114 réponses à ce sujet

[Get Magna Carter]

EJ107 wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I can both agree and disagree with this.

Certainly the loss is more generally effective the more interactions (preferably positive) the game player has with character that dies. At the same time, I know people (myself included) that still found the scene emotional the first time they saw it.

Maybe a scene like this strikes a chord with me because I can relate on a personal level (I lost my brother when I was 13), or maybe I find myself more easily able to get into a character than others. Though I will admit I do believe I'm in the minority in terms of feeling this way.

I don't think the problem was so much the death itself, but how it was brought up many times as something Hawke was deeply upset by. 

Your family members often speak of it and how hard it must be for Hawke, which always feels a little off since the player only saw them for two seconds and can barely remember the character at all. It was like the game was trying to tell you how to feel, despite what the player actually felt. 

That's one of the problems with a partially fixed protagonist. By all accounts Hawke as a character should have been upset but the player had no reason to, so the dialogue where Hawke talks about how upset he is felt a bit forced upon the player. 

I think that if death, particuarly the death of someone close to the protagonist is going to play a vital role in the story then the character should be developed enough before they die that the player feels moved by their death as well as the charcter they are playing. Role-playing is a lot more fun when you feel the same emotions your character is feeling. 

I think the key problem is that the game starts off with Hawke on the run with no glimpse of Hawke's family life before they tried to excape the Darkspawn ... and of course it is hard to fit in because of the decisions to
i) start off with the fight and ii) focus on a narrator who had never seen Hawke before Kirkwall

As a related aside, When I played the first Suikoden (on PS1) I remember the feelings stirred in me when the hero had lost almost all of his initial family group from the beginning (with just family servant Cleo remaining).
I don't think Dragon AGe 2 came close to matching that..

[Nefla]

I agree with the OP, DA2's intro was horrible and doesn't give you any reason to care about anything. You care more about Wesley dying than you do about your sibling. Also the fleeing from the blight should not have been the tutorial. Since it's a tutorial it's waaay too easy and you don't feel a sense of urgency at all. The tutorial should have been a slow part in the game like the OP said you should have been able to see "a normal day in Lothering" and that could be the intro and tutorial. You can learn to fight by defending your family's home from a group of wolves or bears. Easy and it helps introduce you to your life, family, and character. It would have also been a good time to put little hints about the first game referencing the warden, Leliana, etc...

[Allan Schumacher]

nightscrawl wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I'm not sure why you're upset with an arbitrary death due to which class you choose, compared to an arbitrary sibling simply not existing due to which class you choose.

Perhaps it's because the death scenes played out exactly the same way for both, which is what made it seem arbitrary. Sure, you could argue that, because they're twins, they might have the same (foolish) reaction in such a situation, leading them to be killed, however that statement seems to suggest a closer relationship as twins than we are led to believe they had in the game. Why didn't they react the same way and both get killed? Or why didn't they react in such a way as to work together to prevent either from being killed?

That's a fair enough point.  Although I'm never sure if we should change things based purely on metaknowledge, but I can understand the perspective.

I also felt like it was stuck in there to get an emotional reaction. I only really felt bad for Leandra in that scene, to be honest, since her child was just killed in front of her. I never felt sad on behalf of my Hawke because I didn't even know the person. I feel like Bioware is telling me I should be sad about this person's death because of who they were, which, to be honest, is another way of them controlling the PC and limiting role play.

I saw it more as setting up the emotional reaction for Mother moreso than Hawke.  Although to be fair it's been quite some time since I have played through any of the content so I may be missing conversations where Hawke is demonstrating some sort of emotional reaction to the loss of the sibling.  I still consider JerkHawke to be one of the coldest people ever when he says "I'll come back when you're less maudlin" to his own mother!!! >.>

And... I've gotten really far off track of time skips. Sorry about that.

Conversations always evolve, and I'd still consider it on topic since part of the time skips revolves around the loss placed upon the Amell family (Mother definitely struggles with it).

[Direwolf0294]

Jumping in on this conversation about your siblings dying because I don't think I've ever commented on it before.

