337 réponses à ce sujet

[rolson00]

Morroian wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

Or right at the end of DA2.  You want to have a dramatic speech, stopping to get the player to choose the dialogue would screw up the flow.  So Hawke just launches into a speech with no player input whatsoever.

As opposed to DAO where Alistair launches into speeches that should have been given by the Warden.

well he was king and it was about him telling the troops that it was time to avenge the death of his brother

[Morroian]

Either way there's no choice.

[Wulfram]

Morroian wrote...

As opposed to DAO where Alistair launches into speeches that should have been given by the Warden.

Which was fine by me, since he was King.  And it didn't take control of my character away from me.  Only problem with that speech was that too much was devoted to puffing the PC's ego.

Though ME has done it better, allowing you to choose the tone of various segments of the speech.  For a VOed, paraphrased protagonist, that was about as good as it could be.  So I don't know why the DA2 team instead chose to go for the demonic possession route instead.

edit:

Morroian wrote...

Either way there's no choice.

I don't expect to have control over what other characters say.  Just what my character says.

Modifié par Wulfram, 29 février 2012 - 12:02 .

[zyntifox]

Morroian wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

Or right at the end of DA2.  You want to have a dramatic speech, stopping to get the player to choose the dialogue would screw up the flow.  So Hawke just launches into a speech with no player input whatsoever.

As opposed to DAO where Alistair launches into speeches that should have been given by the Warden.

I don't think the warden should have made that speech, if you are refering to the one at the end before you go to Denerim, even if he/she was voiced in DA:O. That speech should be made by the ruler of Ferelden, that is Alistair or Anora. But that's just my opinion.

[Fast Jimmy]

HolyAvenger wrote...

There's an argument being made in this thread btw that DA2 lost half the players of DAO for RP/silent protagonist reasons. BS. I've played both games, and there are many reasons why I would hesitate to recommend DA2, but the voiced protagonist isn't it...the railroading of story is, but that happened for other reasons (rushed to completion).

And making sure that a recorded line for every line of text the main character said, recorded in three different tones for two separate genders, not to mention the facial animations to go along with said spoken lines, couldn't possibly have been a factor? In the 18 months between DAO and DA2, doing this level of voice recording and syncing it up with the game doesn't weigh in as a time-intensive activity, especially since the DA team would have been doing it for the first time?

DA2 was rushed... but not just because of a hugely reduced dev cycle, but because of all the new and extra things DA2 attempted. Voicing the main character being, to me, a very time-intensive one. Could they have spent the hours upon hours devoted to this to instead try and vary the plot, or giving the players some impactful choice?

I don't know... but to me it's a huge possibility. 

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 29 février 2012 - 12:15 .

[Yrkoon]

HolyAvenger wrote...

There's an argument being made in this thread btw that DA2 lost half the players of DAO for RP/silent protagonist reasons. BS. I've played both games, and there are many reasons why I would hesitate to recommend DA2, but the voiced protagonist isn't it...the railroading of story is, but that happened for other reasons (rushed to completion).

I agree.    I seriously  *seriously* doubt that a voiced protagonist is the reason why DA2 did not enjoy the same level of sales as DA:O.   Maybe on  these forums   Voiced vs. Silent  appears to be a  massive,  polarizing issue  commanding dozens of heated threads, but everywhere else its just... meh.    At  the very most, it's  one in a long list of  reasons.    At the very least, it doesn't even register on that list.

Personally, despite the fact that I'm vehement in my dislike of a voiced protagonist, I still don't see it as a big deal in an of itself.  My main gripe  with it is that I see it as  a symptom of a much greater problem, which has been discussed on this thread:  The gradual move towards making games more like movies.  It's a bad idea, period.  I'm not an RPG fan because I love watching movies.  I'm an RPG fan because I like to  play a game  where I have complete control over everything my character says (and how he says it), wears, does and IS.  And while there will probably never  be a game that allows me 100% of the control I want, I've played quite a few that come very close.  And those games get all my praise.

