343 réponses à ce sujet

[Sutekh]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Where do you think there was auto-dialogue in Origin?  Where did the Warden say anything without being explicitly directed to do so?

If you consider expression and body language to be part of communication (and it is), then there were several occurrences of "auto-dialog" in DAO. Moments when your Warden reacted or showed  an emotion you didn't control at all (The Joining or the execution of Loghain come to mind, but there were others). It might seem less problematic to you, because it's non-verbal, but to me it was as much as DA2 auto-dialog.

Not to mention the voiced part of the Warden, i.e. battle cries, trap warnings and such (not as bothersome, though)

Edit: Actually, not the battle cries & trap warnings. The responses you got when you did something non-combat or dialogue related such as "can I get you a ladder so you get off my back" or "are you insane?". Not only was it unsollicited but it was breaking the fourth wall big time, since that character that you roleplayed was suddenly talking to you.

Modifié par Sutekh, 10 mai 2012 - 11:13 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Sutekh wrote...

If you consider expression and body language to be part of communication (and it is)

I deny communication.  There is expression and interpretation, and never the twain shall meet.

then there were several occurrences of "auto-dialog" in DAO. Moments when you Warden reacted or showed  an emotion you didn't control at all (The Joining or the execution of Loghain come to mind, but there were others).

I will agree that those displays of facial expression were unacceptable.  But they were far less common than the dialogue events in DA2, where literally everything Hawke said was something the player didn't choose.

I dispute, though, that facial expressions alone constitute dialogue.

Not to mention the voiced part of the Warden, i.e. battle cries, trap warnings and such (not as bothersome, though)

The battlecries should have been optional, as well.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I deny communication.  There is expression and interpretation, and never the twain shall meet.

Do you reject pragmatics? If you grant that grammer, you have to grant body language. They serve indentical roles. In fact, body language preceeded grammer (developmentally), and we've just incorporated grammer as a very limited representation of tonal variation.

On the OP:

If we give up all VA (PCs and NPCs), absolutely. Otherwise, no.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Sutekh wrote...

Edit: Actually, not the battle cries & trap warnings. The responses you got when you did something non-combat or dialogue related such as "can I get you a ladder so you get off my back" or "are you insane?". Not only was it unsollicited but it was breaking the fourth wall big time, since that character that you roleplayed was suddenly talking to you.

Those were unnecessary, but given that they were clearly breaking the fourth wall I also deemed them irrelevant.  They were effectively part of the user-interface.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
I deny communication.  There is expression and interpretation, and never the twain shall meet.

Do you reject pragmatics? If you grant that grammer, you have to grant body language. They serve indentical roles. In fact, body language preceeded grammer (developmentally), and we've just incorporated grammer as a very limited representation of tonal variation.

I didn't deny body language there.  I was denying the existence of communication as an entity.

I do deny that body language is meaningful.  Only when body language gets formal definitions will it cease to be a complete waste of time.

[Massakkolia]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

Auto-dialogue = excellent.  Lack of auto-dialogue = boring.

Auto-dialogue is the bane of gaming, especially of role-playing games. If you enjoy watching a story go and see a movie. Games are for interacting, not watching. Resorting to auto-dialogue in RPGs is a sign of lazy and uninspired game development.

[Fast Jimmy]

Auto-dialogue, and indeed, the voiced PC with their own personality as opposed to the "blank slate" protagonist, are hallmarks of JRPGs and action games. Given how much JRPGs are in the toilet now, I am stunned that Western video game companies are looking to them for design elements (cutscenes, cinematics, voiced protagonists, defined protagonists, combat-only approaches, etc.).

Action games are great, because they are strictly defined protagonists. Its cool that I get to play as Batman in Arkham City. It would be idiocy if I could play my Batman as a non-violent type, or someone who prefers to use guns. The Uncharted, Assassin's Creed and the God of War games wouldn't be as good if not for the history, outlook, experience and personalities of their main characters.

But they are not RPGs. And they have almost zero replay value once you go through the main plot.

Western RPGs have thrived for decades on doing the best to create an experience as close to a PnP experience as technology and resources would allow. They had their hey-day in the late 90's/early 2000's until the collapse of the PC gaming market. With the more recent success of companies like EA/Bioware and Bethesda, and even new upstarts like CDProjekt, and the downfall of almost every JRPG company aside from Square Enix, things were starting to look up again for fans of the Western RPG.

But while Bethesda is sticking to their guns and refining their formula, to great critical and commercial success, EA/Bioware is trying to reinvent their entire catalog of products from scratch, trying to go from making excellent RPGs to RPG/action hybrids.

God of War would have been horrible if Kratos had been given a diplomatic/aggressive/snarky dialogue options and robbed his character of his bad arse personality and outlook. If Altair had broken his cooler-than-ice demeanor and started cracking jokes just for the lolz, it would have looked RIDICULOUS.