When I first played the game it was as a rogue and I felt no emotion what so ever when Carver died. To me he was just some random guy who I'd know for 5 minutes and had no history with. I honestly think I would have been more upset if it had been Bethany who had died at the start, even though I'd only known her character for about the same length of time as I'd known Carver. That start scene where my Hawke was standing alongside her and fighting Darkspawn helped me make more of a connection with her character and helped me see her and Hawke having a connection, which was something I never got with Carver. Of course it could also be that since I do actually have a sister I'm sort of pre-programmed to care more about sister characters than brother characters.

When I did get around to playing a mage character and Bethany died I was more saddened by that then I'd ever been by the death of Carver, who I'd seen die twice since I'd also played a warrior Hawke before making a mage. I think that came from the fact that because I'd played through act 1 twice with her by my side I'd actually gotten to know her character so it meant more to when when she died. Of course though this was tempered by the fact that I knew your sibling was inevitably screwed at the end of act 1 no matter what you do, which meant it became hard to care about them too much. In BioWare games, I've found the death of a companion hits harder when there's a chance to save that companion. For example, in my game of ME3 Miranda died. Now I've never really liked Miranda all that much, as Tali says when she's drunk, she's a ****, but having her die and knowing that it is actually possible within the limits of the game to save her made me really sad about the whole thing. I'd let her down. I failed. On the other hand when a character's going to die no matter what you do there sort of feels like a bit of a disconnect from the whole situation. I mean, you can still be upset and emotional that the character died, but it just never hits you as hard as the knowledge that the character dying was your fault, that you could have saved them. Getting back to what I was saying though, I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out Carver wasn't just a copy pasted version of Bethany's personality, which I'd always assumed he would be. That certainly made playing through act 1 for a third time more enjoyable. Still, you were running all the exact same quests with him, which was a bit of a shame. I would have liked to see at least some deviation on that, just to keep things interesting. Plus there was still the knowledge that no matter what I did he'd be leaving at the end of the act.

I really didn't like that which sibling survived was based on class. I hate the idea of structuring a story around gameplay. I get that it does go a bit deeper than just wanting a good party makeup, I get that they wanted at least one survivng Hawke sibling to be a mage so they could play up that whole apostate and struggle of mages thing, but I still would have liked to have seen how the relationship between a rogue/warrior Hawke and Carver would have been or a mage Hawke and Bethany.

[PinkDiamondstl]

It's ok for movies to do it but not videogames?

Modifié par PinkDiamondstl, 12 août 2012 - 05:56 .

[nightscrawl]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I still consider JerkHawke to be one of the coldest people ever when he says "I'll come back when you're less maudlin" to his own mother!!! >.>

Ahahah! I know exactly! I was going for an aggressive Hawke in one play and hitting all of the red responses and I was shocked at this one. Though it does take some of the sting out of it when Leandra reacts the same way no matter what (apologizing and explaining how she feels/felt).

In a way, this sort of highlights the pros and cons of the personality system. On the one hand, it's fun to craft a personality for your character based on a pattern of your own dialogue choices (sarcastic Hawke is just hilarious sometimes), but I think it can encourage the player to go the extreme route of picking all blue/purple/red choices to keep within that personality, rather than what might be appropriate for the situation (or the character the person is trying to play). For my standard canon play I do just that: pick options based on the situation and who I'm talking to, rather than being a self-centered ass and not considering the feelings of others for anything. I'd really like to see some sort of graphical meter for my canon Hawke's personality, just for kicks, to see how the game has placed me based on my varying dialogue choices.

Direwolf0294 wrote...

In BioWare games, I've found the death of a companion hits harder when there's a chance to save that companion.

Oh man... After like 10 plays I decided to not bring Anders into the Deep Roads and have my sibling (Carver this time) be killed. I didn't know it would turn out exactly the way it did and felt horrible. To me, that single death is the worst in the whole game, and in a way, for such a hugely emotional impact, it's a shame that it requires a specific set of circumstances to experience.

On the other hand when a character's going to die no matter what you do there sort of feels like a bit of a disconnect from the whole situation. I mean, you can still be upset and emotional that the character died, but it just never hits you as hard as the knowledge that the character dying was your fault, that you could have saved them.

