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[Reidbynature]

 I'll just try and list off a few thins I don't want to see that I thought needlessly restricts the player.

- Don't restrict what we can equip (without good reason)

Maybe some weapons and armour should have some class or skill requirements (which is already common place in RPG's), but not all.  I don't want to see a DA2 scenario where we can only equip a certain type of weapon depending on class.  If I want to use a crossbow as a Mage then I should be able to (well, with enough points in the rights skill anyway).  DA2 was such a backwards step in my mind as far as classes went.

- Don't restrict what characters or classes of companions are available arbitrarily

This just has DA2 all over.  I played through it and the interchangable siblings felt less for it and I felt that in some circumstances it left the party seriously unbalanced by the end (it shouldn't end up being a factor in whether I kill Anders at the end or not).

Those are the two main ones that I can think of at the moment.  Feel free to add your own and I might add more if I can think of any.

Modifié par Reidbynature, 19 mai 2012 - 12:42 .

[Allan Schumacher]

schalafi wrote...

Maybe it was supposed to add drama, but I think it was just another method of cost cutting.

In many ways it would have been cheaper and easier to not have a specific sibling die based upon your character choice, though it would have required rewrites of the story since the sibling's death is required.

Though since it's a key part of the plot, the ultimate in cost savings would have been to not pay any thought to the party make up and just have one of the siblings always die.  We wouldn't have had to implement any of their dialogues, stories, Hawke's sibling specific responses, nor any of the alternative dialogues that factor in for NPCs that made unique responses to your sibling.  With all those are cascading expenses such as localization and additional QA.  I can't think of any valid "cost cutting" mechanisms that come in by providing some level of mutually exclusive choice that wouldn't be made significantly cheaper by just cutting out the mutually exclusive choice altogether.

You're worried about spoilers this long after, really?  I think the people that may affect at this stage are very few. lol

While the game has been out for a while and the chances of seriously ruining the game for someone is limited, keep in mind that this section of the forum does explicitly state "NO Spoilers allowed."  This means that it's a reasonable assumption for someone reading these threads to not read spoilers for DA2 (and ME3 for that matter).  Try to keep them to a minimum and if you feel it's necessary, just warn people about impending spoilers.

[Allan Schumacher]

Reidbynature wrote...

You're assuming I hate Hawke and everything related to him. You're wrong. I just didn't like how Bethany or Carver's stories panned out.

You're also assuming that I think Bioware killed them solely because of party balancing. I don't think that either. I partly think they misjudged how to handle their deaths. I believe that it being connected to something as random as the player characters chosen class does devalue it because something like that should come from something more meaningful like being forced to save one sibling because you are incapable of saving both at the time or something like that.

Party balancing was still a factor.  As was the fact that it provided some level of replayability as they are mutually exclusive, without significant additional costs (I think most can understand that true mutual exclusivity with sweeping changes and divergent gameplay is very expensive).  Though there was also story reasons for this distinction as well, because keeping the dialogues the same would not have made as much sense.

Gamers shouldn't have to go "oh I'll play this class so Bethany survives this playthrough", it should be done in game as part of the rpg experience. Also, I don't think either characters personal storyline or even Hawke's storyline did enough with the death and left me feeling unconvinced of its impact on the family.  It need not take away from Hawke being helpless since he would still not have the power to save everyone, but the system as it was implemented just leaves the choice of who dies to something outside of the game rather than removing it altogether.

The way I see it is, this is metagaming and is something that gamers will do regardless of how we present our choices.  People will complain that it's arbitrary, but at its core all of our plot decisions could be considered "arbitrary" with how people use the word.  People will feel "forced" into particular dialogues to romance the character they want, and they'll feel forced into particular choices in order to get the big plot outcome that they want, and so forth.  There's nothing we can do to prevent people from deciding what they want to do with their gameplay before playing.  Even the most open ended games are still ultimately deterministic, due to the nature of them being video games.


I don't mind the way it plays out, though if I were to do something different, I would have just provided a better story reason for why the class choice makes a difference.

[Allan Schumacher]

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Party balancing was still a factor. As was the fact that it provided some level of replayability as they are mutually exclusive, without significant additional costs (I think most can understand that true mutual exclusivity with sweeping changes and divergent gameplay is very expensive).

Why was party balancing so important when the gameplay was already unbalanced in the first place? Killing off a sibling doesn't automatically fix it. At best, it's a bandaid trying to cover up an amputation.

It's not like we went into preproduction saying "Lets make really unbalanced combat" and then had the clairvoyance to then alter our story and some of our design decisions at the start when combat balance sees most of its attention towards the end of the project.

Having dialogue associated with the whole family being alive would've been great, IMO. It would've allowed for the player to really see more interaction between everyone -- Leandra, Carver, Bethany, Gamlen and Hawke -- and really feel a connection to the family.

This is akin to saying "more content would be great" which I don't think you'd find any person that would disagree with that sentiment.  There's a constant adversarial undertone between Hawke and the sibling that requires one to be a mage, the other not to be.  We could have done a myriad of things differently with the story (which is always good feedback), but in the end the writers and the rest of the team try to implement the idea.  Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn't.