But what are we seeing from Bioware these days?   I'll tell you:  Gradual movement in the opposite direction of that ideal.  True Story:  I didn't buy the  Mark of the Assassin DLC.   Why not?  Because I didn't need to.  I watched the whole thing on Youtube.  The whole thing.  From beginning to end.  And it was like watching a movie.  It felt like a movie.  It viewed like a movie.  It entertained me and kept me in my seat  for a couple of hours, like a movie does.  So why do I need to play it?  Answer:  I don't.  And that's the problem here:  When Cinematics trumps gameplay

Modifié par Yrkoon, 29 février 2012 - 12:37 .

[Wulfram]

I don't think you can say that voiced protagonist took away from sales of DA2.

I do think it casts some doubt on the idea that a lack of voiced protagonist held DA:O's sales back.

The evidence that VOed games necessarily sell more than silent protagonist games doesn't seem to be there at the moment. And considering VO costs money to implement, particularly to the high standard that Bioware does it, I wonder if there's a strong business case for it.

Of course, I guess Bioware might be doing it for the art. That's the sort of thing EA is famous for encouraging after all.

[batlin]

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.

So rather than develop the identity of video games in the way films have been, let's stagnate the medium by just taking elements from other mediums that don't involve interactive gameplay infused with challenge.

And by the way, I don't dislike voiced protagonists. i would PREFER a silent one, but what I hate about BioWare's implementation of a voiced PC is how the dialogue options are always those short, vague blurbs that leave you guessing as to what the meaning is. WHY do they insist on doing that?

Modifié par batlin, 29 février 2012 - 12:56 .

[abnocte]

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.

I always find that assumption funny.

English is not my mother language and Bioware games aren't voiced in it.
Even if nowadays I am able to understand the dialogue just by listening I always play with subtitles ( in english ).

We also have to think that Bioware games are released worldwide, so the amount of people that end up using subtitles can't be irrelevant.

Yet they insist that listening to a line of dialogue only to read it afterwards is jarring? I'm doing it ALL the time!!!
So if I'm going to read it anyway I certainly prefer to know in advance what my PC is going to say.

Modifié par abnocte, 29 février 2012 - 01:06 .

[Xewaka]

abnocte wrote...

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.

I always find that assumption funny.
English is not my mother language and Bioware games aren't voiced in it.
Even if nowadays I am able to understand the dialogue just by listening I always play with subtitles ( in english ).
We also have to think that Bioware games are released worldwide, so the amount of people that end up using subtitles can't be irrelevant.
Yet they insist that listening to a line of dialogue only to read it afterwards is jarring? I'm doing it ALL the time!!!
So if I'm going to read it anyway I certainly prefer to know in advance what my PC is going to say.

I'm spanish. The game doesn't have spanish voices either, only english. Hence I always play with subtitles as well, despite being reasonably capable of following the spoken dialogue. But that's the reason they've given for using paraphrases instead of full line. I'm just relaying it.

Modifié par Xewaka, 29 février 2012 - 01:46 .

[Arppis]

rolson00 wrote...

Arppis wrote...

CoD had silent protagonist btw. That's one of the reasons why I didn't like it. When character is so detached from the game world that they don't react in any way of someone's death or something that happens on the screen, it's pretty poor writing.

Well here is another alternative sollution. "Mute player character" button. Where it basicaly skips your character talks. Tadaa!

couple of things first when i said CoD crowd i ment the people who play those style of games not the games themselves

secondly a mute button wouldnt solve anything as the disc space would still be taken up by speech actors lines, the problem isnt a talking main character its hardware issues i said this earlier until gaming studios have better consols and new discs to put their games on we're going to be having this same arguemnt til we're old men.

now i do prefer silent but only because a talking main character isnt complete enough (due to what i just said)  in a shooter (Cod and me series) talking mian chars are fine, but ina fantasy game people want to be a different race like and elf or a dwarf and are dishearted when they are forced to play human.