While I agree with this, I think it's a double edged sword. While I do feel that the disconnect is there (depending on the situation), having the option to save them leads to the Connor/Isolde situation in DAO. There are two equally horrible solutions, and one perfect solution where you save everyone. Almost as bad as having to make that decision was having Alistair yell at me afterward for it, and not having a lot of the dialogue options I would like to say to him available.

Still, you were running all the exact same quests with him, which was a bit of a shame. I would have liked to see at least some deviation on that, just to keep things interesting.

Same here, especially regarding Bethany's mageness, or Carver's former time in the army.

... but I still would have liked to have seen how the relationship between a rogue/warrior Hawke and Carver would have been or a mage Hawke and Bethany.

Me too! Mage sisters would have been awesome!

Modifié par nightscrawl, 12 août 2012 - 06:37 .

[nightscrawl]

PinkDiamondstl wrote...

It's ok for movies to do it but not videogames?

There can certainly be bad time lapses in movies too, or a bunch of flash forwards and backwards that can be confusing, or even just irritating, for the viewer.

But in general comparing videogames to any sort of passive entertainment is not good, especially for an RPG. You are playing as the character, or even become the character. How you perceive the world, it's surroundings and your relationships with characters is important for an interactive media. For a book/movie you are experiencing it as a third, not involved party, and how you perceive the world matters much less than how the characters in it do.

[Dave of Canada]

Time skips as a concept aren't bad, they're a great narrative tools and can move along a long-stretching plot without having "filler".

The problem being, Dragon Age 2 didn't really do them well. Nothing in Kirkwall changed with out choices, the time-skips cut far too much and many of the events which transpire while we're not playing are poorly introduced. Hell, with companions it almost felt like the events of the previous act happened the day before.

Look at The Walking Dead by Telltale, the second episode starts months after the first one and sets the predicament of the story while still following the first one. Different characters react differently in the past few months, a new guy is introduced well enough that you know why he's there and nothing feels "forced".

If DA3 spans a long time, I'd like to see time-skips done reasonably. For example, you recruit an army and the segment ends with the army approaches your fortress... bam, two months later and you're talking with the heads of the army and your fortress is fortified.

[Absafraginlootly]

Mostly of the time skips didn't bother me, I mean there could of been a little more indication of said time passing. Like say, those npc conversations you overhear could change or something, but the only skips that really bothered me was the begining skip and I thought we could of used just a little on the year of servitude.

In DA:O the origins, for the most part, are each comprised of 2 parts.

Spoilers

• The Introduction (eg. City elf getting ready for wedding, human noble is going to be left at home, etc.) and
• The Catastrophe (eg. The elven women are kidnaped and Shani is raped, the keep is attacked and your family murdered, etc.)

The thing that bothered me about Dragon age 2's begining is that it went straight to the catastrophe, there was no chance to see the world, people and events around you and decide how your character felt about them.

I don't think we necessarily should of had a normal day in Lothering, we know that Lothering was full of fleeing refugees and probably had many fleeing it in the months before it was destroyed, so, y'know, not really very normal . But I think we maybe should have started there.

For example after we have Varrics opening exaggeration:

Introduction

A Warrior or Rogue Hawke could start just outside of/heading into Lothering with Carver, having fled Ostagar after the battle (I presume some soldiers from ostagar would have taken longer to get back then the Warden did, what with avoiding Darkspawn and possible injuries). You have a conversation with him (giving you a chance to know the sibling thats going to die) then hurry to tell your family that you need to flee lothering because the Darkspawn are coming.

A Mage Hawke could instead start in Lothering with Bethany when Carver arrives bearing this news.

All Hawkes could then go about getting supplies ready to flee. You'd have a chance to talk to your family and to a few of Lotherings other citizens (you might need to trade with them or help each other etc.) which would introduce you to the world a bit and give you a chance to form your characters feeling/opinions on things.

This all wouldn't have to take long, about the same length as the beginings of the DA:O origins.

Then the Catastrophe, the Darkspawn have arrived already and you must flee immediatlely, the begining scene in the game of you fleeing starts soon after and the origin proceeds as it did in game.

