121 réponses à ce sujet

[Kaosgirl]

Wild Maiden wrote...

Dark83 wrote...
If George Lucas writes a Star Wars trilogy novel, complete with inner monologues, where Luke isn't a whiney farmboy, it won't change what Luke is in the movie, you dig? Han could be written as a conflicted tormented emo, but the novelization doesn't change the Han of the movie.

If George Lucas wrote in a book that was supposed to be cannon that Luke's father was a wookie, and you watch the movies and think "...That doesn't make sense", then George Lucas comes on the community forum and says "whoops my bad, deal with it" wouldn't that kind of ruin the whole thing for you?

Probably.  But if someone in the novel said Luke was born on Dantooine and someone in the movie said he was born on Tatooine, I wouldn't be too concerned.  That's easily written off as a slip of the tongue or some *character* believing bad information and passing it on.  

Wild Maiden wrote...
In a game where the lore plays such a critical role it should not be cast aside so quickly and forgotten about.

In a game where the lore is passed on organically, through methods that are known to propogate errors in the real world, I'd find it implausible for the lore to be perfectly accurate and consistent.

[Kaosgirl]

Leonhartx wrote...
This is exactly the point I was trying to make with my posts, but you've said it far better than I.

The Lore is -Critical- to this game...

Did anyone seriously read the authors post and not skim through and start immediatly agreeing just because you love the game?

If that's the one where he said the lore is *Deliberately* inaccurate, I did read it.  In fact, I might have read it better than some, since I caught the "deliberate" part and managed to understand why that might be done:

Most of the lore is presented as opinion, theory and hearsay.  Opinions tend to differ, theories occasionally don't pan out and hearsay is rarely reliable.  

[Infiniteone2]

Wolfva2 wrote...

Ok everyone.  Take a deep breath and step away from your keyboards.  I'm shutting down the internet until you can stop acting like spoilt brats and grow up.

Sheesh, you DO realize you are throwing a temper tantrum over a discrepency about the parentage of 1 character which is utterly meaningless to the story in the game, right?  Who cares who Duncan's parents were?

It's not a big deal really, but I'd like to nip it in the butt before it gets way out of hand.

It's NOT HARD at all to make sure there's no discrepancies, all it takes is not being lazy, and some hardwork.  If it were me who was in charge of lore I would have my very own personal database, my own Wikipedia if you will.  Every single scrap of information about an event, characters, their kin, races, and places would go into it and they would all link to each other.  For example, say I had a page on Duncan, on this page it would have his story, who his parents were, what major battles or places he visited and when, what major things he did, who he spoke to when and about what, conversations he had talking about backgrounds, races, places, his past, what something/someone looks like etc would all be on this page divied up into neat categoreis.  Every keyword would be linked to another page that described it in detail.  Say for example, he was in Ostagar which would be mentioned on his page under the appropriate category, then the word Ostagar on his page would be a link to a page about Ostagar and all about it.

No writer would be able to create anything new w/o knowing the database in and out and consulting it non-stop.  Then I, as the in charge guy, would go over every single scrap of whatever anyone else wrote comparing it to my database to make sure it was accurate before it was even close to being implemented.  I would spend near everyday constantly going through my database, adding and tweaking things, looking for inconsistencies.  I'd wake up, make a cup of coffee and go over it for as long as I could before real life called, then when I got done with real life I'd get home and go over it again, and again, and again, till i was 100% sure it was perfect in every single way, then I'd get 4 hours of sleep and start over again the next day till i was absolutely sure everything was perfect.  If I had a willing friend, which I do, who doesn't have a woman friend that has their masters in English? I'd have her help for another perspective to make sure everything meshed incase for some reason my mind wasn't picking up on something.

And before adding anything new I'd go over it with a fine comb first making sure everything was completely accurate before adding it into my perfected database. 

Needless to say I'd have about 5 copies of my database backed up in various places, backing things up whenever anything new was added.

If anyone in charge tried to add something that didn't mesh I'd fight them till I was exactly one step away from being fired, and if anyone brought up why this change was added I'd be sure to mention it wasn't my idea and I fought it as best I could.

Modifié par Infiniteone2, 07 décembre 2009 - 07:01 .

[MrFish]

k

[Leonhartx]

haha thats a very detailed plan.

[_Jekias_]

/popcorn

[Wolfva2]

Well Infinite, I think you're just the person for the job. By all means, send in your resume to Bioware for the position. I'm not even being sarcastic. I really mean it. If not them, then get a job as an editor, maybe for one of the large publishing houses. Heck, get a job with Marvel comics! They REALLY need help with consistancy.