In the same vein, narrowing down our characters to one race, three tones and no choices is equally insulting and damaging to an RPG series like Dragon Age. Three different voices to record for every dialogue line Hawke has is a huge drain on resources... especially since I can imagine over a thousand in my head with a silent PC. I can add in any tone, implied meaning, body language and intent I want. If Leliana doesn't pick up I'm being sarcastic, I can chalk it up to her being a little bit of a ditz. If Morrigan takes offense to my innocent comment, I can chalk it up to her being a little bit of a female canine.

Point being, the silent PC has been a tried and true RPG mechanic because it offers as close to an open and full-control experience as technology in the long-foreseeable-future will allow.

If EA/Bioware wants to make Action games, I say go for it. They will probably be amazing, have great stories and really immersive worlds. If they want to make RPGs, they should stick to conventions that work the best with RPGs - conventions they not allow abided by, but helped innovate and create. Or, if they want to go with a full RPG with a totally set protagonist, then do that instead as well.

Making RPG/Action hybrids while at the same time trying to allow the player to make their own character is a show-stopper. You can't do both and give any option that doesn't sound trite while at the same time trying to avoid a set protagonist. The Witcher games get away with this because the books they are based on already has a set character (Geralt). And it proves that you can still have an RPG with choice and things like a voiced PC, but ONLY with a firmly set protagonist character from the start.

But you can't be in the middle of the road on all of these things. You can't try and tell one amazing story and at the same time pretend you are offering people choices in how things play out. You can't give people the illusion of class selection that matters while at the same time defaulting to the action-game stereotype that everything is solved via combat. And you can't offer a blank slate character creator, but then throw in auto-dialogue that may be completely outside the character I create.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 11 mai 2012 - 12:58 .

[seraphymon]

jbrand2002uk wrote...

I have nothing against "old style" games what im against is paying new game prices for an old rehashed formula thats been used for over 20yrs its not unreasonable to demand new ideas and innovation for £60 instead of lazy design because designer's creativity is clipped for fear of offending the old guard of fans

well i guess thats where we just differ,  As i want to pay for what is worth it it doesnt matter if its from today or 20 years back. because like i said in the category of games and movies new doesnt  automatically equal better, if it did id maybe be in the same boat. But to be a guinea pig to these "innovations" or w/e the heck DA2 ended up being , feels much worse. Lazy design? all i can think about is DA2 when i hear that, even with the budget and time. Im all for trying something new, for say a new series game, not turn a series upside down form 1 game to the next.

[TheShadowWolf911]

yes

[mesmerizedish]

I don't care about how much control my character has over the plot. That's not roleplaying.

What I care about is being able to dictate how my character reacts to the plot, THAT is roleplaying.

Of course, I want the story to react to my character's actions if it makes sense to do so. It doesn't make sense given Anders's character progression that I should have been able to prevent him from [spoiler]ing the [spoiler].

I.E. Control over how my character reacts to the world is vastly more important to me than how the world reacts to my character.

That said, to any significant action my character takes, there will likely be some logical consequences. I DO want logical consistency. But that has nothing to do with roleplaying, which is what I value in an RPG.

[mesmerizedish]

Filament wrote...

I'd only want to give up PC voice if we gave up all voice acting. But I'd only really be willing to play an RPG that gives up all voice acting if it's an indie game. For a modern AAA RPG it would feel outmoded, not worth the AAA price.

I am inclined to agree, but I think it really depends on the game (and even more on the game's GUI). Morrowind's dialogue system was mostly unvoiced (characters had "ambient lines" but the dialogue UI was silent). I would pay $50-60 for TES VI if it used Morrowind's system of character voicing (if it were otherwise up-to-snuff in 2020 or whenever it eventually gets released).

[Maria Caliban]

Filament wrote...

I'd only want to give up PC voice if we gave up all voice acting. But I'd only really be willing to play an RPG that gives up all voice acting if it's an indie game. For a modern AAA RPG it would feel outmoded, not worth the AAA price.

So you wouldn't play a game like Kingdoms of Amalur, Vampire: Bloodlines, or Skyrim?

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 11 mai 2012 - 04:28 .

[Renkiri]

Yes!! Oh, please yes. But this question shouldn't even be necessary, because Bioware should never have twisted Dragon Age: Origins into Dragon Age: Fast and the Furious in the first place. Genre shift in the middle of a series is idiotic. Let the cinematics-over-choice people go play an action game like Mass Effect (as I do) and leave our *role-playing* game alone. When exactly was it decided that all new things are wonderful and awesome and all older, tried-and-true things are horrible and embarrassing? Sounds like something a fourteen year old would say.