There are other ways you could have the introduction while still not having to go to Ostagar and still getting to get to know your sibling and the world more, this is just what I came up with and I would have liked for something like this to be in the game.

As for Act 1, it was mainly side quests that provided coin for your expedition. I sometimes think that the tail end of your years servitude could have been added to it with not to much effort, by say, having you still working for (insert person here) for the first half of you side quest binge. Or having you work for them only at the very begining of the Act and go through your last mission for them, then deal with whether they want to let you go or not. This would only replace say, one sidequest/secondary quest, and then you could continue with act one as normal.

But I don't feel that this is as missing as the first part of the begining is.

[nightscrawl]

Absafraginlootly wrote...

Mostly of the time skips didn't bother me, I mean there could of been a little more indication of said time passing. Like say, those npc conversations you overhear could change or something, but the only skips that really bothered me was the begining skip and I thought we could of used just a little on the year of servitude.

I think if they had added maybe 30 min to an hour of gameplay for the servitude, including increasing its time to two years (fixing the Anders timeline issues), it would have been just perfect.

Modifié par nightscrawl, 12 août 2012 - 09:11 .

[Fast Jimmy]

As many people have stated, the fact that nothing and no one changed in the seven years Hawke was in Kirkwall was boring, stupid and wasteful. If you put my life into DA2 time skips, it would have looked like this:

Seven years ago, for me, was the last year of college. It would have been a great introduction to who my long-time friends were and what my life was about. Instead of gathering 50 sovereigns, I was finishing up finals and the like.

The year after, all my friends were having fun with our lives. Starting out in our new jobs, having no real responsibilities or problems, going out to bars, dating, etc.

Three years later, all of my friends and I were either married, engaged or in serious relationships. It was a fun time of weddings, bachelor parties and starting new lives with our significant others.

Three years after that, all of us are pregnant or have kids. We are all changing diapers, seeing our kids walk or crawl and laughing as they learn how to talk.

I have one friend still who is looking like a life-long student (going for his second graduate degree) and living the bachelor life. His life hasn't changed since the 'prologue' of being in school and partying all the time, and hooking up with random coeds, with the same bar job he had while we were all still in school.

While I love the guy and he loves his life, if you were doing time skips, his life would be like the majority of people in Kirkwall - check in a decade later and they have nothing new going on, they are still hanging out in the same old place, doing the same old thing. I sympathize with the Arishok in agreeing they have shallow, pointless lives, scurrying about with no purpose.

This is in no way advocating there should be a 'get married and have a family' mechanic in DA games. It is simply a metaphor for how one dimensional the entire city feels - nothing there ever changes, except for the few things that do, which are invariably worse. It's a bad way to do timeskips.

[EnforcerGREG]

OP you make alot of sense.

This would be another example of something DAO did better. Namely the chance to tell an origin story setting up who your character is and why u should care about the coming Blight. That coupled with Ostagar really set up the world for me and got me exited to start my game.

Wouldn't have been amazing to meet some famillar face at ostagar before things went to hell.

Duncan/Greywardens-Introduction to the Grey wardens where you could find more about the darkspawn.
Wynne Circle/Templars-Introduction to the alternative life hawkes family could have led. Info on Thedas religion and politics
City Elves Servants-Introduction to Elves and Ferelden Politics.

Sad now thinking what could have been...

[Amycus89]

This might be slightly off-topic (and in the thread I created myself, no less), butsince the subject about the siblings and the subject about the different tones has come up:

About the siblings (spoilers):
As has already been stated before, the first siblings death didn't feel any different from any random starnger dying, even though it was supposed to be our own flesh and blood (I felt more sorry for the two guys in origins that didn't survive the joining). As a consequence of us not being able to spend much time with them before any of them died, my experience was like this:
1st playthrough: Made a warrior Hawke, Carver dies, but I know almost nothing about him, and thus I just think "damn, one companion less".
2nd playthrough: Made a warrior Hawke. Bethany dies, and my reaction is now instead "Nooo! why did you have to die now?! Couldn't you have killed Carver instead?!"
3rd playthrough: I already know by now what is going to happen beforehand, and thus don't really care that much. Maybe slightly sad, but not in the way that I assume you were aiming for the player to feel like, and would have been achieved when we still weren't expecting it to happen.

