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[Sylvius the Mad]

magodesky wrote...

I think you misunderstand my question.  I'm wondering about what specific decision in the intro you needed more information in order to make.  How does knowing what life in Lothering was like before the Blight effect whether Hawke tells his family to keep running in a diplomatic tone or a sarcastic one?

I'm not trying to be difficult or anything.  I'm geniunely curious because when I played, I can't think of any time when I felt like I needed more information to make an informed character choice (there actually were a few times in Origins I felt like that, but not in DA2).

That might work if we knew what it was we were going to say before we said it.  I don't think it was clear at all that we were simply choosing how to say the same thing.  If that had been clear, then playing the game might have been easier.

I think that statement may indicate a problem with the way you're approaching the game right there.  All of the choices available to you are compatible with the game.  It's just a matter of deciding what kind of character you want to play.  Again, I think most players ought to have at least a general idea of what kind of character they want to play when they start the game.

Not all of the choices we might make are compatible with the game.  I might choose to let someone live because I have no quarrel with him, only to have Hawke then antagonise him without my consent.  That's how we can make choices that are incompatible with the game, and DA2 does it constantly.

Why we choose the options is at least as important as what options we choose, but DA2 makes a habit of contradicting those motivations.

And how is that not still true in DA2?  At what point does the game contradict any character decision that Hawke makes?

By not letting us avoid contradictory dialogue.  The paraphrases are insufficiently informative.

Baldur's Gate is actually a good example of what I'm talking about.  I hated Baldur's Gate.  I know, I know.  That's heresy around these boards.  But I honestly don't understand what all the hype is about.  I missed it when it was first released, so I went back and ordered the collection a few years ago.  I played for about an hour before I got so bored that I just quit.  All I had done was wander around through the game's clunky gameplay and meandering story trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing and why I should care about any of these characters.

And there's your mistake right there.  Why do you care what you're supposed to be doing?  If you're in-character, you're supposed to be doing what your character wants to do, and only you can ever know that.  The game doesn't know what your character wants to do.  The writers can't know what your character wants to do.  Only you know that, and that should drive your decision-making process.

And, frankly, how could the game tell you what you're supposed to be doing without breaking the fourth wall? 

As for the characters, whether you care about them (or your character cares about them) is up to you.  The game shouldn't have to give you that.  Relying on the game to give you a reason to care about the characters produces situations like DA2 where my favourite companion was someone I would describe as "nice enough, but kind of dull", and aside from her (Aveline) I genuinely disliked the rest of them.

And the thing, I'm sure the fans who tell me about how great the story is are right.  But I'm simply not willing to go through the chore of trying to get to it.

It's not about the story.  It's about the freedom.  BG's story isn't that interesting (though I think it is made more interesting in how it is made known to the player only in fits and starts, and much of the game can be completed without the player even knowing what the story is).

I suppose I can see how I might have been impressed if I had played it back in '98.  Which makes me think that perhaps a lot of the talk about Baldur's Gate is based on pure nostalgia.  Pretty much every major CRPG release since then has drastically improved on Baldur's Gate in practically every conceivable way.  And yes, I include DA2 in that statement, even taking into account its flaws.  I cringe whenever see some fan saying that Dragon Age needs to be more like Baldur's Gate because it sounds to me like they want the genre to go backwards instead of forward.

I'd like you to define what you mean by "forward", because I see that backward-forward comparison usd a lot but it seems like it's nothing more than an empty value judgment.

I would think moving forward would involve improving player control and improving the opportunities for roleplaying, which is the exact opposite of what we see in DA2.

I would argue that BioWare got CRPGs almost right with Baldur's Gate, and then have been moving in generally the wrong direction ever since.

It really seems to me like you're overthinking this.

This is never possible with regard to anything.

Origins is exactly the same in this regard, if not worse.  As soon as I started playing my Cousland, I'm being asked to react to my character's father.  I don't know anything about Cousland's father.  What kind of relationship do we have?  Do I get along with my father?

Right.  WIthout guidance, you're forced to just make something up from whole cloth, just like DA2.  But the difference is that DAO lets you do that and doesn't then tell you that you're wrong.  Wherever the decisions like this matter to DAO overall, you're given more guidance as to what sorts of choices will work (the only place DAO really fails at this is in how an elf PC views human society - DAO gives a city elf every reason to loathe humans, but then forces him to work for their betterment).  But DA2 never offers any guidance at all, even when these chouices do matter (and with the paraphrases, I would argue that they all matter in DA2 because you can't avoid character-breaking lines).

