52 réponses à ce sujet

[Daennikus]

If Bioware won't, there sure will be another company to issue something similar in the future. If Mass Effect has done one thing right is to set a new standard for adventure gaming.

I'm not worried.

[sth128]

kalle90 wrote...


Anyway with everyone going "OMG COD and Angry Birds sell better than our epics" I doubt there's much incentive atleast for those after profit instead of artistic in... passion.

Artistic Integrity: the determination to sacrifice even profit margin for the sake of art.

[Justin2k]

Heather Cline wrote...

Good trilogies like Xenosaga was one of those. If you played the third game you wouldn't know what was really going on without playing the first two. Fact is they failed in that regard right there.

I never played Xenosaga but I remember .Hack quarantine, infection and mutation pretty much played like one continuous game.  I think you even started one of them on a boss fight.

Also Shenmue one ends with Ryo getting on a boat to China.  Shenmue two starts with him getting off the boat and it plays like one continuous game.

In each the graphics and UI are slightly updated but the game stays the same.

With Mass Effect the story isn't continuous (it's like so long later), the genre isn't even the same, everything is completely overhauled.

In general I wouldn't class Mass Effect as something on the same scope as .Hack which was one very long game split over four different installments.  ME was more like 3 seperate stories glued together by the same characters.

[LegendaryBlade]

Eain wrote...

Of course. Just not from Bioware.

Yes please, let a studio with more competent writers handle the next big adventure game

[Sebbe1337o]

No, never ever.

[Heather Cline]

Justin2k wrote...

Heather Cline wrote...

Good trilogies like Xenosaga was one of those. If you played the third game you wouldn't know what was really going on without playing the first two. Fact is they failed in that regard right there.

I never played Xenosaga but I remember .Hack quarantine, infection and mutation pretty much played like one continuous game.  I think you even started one of them on a boss fight.

Also Shenmue one ends with Ryo getting on a boat to China.  Shenmue two starts with him getting off the boat and it plays like one continuous game.

In each the graphics and UI are slightly updated but the game stays the same.

With Mass Effect the story isn't continuous (it's like so long later), the genre isn't even the same, everything is completely overhauled.

In general I wouldn't class Mass Effect as something on the same scope as .Hack which was one very long game split over four different installments.  ME was more like 3 seperate stories glued together by the same characters.

Xenosaga was very similar in fact after the first game when you booted up the second game when it came out, with the exception of different graphics due to a different team having been brought in to do the second and 3rd games in the trilogy they picked up right were the last one left off.

The Matrix did something similar though there were time jumps between each installment to note the passage of time, the movie trilogy itself played out like one giant movie just split up into three sections.

[MrTijger]

LegendaryBlade wrote...

Eain wrote...

Of course. Just not from Bioware.

Yes please, let a studio with more competent writers handle the next big adventure game

Which one? I cannot think of one offhand which does endings so much better, personally. The best you can hope for, it seems, are a few slides or a voice over.

[Travie]

Of course there will be, but most likely there will never be anything from bioware worthy of the title.

Oh, and the PAX panel was a complete joke.

[Farbautisonn]

BKnight3 wrote...

The world will end before we see the envelope get pushed like this again.

[AlanC9]

OP, I think you brought up the problem with the concept:

AtlasMickey wrote...
People complain that it seems like choices really didn't matter and even go so far as to say BioWare and EA are guilty of false advertising to that effect, but I don't think they realize just how difficult and ambitious that is to create. We should be proud of them for giving it a good try.

People will always end up with unrealistic expectations from a trilogy structured like ME. After following the arguments on this board, I think it's just not worth it.

[Il Divo]

To answer your question OP: The Dark Knight Rises

[mupp3tz]

I think that there will definitely be ambitious epics produced in the future. There's a lot of developers, writers, and producers out there who have big visions and want to create something groundbreaking. What will most likely happen is (as a result of the ME3 ending fiasco) that they will take a more realistic approach to the IP. They'll be more hesitant to make big claims or set up a premise that leaves a lot of story progression open ended.

