hhh89 wrote...
Considering that DA3 could have already two major plots, I think that they're going to leave the OGB, Flemeth and Morrigan in the background and decide later what to do.
Nah, I don't think so. They'll have Morrigan and Flemeth in DA3 no matter what I think. They were dumb to let that slide in DA2 when they should have struck while the iron was hot and people were still engaged by that storyline. Either in one last expack to DAO or via a different DA2 to wrap the OGB/Morrigan stuff up. The longer it gets dragged out, the less draw and impact it potentially has I think.
brushyourteeth wrote..
Let's do this:
If you did the DR, Morrigan will forever remember her Warden friend/lover and how she forged her first meaningful relationship, even if it was just a tenuous alliance, and will raise her son with love and teach him goodwill toward humanity.
If you refused the DR, Morrigan sprinted into action and completed plan B. to rescue the Old God's soul and make a baby, but she forever harbored bitterness toward all mankind which molded her son into a spiteful freak of nature.
Consequences - there you go. 
Then you get the issue of Wardens that fathered the OGB and went with Morrigan into the Eluvian. Thats another problematic choice/consequence. As its postioned in Witch Hunt, going with Morrigan should keep the Warden relevant in raising the OGB and alongside Morrigan, as one of the possible reasons you can give Morrigan for wanting to go with her is to raise the child or stay alongside Morrigan. How do you account for that without just writing off those Wardens?
Allan Schumacher wrote...
Other alternatives would be: Just not making sequels (an idea that I'm not actually against as a game player). I don't know how popular this would be with the fanbase, and it would incur additional development on our part.
Again, I think with sequels to future DA games, just position events far enough away geographically or chonologically so past events don't factor into the story of the new game. No old NPCs, no old locations and so forth.
Allan Schumacher wrote...
BioWare could also consider revisiting how they do their games, perhaps allowing for increasingly divergent gameplay and providing more unique experiences based upon player choice. I think this is quite
interesting, but at the same time uncertain and probably quite risky. It also poses a risk of alientating anyoen that picks up the series at a point different than the beginning.
Thats one reason I think The Witcher 2 was one of the riskiest games published last year. The narrative split in the middle essentially makes it two different games. And I thought it was pretty spectacular. I don't know that doing things like that would alienate new players anymore than any direct sequel alienates people coming in late.
Allan Schumacher wrote...
Should we actually make design decisions around the fact that metagaming will always occur? Is this a responsibility of the game designer, or of the gameplayer to not sabotage their own game experience? I think this could make creating CRPGs increasingly more challenging.
I think it depends on the gamer. I see metagame knowledge as a potential problem with Dragon Age going forward if we have a new PC every new game and yet we're still in the same relative time period of past sequels, with past NPCs still alive and past PCs potentially still alive in the world.
One of my least favorite moments in gaming was in KOTOR 2 when the Exile can meet Bastila and Carth. As a player, I knew exactly who they were and I was excited to see them again. Then I realized I was playing as the Exile and the Exile has no clue who they are. That sucks.
Basically, it seems like with a new PC every game, the DA games want to structure themselves like A Song of Ice and Fire books. Where each chapter of the book takes place from the POV of a certain character and its from those different points of view that the reader can piece together certain aspects of the story that might never be explicitly stated.
Its a dilemma no doubt. If you bring back Morrigan or some other old companion in a future game, as a designer do you expect people to be stone faced role playing their new PC who shouldn't know anything about them? If you're bringing back some old character or revisiting some old locale, what are you trying to make the player feel? Should they be strictly role playing with limited knowledge or should they be using metagame knowledge from past games to maybe piece together some greater plot/observation?