I can totaly relate to that reasoning. It's a very good point. Taking
away race choices thanks to voiced protagonist is dumb. I agree on that.

And I was just under the impression that people didn't like their characters getting voiced and they could just turn the voice acting off. Compromises always take their toll, after all. Well, I enjoy voiced protagonists. They were voiced well and I am happy about it.

Modifié par Arppis, 29 février 2012 - 01:50 .

[Arppis]

HolyAvenger wrote...

There's an argument being made in this thread btw that DA2 lost half the players of DAO for RP/silent protagonist reasons. BS. I've played both games, and there are many reasons why I would hesitate to recommend DA2, but the voiced protagonist isn't it...the railroading of story is, but that happened for other reasons (rushed to completion).

I completely agree with you.

[MerinTB]

I play with captions/sub-titles on always, too. And English is my native language, but I tend to miss things being voiced and I don't when reading. I hate having to WAIT on the voice, because I can read the text like ten times faster than they speak it. In games that let you skip each spoken line at a time I often find myself skipping the voiced dialog as I read it faster and hate waiting on it.

All voice does for me when gaming is SLOW THE GAME DOWN. I hate it.

[Leon481]

Gibb_Shepard wrote...

I honestly believe that if there is a voiced protagonist, they should define him. With a silent protagonist, which i am entirely in favor of, everything is left to he player. The voice, the tone, the intent, the motivations. EVERYTHING.

But when a voiced character comes in, it defines these things. But the problem is that it doesn't define them enough. What we have in DA2 is a character that shows no emotion due to "not wanting to step on the player's toes"; but is inevitably defined due to the voice over. We have a character that is too defined to create a truly unique incarnation, but not defined enough to suffice as an interesting character from a cinematic storytelling perspective.

The Witcher 2 is my absolute favourite Voiced RPG. Geralt of Rivia is defined. He is snarky, cynical, stoic and broody. You cannot change these aspects. But what you can change is his motivations, his ideals, his indifference. So basically you have an interesting character that can actually be called a character from a cinematic storytelling perspective, but his ultimatums are decided by the player. IMO, it is the absolute ideal route for any voiced protagonist. This allows much more fluid conversation mechanics (Due to the acceptance of banter without player input), it allows instances where the devs cannot possibly step on a player's toes (because they know who Geralt is and how he acts) and just generally allows the possibility of watching an interesting caharcter's stroy.

Bioware, you want to turn this into a purely cinematic franchise? A franchise that can compare to a movie's storytelling? Go ahead. I've accepted that DAO will not be made again. But for the love of god, do it right. You simply cannot have a half assed, semi defined voiced protagonist when your goal is to tell a story like a movie. I cringed when Hawke showed no emotion over his sibling's death. This would not be a problem if you defined your characters, but left the meaty aspects to us; the players.

I know that many here disagree with this, that even though the PC is voiced they want as much control is possible, but i just don't think it is possible.

Look at TW2, please. Defined protagonist, but SO MANY different avenues to take him. This is what you should be aiming for if you wish to take the franchis into a fully cinematic direction.

I actually agree with this but feel it should be implemented differently than what you seem to be implying. Instead of having the writers define one character and have us make choices for them, continue to give us the choice on how to build our character's personality and shine more of a spotlight on the personality we've chosen.

The character of Hawke may have started out somewhat defined, but eventually we got to choose between three seperate personalities of Hawke. From there we could even choose his/her seperate reactions and could decide on our own his/her reasons and rationale. It was actually a really good way to both give the player choice and still have a cinematic voiced character. In normal gameplay this worked somewhat well and the character pretty much felt like mine. For instance, I played an overall diplomatic Hawke who still joked around with his friends and was aggressive to his enemies. Maybe I couldn't choose his demeanor or tone within those choices, but what we had could have been just enough to work. There were two problems in execution however.