In DA2, I can decide why Hawke is completing some quest, but then Hawke will explain why he's doing something and he'll say something completely different.  He'll express concern for someone's welfare, when I've already decided that he's completely indifferent to that person's continued survival.  That's the problem.  That's how DA2 differs from DAO.

And he's not required to love his family.  You can play a Hawke who's a total jerk to all of them.

And then grieves for his mother, no matter what the player decides.

[magodesky]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Not all of the choices we might make are compatible with the game.  I might choose to let someone live because I have no quarrel with him, only to have Hawke then antagonise him without my consent.

I'm not sure who you're referring to.  Can you be more specific?

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

By not letting us avoid contradictory dialogue.  The paraphrases are insufficiently informative.

The paraphrases need work.  I'll admit that.  But I don't know of any time when my Hawke contradicted something I had already said except for a few instances when I picked a dialogue option without realizing what the actual line was going to be.  And even then, it usually wasn't a direct contradiction so much as an oddly abrupt shift in tone.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

And there's your mistake right there.  Why do you care what you're supposed to be doing?  If you're in-character, you're supposed to be doing what your character wants to do, and only you can ever know that.  The game doesn't know what your character wants to do.  The writers can't know what your character wants to do.  Only you know that, and that should drive your decision-making process.

But how am I to decide what my character wants to do without any guidance from the game as to what my options are? 

In a CRPG, the developers are essentially playing the role of the GM.  Part of their job is to provide the context in which these decisions are made.  If all they're offering me is an opportunity to wander aimlessly with people I don't care about all while being attacked by random enemies, to me, that's not a terribly compelling game.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

And, frankly, how could the game tell you what you're supposed to be doing without breaking the fourth wall?

That's essentially what a quest is.  Or a "mission objective" in more modern settings.  Pretty much every game has them.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

As for the characters, whether you care about them (or your character cares about them) is up to you.  The game shouldn't have to give you that.

These are fictional characters.  They only exist within the game.  What other reason could I possibly have for caring about a character other than what's in the game?  If the writers want to include a character as a major part of the game, it's their job to make me care about them.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

It's not about the story.  It's about the freedom.

Which is exactly the distinction I was referring when I mentioned the different types of role-players.  RPGs are alway a balance of story, which includes things like plot and character development, and freedom to explore.  Most games favor one aspect or the other.

Dragon Age is one of the rare CPRGs that emphasizes story.  That's what I like about it.  If all I cared about was exploring, I'd go play Skyrim, or Fallout: New Vegas, or any of a dozen other open world games.  Personally, I'd hate to see Bioware turn DA into a Skyrim clone to appease people who want to change the series into something it's not.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I'd like you to define what you mean by "forward", because I see that backward-forward comparison usd a lot but it seems like it's nothing more than an empty value judgment.

Yes, much of what people consider to be better or worse is subjective, but at the same time, there have been a lot of clear improvements in gaming since 1998.

Graphics are the most obvious one.  Not that you can really compare graphics of games that were released 14 years apart from each other.  But if exploring is a big part of the game, then graphics becomes important.  Part of what makes exploration work in open world games like Skyrim is that they have the 3D technology to bring those environments to life in a compelling way that draws the player in.

Gameplay in most of today's major RPGs is much improved.  In Baldur's Gate, a full third of my screen must have been covered in icons.  And I was still frustrated by how clunky the controls were.  From Neverwinter Night and on, the gameplay has gotten much smoother and more intuitive.

Writing has gotten much tighter.  Even a game like Fallout 3 which really only has the barest framework of a story succeeds at drawing the player in from the start and keeping them involved in what's going on.

Role-playing options are more subjective, and this is clearly an area where a lot of CRPGs can use some improvement.  And I'll admit that I gave up on Baldur's Gate before I got to a lot of the RP decisions.  So perhaps this is an aspect that I'm not qualified to judge.  But on the other hand, the fact that I didn't even care about my character enough to be bothered to continue playing for much more than an hour seems to indicate to me that there's room for improvement on that front as well.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Right.  WIthout guidance, you're forced to just make something up from whole cloth, just like DA2.  But the difference is that DAO lets you do that and doesn't then tell you that you're wrong.