Also, as someone pointed out, it does make us feel so uch horrible when someone is killed and we find out that it was possible to prevent it. In my first playthrough I pretty much ignored the murderers, let the suspect go, and didn't look for him before following the trail for my kidnapped mother. I was, for lack of a better word, devastated, because I thought for sure I must have missed something. - Then I found out that it wasn't possible to save her no matter wat I did, and no longer cared as much. Odd, but that is really how I felt.

I also agree that it felt a bit weird that the sibling you lose first is class dependant, I mean what, does the ogre first look at you and your class before deciding which one of your siblings he is going to grab? To your defence here though, I will admit that I can understand why you did it considering the current story you had with mages vs templars, and I can't really find any way to really work around this myself.

About the different tones:
As others have mentioned both here and elsewhere, one of the major problems with the different "tones" and personalities, is that you start making your dialogue choices depending on what "tone" you want your character to have in the end, instead of how your character really should act in such a situation.

Now I happen to prefer the origin style of a dialogue tree (silent protagonist included), but since that doesn't appear to be the path that Bioware is currently set on, and in case they wish to reuse the DA2 dialogue system in DA3, here is a suggestion:

You know how Hawk's personality resets each time a new act began? Make it reset each time before a new conversation, as well as certain situations where a twist in the story is presenting itself. In real life we are for example usualy consistant in our tone throughout a whole conversation, but they can later change depending on who we speak with, and under which circumstances. I don't usually speak in the same tone towards my siblings as I do to my friends for example.So a conversation in DA2 could go like this:

Your mother has been kidnapped, but you aren't too worried yet, and you are, as usual, rather "diplomatic" towards your companions until you reach the kidnapper and start a new
conversation --> PERSONALITY RESET (the next dialogue option will determine your tone for the rest of this conversation). I'm pissed, but still not too worried, so I'm being sarcastic no problem here. Then, he shows me my mother (or what remains of her), and because this is quite a turn of events-->PERSONALITY RESET - if we don't do this I will still be set upon being sarcastic, and suddenly seem like an uncaring creep - and if that's what we want, sure, just choose "sarcastic" again. However, I personally feel enrages, so I choose the "renegade" option, and is now acting really pissed towards the kidnapper for the remaining conversation. After the fight, a new conversation with your mother --> PERSONALITY RESET - Now how do I feel? If I feel enraged, I can choose the "renegade" option again, and I will stay that way throughout (no autodialogue however, in case I gave that impression. You still get other choices, but your overall tone is already set here) the conversation. If I feel like a creep, I can be sarcastic throughout the whole conversation as she draws her last breath. If I feel sad, I can choose the diplomatic option, and will act as such throughout the whole conversation. Hopefully one won't be so desperate to just choose options depending on their colour symbols then... I still don't like the dialogue system in DA2, but if Bioware won't be swayed to do otherwise, this is one way to do it.

This last part is a bit hard to explain, but hopefully you understand the gist of it. I heartidly support any idea that will once again make you choose dialogue options appropiate for the current situation, instead of just choosing options to get a certain tone by the end. Using the system in ME3 might also work.

Modifié par Amycus89, 13 août 2012 - 01:23 .

[Wulfram]

Basically every RPG's time scale makes no sense if you think about too much or take it too literally. I think DA2's mistake was making the passage of time too explicit and concrete which gets people thinking about it.

I mean DA:O effectively had timeskips whenever you travelled anywhere, and often this made no sense. Like how you and Duncan travel across half of Fereldan without him telling you anything relevant apparently. And back in BG2 you could easily end up spending days camping out in hostile dungeons.

DA2 timeskips start to work better if you accept that there is still a whole bunch of abstraction going on, and that many of the events that are depicted for game convenience as occuring at the same time could in fact have been scattered throughout the time skips

[Killer3000ad]

The problem with DA2's opening is that there's no attachment to the Hawke sibling that dies. Bethany/Carver literally dies in the first 10 mins. NOw look at DA:O, I felt sad when the human noble's parents died, i felt sad when Duncan died trying to save the King. Why? Cause the game made me care about them by spending time building up the relationships. DA2 did none of this and so the opening sibling death came across as,"Whatever" to me.