First is the fact that in certain set cutscenes, we got static responses from Hawke no matter what character personality we chose. Take the family deaths. Hawke should be raging if aggressive, or crying if peaceful, or making sad or dark jokes to cover up if sarcastic. Instead, suddenly, in those scenes, the character isn't ours anymore but the writer's and in a game that allows you to build your own personality it just doesn't work and created a disconnect for the player. We may have some dialogue choices in those scenes, but the responses are overall based on current choices, not overall personality and the reactions, while supposedly based on a personality type are rather underwhelming and lacking in emotiveness. Even then, the reactions outside of those choices are still the same. They should make us see and feel the character we created in those scenes, not just default to generic responses.

Secondly is that again, the NPC response to your character's personality is static. You may get changes depending on your choices, and in some places your personality may work like a persuasion check in Origins and let you resolve something differently (the werewolf/elf thing for example), but that's not the same thing. NPCs should be wary, defensive, or nervous around you if aggressive, jolly or dismissive if sarcastic, cordial or respectful if diplomatic. The static responses no matter what kind of made the whole excercise feel pointless. Why choose a personality if the effect is miminal?

The point is, instead of one defined character, they had an oppourtunity to create 3 distinct character paths giving the player much more choice and agency. What we got instead was a situation where the character was ours, until he/she wasn't anymore. The game took Hawke from us, made him/her act outside the parameters of the character we built, then threw him/her back at us. If they really are trying to create a more cinematic experience while still giving the player choice, what needs to happen is to find a way to incorporate our chosen character personalities into fixed cutscenes and make the world react more to who our character is. What we have with DA2 instead is a disjointed mess and it doesn't work well at all.

Modifié par Leon481, 29 février 2012 - 02:35 .

[Monica83]

Ukki wrote...

Cstaf wrote...

Imrahil_ 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.

This is just a terrible approach.  IMO, obviously.  All sarcasm from your post aside, granted, you should not be looking to movies/films to tell your story.  You should be looking to the *future* of computer games, specifically cRPGs.  You should be innovating that medium.  Leading that medium.  Not looking to the past/present of movies.  If you do that, you'll only make games that lag behind movies instead of games that are at the forefront of cRPGs.

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.

To be fair, you aren't allowed to do that, more-or-less.  You have the power to ban people.  With great power comes great responsibility. You'll literally never get banned or even warned for anything you say.  You need to conduct yourself on a higher level. Suck it up. No character flaws allowed. Sorry.  It is what is.

As to the rest - I don't think we've ever interrupted the game every three minutes to give a cutscene.

Just to digress a moment, do they teach a class in Going Literal To Combat A Point 101 at Bioware?  You know as well as everyone reading that that he didn't literally mean "every three minutes".  Y'all do this a lot.  I mean *a lot*.

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

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

Make an awesome world with deep characters for us to advernture in. Stop telling us who our character is. Stop telling us what he says. Stop telling us how he reacts to events. Go back to making awesome worlds to interact with however we choose to interact with them.

JohnEpler wrote...
Unless you're building an entirely player-driven, emergent narrative, we are, at some point, setting the tone.

As has already been pointed out, a good RPG is exactly that: "an entirely player-driven, emergent narrative". Bioware used to be the pinnacle of entirely player-driven, emergent narratives. It's... somewhat astounding... that you don't even want that anymore. That you think that's something you *shouldn't* be making. That you think that's something that people don't want.

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

And you don't think people want an entirely player-driven, emergent narrative? That's exactly what we want.

I'm not really talking about the tone of the player's dialogue, by the way - it would work just as well if we had the player silently mouthing their lines but never speaking. It comes down to how conversations have 'beats', and you can use those natural beats to change the tone of the story.

No, you should stop this. You should stop tyring to set/change the tone of the story. You should set up events, worlds, characters, politics, even items, which may or may not change the tone of the story, depending on what the player chooses to do.

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

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,

No, you don't.  Granted, of the people who bought DA2, that audience is split on a lot of things. Voiced protagonist, "cinematic approach", iconic companions, sure - the audience that bought DA2 is split on a lot of the changes DA2 made, But what you're forgetting/ignoring is that *DA2 lost about 3 million customers from DA:O*. Possibly more.  I'm assuming DA2 hit 2 million in actual sales.

