343 réponses à ce sujet

[seraphymon]

jbrand2002uk wrote...

Well if we follow your logic in regards to EA's franchise's then your saying that The Tiger Woods and Fifa Franchises, hell throw in NHL and NBA for that matter are the best thing in gaming since sliced bread because each successive game is almost absoloutley identical to the previous one except for changes of clothes and an odd new course/golf bat thrown in so they can say hey look its different.

Experiments gone wrong are bad I grant however sticking with the same formula time and again for fear that a new idea "might not work" is even worse its better to try and fail then never to try at all.

What if our ancestors had said hey lets not build houses we'll just live in caves because well they work and if it aint broke dont fix it. or if they said hey lets not bother inventing cars and motorcycles and planes because our legs work just fine 

What your comparing is apples and oranges.the sports franchises are always constant, and imo most FPS are as well, each one looks the same to another almost. However they sell because it works to those that enjoy it.
Im not arguing to not expirement at all or change things. However  you shouldnt change a game upside down on just the 2nd game. Fixing what wasnt broken and trying to morph it closer to the ME franchise.  Experimenting to that extent should be reserved for a new game or just try a bit here and there with DLCs as well as the major, not make it unrecognizable almost, and rely on the success on its prequel in order to make a profit, and sell what it did.

[Maria Caliban]

Filament wrote...

Maria Caliban wrote...

I wanted to have a conversation. I was showing interest in your thoughts and opinions.

I regret that I've come to expect that every time you respond to me in a thread, it's to needle me with snark in one manner or another.

I'll try not to bother you in the future.

[Gibb_Shepard]

Definitely. The amount of roleplaying content that could be offered to a silent PC far outweighs the linear nature of a voiced one.

[smallwhippet]

OP: no.

[Sajji]

Of course.

BioWare won't, thougb. No way EA would allow that.

Casual gamers expect voiced characters. And DA3 will be made for not you, but the casual gamer.

[In Exile]

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

We've had that argument before. :happy:

I don't see how you can deny that the exchange of information is a thing that exists. We are doing it right now.

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.

But that's just going back to the same epistemological problem: certainty can't operate in the way you think it does without it being meaingless, i.e. there is never a circumstance where we could be "certain" of anything, and it would always be impossible to choose between alternatives.

To elaborate, to pick between A and B (other than picking randomly between A and  is to have some information about A or B. But by your standard, you can't have information without certainty, except that - as a logical necessity (because, among other things, logic as a mode of inference is impossible to prove except with logic, which is just nothing more than blind faith, and can serve to easily justify induction as well) - you can't have certainty.

[In Exile]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
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.

There is no comparison between what you say an RPG is and what PNP is supposed to be. PNP is not about mental fantasy. It's clear and concrete. It's live.  If you have mock in-character conversations with people, you have a series of cues about what the interaction is. If you leave it up the ruleset (i.e. I pick to be persuasive, let me be persuasive) then you've just abstract all possible interaction out of the game. You're not even at the level of representing characters on-screen.

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.

To pretend like Bestheda's landmark is a silent PC and not their open-world design is ridiculous. It's like saying DA:O was succesful because it had dragons, and Skyrim was succesful for the same reason.

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 mental fantasy and fan-fiction is irrelevant. You can close your eyes and pretend that Hawke is an alien from the plant Zarbloxx 99 and there to harvest he liver of every human in Lowtown. But that doesn't mean that's really a "possibility" in-game.

I can imagine that Ducan lived at Ostagar, that Alistair just went insane after the battle, and that Duncan travelled with the party everywhere as an advisor. Nothing is stopping me.

But to pretend that an RPG is about - essentially - willful psychosis is ridiculous.

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.

.

It does no such thing. Can I correct a misuderstanding? Can I tell the Landsmeet that King Cousland is the best choice? Can I call out Duncan for the murdering bastard that he is, when he left my mother and father to die?

An RPG isn't open. An RPG doesn't let you have your own voice. All you can do is pretend that you can control timbre and pitch. And if you want to do anything more - if you want to imagine in-game scenes that just aren't rendered - then you've crossed the line (in term of the logic that you're using) into justifying a game where I pretend that the Hawke is my shapesifter from Zarblox 99.