One thing though...even with all of that redundancy I can almost assure you that there would be a mistake somewhere. Whether or not someone else would catch it and then publicly insult you for being lazy and pathetic for making such an 'egrarious' mistake which has ruined the entire game/book/magazine/tvshow/whatever is up in the air. Most people, thankfully, have more tact then that.

[Infiniteone2]

Wolfva2 wrote...

Well Infinite, I think you're just the person for the job. By all means, send in your resume to Bioware for the position. I'm not even being sarcastic. I really mean it. If not them, then get a job as an editor, maybe for one of the large publishing houses. Heck, get a job with Marvel comics! They REALLY need help with consistancy.

One thing though...even with all of that redundancy I can almost assure you that there would be a mistake somewhere. Whether or not someone else would catch it and then publicly insult you for being lazy and pathetic for making such an 'egrarious' mistake which has ruined the entire game/book/magazine/tvshow/whatever is up in the air. Most people, thankfully, have more tact then that.

If i ever made a mistake, I would personally punch myself in the balls 50 times as hard as I could, beg for forgiveness instead of saying "My b", and then probably hire and personally pay 2-3 very dedicated helpers to double check me.  Not to mention nearly get myself fired to make sure it was fixed asap in-game.

Modifié par Infiniteone2, 07 décembre 2009 - 07:49 .

[Torias]

But would all that detail focus be profitable?



(remember that I am a community member, not a Bioware employee).



Just want to bring up that point about profitability, cause what you described is a lot of effort, and effort is money.

[Wild Maiden]

I don't know about the ball punching, but I would have expected the official response to be more "we'll get right on that" and less "whoops!".

For the third time I'll point out that the arguments extend beyond the one example of the lineage of Duncan's parents. What about future discrepancies? Will they be fixed or ignored?

Wolfva2 wrote...
Read 'The Lord of the Rings', then read 'The Silmarrilion'.  Not even Tolkien could keep things straight from book to book.  

Also, as a side note, you cannot blame Tolkien for "errors" in the Silmarillion since it was published after he died and not by his own will. That's not say there aren't other discrepancies in his work, but anything in the Silmarillion has to be taken as a "work in progress". Tolkien also worked hard to correct these kinds of errors, which is why there are multiple re-printings of his works. Tolkien, who regularly replied to letters he received from his fans, never replied with "My bad". I'm not trying to compare David Gaider to Tolkien, just throwing out my two cents on that particular analogy.

Modifié par Wild Maiden, 07 décembre 2009 - 08:11 .

[Balgin Stondraeg]

Xaila wrote...

BelgarathMTH wrote...

There's already a novelization of DAO? Who wrote it and where can I get it?

It's not a novelization of the events in Origins.  There are two books, both prequels.  The Stolen Throne and The Calling are the titles, both by David Gaider, and you can get 'em most anywhere.  I had a ton of trouble finding TST in the brick and mortar stores so I ordered it on amazon though.

The Calling never got released over here in the UK. In fact I'm not sure it got released outside america. The Stolen Throne's good for the most part (could've done with slightly better proof reading).

[Dark83]

There has been cases where a movie portrayal (due to Director/Producer actions) conflicted with the writer's vision. Regardless of the writer's novelization of his script, how the character is portrayed in the film is canon to the film, and the writer's vision is a separate addendum. If the script portrays a character as sympathetic, but due to the director's careful shots and cutting he is portrayed as a callous bastard - in the film canon, he's a callous bastard, regardless of what the writer intended or wrote.



If the game shows Loghain as a delusional traitorous moron, then that's what he is in DA:O, regardless of his portrayal in other media.

[elijah_kaine]

Infiniteone2 wrote...

If i ever made a mistake, I would personally punch myself in the balls 50 times as hard as I could, beg for forgiveness instead of saying "My b", and then probably hire and personally pay 2-3 very dedicated helpers to double check me.  Not to mention nearly get myself fired to make sure it was fixed asap in-game.

Yeah right. I don't think that true at all. It's easy enough for you to say so behind a screen name where you don't have to prove anything. If that is the case though get prepared for a lot of ball pain becaue life is a series of mistakes on top of mistakes. Eventually your gonna rupture something in there an end up in a hospital and die.

In all seriousness I really doubt that your company, whoever you work for, would give the extra time and money to try and correct an issue so obsolete that only about 4 people out of the hundreds on this forum and the thousands who actually play this game noticed. 

[David Gaider]

Hm. I think it's a pretty minor error, but if someone wants to make a big deal about it, let them. From my perspective it would be much easier if all the information from various writers on the project was in one massive, easily-searchable and (more importantly) constantly updated database. That would be cool, even if I don't think it's going to happen.