Really?  Because frankly, I was a lot more irritated by the way DA:O forced me into being a Grey Warden and constantly shoved how great they are down my throat (even though every Warden I actually meet is a total jerk) than I was by anything in DA2.  Or the way I was forced to choose between Bhelen and Harrowmont while knowing hardly anything about their backgrounds or policies, only to find out at the end that Orzammar's fate is pretty bleak no matter what I decide.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Wherever the decisions like this matter to DAO overall, you're given more guidance as to what sorts of choices will work

I had just as little information on which to base a choice in the intro to DA:O as I had in the intro to DA2.  And DA:O asked me to make quite a few more character decisions in the intro than DA2 did.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

And then grieves for his mother, no matter what the player decides.

Does he actually say that he's grieving?  Admittedly, I've never tried playing through as an evil Hawke, but I seem to recall there being options for Hawke to be pretty cold.  So is he actually "grieving," or is he just sitting by the fireplace thinking about the blood mage he just gutted?

If he does, then yes, that may be an example of the game contradicting your Hawke.  In fairness though, I'm willing to extend games a little more leeway in overruling evil choices.  It's not uncommon even in tabletop RPGs for the GM to say "no evil PCs" because evil characters have a tendency to complicate things and, more often than not, aren't really played seriously anyway.  I think that's also probably part of why Bioware moved away from the good/evil alignment system and made the third option more direct and aggressive than outright evil.

Modifié par magodesky, 13 août 2012 - 09:37 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

[quote]magodesky wrote...

I'm not sure who you're referring to.  Can you be more specific?[/quote]
I'll try that below.
[quote]The paraphrases need work.  I'll admit that.  But I don't know of any time when my Hawke contradicted something I had already said except for a few instances when I picked a dialogue option without realizing what the actual line was going to be.  And even then, it usually wasn't a direct contradiction so much as an oddly abrupt shift in tone.[/quote]
The problem isn't that the line might contradict something Hawke has already said.  The writers can write around that.  No, the problem is the line contradicting the reason Hawke said or did something previously.  The line I was thinkg of above was one where Hawke was asked by a slaver "Can I go now?" with the available wheel options being Yes and No.  I chose No, because Hawke had no quarrel with the slaver, or with slavers generally, but Hawke then immediately seethed "Get out of my sight."  There, he game's design contradicted my choices regarding Hawke's motives for doing things, all in that one dialogue option.  Across the whole game, this happened inumerable times, sometimes far removed in time or distance, but sometimes immediately as in the slaver example.

[quote]But how am I to decide what my character wants to do without any guidance from the game as to what my options are? [/quote]
That would be contrived.  Your options are whatever you can imagine.  In BG, you're given advice from Gorion (go to the Friendly Arm Inn), incentives (you've just been attacked), a map that tells you were you are relative to things (you are on the road from Candlekeep to Beregost) - what more could you want?  Given your character design, what would he do given that situation?  That's roleplaying.  He could continue to trust Gorion, and follow his advice, taking the most obvious path (along the road).  He could decide that being on the road is dangerous, given that he was just ambished, and decide to move cross-country.  He might decide that Gorion's advice was poor - after all, he did just lead them into an ambush - and strike out for somewhere else.  He might decide to turn around and go right back to Candlekeep.  Determining what your character would do under those circumstances is the heart of roleplaying - not just following metagame instuctions.

[quote]In a CRPG, the developers are essentially playing the role of the GM.  Part of their job is to provide the context in which these decisions are made.  If all they're offering me is an opportunity to wander aimlessly with people I don't care about all while being attacked by random enemies, to me, that's not a terribly compelling game.[/quote]
If you don't care about those people, why are you wandering with them?  I'll grant, these modern games do a less good job of encouraging participation by allowing characters to survive indefinitely without doing anything.  But if you had to find food, or example, then that alone would be incentive do things.

[quote]That's essentially what a quest is.  Or a "mission objective" in more modern settings.  Pretty much every game has them.[/quote]
But with every quest, there's an in-character choice to be made as to whether to complete it.  There's no element there of instruction - just opportunity.  Quests are things you can do, not things you are supposed to do.

[quote]These are fictional characters.  They only exist within the game.[/quote]
Not from their point of view.  Not from your character's point of view.

[quote]What other reason could I possibly have for caring about a character other than what's in the game?[/quote]
It doesn't matter how you feel about the characters, or whether you care about them.  It matters only how your character feels about the characters he meets.  That, again, is what roleplaying is all about.  You perceive the world and the characters not through your own eyes, but through the eyes of your character (or characters, depending on the game).