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

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

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


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

Great post Imrahil. Pretty much sums up how i feel about the whole thing.

My feelings exactly.

Indeed a really nice post... I wish bioware returns to make the quality CRPG of the past and get rid of this button awesome marketing thing..

[DragonRageGT]

Great posts here. And while BW don't do it anymore, Bethesda does it and Skyrim beats the **** our of any voiced protagonist game. Except for fixed protagonist games like Gothic, Risen and The Witcher, perhaps Mass Effect.

I'm really impressed by the amount of dialogue that KoA has and I believe it was only made possible by having a silent protagonist. Really a pity that it isn't nearly as attractive as what BW used to do up to Origins but I can really appreciate the effort they did with KoA.

[Leon481]

I was thinking about my last post and I realized there was another avenue here. Instead of choosing a cinematic response based on lines of dialogue or set personality, they could give you a choice in scene of how your character will react non-verbally. Like in the before mentioned death scene, give us a choice on the dialogue wheel like option A could be cry, option B could be to rage like a lunatic, and option C could be try to cover it up with a joke. This would allow say an aggressive Hawke with a glass heart who starts bawling, or a sarcastic Hawke with a temper who completely loses control, or a diplomatic Hawke trying to stay strong covering it up with a joke. There could even be an option D of acting indifferent if you are playing a cold-hearted character.

This might actually be a slightly better solution because while the writers could still set the pace, the player has complete control over reactions and it would do a better job of making it feel like the player's character.

Of course, the best solution would be to combine the two. Have the scene begin playing around your character's chosen personality then transition into whatever dialogue/reaction choices you make. It's the best of both worlds, both making the player's choice in character cinematic and still giving the player control of the scene.

Modifié par Leon481, 29 février 2012 - 04:35 .

[batlin]

[quote]Monica83 wrote...

[quote]Ukki wrote...

[quote]Cstaf wrote...

[quote]Imrahil_ wrote...

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


[quote]When you loftily proclaim that we don't want to make games because of a particular stylistic and presentation choice we've made, well, I get a little sarcastic. It's a character flaw.[/quote]
To be fair, you aren't allowed to do that, more-or-less.  You have the power to ban people.  With great power comes great responsibility. You'll literally never get banned or even warned for anything you say.  You need to conduct yourself on a higher level. Suck it up. No character flaws allowed. Sorry.  It is what is.



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



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

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

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

And you don't think people want an entirely player-driven, emergent narrative? That's exactly what we want.




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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Great post Imrahil. Pretty much sums up how i feel about the whole thing.

[/quote]


My feelings exactly.
[/quote]

Indeed a really nice post... I wish bioware returns to make the quality CRPG of the past and get rid of this button awesome marketing thing..

[/quote]

This post deserves to be quoted more

[Sylvius the Mad]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

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

No.

While I like the idea of having the option to interrupt NPCs, I object strongly to being forced to do it in real time, and being forced to do with from behind a veil of ignorance.

In ME2, I never knew what Shepard was going to do with an interrupt (I sometimes had a pretty good idea, but that idea was wrong more than half the time), and I routinely missed the interrupt by not being quick enough.

If the game paused to give me the option to interrupt, that would be better.  Or if triggering the interrupt just presented me with an interface that showed me what the interrupt would do so I could then make an informed decision about whether I actually wanted to do that thing.

But being forced to make a wild guess with time constraints is not helpful at all.

[MerinTB]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
While I like the idea of having the option to interrupt NPCs, I object strongly to being forced to do it in real time, and being forced to do with from behind a veil of ignorance.

In ME2, I never knew what Shepard was going to do with an interrupt (I sometimes had a pretty good idea, but that idea was wrong more than half the time), and I routinely missed the interrupt by not being quick enough.

If the game paused to give me the option to interrupt, that would be better.  Or if triggering the interrupt just presented me with an interface that showed me what the interrupt would do so I could then make an informed decision about whether I actually wanted to do that thing.