But hey, if someone thinks that missing that one point leads to "LOLlore" or whatever -- then all the power to 'em. I'm comfortable with that.

[elijah_kaine]

Wild Maiden wrote...

I don't know about the ball punching, but I would have expected the official response to be more "we'll get right on that" and less "whoops!".

For the third time I'll point out that the arguments extend beyond the one example of the lineage of Duncan's parents. What about future discrepancies? Will they be fixed or ignored?

It really depends I think. How much of an issue is it. How likely is it to seriously effect the lore. How bad of a mistake is it? This isn't really that bad as far as mistakes go or consistency issues. You can run into waaay worse problems. A lot of the time depending on how long you have to correct mistakes and how much money it may cost to fix them sometimes you've got to pick and choose which things to get out of the way as far as fixes go. Especially if you have a deadline.

Most novels go through tons of read throughs to weed out discrepencies and even then editing offices miss enough of them for some nerd to go on the internet and post all the discrepencies up on the novels wikipedia page. Besides the complications of having a deadline with Dragon Age editing discrepicies is made harder I'm sure becaue of all the branching dialog trees.

edit: Not to mention that your talking about cross platform editing. So that's keeping two novels and a video game consistant all with a publishing date of around the same time. Harder then you might think.

I think you also just got a terribly wrong impression of David Gaider statement.

In this case, even though I looked I didn't realize there was something
written that mentioned Duncan's parentage (in this case it was a piece
of marketing that was done for the old website). Definitely my bad on
that one.

This is him saying that he looked through all the stuff and messed up and missed whatever it was. Then he goes on to say "This is my bad." Now, as far as I know the cool crowd using this phrase to say "This is my fault." Which is excepting blame for it. Sometimes it means "Ah, dude, my bad" which is more light hearted even so I've used "my bad." to mean "This is my fault." I think you have a predisposition to think that he doesn't care.

Modifié par elijah_kaine, 08 décembre 2009 - 02:21 .

[Servant of Nature]

David Gaider wrote...

Hm. I think it's a pretty minor error, but if someone wants to make a big deal about it, let them. From my perspective it would be much easier if all the information from various writers on the project was in one massive, easily-searchable and (more importantly) constantly updated database. That would be cool, even if I don't think it's going to happen.

But hey, if someone thinks that missing that one point leads to "LOLlore" or whatever -- then all the power to 'em. I'm comfortable with that.

I think the issue(for me, at least) is I like knowing every single scrap of information I can.  Honestly I loved Duncan in the Calling and loved him even more in the game (although, admitedly, I was disappointed we could not jump on him like Vivian did).  I just want to know what is real heritage is.  It's interesting, something to ponder, even if it really doesn't matter in the end, considering he ended up a streetrat for most of his life anyway.  Judging by the Calling he had a pretty deep connection with his parents, I would like to know who they were, even if it's just a minor detail like that.

However I am not going to rake you over the coals for such a silly thing, then again, I've seen you answer questions willing to rabid forumites for years now so, I guess I just appreciate what you've done.  With all the brand new lore stuff you were writing in DA:O, it's hardly surprising some things get lost or overlooked.

For what it's worth, thanks you to and your fellow writers(and the entire staff)... I adore both novels you've written and Dragon Age has nudged past Baldur's Gate as my favorite game, even if it'll always hold a place in my heart as my first cRPG.

Sorry some people are idiots.

[David Gaider]

Servant of Nature wrote...
I think the issue(for me, at least) is I like knowing every single scrap of information I can.  Honestly I loved Duncan in the Calling and loved him even more in the game (although, admitedly, I was disappointed we could not jump on him like Vivian did).  I just want to know what is real heritage is.  It's interesting, something to ponder, even if it really doesn't matter in the end, considering he ended up a streetrat for most of his life anyway.  Judging by the Calling he had a pretty deep connection with his parents, I would like to know who they were, even if it's just a minor detail like that.

From my perspective, the book is correct. Duncan's mother is Rivaini and his father is Fereldan, and they moved from Highever to Orlais. I don't remember when the original info was written, but it's difficult when you write things over six years like this -- we ended up with a lot of legacy lore, especially from things that were changed, so some inconsistencies are bound to creep in. Dragon Age has a huge amount of lore written by different people, so it's not easy to keep track of.

The difficulty of changing it in the game has more to do with localization issues. I'm not sure it's going to happen, but I can always see. Overall I suspect it would be treated as too minor to fix, considering it doesn't affect anything other than the novel.

For what it's worth, thanks you to and your fellow writers(and the entire staff)... I adore both novels you've written and Dragon Age has nudged past Baldur's Gate as my favorite game, even if it'll always hold a place in my heart as my first cRPG.