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.

It proves none of these things. If you let players play Geralt as a woman or modify the face nothing in-game would change. There's no plot that's specific to men. There's no plot that requires Geralt to look the way he does. And you can have a lot of variety in what Geralt believes, and why he does things.

Whether or not a character is fixed is completely irrelevant to all of these other RPG-like features.

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.

See, you're totally right here - you can't be middle of the road, because you will end up breaking a good feature.

But you're wrong about what choices you get to make in an RPG.

[Zanallen]

Sure, as long as the silence isn't limited to the PC itself and instead the game has no voiced characters at all. But then again, some of my favorite games are for the SNES and PSOne.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
But I find much more enjoyable the interaction between the character I designed and the game's setting.  The writers' story (the authored narrative) is part of the setting, and serves as a backdrop to whatever it is I have my character do.  The story that is told through that interaction between my character and the setting is unique to each player.  That's the emergent narrative, and that's the payoff for me.  I want to see how my character reacts to the things that happen to him.  What choices does he make?  How does he affect the people he meets, and the world in which he lives?

I create a character, and then I set him loose within BioWare's story to see what he does.  BioWare's story (the authored narrative) is an important building block, but it is not the result I'm looking for.

In these newest games, BioWare has taken to restricting my ability to design my character in order to write a more detailed story.  A more detailed story isn't a bad thing, but the reason I'm interested in experiencing the story at all vanishes as soon as I'm not able to craft my own character.

I've thought about this, Sylvius, and the truth is that you do more than that. You don't just what to see what choices your character makes, and how he reacts. You want to invent those outcomes.

The world doesn't need to respond to your choice at all - it just needs to have a response (and not even that, because you've mentioned you imagine content and interactions). That's creating content.

I agree with you that I want an emergent experience, as between myself and the gameworld, but to me that reaction has to happen within the game itself, so as a mere matter of design, the game has to know how I'm acting to react coherently to it.

Misunderstandings are the epitome of this.

[artsangel]

Perhaps they could make the player character voiced a similar way as Baldur's Gate party members are. Let people choose a voice from a set of options. Give them a few spoken lines at the start of the game so you can picture their voice in your head (plus maybe some other crucial scenes), let them make a rousing speech at the end, but make them silent for the rest so that there can be more VA budget for NPCs and others to have lots more lines of dialog in response to a larger range of conversation options.

Modifié par artsangel, 14 mai 2012 - 06:50 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

I've thought about this, Sylvius, and the truth is that you do more than that. You don't just what to see what choices your character makes, and how he reacts. You want to invent those outcomes.

I invent them insofar that they're requireed by my character design.  But never do I contradict any consequences presented to me by the game.

You were saying that I solve my problems by overwriting the game's content with my own imagined content, because (you claimed) I'm already doing that.

But I'm not.  I'm unequivocally not doing that.

The world doesn't need to respond to your choice at all - it just needs to have a response

I don't understand what distinction you're making here.  I choose something, and the game responds.  the what th game is reponding is unknowable.  This is exactly how people work.  Roleplaying games are a manifestation of the Problem of Other Minds.

(and not even that, because you've mentioned you imagine content and interactions). That's creating content.

I never denied creating content.  My character's thoughts are content, and obviously I have to create those.

I denied overwriting content, which you still haven't shown that I do.

I agree with you that I want an emergent experience, as between myself and the gameworld, but to me that reaction has to happen within the game itself, so as a mere matter of design, the game has to know how I'm acting to react coherently to it.

And I insist that you can't know enough about the events within the game's reality (particularly the minds of the NPCs) in order to judge coherence.

You're holding the game to an impossible standard.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 14 mai 2012 - 08:10 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Can I correct a misuderstanding?

No, but you can't do it with a voiced protagonist, either.

So there's no benefit here.  You've defeated your own position.

