[quote]LinksOcarina wrote...
Honestly, I don't get the question you are asking, because Shepard has the same amount of choices in dialogue for the most part in the previous games.[/quote]
No. They. Don't. They just don't. How does having between 3 and 5 options most of the time in the other two games compared to only 2 95% of the time mean "the same amount of choices" exactly? How does Shepard talking automatically after another character says something 3 out of 4 times compared to 1 out of 4 times in the other two games mean the same amount of choices?
Seriously... where are you
getting this "same amount of choices" nonsense from?!
[quote]
See, one thing that is always cited is the lack of dialogue options and conversation trees for Shepard to use in conversations. Lack of choices in paragon/renegade lines as well compared to the others.
But now here is the thing. First off, the Paragon/Renegade choices in dialogue were limited in Mass Effect 2 as well to major decisions, loyalty missions, and so forth. You notice that most side-mission had the paragon/renegade interrupt instead. That change allowed auto-dialogue based on choice of action. They continued that a bit in Mass Effect 3 as well.[/quote]
Not true. There were plenty of Charm/Intimidate opportunities in all types of quests in the previous games, and often multiple times throughout a quest too. ME1 had them all over the place, with, as I've said countless times, more on Port Hanshan on Noveria alone than in the entirety of ME3. ME1 quests such as the Hanar Preacher and Samesh Bhatia even had multiple cases of it for both parties, giving you not only Charm and Intimidate chances for each person you were dealing with in the quest, but more opportunities to solve the quest in more varied ways. You could support Samesh for both Paragon or Renegade reasons, and the same goes for the Alliance Officer dealing with the case. The same goes for the Hanar preacher and the turian C-Sec officer. These type of things just don't exist in ME3, and most of the few times they do comes down to the one decision at the end of a quest, which only alters the final moments, providing no real variation within the quest up until then. Compare that to your mission to get the garage pass on Noveria which alone can be solved at least half-a-dozen different ways, dealing or not dealing with several different NPCs, making moral choices and even avoiding or partaking in entire combat encounters. ME3's lack of dialogue choices make everything a straight line until the end of any quest, changing only the last couple of minutes of it and leaving the rest of the experience the exact same.
[quote]
Also, in Mass Effect 1 we had a large issue of auto-dialogue irregardless of choice. Yeah i'm going there, because regardless of what you say, the same line is spoken by Shepard and the same story takes place irregardless of decision. You can say intent of dialogue is fine and that was missing in Mass Effect 3, but to that, I say then Dragon Age II did it better than Mass Effect, because the intent of dialogue in Mass Effect was irrelevent most of the time.[/quote]
The "same dialogue no matter the choice" thing in ME1 comes up far less than you claim it does. Certainly far less than autodialogue and a dialogue wheel with only two choices in ME3. Again, ME2 fixed this issue and managed to avoid this pitfall and retain a full set of options without the same responses and with minimal autodialogue, so ME3 shouldn't have to resort to such tactics. Only a small handful of times did I feel my Shepard wasn't able to express themselves properly in ME2, and they were pretty much all related to pro-Cerberus options for my Paragon Shepards. ME3 did it all the time: either the options I wanted were just not there, or Shepard would just speak without my input, saying something that directly contradicted how they'd been built and characterized up until then. I could probably count on both hands the amount of times Shepard just automatically said something I didn't want them to in both ME1 and ME2 combined, but I'd have already run out of fingers in ME3 for the same count by the time I'd first reached The Citadel.
[quote]
As for a "third option", most of that kind of fills into the ideas above where they didn't really change anything mechanically. The ending of Mass Effect 1 had only two real endings to it, saving the council, or destroying them. You got three options, two of which are destryoing the council by sacrificing them, and the dialouge is virtually the same. The only thing changed is the "intent", but they do the same thing fundamentally.
That is not good design in terms of dialogue trees or dialogue/choice making. It forces the same choice and just gives the player the intent of what they wanted. But considering the lines said, the intent is irrelevent. I said earlier that Dragon Age II is a better example, because the dialogue in that game actually had intent and tone marked, as well as different lines based on the option given.[/quote]
Intent matters a lot though. That's the whole point. That's how you define your Shepard or any RPG character you take control of and give them their personality, beliefs, opinions, etc. The Council choice is an example of good design, because it illustrates that while two of the three choices might have the same basic impact in the end, there's a big difference between a character making a choice like that for practical/strategic reasons and doing it out of malice. To say that there's no difference between such things and that players shouldn't have the choice because the result is essentially the same is like saying whether I choose to kill a person in self-defence or out of hate is the same thing, just because they wind up dead in either case. In a game that's supposed to be based around morality and tough decisions, then intent is far more important than the result. Sounds to me like you just want every dialogue choice to come down to "Outcome A" or "Outcome B" rather than actually be about the dialogue itself and the reasons behind the options.
[quote]
Neutral lines are also irrelevent, because neutrality is almost impossible to maintain during certain parts of Mass Effect 3. You can't be neutral during the Genophage, or when you deal with Cerberus. You can't be neutral regarding character relationships either, as they are asking you their advice on things at times. Would the option be nice, sure. But it wouldn't make sense at this stage of the storyline in terms of the narrative being told.[/quote]
Neutrality in ME has never always just been completely neutral though. Often it represents choosing one side over another, but in a more reluctant manner than outright agreeing with them. This can help reflect situations where Shepard knows he needs to side with a particular faction or person, but doesn't agree with them, i.e choice out of necessity rather than choice out of agreement. The Council decision in ME1 is, again, an example of this: the difference in choices is the feeling of needing to sacrifice The Council out of need rather than because you hate them.
