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David Gaider wrote...
JustifiablyDefenestrated wrote...
Just out of curiosity, are there ways to increase the content without significantly increasing the budget/time needed to implement?
There are ways, yes, though whether those are acceptable (either to the players or to us) are really the question-- and there's no way to make content cost nothing. All content comes with some kind of cost attached, particularly written content... anything we write must be recorded, translated, scripted, animated and tested. There's a lot of "trickle-down" cost.
The most obvious way would be to eliminate the need for animation (or cinematics) to touch all writing-- so a way for some conversations to be done ambiently. No zoom-in, no animations or facial expressions (so the same way party banter is currently done) but yet still allowing for the conversation wheel to be used (though how this would be done with the player still possessing movement capability is difficult to say). This requires changes to the engine, and it's hard to say whether players would be okay having some conversations be done like this.
It's difficult to eliminate more costs than that, however. In that respect we're a victim of our own quality bar-- any attempts to cut corners (even if they're things that other games regularly do) are much more evident in comparison to the rest of the game. In some places these are things that can be mollified by improvements to the engine as well. A lot of it comes back to the engine-- as always.
You've probably gone.
But I'm really curious to know if there's a formula or "best practice" for how much dialogue for each character created (given it being expensive, as you've outlined) could be considered "optional" or "extra." In Origins, for example, there was the hardened Alistair/Leliana thing. You could only experience one variation on their character, but it probably didn't amount to massive changes. (I'm thinking a character, like Merrill, who could be player-defined as either gay or straight, somehow, could be similar.) But, there must be other variations in DA2, like friend/rival. (Without toolset it's hard to be sure exactly how extensive the variation is.) I'm just interested to know if there is some magic number, like x% of a character's dialogue which might be considered "OK for the player to miss" if they're playing in a roughly expected manner. (It's probably informal?)
(Of course, on production costs, I'd be happy with the Infinity engine and a combination of voicing, like when Irenicus delivered scary lines scarily, but many other NPCs were just written, or a bit of both. I don't get why everything needs to be so expensive these days. To me, voicing etc doesn't add a lot. Well, not as much as an absolute glut of dialogue. But, not everyone thinks like that, obviously.)
And,
*DA2 spoilers in following example*
I wonder if this process could be offset in other ways. Like, more options = more testing. But do writers anticipate, and work around, potential problems? In Dragon Age 2, for example, I romanced Fenris but ended up (spoiler) at the end. I also "accidentally" romanced Merrill then broke it off. So, I ended in no romances. Varric then delivered his line about who the Champion (spoiler, spoiler) with and he said both "Merrill" and "Fenris" simultaneously. Whatever it was about that combination borked Varric. But, I don't need the game to tell me who I romanced and was no longer with. Could Varric have simply made a comment on true/false to any romance at that point? Or not mentioned it at all. (Probably people, not me, I don't care, might actually want their love interest recognised, though. I understand why Varric might have been specific, for that case. But, I'm interested to know if "avoiding bugs" is actually a consideration when writing.)
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