[EricHVela]

It is interesting that some issues arise from meta-gaming, and people claim meta-gaming to be the problem and give the issue an allowance.

Yet, it seems to me to be unrealistic to expect all (or even most) players to completely ignore their previous play-through. Unlike me, most people do not have rampant amnesia.

Also logically if someone purposely takes a different route in their choices in a subsequent play-through, that person must meta-game in order to make a different decision than they did in the previous play-through.

I strongly feel that developers and writers of games should expect meta-gaming if their content is variable and worth replaying. To me, the whole "you'd only know that through meta-gaming" is a weak argument. When certain games seem to handle meta-gaming fairly well (like DA:O), games that do not (like the second Dragon Age) should not be able to use such an excuse.

[Ash Wind]

Time Skips: On their own they weren't that big an issue for me. Basically a mechanism used to separate Acts... Act I... blah blah blah… last mission… fade out: cinematic; a little info and back to the matter. In a more interesting story they would have been more seamless and in a design that valued the locale, their impact would have been more noticeable as world elements would have changed instead of virtually being the same. Used as they were, they were utilitarian serving the purpose of framing the narrative.

If they plan to use them again in the future, I'd like to see better execution

As for connection to the siblings... I attribute the lack of a connection in two words: Awesome Button.

Actually, the line was press a button and something awesome happens; though I find it hilarious that it has morphed into the Awesome Button.

I don’t recall the huge outcry that the Origins in DAO slowed things down. I thought they were well done and only added substance to the story.

But clearly that type of character prologue didn’t make the cut for DA2. I don’t know what data BW interpreted (or misinterpreted) but apparently appealing to a wider audience means you have to get right into the button-mashing action.

I don’t know if there ever was supposed to be a DA2 Origin, but a little time setting things up like they did in DAO would have worked wonders for the story IMO. The death of a PC sibling should be an impactful event.

Instead a character I have no connection to dies and I am told we should mourn… because… like… this person… was important… to you… see, your mother and sister (or brother) are sad… so be sad… you’ve endured a great loss.

Telling, not showing.

And it doesn’t take much time. The origins in DAO weren’t all that long in comparison to the overall story, 10-15 minutes? Just long enough to put a face on people and give the PC a connection.

Whether DA3 has Origins or just 1 Character, my hope is they will at least spend a little time to set up that character by showing, and don’t resort to telling you what and who should be important.

Modifié par Ash Wind, 13 août 2012 - 04:57 .

[Allan Schumacher]

ReggarBlane wrote...

It is interesting that some issues arise from meta-gaming, and people claim meta-gaming to be the problem and give the issue an allowance.

Yet, it seems to me to be unrealistic to expect all (or even most) players to completely ignore their previous play-through. Unlike me, most people do not have rampant amnesia.

Also logically if someone purposely takes a different route in their choices in a subsequent play-through, that person must meta-game in order to make a different decision than they did in the previous play-through.

I strongly feel that developers and writers of games should expect meta-gaming if their content is variable and worth replaying. To me, the whole "you'd only know that through meta-gaming" is a weak argument. When certain games seem to handle meta-gaming fairly well (like DA:O), games that do not (like the second Dragon Age) should not be able to use such an excuse.

It's more an issue of "should we bother trying to account for metagaming?"  IMO, no.  Otherwise you don't get plot twists like the one in KOTOR, or other things like that.

You're right that people don't immediately get amnesia, but I'm of the variety that the first playthrough is of paramount importance.  Deus Ex successfully convinced me that if I wanted to, I could have sided with UNATCO.  This helped contribute to me absolutely loving the game's story and considering it one of my favourite game experiences of all time.  I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't, but I realized that the game did such a fantastic job of letting me think choices were available that didn't actually exist, but then leading me along the way to choose the actual path the game went along.  Also going with the first playthrough, if the first playthrough isn't interesting, the chances of there being a second playthrough becomes significantly less.  All the creative reactivity in the world doesn't mean much of people don't feel compelled to give it another whirl.


