While players would want more of everything , to paraphrase Dave. It's not a reasonable expectation. The purpose of this is to see where the balance lies, between quality and quantity.
On the one extreme of the scale you have a fixed party. PC plus 3 characters covering classes.
Advantages
Very predictable when it comes to balance. The designers will know who is in your group at all times and have a good idea what skills they have.
If you only have a finite number of lines then you can spend more of them per companion.
Covers all the bases, you will never be left without an essential character because you left them at the camp.
Characters can be tied very closely to the story and not be forced into your group for events. Which tends to be a massive red flag something is about to occur.
Limits cheese of stacking certain OP classes.
Disadvantages
It's a small character pool, less chance of finding a character you like.
If you hate any of them, tough luck because thats all there is.
Limits creativity like having 3 mages in the party.
It's an odd number (throws up a number of things like LI's).
On the flip side. A large party.
Advantages
More chance of a character you like
A lot of choice both in social and gameplay
Allows for odd party mixes
Replaying means you can have a different combination of characters.
Disadvantages.
Hard to balance
Lines will be spread thin meaning shallower characters (remember 50% of the PC lines are already accounted for).
Easy to screw yourself by choosing the wrong party for a particular encounter. A bow heavy party and a rock golem come to mind..
Characters will have very little direct interaction with the plot or will have to be forced on you at specific points.
More work, in modeling and cutscenes which take a lot of time.
Companions and game design.
Débuté par
AkiKishi
, avril 26 2012 02:50
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#2
Posté 26 avril 2012 - 05:19
John Epler
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- BioWare Employees
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- 3 390 messages
Multiple origins has a non-trivial VO cost, yes - something like 40% of the game's dialogue is player dialogue. Having said that, the reasons behind not having multiple origins in DA2 have a lot less to do with it being more expensive in terms of voice acting as it simply not being a route we wanted to take. The specific reasons for that decision are various and many-faceted, and cover a whole lot of disciplines and departments beyond just VO/Loc.
Really, VO is expensive on its own, but compared to the rest of the project's costs it is a minor drop in the bucket. As for the argument that 'cinematics are where all the resources go', there are only... fourteen cinematic designers across both ME and DA? Or something like that - it's not a significant number, particularly compared to art and other disciplines. Is it still a non-zero cost? Yes, certainly, and if you don't see their value I suppose any number other than 'zero' is too many. But one of our ongoing projects is to find ways to ensure that cinematics are significantly cheaper and easier to make. Resource savings are good for the developers (it means we can spend more time focusing on the key moments and less on the 'run of the mill' cinematics), and good for the consumer (it means that the important cinematics will look and feel better, and if we have a good procedural solution it means that even smaller moments will look and feel better.)
Really, VO is expensive on its own, but compared to the rest of the project's costs it is a minor drop in the bucket. As for the argument that 'cinematics are where all the resources go', there are only... fourteen cinematic designers across both ME and DA? Or something like that - it's not a significant number, particularly compared to art and other disciplines. Is it still a non-zero cost? Yes, certainly, and if you don't see their value I suppose any number other than 'zero' is too many. But one of our ongoing projects is to find ways to ensure that cinematics are significantly cheaper and easier to make. Resource savings are good for the developers (it means we can spend more time focusing on the key moments and less on the 'run of the mill' cinematics), and good for the consumer (it means that the important cinematics will look and feel better, and if we have a good procedural solution it means that even smaller moments will look and feel better.)
#3
Posté 26 avril 2012 - 05:27
John Epler
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- BioWare Employees
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- 3 390 messages
Atakuma wrote...
Having two genders certainly adds to it, but it's hardly double the work since the female isn't much more than a model swap and some different dialogue.BobSmith101 wrote...
Atakuma wrote...
What hoorayforicecream said is exactly the reason a game like TW2 costs significantly less to make than a game like ME3 while being technologically superior and having pretty much the same amount of voice acting. It's simply because the cost of living in Poland, where TW2 was made, is significantly less than it is in Canada, where ME3 was made.
Well, that and only needing to do 50% of the work.
Even something like allowing gender choice doubles the workload.
Gender swap is usually not too big of a problem. The only time it does become an issue is when the PC is actually interacting with other characters, because the male and female models are slightly different sizes - so what looks good for one might end up with the other clipping horribly into whoever they're interacting with. Even when they're interacting with their own model - I had to do a -lot- of tweaking on the 'stung by a bee' scene in MoTA, because Female Hawke kept grabbing inside her own forearm.
There are, occasionally, camera issues that crop up - the female is slightly shorter than the male, so some shots can look a little strange, but we generally shoot with a long enough lens that it's not all that noticeable. It's not -zero- work, but it's not nearly as much work as a character who's a different height, or who needs significant dialogue changes.
#4
Posté 26 avril 2012 - 05:59
John Epler
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- BioWare Employees
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- 3 390 messages
Atakuma wrote...
I'm sorry if I made it sound trivial, I am aware that it requires work on animations and such, I was just saying that the female would have to be her own seperate character for it to really be double the work.John Epler wrote...
Atakuma wrote...
Having two genders certainly adds to it, but it's hardly double the work since the female isn't much more than a model swap and some different dialogue.BobSmith101 wrote...
Atakuma wrote...
What hoorayforicecream said is exactly the reason a game like TW2 costs significantly less to make than a game like ME3 while being technologically superior and having pretty much the same amount of voice acting. It's simply because the cost of living in Poland, where TW2 was made, is significantly less than it is in Canada, where ME3 was made.
Well, that and only needing to do 50% of the work.
Even something like allowing gender choice doubles the workload.
Gender swap is usually not too big of a problem. The only time it does become an issue is when the PC is actually interacting with other characters, because the male and female models are slightly different sizes - so what looks good for one might end up with the other clipping horribly into whoever they're interacting with. Even when they're interacting with their own model - I had to do a -lot- of tweaking on the 'stung by a bee' scene in MoTA, because Female Hawke kept grabbing inside her own forearm.
There are, occasionally, camera issues that crop up - the female is slightly shorter than the male, so some shots can look a little strange, but we generally shoot with a long enough lens that it's not all that noticeable. It's not -zero- work, but it's not nearly as much work as a character who's a different height, or who needs significant dialogue changes.
Oh, I know. I'm actually reinforcing your point - it's not a -ton- of extra work. It's non-trivial, but it's not as if including a female protagonist blows all our estimates out of whack.