Freedom of choice is the only reason I play RPGs. If I wanted to watch some committee-created moron blather, I'd go watch a Hollywood movie. What I want is an interactive *novel*, not an interactive movie. That seems to be the difference between pro-silent and pro-voiced: the creativity to imagine and implement a character and the story around him/her, instead of having everything handed over like candy to a child. Good RPGs require effort.

Voiced PCs are the lazy (and unbelievably expensive) way out: lay back and mindlessly watch a cutscene with only three clear-cut choices (with color-coded prompts because the world is black-and-white and no shades of gray, of course!) and zero consequences. It works only if the PC is already a fully-fleshed character like Geralt (and still, he had choice and consequence), not some half-blank, half-formed muddle like Hawke.

Personally, I want to *play* an RPG and deal with the consequences of my choices, be they good, bad, or somewhere in between, and no developer has yet figured out how to combine that with a custom-created, voiced protagonist. I don't appreciate being punished so the unimaginative, hand-it-to-me-so-I-have-to-do-as-little-as-possible crowd can have yet another action clone.

[Maria Caliban]

Filament wrote...

Pretty sure those all have voice acting.

You said that you'd only want a game to not have PC voice acting if none of the characters were voiced. I pointed to three video games that lack PC voice acting, have a voiced NPCs, and are generally considered good games.

Do you consider those games bad or unplayable?

[mesmerizedish]

Filament wrote...

Pretty sure those all have voice acting.

But not for the player. I understood your position to be that "I'm fine with an unvoiced PC is everyone else if also unvoiced." If that is your position, then Maria's examples all fail this test (though you're certainly able to play them anyway because the voiced/unvoiced status of the PC isn't a dealbreaker).

If I've misunderstood your position, feel free to clarify where I'm parsing it incorrectly

[Maria Caliban]

Filament wrote...


You supposed that I "wouldn't" play those games...

No, I asked. I provided examples of games that didn't fulfill your criteria and tried to get your thoughts on them. Your response was that they all had voice acting.

[Sylvius the Mad]

RinpocheSchnozberry wrote...

The Warden never spoke.

That's an unsupportable claim.

The Warden never spoke on camera.

That's a supportable claim.

Which is part of why DAO was so much less of an experience than DA2.  The dialogue choices in a game should help define the character's personality.  That personality should be reflected in cutscenes to make them much more entertaining.

That's an obviously impossible standard.  The only way a cutscene could ever reflect a character's personality is if that personality was controlled by the makers of the cutscene.

That is direct attack on player agency.

Auto-dialogue is excellent because it allows for a character to express themselves in what would otherwise be a stilted "it's my momen of triump... but I'll just wave and smile" cutscene.

It allows it, but it also forces it.  That's at least as important.

Auto-dialogue = excellent.  Lack of auto-dialogue = boring.

Auto-dialogue = no player control.

If the player isn't in control, what is the point of having the player there at all?

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 11 mai 2012 - 06:14 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Filament wrote...

I took it as a rhetorical question designed to make my standards seem absurd.

No question to which you have an answer need ever be rhetorical.

[Esbatty]

The Warden did speak "My Warden Sense is tingling..." when Darkspawn would show up and then when you'd click on stuff and your Warden would comment about what you tasked them to do.

[AkiKishi]

Faerunner wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

In the same vein, narrowing down our characters to one race, three tones and no choices is equally insulting and damaging to an RPG series like Dragon Age. Three different voices to record for every dialogue line Hawke has is a huge drain on resources... especially since I can imagine over a thousand in my head with a silent PC. I can add in any tone, implied meaning, body language and intent I want. If Leliana doesn't pick up I'm being sarcastic, I can chalk it up to her being a little bit of a ditz. If Morrigan takes offense to my innocent comment, I can chalk it up to her being a little bit of a female canine.

Your entire post was amazing and I agree with every word of it, but this stands out as the main reason why I think many people prefer silent to voiced protagonists. Pre-defined and voiced protagonists definitely have their place in the video game industry, (not knocking it) but I don't think they work quite as well in RPG series like Dragon Age.

I think we should compare it with a toolset. Having an amorphous protagonist gives you the ability to create your own to a degree ,just like having a toolset gives you the ability to create game content.

Not everyone wants to do that and in the case of a silent PC if you don't put in the "work" you get an empty souless shell.
Dragon Age has never tried a pre-defined PC. It's only gone for middle ground which is a pre-defined PC with the idea that it is still the players creation. This is a problem since the players idea and the official idea will often clash.

For instance when playing the Witcher2 I got a paraphrase of "sorry" to which the dialogue was "F**k you"! Came totally by suprise, and if I had been playing a character I created that would have been unacceptable, like when Hawke says "well at least father has company".
But because it was just Geralt being Geralt , it was not a big deal. I can guide Geralt through the "maze" the exact same way as DA2, but he's a complete character and I don't need or expect him to be anything else.