The issue with the metagaming in question is why does this situation with the siblings really bother people.

I personally think it can be often be drilled down to "because I'd like more content" (which is what the player would get if the game properly delivered the ability to choose which sibling died).  Am I wrong with this?  Is there something else more fundamental that I am missing?

[Fast Jimmy]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

The issue with the metagaming in question is why does this situation with the siblings really bother people.

I personally think it can be often be drilled down to "because I'd like more content" (which is what the player would get if the game properly delivered the ability to choose which sibling died).  Am I wrong with this?  Is there something else more fundamental that I am missing?

No, as usual Allen, I think you hit the nail on the head. The content was there to say 'here's an event' and then there is content after in the form of sibling and mother dialogue to suggest that 'you should care that the sibling is dead' but outside of meta game knowledge of getting to know Bethany or Carer in a different playthrough, the event at the time leaves people a bit numb. 

[Maria Caliban]

nightscrawl wrote...

PinkDiamondstl wrote...

It's ok for movies to do it but not videogames?

There can certainly be bad time lapses in movies too, or a bunch of flash forwards and backwards that can be confusing, or even just irritating, for the viewer.

But in general comparing videogames to any sort of passive entertainment is not good, especially for an RPG. You are playing as the character, or even become the character. How you perceive the world, it's surroundings and your relationships with characters is important for an interactive media. For a book/movie you are experiencing it as a third, not involved party, and how you perceive the world matters much less than how the characters in it do.

You didn't like the time skips in Dragon Age 2. That doesn't mean that time skips are a bad idea for video games or role-playing games.

LA Noire, Fable, and Fallout 3 all have jumps in time, but I've yet to see anyone complain about them. In fact, Fallout 3 was praised for its skippy beginning.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 13 août 2012 - 05:52 .

[nightscrawl]

Maria Caliban wrote...

You didn't like the time skips in Dragon Age 2. That doesn't mean that time skips are a bad idea for video games or role-playing games.

*sigh* I didn't say they were. In fact, that post had nothing to do with DA2 specifically. I was trying to explain why passive and interactive entertainment are not the same thing and are not experienced in the same way by consumers of said content.

Allan Schumacher wrote...

You're right that people don't immediately get amnesia, but I'm of the variety that the first playthrough is of paramount importance.

I only sort of agree. However, many people seem to treat a second (or third, fourth) play the same as if the person went online and did all sorts of research about the different options or paths, when all they did was have foreknowledge based on previous play experience. I don't feel that this is the same thing as sitting there with the DAwiki open while talking to Fenris and selecting all of the dialogue options for maximum friendship, or the same as switching out companions several times during quests to maximize friend/rival gain.

However, I will say that sometimes the first play or first viewing (movie) can have the most impact in some situations, which adds flavor, but does not detract, from successive viewings. The big reveals of the movies The Crying Game and The Sixth Sense are two such examples, further helped along by the fact that most of the movie going public kept mum about them, only telling their friends "you've gotta go see this movie," while not revealing the big surprise. Unfortunately, with huge social media on the internet, times have changed drastically since 1992 and 1999 when those movies were released, making it difficult to catch the viewer unawares about most things.


Here are some questions... I know you all have data for this, what is your target audience here? Is it the person who never finishes the game (I know there are a lot of those)? Is it the person who only finishes once and never plays again (I'm sure there are quite a few of these, perhaps the largest subset)? Or is it the person who plays two or more times (probably the lowest amount of people)?

Do you think it's more important to give a one time, or partial player the best experience in their one time or partial play, than the person who is going to play the game multiple times? Or do you just count on the first play having so much of an influence, surprises included, as to make the person want to play again?


Having played DAO about six times, and DA2 about a dozen, I know I'm in the minority, as are many of the people on these forums. That said, I'll add that my second and onward plays of DAO and DA2 were much more enjoyable because I was able to experience much more of the content that was available. Different origin, different race, different class, different quest results. I honestly feel that a person who played DAO one time, even if they enjoyed it, only experienced a portion of the game -- to bring this back to my passive vs interactive entertainment, this will never be the case when watching a movie or reading a book. Even now I haven't experienced all DAO has to offer because I make many of the same choices (I only recently decided on an ultimate sacrifice play, for example).

