I think that a significant reason Geralt works better as a character than Hawke is that Geralt's personality is stable. He's not a doormat one moment, someone with anger issues the next, and detached immediately afterward. You can make choices (and significantly more impactful/major ones than you can make in DA2), but the choices all make sense in the context of one stable personality.

[Brockololly]

Addai67 wrote...
I'm playing Witcher 2 now and I have no trouble with Geralt being a voiced protagonist because I have no expectation that he's my character.  That means I probably will never get absorbed in that kind of game as much as an open RPG where I'm telling my own story.  However it's still enjoyable because my input has significant impact on what happens on the screen.  I stay alert in dialogues because I know that it will matter what I choose.

Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut wrote...
Yeah,
Witcher 2 worked a lot better for me for some reason. I feel part of it
is because, as you said, Geralt's an established character. Also, I
think that a significant reason Geralt works better as a character than
Hawke is that Geralt's personality is stable. He's not a doormat one
moment, someone with anger issues the next, and detached immediately
afterward. You can make choices (and significantly more impactful/major
ones than you can make in DA2), but the choices all make sense in the
context of one stable personality.

Agreed. With a voiced PC, I think I prefer a more fixed character like a Geralt or Mike Thorton or Adam Jensen. Those characters have established roles and personalities that exist without the player's input. Its a more detached experience, but its not jarring like DA2 where one second Hawke is snarky and the next he's deadly serious or pathetically appeasing. Geralt has his own sense of humor.

Suave Mike Thorton still feels like a different side of Professional Mike Thorton as does Aggressive Mike Thorton. Maybe more to do with why I feel AP works well is that the NPCs actually react in different ways to how you react to them: case in point- you can't be an **** without people reacting to you like you're an ****! Amazing! The reputation system and dossiers really help too.

Damn I think I need to replay AP now.

[Fast Jimmy]

One of the upsides to the voiced PC that I have noticed in Mass Effect was the Interrupt option. If your PC had a high enough Paragon/Renegade level, they could perform interrupts in conversation that let you turn the discussion in another direction, mid-sentence. Sometimes this was a 'you're an evil person and I don't have to listen to your lies' Paragon interrupt... or sometimes it was a 'bullet in the head' Renegade interrupt.

Making the dialogue more organic through these interrupts made dialogue more interactive and reactive, although a voiced PC wouldn't necessarily be required. But the interrupting scene would seem to be... missing something if my character told someone to shut up with no sound.

But this is one positive for me in a much larger pool of negatives for the voiced character. Unless Bioware gives me more to appreciate this feature, I'm going to be critical of it, since I see it only as a limiting factor currently.

[HiroVoid]

Brockololly wrote...

Addai67 wrote...
I'm playing Witcher 2 now and I have no trouble with Geralt being a voiced protagonist because I have no expectation that he's my character.  That means I probably will never get absorbed in that kind of game as much as an open RPG where I'm telling my own story.  However it's still enjoyable because my input has significant impact on what happens on the screen.  I stay alert in dialogues because I know that it will matter what I choose.

Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut wrote...
Yeah,
Witcher 2 worked a lot better for me for some reason. I feel part of it
is because, as you said, Geralt's an established character. Also, I
think that a significant reason Geralt works better as a character than
Hawke is that Geralt's personality is stable. He's not a doormat one
moment, someone with anger issues the next, and detached immediately
afterward. You can make choices (and significantly more impactful/major
ones than you can make in DA2), but the choices all make sense in the
context of one stable personality.

Agreed. With a voiced PC, I think I prefer a more fixed character like a Geralt or Mike Thorton or Adam Jensen. Those characters have established roles and personalities that exist without the player's input. Its a more detached experience, but its not jarring like DA2 where one second Hawke is snarky and the next he's deadly serious or pathetically appeasing. Geralt has his own sense of humor.

Suave Mike Thorton still feels like a different side of Professional Mike Thorton as does Aggressive Mike Thorton. Maybe more to do with why I feel AP works well is that the NPCs actually react in different ways to how you react to them: case in point- you can't be an **** without people reacting to you like you're an ****! Amazing! The reputation system and dossiers really help too.

Damn I think I need to replay AP now.

Part of what makes it work so well in AP is that you're encouraged to use multiple options because different NPCs respond better to different personalities, and while I don't think it's often, I know at least one instance of pi**ing someone off enough to make them have poor judgement.  Unlike in Bioware games that usually seem to encourage you to stick to one option and keep using it.

Modifié par HiroVoid, 29 février 2012 - 01:13 .

[Brockololly]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

One of the upsides to the voiced PC that I have noticed in Mass Effect was the Interrupt option.

Really though, if you have a timed dialogue system like Alpha Protocol, then every dialogue can potentially be an interrupt, since you don't have any lulls in the flow of the conversations in the first place. And you can have a more concrete idea what the actual interrupt will be via text on the dialogue wheel/list as opposed to how ME does them via cinematics.

[Fast Jimmy]

Brockololly wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

One of the upsides to the voiced PC that I have noticed in Mass Effect was the Interrupt option.

Really though, if you have a timed dialogue system like Alpha Protocol, then every dialogue can potentially be an interrupt, since you don't have any lulls in the flow of the conversations in the first place. And you can have a more concrete idea what the actual interrupt will be via text on the dialogue wheel/list as opposed to how ME does them via cinematics.

I agree. If you could combine DAO's storytelling and world building with Alpha Protocol's dialogue system, it would be a game I would buy in a HEARTBEAT. 

Maker bless John Epler, he really has his work cut out for him juggling us chuckleheads on the forums AND heading up the cinematic aspects of the DA games. I don't eny him either task, to be honest.