An RPG isn't open. An RPG doesn't let you have your own voice. All you can do is pretend that you can control timbre and pitch. And if you want to do anything more - if you want to imagine in-game scenes that just aren't rendered - then you've crossed the line (in term of the logic that you're using) into justifying a game where I pretend that the Hawke is my shapesifter from Zarblox 99.

Exactly.  That should be a the standard.

And if every single thing Hawke does is something I told him to do, then I can maintain that fiction.

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

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

We've had that argument before. :happy:

I don't see how you can deny that the exchange of information is a thing that exists. We are doing it right now.

You can trasmit information.  I can receive information.  There's no scientific justification for believing that the two undergo synthesis to form "exchange".

You have no reason at all to believe in the existence of groups.

But that's just going back to the same epistemological problem: certainty can't operate in the way you think it does without it being meaingless, i.e. there is never a circumstance where we could be "certain" of anything, and it would always be impossible to choose between alternatives.

We can't be certain of anything on its own, no.  But we can be certain of things relative to our certainty about other things.  Only relative truth values are available to us.

We've been over this.  Your complaint about not being able to know anything on its own misses the point.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 14 mai 2012 - 07:00 .

[Annie_Dear]

andraip wrote...

Annie_Dear wrote...

I would pay extra if it meant I'd have a silent protagonist.

And then the game would be worse then DA 2, and all the BSN would rage about saying that Bioware made the game that bad on purpose. No thanks. Mute your headphones (or equivalent) and see for yourself if it makes the game better.

So Origins is worse than DA2?

[wsandista]

Annie_Dear wrote...

andraip wrote...

Annie_Dear wrote...

I would pay extra if it meant I'd have a silent protagonist.

And then the game would be worse then DA 2, and all the BSN would rage about saying that Bioware made the game that bad on purpose. No thanks. Mute your headphones (or equivalent) and see for yourself if it makes the game better.

So Origins is worse than DA2?

Obviously which is why DAO is currently selling for a higher price and almost universally rated higher rated higher than DA2. Everyone knows that having a product that sells for a lower price and is rated worse makes it amazing.

[AkiKishi]

wsandista wrote...

Obviously which is why DAO is currently selling for a higher price and almost universally rated higher rated higher than DA2. Everyone knows that having a product that sells for a lower price and is rated worse makes it amazing.

Problem is that so much was changed that you can't pin it down to just being the voiced protagonist. Plenty of other cinematic games get high ratings and sell well. Games that sell well like Skyrim, are not cinematic.

[wsandista]

BobSmith101 wrote...

wsandista wrote...

Obviously which is why DAO is currently selling for a higher price and almost universally rated higher rated higher than DA2. Everyone knows that having a product that sells for a lower price and is rated worse makes it amazing.

Problem is that so much was changed that you can't pin it down to just being the voiced protagonist. Plenty of other cinematic games get high ratings and sell well. Games that sell well like Skyrim, are not cinematic.

True, but I think we can all assume that one of the reasons DA2 failed was because it departed heavily from DAO. Voiced PC was one of the more noticeable departures, all of which were in a direction to make the game appeal to a certain crowd.

BTW, I noticed that you continually mention a game named Xenoblade in your posts, is that worth looking at?

[AkiKishi]

wsandista wrote...
True, but I think we can all assume that one of the reasons DA2 failed was because it departed heavily from DAO. Voiced PC was one of the more noticeable departures, all of which were in a direction to make the game appeal to a certain crowd.

BTW, I noticed that you continually mention a game named Xenoblade in your posts, is that worth looking at?

The other options is that the people who bought DA did not like it and you saw the knock on effect with DA2 (not saying that is the case, but it's a possibility).

Xenoblade is totally worth getting as long as you own a Wii.

[wsandista]

BobSmith101 wrote...

wsandista wrote...
True, but I think we can all assume that one of the reasons DA2 failed was because it departed heavily from DAO. Voiced PC was one of the more noticeable departures, all of which were in a direction to make the game appeal to a certain crowd.

BTW, I noticed that you continually mention a game named Xenoblade in your posts, is that worth looking at?