Modifié par nightscrawl, 13 août 2012 - 06:56 .

[nightscrawl]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I personally think it can be often be drilled down to "because I'd like more content" (which is what the player would get if the game properly delivered the ability to choose which sibling died).  Am I wrong with this?  Is there something else more fundamental that I am missing?

Um, other than the choice itself being additional content, how does this change things? You still have the one sibling through Act 1, and presumably either Bethany or Carver's actions would play out the same during Act 1 regardless.

The class choice mechanic aside, regarding this specific death, there are still the issues with detachment because it happens within the first 10 minutes of the game and many people won't even care, aside from a shock that it happened in the first place (as was the case with me).

I admit to a lack of creativity. How would this even have been accomplished? With a completely different prologue, or just the fateful scene where it actually happens? Since the game is the way it is, it's kind of difficult for me to imagine it another way.

Being dialogue and choice based, most of Dragon Age's consequences are based on actual decisions that are made by the player during a dialogue. The best thing I can think of for that scene in particular would have been a combat/tactical choice, ie "I moved left when I should have moved right" kind of thing, which makes the death partially dependent on your actions, but still more or less accidental, as opposed to what actually happens where Bethany or Carver make a brash move, attracting the attention of the ogre.

[Allan Schumacher]

Um, other than the choice itself being additional content, how does this change things? You still have the one sibling through Act 1, and presumably either Bethany or Carver's actions would play out the same during Act 1 regardless.

Done properly, you'd get to see the parts of Act 1 done without the need for one apostate mage (Hawke or Bethany) and a sibling who isn't (Carver or Hawke). In this very thread you see people saying they would have liked to see how it'd be with different sibling pairings, not to mention the gameplay elements which would allow another permutation of party make up.

The best thing I can think of for that scene in particular would have been a combat/tactical choice, ie "I moved left when I should have moved right" kind of thing, which makes the death partially dependent on your actions, but still more or less accidental, as opposed to what actually happens where Bethany or Carver make a brash move, attracting the attention of the ogre.

Would it have been better to give some indication that Bethany feels she's in the shadow of Hawke if Hawke is a mage, and have Carver feel the same if Hawke is a martial soldier (Warrior/Rogue). This would provide some level of motivation for why each sibling decides to charge forward and make the death seem less arbitrary.

(Though I'd wager it'd make the death less sympathetic, but I digress)

[nightscrawl]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Would it have been better to give some indication that Bethany feels she's in the shadow of Hawke if Hawke is a mage, and have Carver feel the same if Hawke is a martial soldier (Warrior/Rogue). This would provide some level of motivation for why each sibling decides to charge forward and make the death seem less arbitrary.

That doesn't seem to fit it with Bethany's personality though, but it does for Carver.

In general, I prefer the family dynamic of mage, mage, warrior, since I think it greatly contributes to the motivation for Carver's personal angst, even ignoring the whole "in Hawke's shadow" thing. If you have an older mage sibling, a mage twin, and a mage father who would have been greatly concerned with (1) teaching his children how to use their magic discreetly, (2) constant vigilance lest some neighbors see something they shouldn't concerning magic, and (3) protecting the family from templars, I imagine that Carver might have felt a tier below Hawke and Bethany on the importance scale.

[ElitePinecone]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

(Though I'd wager it'd make the death less sympathetic, but I digress)

Honestly, the death wasn't very sympathetic to start with - I felt far worse for Aveline about Wesley.

The game does generate a certain amount of sympathy towards Leandra Hawke, but by comparison I felt so much more at the end of Origins' Human Noble origin, if only because we'd actually got to know the characters for more than a few seconds and we had a taste of what relatively normal family life was like (even to the extent of pet names). In DA2 we were unceremoniously dumped in Lothering's Blightlands for a five/ten-minute combat scene and a couple of cutscenes - then we're supposed to respond emotionally to the death of a sibling we know nothing about? 

There might not even be much difference between the total content or amount of dialogue in DA2's prologue compared to, say, the Noble origin story - but qualitatively the latter just seemed so much more complete and deep.