[quote]
So if we want to recap, auto-dialogue has existed since the first game, masked behind the idea of "intent" of speech vs actual changes or options of speech. They also changed the auto-dialogue at points to the interrupts to make things more action-packed and unique for cut-scenes, and they retained charm/intimidate dialogue options for important conversations. So honestly, I am not sure why you are upset over it since it is mostly the status quo. [/quote]
Read above, it's
not status quo. Intent makes all the difference, and even if the three options result in the same thing (which, again, wasn't as common as you make out and didn't happen as often as autodialogue in ME3) it's still the player that gets to make the choice, and as a whole this was eliminated in ME2. I've no real priblems with interrupts, aside from the fact that some of them have autodialogue in ME3 that doesn't fit (i.e. a Renegade alien racist yelling, "this is for Thane!") but the amount of Charm/Intimidate dialogue is severely limited compared to the other two games, and the fact that you say it's pretty much only there for "important conversations" illustrates this and doesn't ignore the fact that they pretty much only come up now at the very end of a major questline.
[quote]
First off, how do you know BioWare dropped any ball here in terms of game development? Do you know something we don't in terms of what they focused on? I ask because what you say below that statement is all supposition and not factual. [/quote]
Because I can see all the things in the game that they've added and polished brightly, and all the things that aren't there and neglected. It's as easy as flying over a big city in a helicopter and seeing the difference between the rich areas and the slums.
[quote]
Second, the Kinect stuff was done as an afterthrought for one system, and that is fairly easy to implement from what I understand. It is basically a remapping of controls to the Kinect sensor and putting commands in the coding.[/quote]
The programmers still have to make sure that every time a dialogue wheel pops up and a players speaks, they're choosing the right options on the wheel. And I suspect one of the reasons dialogue choices were so sparse in ME3 was because too many options means too many chances for Kinect to misinterpret. When you've only got two choices 95% of the time, less chance that Kinect mishears you because two many options may have the same or similar words in them.
[quote]
The different game modes are also irrelevent, as they only map out difficulty of the game and emphasis on story or combat for players. It actually gives more freedom to the players to decide what type of game they want to play, just like how Casual difficulty was for the story-lovers, and the insanity difficulty was for the hardcore crunchy RPG fans. That is the purpose of them basically, they just renamed it to make it clear what their fucntion was. [/quote]
It's just BioWare pandering to the mainstream and casual gamer. Again. They're too focused on new players and $$$ over that of their existing fanbase. Most of ME3's problems as a whole can be attributed to this problem BioWare has with their products ever since EA took the helm.
[quote]
The combat was the weakest aspect in Mass Effect 1 and 2. Mass Effect 1 it was borderline broken, and in 2 it was too simple and, in terms of power usage, easily manipulative. Mass Effect 3 made things balanced finally. Still has some kinks though, like the magic roll button but if they removed that id be happy. So basically, a statement like the one above just reeks of sour grapes in terms of the narrative and its direction, and I am sorry to burst the bubble, but the overall plot of Mass Effect was always a weak aspect of the series as well, so much so that anything regarding the main plot in Mass Effect 2, bar the suicide mission, was entirely pointless and irrelevent. The reason many kept playing was character interaction and the rich setting of the world.[/quote]
Yes. And now that's ruined with ME3. Partly due to the complete lack of choices and decent consequences, and part due to a lot of the plot points from ME3 pretty much ruining the rich setting, especially the final moments that even with the EC are stupid, pretentious, don't fit the rest of Mass Effect style-wise and are riddled with plotholes and nonsensical garbage.
ME3's problem with combat wasn't that it perfected it: it was that by the time ME3 rolled around, combat was pretty much all the game was about. Even the RPG elements were now 100% completely focused on it.
[quote]
We got little of both of that in Mass Effect 3 because they had to focus on their main plot. Their good vs evil styled story that is anything but, essentially. [/quote]
So... you actually buy into the crap thrown at you at the end of ME3?
[quote]
And before you say they needed more dev time, some food for thought: Mass Effect 3 had a longer development period than Mass Effect 2 did: Mass Effect 2 had around 20 months of dev time, while 3 had over 27, and that includes the extended time they got when the game was delayed. So I guess it is easy to say that they focused on the wrong aspects, but from where I am sitting, it seems doubtful to me.
[/quote]
ME3 was the final part of the trilogy. All our decisions should have had meaning, and they should have spent a lot more time making sure they did and that the game was filled with plenty of choices and variations. They said themselves that the final part was going to be the most varied because it was the final part and there were no obligations plot-wise for them any more. Instead it was the most linear and choice-free of the trilogy. Less dialogue options, a completely linear main plot and mission structure, weak substitutions, outcomes from prior choices that only changed anything on a purely cosmetic level at best, lazy sidequests, a character import system that didn't even work (and still doesn't... and probably never will). And yet we've got useless stuff we didn't need like Multiplayer, Kinect support, Diana Allers, etc.
Modifié par Terror_K, 25 juillet 2012 - 03:15 .
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