[quote]If the writers want to include a character as a major part of the game, it's their job to make me care about them.[/quote]
No, it's their job to give that character a personality.  How your character feels about that character is entirely up to you.
[quote]Which is exactly the distinction I was referring when I mentioned the different types of role-players.  RPGs are alway a balance of story, which includes things like plot and character development, and freedom to explore.  Most games favor one aspect or the other.

Dragon Age is one of the rare CPRGs that emphasizes story.  That's what I like about it.  If all I cared about was exploring, I'd go play Skyrim, or Fallout: New Vegas, or any of a dozen other open world games.  Personally, I'd hate to see Bioware turn DA into a Skyrim clone to appease people who want to change the series into something it's not.[/quote]
Why does anyone think I'm talking about open world or exploration when I talk about player freedom?  I'm talking about the ability to control who your character is, how he feels, what he thinks, what his beliefs and goals are, and how he wants to go about achieving them.  None of those require an open world.

Yes, in some respects Skyrim and Fallout are better roleplaying games than DA2 is, but in others they are worse (Skyrim's action combat in particular is a serious strike against it).

I don't care what kind of game people think Dragon Age is (and I would argue that DAO and DA2 resemble each other almost not at all).  I care about what sort of game allows roleplaying, and DAO does that.  DA2 does not.
[quote]Yes, much of what people consider to be better or worse is subjective, but at the same time, there have been a lot of clear improvements in gaming since 1998.

Graphics are the most obvious one.[/quote]
I'll grant that NWN's graphics offered significant gameplay advantages over the Infinity Engine games.  But no graphical advancement since has improved a BioWare game at all.

[quote]Gameplay in most of today's major RPGs is much improved.  In Baldur's Gate, a full third of my screen must have been covered in icons.  And I was still frustrated by how clunky the controls were.  From Neverwinter Night and on, the gameplay has gotten much smoother and more intuitive.[/quote]
NWN has the superior UI.  BioWare has not yet matched it.

As for gameplay being intuitive, I don't find that's true at all.  I find that with the mechanics becoming less and less well documented, the games have become harder and harder to play.  I still have no idea how resistances worked in DA2.

[quote]Role-playing options are more subjective, and this is clearly an area where a lot of CRPGs can use some improvement.  And I'll admit that I gave up on Baldur's Gate before I got to a lot of the RP decisions.[/quote]
I would argue that every dialogue event is a roleplaying decision.  Every choice of where to travel and how to get there is a roleplaying event.  Every skill selection is a roleplaying event.

[quote]But on the other hand, the fact that I didn't even care about my character enough to be bothered to continue playing for much more than an hour seems to indicate to me that there's room for improvement on that front as well.[/quote]
If you ever don't care about your character, that is entirely your fault.  Who is you character?  What does he like?  What does he want to do with his life?  What are his opinions on any relevant issue within his community?

I suggest that you should always know the answers to these questions before you even complete character creation.

[quote]Really?  Because frankly, I was a lot more irritated by the way DA:O forced me into being a Grey Warden and constantly shoved how great they are down my throat (even though every Warden I actually meet is a total jerk) than I was by anything in DA2.[/quote]
DAO didn't tell you why you became a Grey Warden.  DA2, though, decided why Hawke did virtually everything.  IF I helped Fenris it was because I opposed not only slavery in general, but all mages.  Really?  Why can't I help him just because I like the guy, but at the same time opposing his political views.  If I rescued a criminal from an angry mob, it was because I believed he could be redeemed, not because I'd been paid to do it.  DA2 didn't let me make any decisions about Hawke's motives at all.

[quote]Or the way I was forced to choose between Bhelen and Harrowmont while knowing hardly anything about their backgrounds or policies, only to find out at the end that Orzammar's fate is pretty bleak no matter what I decide.[/quote]
What you find out at the end is irrelevant to the choice.  I loved that section in DAO, because the Warden's job there is to secure the dwarven forces to face the Blight - who rules Orzammar is only his concern if you decide it is.  But there is, as you say, little reason to choose one over the other.  If your Warden cares about the choice (beyond simply just making it to get it done, which is his primary job as Warden), it's a difficult decision.  I like difficult decisions.

Like Redcliffe.  Recliffe was terrific.