Sorry some people are idiots.

Heh. Thanks for the compliments -- and I find the image of my boss storming into my office saying "OH MY GOD YOU GOT DUNCAN'S PARENTAGE MIXED UP? YOU'RE FIRED!!" to be pretty funny. So LOL to that. But someone deciding to act like an idiot regarding something they know nothing about is nothing new -- so meh. What can you do?

[Alternategray]

Infiniteone2 wrote...

It's not a big deal really, but I'd like to nip it in the butt before it gets way out of hand.

Ahem. The saying is, "nip it in the bud". Not only are you FIRED, sir, you need to start punchin' away.

[elijah_kaine]

David Gaider wrote...
Heh. Thanks for the compliments -- and I find the image of my boss storming into my office saying "OH MY GOD YOU GOT DUNCAN'S PARENTAGE MIXED UP? YOU'RE FIRED!!" to be pretty funny. So LOL to that. But someone deciding to act like an idiot regarding something they know nothing about is nothing new -- so meh. What can you do?

I find it surprising that your taking it in stride. I would be pretty upset. Then again you have had some time to grow a thick skin I'm sure.

[David Gaider]

elijah_kaine wrote...
I find it surprising that your taking it in stride. I would be pretty upset. Then again you have had some time to grow a thick skin I'm sure.

I'm in a good mood. I've helped write a massive game with a massive amount of lore to keep track of and then penned two books that have also been received well by the fanbase. If this is the worst of my crimes, I think I'll live.

[Curlain]

Alternategray wrote...

Infiniteone2 wrote...

It's not a big deal really, but I'd like to nip it in the butt before it gets way out of hand.

Ahem. The saying is, "nip it in the bud". Not only are you FIRED, sir, you need to start punchin' away.

You might want to think of getting a large ice cooler too Infiniteone2, you know, for all those ice packs it looks like you could be needing, but you know, let us know how the ball breaking went

Modifié par Curlain, 08 décembre 2009 - 03:04 .

[Infiniteone2]

David Gaider wrote...

From my perspective it would be much easier if all the information from various writers on the project was in one massive, easily-searchable and (more importantly) constantly updated database.

See, like I said, lazy and doesn't care enough about his work.  Nothing stopping you from doing this or setting it up...I'm not even a writer, only had one writing class ever, and this was always something I knew I would do from the get-go if I did ever start writing.  My wife is a budding writer and working on her first novel of a planned series, and even she does this, strangely she does it all manually on actual paper instead of the computer but its quite organized.

Modifié par Infiniteone2, 08 décembre 2009 - 03:26 .

[DJoker35]

David Gaider wrote...

elijah_kaine wrote...
I find it surprising that your taking it in stride. I would be pretty upset. Then again you have had some time to grow a thick skin I'm sure.

I'm in a good mood. I've helped write a massive game with a massive amount of lore to keep track of and then penned two books that have also been received well by the fanbase. If this is the worst of my crimes, I think I'll live.

Good for you! Glad you're not letting it get you down. It shoudln't. What you've done so far is fantastic.

I've really enjoyed the first two books, and look forward to the THIRD! :happy:

[David Gaider]

Infiniteone2 wrote...
See, like I said, lazy and doesn't care enough about his work.  Nothing stopping you from doing this or setting it up...I'm not even a writer, only had one writing class ever, and this was always something I knew I would do from the get-go if I did ever start writing.  My wife is a budding writer and working on her first novel of a planned series, and even she does this, strangely she does it all manually on actual paper instead of the computer but its quite organized.

Considering the patience she must have, I imagine she'll do quite well. Wish her good luck for me, please!

Modifié par David Gaider, 08 décembre 2009 - 05:07 .

[T1l]

David Gaider wrote...

From my perspective it would be much easier if all the information from various writers on the project was in one massive, easily-searchable and (more importantly) constantly updated database. That would be cool, even if I don't think it's going to happen.

David,

   If you don't mind me asking directly; I find it odd that all of the information isn't stored like that? I've worked on some incredibly insignificant and minor story telling in a group environment (and please, let me emphasise that I am in no way, shape or form claiming expertise here) and we had a whole room dedicated to just such a thing. The walls were covered in maps we'd drawn and pin-boards with family lineage and intertwining character / plot points.

   I find it really strange that you didn't have something similar? A database that every creative person can enter information, collaborate and reference would seem, to me, like a necessity for a project like this.

   My apologies in addressing you personally; I'm just fascinated by the creative process that you guys use in a professional environment and would love to know more.

Cheers,

   Til.