The other options is that the people who bought DA did not like it and you saw the knock on effect with DA2 (not saying that is the case, but it's a possibility).

Xenoblade is totally worth getting as long as you own a Wii.

Assuming that is the case, I don't think they would've bothered with DA2 in the first place.

I think I will try Xenoblade then.

[Tirigon]

Of course.

but then, I would leave out Voice acting for getting absolutely nothing, even, because written text is more impactful anyways. There is not a single voiceactor in this universe who could even nearly as good as is needed to capture the emotion a good story can have.

Voice acting in itself is worse than silence, and if it comes at the prize of other things just the more so.

[abnocte]

I will trade voice acting over plot control, and plot control over character control any day of the week.

A game is a very limited media, and as such, there will always be plot "points" that we, as players, have no control over ( becoming a grey warden, you know who dying, you know who blowing you know what, etc ), and that is ok... as long as I'm allowed a reasonable control over how my character reacts to those events.

The voice acting heavily cuts those options. And developers saying that the game will always interpret a certain line only in the way the writers intended to, so there's no difference in their eyes, is kind of a slap to the face, because they are telling me my way of thinking is wrong and I shouldn't deviate from thinking in 0's and 1's just like a computer.

If the game presents me a situation where I choose a certain line, and the next time I play it I choose the very same line and get the very same outcome from the game, WHY I have to limit myself to assume that the motivations/intentions behind that line are the same for both characters?

I agree with others on Bioware, they should either go back to no voices or go full predefined character.
And for those that said that no voice or cutscenes is going backwards I recommend taking a look at games like Legacy of Kain ( the whole series, 5 videogames ): full of cutscenes, voice acting and a wonderful tale. Bioware isn't inventing the wheel, they are just trying to pass as RPG something that is not.

[KoorahUK]

to OP - No. I'm an old school RPG-er, did PnP for years, BG, Icewind Dale, the lot. Yet after playing voice acted RPG's, when I now play silent RPG games now I feel detached from the main character. I love character interaction and for me well written and voiced dialogue adds huge amounts to the story I am playing through.

I'm under no illusion that this approach allows me the same amount of freedom, as those older games, or even DA:O, but its the path BW have chosen. I believe given mroe time and resources than were allowed DA2, a path taking the best from both approaches can be found, but I for one am happy with the Mass Effect style of RPG - and I am not a CoD loving kid as seems to be the staple put down to anyone who likes this style of game.

Skyrim exists for those wanting the freedom. Vote with your wallet.

[slashthedragon]

What ever happened to reading your lines out loud?

[AkiKishi]

abnocte wrote...

I will trade voice acting over plot control, and plot control over character control any day of the week.

A game is a very limited media, and as such, there will always be plot "points" that we, as players, have no control over ( becoming a grey warden, you know who dying, you know who blowing you know what, etc ), and that is ok... as long as I'm allowed a reasonable control over how my character reacts to those events.

The voice acting heavily cuts those options. And developers saying that the game will always interpret a certain line only in the way the writers intended to, so there's no difference in their eyes, is kind of a slap to the face, because they are telling me my way of thinking is wrong and I shouldn't deviate from thinking in 0's and 1's just like a computer.

If the game presents me a situation where I choose a certain line, and the next time I play it I choose the very same line and get the very same outcome from the game, WHY I have to limit myself to assume that the motivations/intentions behind that line are the same for both characters?

I agree with others on Bioware, they should either go back to no voices or go full predefined character.
And for those that said that no voice or cutscenes is going backwards I recommend taking a look at games like Legacy of Kain ( the whole series, 5 videogames ): full of cutscenes, voice acting and a wonderful tale. Bioware isn't inventing the wheel, they are just trying to pass as RPG something that is not.

I broadly agree. Witcher 2 has more plot control than DA2 despite being voiced. What it does not have is character creation. Which is hardly anything new since FF has done that since FF2 and the majortity of games have fixed protagonists of one kind or another because it better suits the media.

[FASherman]

First,we would not a plot. What we have is a story that the writer wants to tell and we get to make a few minor decisions along the way, but mostly we push buttons to advance through the cinematics.