But being forced to make a wild guess with time constraints is not helpful at all.

This is a pattern in game design philosophy over the past several years, though.  The "push a button and SOMETHING happens" where something is unknown, exactly.  The "one button" fighting of games like Fable, or even the "situational combat" of games like Arkahm Asylum, where hitting the attack button results in different moves that you really don't control.  It's like quick time events, too... quick, hit this button!

Reaction-time based gaming is bad enough in being outside my interest zone.  "Random" or "situational" results based on my guess-work choices makes me wonder why I'm "playing" the game at all.

[Sylvius the Mad]

JohnEpler wrote...

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

Two points, John.

First, the structure of the story doesn't matter.  You may well present us with a very focussed narrative where there isn't a wide variety of available options.  What matters is who's telling the story.  The player should be the one telling the story.  The player creates the narrative as he plays; it might always be the narrative you guys envisioned, but it's the player who is creating it as he progresses through the game.

That's what DA2 did wrong.  DA2's story gets told despite the player's work, not because of it.  The player develops his character and it doesn't matter because DA2 forces Hawke to act in ways that blatantly contradict that character design.  The player forms opinions (on Hawke's behalf) regarding the character's Hawke meets, and then DA2 forces Hawke to act in ways that run contrary to those opinions.

I find what you're saying about player agency heartening, John, because this really is just a problem of player agency.  The problem isn't that the story is already written.  The problem is that the story gets told to the player rather than by the player.

Look at KotOR.  KotOR, in many respects, has a very narrow narrative.  The PC does a very specific set of things, learns one very specific piece of pre-written information, and then does one of two very specific things.  That's not a ton of breadth.  That's almost no breadth at all.  But every step of the way, it's the player who chooses what happens (within the narrow range of available options).  KotOR's narrative is, structurally, very similar to DA2's narrative.  DA2 has two extra chokepoints, but like KotOR offers a very limited set of actions to move the story forward.  But the difference is that DA2 doesn't let the player choose what to do.  Blackpowder Promise, for example, is forced upon Hawke even if he refuses to do it.  And Hawke routinely speaks and acts without the player's input at all.  I've argued many times that all of Hawke's behaviour in conversations and cutscenes takes place without any direct input from the player at all.

DA2 fails because the player cannot control what Hawke does or why Hawke does it.  KotOR succeeds with a very similar overal plot structure because the player can control those things.

Second, authorial intent doesn't matter in any narrative nedium.  Once the story is in the hands of the reader, it's entirely up to the reader to experience it.  What he draws from the story is based on what's actually in the story.  The author's intent has no direct connection to the story the reader sees.

What matters isn't what the writer meant to put in the story.  What matters is what the writer did put in the story.  I have had long dicussions with David about this regarding whether the tone of the PC's lines was fixed before you started voicing the PC.  I insist it was not.  I can not have been, as the delivery of those lines did not exist as expliciy content within the games.

And yes, I'm a big proponent of Death of Author theory.

[Sylvius the Mad]

MerinTB wrote...

This is a pattern in game design philosophy over the past several years, though.

That doesn't make it good or acceptable.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 29 février 2012 - 09:31 .

[bEVEsthda]

What Imrahil said.

...And Sylvius the Mad, of course, but everyone should know by now that I always support everything Sylvius says, ...even when he disagrees with me.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 29 février 2012 - 09:41 .

[abnocte]

Xewaka wrote...

I'm spanish. The game doesn't have spanish voices either, only english. Hence I always play with subtitles as well, despite being reasonably capable of following the spoken dialogue. But that's the reason they've given for using paraphrases instead of full line. I'm just relaying it.

I apologize if I came across as if I was accusing you of something.
I just used your previous post as a start to explain my point because I've seen the very same argument time and again. 
I'm spanish too 

[MerinTB]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
This is a pattern in game design philosophy over the past several years, though.

That doesn't make it good or acceptable.

If it wasn't clear, I'll correct it now ...

I never said it WAS acceptable.