What made ME amazing in the fans eyes is the amount of variables that could be manipulated in the story... however, it's also what resulted in it's downfall. For each choice that the player makes, they set up an expectation for significant consequences. I have no doubt how much trouble they had trying to craft an experience that rewarded individuality while facing technical and creative restraints on how to handle it best. In the end, I think that the ME franchise was just built up too highly by the company, resulting in a fan base with very high expectations. Neither party is fully at fault.

Modifié par M U P P 3 T Z, 07 avril 2012 - 05:29 .

[AtlasMickey]

Thank you for all the high quality replies so far. Very thought-provoking comments. I didn't know that about the .hack games. I played the first Xenosaga immediately before getting the first Mass Effect last year and then Mass Effect sort of took over my life.

AlanC9 wrote...

OP, I think you brought up the problem with the concept:

AtlasMickey wrote...
People complain that it seems like choices really didn't matter and even go so far as to say BioWare and EA are guilty of false advertising to that effect, but I don't think they realize just how difficult and ambitious that is to create. We should be proud of them for giving it a good try.

People will always end up with unrealistic expectations from a trilogy structured like ME. After following the arguments on this board, I think it's just not worth it.

Right, I am slightly worried that because of the fan response other studios will look at this and ask themselves if it's really worth it. But then, if a group of people are passionate about creating such a saga, they will find a way to try. Because of my experience with Shenmue, I have to think that's the only way Mass Effect got off the ground in the first place. It had a team of artists with drive and ambition who felt like they had to make a story like this, not because they thought they were going to retire early.

[sth128]

Opsrbest wrote...


Actually I was using fictisious, I am on an Iphone right now. But the point of what I was saying was that The Witcher is based from Novels. So while they did a good job on the games they aren't using their own creative works. And I meant Pre writen works not pre established works. Saying they used pre established works takes away from how the adapted the story.

"Fictisious" is still not a word. I'm pretty sure iPhone has spell-checking and a dictionary app. Consider turning them on.

And The Witcher is an established franchise. The five novels have been translated into different languages and sold around the world, it has been adapted into a TV show and a movie, plus two popular video games. What else is required exactly, in your mind, to qualify a franchise as being "established"? T-shirts? Toys? Do you only recognize Star Wars as the sole franchise ever to be "established"?

As well, saying that the creative minds behind the Witcher games used established works does not diminish them at all. It's just a factual statement. Nobody has ever created something completely from scratch. Bioware borrowed heavily from the science fiction genre when they created the Mass Effect universe. They licensed the Unreal Engine instead of creating their own graphics engine. They hired well-known actors to play the parts.

You seem to be of the opinion that a collaborative work has less value than creations made by one single individual. That's just silly. If anything, it's much more impressive that CDPR managed to adept the original stories while maintaining the authenticity.

It is much more difficult to realize the vision of others to their satisfaction than to create something that satisfies oneself. Isn't that obvious from the "artistic vision" of Mass Effect 3 ending Bioware realized for us?

Modifié par sth128, 07 avril 2012 - 05:31 .

[CC-Tron]

Yes there will be others. I'm sure other companies will produce similar games to Mass Effect given it's success and do it better than Bioware can. Bioware games have lacked polish IMO (wrong weapons in cut scenes, sub-par animation etc.). I'd like to see what a more thorough game design team could do with this type of game.

[Rheinlandman]

We absolutely will, many of the games that come out of Rockstar/2K Games could already be considered epics (though without the interconnectedness of ME). Red Dead Redemption was definitely an American retelling of the classic Tragedy.

At the moment making such a game is prohibitively expensive; as sophisticated technology becomes cheaper and more readily available more companies will be able to produce them.

The market for deep, story oriented games is there but the ability to ability to supply that market is limited to only and handful of companies.