I'm reminded of an
RPS story with the writers from Valve when they were playtesting Portal 2 regarding whether to have Chell in Portal 2 or some new PC:
Chell was more complex. While playtesters instantly baulked at the absence of the evil robot, none cared at all that they werent Chell. One early build of the game had you wake up in front of a mirror, revealing a long-haired girl in a different coloured jumpsuit, clearly not the previous protagonist. Known internally as Mel, players were happy to be her… until a certain point. The moment they met GlaDOS. As the malevolent machine awakes and doesnt recognise the player, suddenly they were thrown out of the experience. And Chell was put back in.
So for me, I'd value meeting up with old NPCs with the old PCs who have past experiences and relationships with them. Otherwise you're creating a weird disconnect between player and player character unless you're absolutely strictly roleplaying. And I do question how strictly people roleplay without that kind of metgame knowledge when reintroducing an old NPC or companion is almost challenging the player not to utilize metagame knowledge, even if subconsciously.
Allan Schumacher wrote...
Gamers get very upset when a decision they made ends up coming to bite them in the ass later on. Just look at some of the solutions for the Old God situation, which almost always involve providing a different and relatively equal outcome for those that did NOT make the choice. While it's just a consequence, people WILL see it as being penalized for making suboptimal choices.
I think its more how the consequences are portrayed to the player that matters. With The Witcher games, you don't have any approval meters or disapproval meters gauging your actions on some morality scale. You just have the choices you make and then see the consequences in game. Yes, sometimes they turn out poorly, but they most often feel natural and never like the game is punishing you because there aren't any overtly "game-y" elements to confound the consequences you see in those games.
So long as people feel like they've been given adequate foreshadowing to potential consequences and the consequences don't end up feeling like a GOTCHA! moment, I think people would be ok with things. Now, the problem with the OGB possible solutions/consequences is that we haven't really gotten much, if any possible foreshadowing as to plausible consequences. The resolution to that could be anything- people don't know what to expect.
Different medium, but look at the third book in A Song of Ice and Fire, A Storm of Swords. There you have one event, lets call it the RW, that probably causes 90% of readers to chuck the book against the wall in anger/disgust/shock or sadness. Its shocking, but George RR Martin foreshadows the crap out of it prior to happening. Its a believable consequence to prior actions of characters, but it feels totally natural.
Allan Schumacher wrote...
We see people who get upset and call BS because Anders can get offended if the PC turns down his advance. It's a consequence, and one that I think is quite believable (and certainly not impossible to overcome), and it's even possible to completely avoid it if you made different choices. But somehow we're not being fair and it's BS.
Again, with that instance I think the people getting upset are possibly more upset at getting the negative connotation of the red, "rivalry" points which seem to have a negative connotation. Would people have still been upset if they didn't see the red rivalry points?
Allan Schumacher wrote...
IMO people like to see "consequence" in that seeing the game react differently based on their decisions is cool. But they don't like to see "consequence" in that, if the result of the decision isn't what they want or if they feel in any way cheated compared to making a different choice, they get upset. Even if the consequence itself actually makes sense and doesn't just manifest out of thin air. People seem to like the idea that variation exists, as long as they still do what they want and the results are what they want to have happen. I find it quite a challenging prospect to reconcile this viewpoint.
I don't know...I only know that I don't mind consequences to actions so long as they feel fair and don't feel like GOTCHA! moments that come out of no where with the intention simply to shock or be blatantly good or blatantly bad. I think it lies in creating consequences that aren't clear cut good or bad, but have elements of both in them.
As far as variation goes, I guess I don't care if people go back after the fact and try to get some optimal outcome based on metagame knowledge. I think it comes down to making sure some choices don't have clear cut optimal consequences- have consequences where you get some of what you might want but not all. And have some long ranging consequences- so a choice you make in Act 1 won't manifest until near the end of the game.
I'd just encourage you to play The Witcher games- they do choice and consequences of varying magnitude and scale really, really well. The Witcher 2 obviously has the notable massive narrative split but The Witcher 1 has some very cool moments that manifest as consequences.
Modifié par Brockololly, 13 juin 2012 - 05:01 .
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