[quote]I had just as little information on which to base a choice in the intro to DA:O as I had in the intro to DA2.  And DA:O asked me to make quite a few more character decisions in the intro than DA2 did.[/quote]
But they didn't matter to the story, and the game didn't contradict them.

DA2, though, did.  Often.  That's the difference.

[quote]Does he actually say that he's grieving?  Admittedly, I've never tried playing through as an evil Hawke, but I seem to recall there being options for Hawke to be pretty cold.  So is he actually "grieving," or is he just sitting by the fireplace thinking about the blood mage he just gutted?[/quote]
In my head canon, Hawke was actually the serial killer, she murdered her own mother, and Varric was just covering for her.

I love the unreliable narrator.  That's definitely something DA2 got right.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 13 août 2012 - 10:33 .

[magodesky]

Well, all I know is that I've played through DA2 a number of times with very different Hawkes and never felt like the game was contradicting me.  In fact, I was actually quite impressed with the way they were able to voice a character with such a wide range of possible personalities while still sounding like a consistent person.  If you can't play an evil Hawke, that's disappointing, but as I said, it's not altogether unsurprising.

If you're looking for 100% reactivity, all I can really recommend is heading over to Green Ronin Publishing and picking up the Dragon Age tabletop game.  A CRPG simply can't replace having a human GM at the table and likely never will, at least not for the forseeable future.

I think you missed a lot of the points I was trying to make, especially in regards to BG.  But that's not really important, and we've kind of strayed pretty far from the topic.  So I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree.

My real point is simply, if you're talking about a "terrific beginning," there's a lot to be said for getting the player involved in what's going on as soon as possible.  The origin stories from DA:O were an interesting idea, and I'm glad Bioware tried them.  But IMO, they didn't really add much to the game, so I don't know that they're worth going back to.  I suspect many gamers would prefer something closer to the intros in DA2 or Mass Effect that grab the player immediately.  There will be several hours of game in which to fill the player in on any lore that's relevant to the story.  There's no reason to bog down the beginning with a ton of exposition.

[TamiBx]

As a person who played DA2 before playing DA:O, I have to say I had no trouble starting from DA2. At all.
Sure, I didn't know who Zevran was, for example, but it didn't affect my Hawke's story at all, so I had no trouble. I think that the fact that the main character isn't the same (like in ME), it made it easier to get into the world and enjoy it. I could have survived without playing DA:O lol

And yes, I enjoyed it more when I replayed DA2 with my own DA:O import, but not a big deal (yes, I went back and played DA:O, because I had the game just didn't want to play a mute character, so I played DA2 first)

[roundcrow]

I want a beginning as impressive as Gandalf's fight with the Balrog and an ending as affecting as Lucas's final battle in Mother 3.

Not too much to ask, is it?

[Sylvius the Mad]

magodesky wrote...

Well, all I know is that I've played through DA2 a number of times with very different Hawkes and never felt like the game was contradicting me.  In fact, I was actually quite impressed with the way they were able to voice a character with such a wide range of possible personalities while still sounding like a consistent person.  If you can't play an evil Hawke, that's disappointing, but as I said, it's not altogether unsurprising.

I didn't want to play an evil Hawke.  I wanted to play a self-interested Hawke, or an absent-minded Hawke, or a dismissive Hawke, or a condescending Hawke, or a secretive Hawke, or a devious Hawke, or an untrusting Hawke - but it wasn't possible to do any of those things because I couldn't tell which dialogue options would contradict my design.

If you're looking for 100% reactivity, all I can really recommend is heading over to Green Ronin Publishing and picking up the Dragon Age tabletop game.  A CRPG simply can't replace having a human GM at the table and likely never will, at least not for the forseeable future.

I don't need to game to react to my choices.  But I need the game to let me make those choices.

My real point is simply, if you're talking about a "terrific beginning," there's a lot to be said for getting the player involved in what's going on as soon as possible.

I don't dispute that.  But doing it at the cost of having the player have any idea what he's doing (or is allowed to do) is too high a price to pay.

I would rather get dropped in the wilderness with no direction at all than be thrust immediately into action I can't possibly understand.

KotOR did a great job of opening with action, but still letting the player play.  The player could devise any reason at all why his character was on the Endar Spire, and play consistently with that.  I'll happily concede that KotOR is BioWare's best game opening so far.

[RussianSpy27]

Just read a new article by GameSpy about 10 top PC beginnings and DA:O made the cut as #4 http://pc.gamespy.co.../1225736p1.html