The industry isn't going towards a few large conglomerates like EA, Ubisoft, and Activision; its future is more reminiscent of the old British car industry. With numerous small producers offering a variety of products of varying levels of quality. They will of course be competing with the large companies but will be able to compete due to the open nature of the market.

Edit: That is until we have our Star Trek level computers able to procedurally generate a world to our specifications.

Modifié par Rheinlandman, 07 avril 2012 - 05:35 .

[AlanC9]

Rheinlandman wrote...
Edit: That is until we have our Star Trek level computers able to procedurally generate a world to our specifications.

Well, even in the Trek universe holonovels still needed authors.

And yeah, I was being too pessimistic above. Someone, sometime will try it again.

[Iakus]

I hope not. At least in the short term. My belief is that Bioware's reach seriously exceeded its grasp. They went in totally unprepared for maintaining consistent stories and characters across multiple games.

[AtlasMickey]

Rheinlandman wrote...

Edit: That is until we have our Star Trek level computers able to procedurally generate a world to our specifications.

Do you remember that one episode of Star Trek Voyager where the crew discovers a holonovel in protected memory about a Maquis mutiny? They show one person after another going through the same scenes in the story but making different choices. The structure seemed very similar to Mass Effect, in that renegade/paragon decisions didn't branch the story too far. For example, you could choose dialogue choices that would side with the Maquis right away or later, but you still had to wait to prove your loyalty. It ends up being really popular and gets everyone talking to each other about the different decisions they made!

I love watching that episode after playing Mass Effect. XD

[sth128]

AlanC9 wrote...

Rheinlandman wrote...
Edit: That is until we have our Star Trek level computers able to procedurally generate a world to our specifications.

Well, even in the Trek universe holonovels still needed authors.

And yeah, I was being too pessimistic above. Someone, sometime will try it again.

Actually it's been speculated that a computer capable of generating a holodeck level of sophistication would be itself, a strong AI. If that's the case then the AI itself might be capable of creating artistic works.

Currently there are AI that can "create" via machine learning. An example of this is the program written to create new piano pieces by studying works of others (search Google or Youtube, I don't recall the exact link at this moment).

Certainly in several episodes of TNG, the holodeck managed to create fully sapient and self-aware strong AIs (the Moriarty character, for example). Inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted that by 2025 the computational capabilities of computers will have reached the level that a full neural simulation is possible. That means an artificial intelligence identical in sophistication to a human can be realized. If it (or he/she?) is anything like a human mind, then surely artistic creation will not be out of the question?

[EDIT]

Ok I managed to track down the article and the video of the piano concerto creating robot:
The article I read it from.

The music created.

The journal article that goes into more detail about the program.

Modifié par sth128, 07 avril 2012 - 06:00 .

[AtlasMickey]

I thought Kurzweil's strong AI prediction was 2040?

[Navasha]

I could deal with a little less epic scale than the end of all life in the galaxy myself. A good story doesn't have to revolve around cataclysmic events to be a great story. Especially, if its going to be a planned series of games. You can't keep "out doing" yourself each game before it gets ridiculous.

The Elder Scrolls is falling into this trap. Every title now has to be about an even BIGGER end to the world than the one before it. Hard to keep a series unique and refreshing when you are bogged down with that level of obligation.

[sth128]

AtlasMickey wrote...

I thought Kurzweil's strong AI prediction was 2040?

I'm just going by the figures he wrote in "The Singularity is Near". Besides I said capacity necessary for neural simulation (ie. whole brain simulation). Whether this will result in strong AI or a coma patient, I don't really know.

I mean, Watson can already beat out the all time champions in Jeopardy and is capable of learning and limited interpolation... Who knows, maybe we'll get a VI soon. My personal opinion on the strong AI is that it should be held back until we can ensure superiority or at least equality.

Granted, Kurzweil thinks the robots will all revere us and love us, I'm not so hopefully naive. The Aztecs probably thought the same thing when the Spaniards landed. If strong AI is derived from the human mind then surely the inherent conflict and violence will be ported over too... As Shakespeare put it, "If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that"...