298 réponses à ce sujet

[Nomen Mendax]

I think the case of Sister Petrice is a great example. I'll try and keep this relatively vague but there may be some spoilers.  You don't get the chance to kill her in Act 1 even though you have a perfect opportunity (you are in a secret location and you can at least assume that no-one else knows she is meeting with you).  But the game doesn't allow you to. I read a post by one of the developers (I forget where) who said that he would have preferred it if the game gave you more of a reason why you couldn't kill her -- whereas I think the player should have been given the opportunity to do so.

It would have only been a minor plot divergence since her role in Act 2 could easily have been taken by someone else since she there were clearly other people who felt the same way she did.

If you had been allowed her to (try to) kill her I would also have liked her to have a chance to flee, if she manages to get out of the building before you take her down then she gets away (since murdering a member of the chantry in full view of multiple witnesses would result in Hawke being arrested and executed).  This could be brought up in Act 2, but needn't be more than a relatively minor divergence.

This kind of thing gives me the impression (rightly or wrongly) that the developers are more interested in telling their story than in building a story with the player being more of an equal partner.

Modifié par Nomen Mendax, 13 septembre 2012 - 03:14 .

[Face of Evil]

Sacred_Fantasy wrote...

You mean after ACT 2 or ACT 3? Can you exhausted all dialogue options in ACT I? I don't think so.

Why would I want to? I didn't do that in DAO even when it was an option.

It's like saying I should prefer DAO to DA2 because the former has a toolset. Dude, I play on the XBox 360.

Modifié par Face of Evil, 13 septembre 2012 - 04:46 .

[Emzamination]

batlin wrote...

Emzamination wrote...

You can talk to your companions any time you like but once you have exhausted all conversational options, the game reverts to a loop, no different than Origins.

Please give an example of what traps you're referring to.

Seeing as how no one knew exactly what Anders had planned their first playthrough, why do you believe your hawke should suddenly be able stop him on subsequent playthroughs based on your knowlege of events? That's akin to cheating don't you think? certainly not what a true rpg gamer should aspire to.

To be honest, we don't know exactly what the repercussions of hawke's actions will be as we never got that far.

Nope. In DA:O you can talk to companions immediately after relevant events about them. In DA2, oftentimes you have to wait years in-game before you can bring something up. And you really didn't know what Anders was planning, or at the very least didn't know that he wasn't up to anything good? Anders, a guy who had made it clear to all but the blind, deaf and dumb that he thought a war betwen mages and Templars was coming and who has already been shown to be murderously vengeful, comes to you about breaking into the Chantry and he will not tell you why? You truly didn't think it was somewhat fishy? And yes, we DON'T see the repercussions of Hawke's actions. That's because everything that we're presented with shows in no unsure terms that the end result is the same. Simply assuming that things might be different isn't good enough

I've beaten Da2 numerous times and I've never had to wait whole acts to talk to anyone I recruited so I'm going to need more clarification on the point you're trying to make.

Ok lets view this from a 1st playthrough prespective

• Anders is portrayed in the beginning of the game as a empathetic mage just wanting to see his brethren free because they are being mistreated which he backs up with proof in karl, nothing wrong there.
• The middle of the game, he's joined the Underground group and started sneaking mages peacefully out of their tower to avoid tranquility which is against chantry law but in no way suggest he's going to go on a mass murder spree.
• He does attempt/commit to kill a little mage girl which does show he's starting to lose himself and is prone to homicidal tendencies against templars who mistreat mages, which does suggest a level of wariness but this is only shown so far to be limited to templars who mistreat mages, nothing to suggest magical mass destruction.
• Even the bomb ingredient quest where he ask you to help him gather materials for a potion to seperate him and justice isn't seen as suspicious because we have no prior knowlege of these ingrediants in any media or their purposes.To the ignorant these ingrediants do seem like things that would be in a potion, I believe it was some form of hardened urine, dragon dust and something else, nothing there to suggest magical mass bomb or even a connection between the templars.
• When he ask hawke to distract the grand cleric in the chantry while he fiddles around the chantry, it does warrant a huge load of suspicion given his hatred of templar injustice but nothing to remotely suggest magical mass bomb as anders is a devoted Andrastian (even going so far as to spout the tevinter amulet gift is heresy) and shows nothing but respect to the grand cleric up to that point.

End game, well we all know what happened there.

What are we presented with exactly? The effects of hawkes actions were suppose to be portrayed in the canceled expansion.

[Wulfram]

Sela Petrae = Saltpetre, which is a fairly big red flag. Though I don't know if Hawke should know that.

[Maria Caliban]

My first playthrough, I kicked him out of Kirkwall because it was obvious the dude was losing it and up to no good.

It's fine if you liked Anders and thought he was a benevolent, loving soul your first playthrough, but you're acting as though there's no evidence to the contrary.

[Emzamination]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Emzamination wrote...

Seeing as how no one knew exactly what Anders had planned their first playthrough, why do you believe your hawke should suddenly be able stop him on subsequent playthroughs based on your knowlege of events?

He's a mage losing his mind to a spirit of Vengeance who asks for help gathering sulfur and saltpeter. I knew he was going to blow something up, but I didn't know the exact target.

Alternatively, Hawke has watched Anders break down for years. It's obvious that something is up, and even if she doesn't know his exact plans, she should know that a volatile mage is a danger to everyone around them. You know, what with the hundred or so mages around Kirkwall she has to put down.

Vengeance attempts to murder an innocent woman in front of the entire group! If a friend of yours took out a fireaxe and chased a woman down the street, would you just shrug and hope he works out his emotional issues?

If he later killed a group of people could you honestly say you didn't see it coming?

He asked for Sela Petrae and Drake stone, two ingredients that along with their alchemical properties were largely (if not completely) unknown in previous media.How could you deduce a bomb from urine and some rocks?

The only real danger we can be sure of from watching anders or any other depressed mage going through acrisis is them finally losing their mind completely and turning into a rampaging abomination which I agree has to be dealt with quickly and efficently, tho mid life crisis doesn't suggest bomb in the slightest.

What were his reasons for chasing this woman down? Did she cheat on him or steal from him or provoke him in anyway? If so, I'd feel bad for her but that event is limited to those two people and in no way suggest this friend is going to give it to anyone else but his target.Now if he just did it out of the plain blue then yeah, he needs to be apprehended and dealt with because if he kills one random person for no reason, you can be sure he's going to kill another and another.

Combining that analogy with anders...He didn't randomly try to kill that girl, he was possesed and in his eyes he envisioned that girl was one of the corrupt templars he just fought.While this suggest anders is prone to kill corrupt templars, it does not suggest he is going to commit mass murder or blow up the chantry.It should also be noted hawke has the ability to stop him and if hawke doesn't, it's just as much hawke's fault if not more for failing to prevent it when they could have, knowing anders wasn't himself at the time.

[CuriousArtemis]

OP forgot to add "In my opinion" to his/her post title  

[Emzamination]

Wulfram wrote...

Sela Petrae = Saltpetre, which is a fairly big red flag. Though I don't know if Hawke should know that.

I didn't even know that

Maria Caliban wrote...

My first playthrough, I kicked him out of Kirkwall because it was obvious the dude was losing it and up to no good.

It's fine if you liked Anders and thought he was a benevolent, loving soul your first playthrough, but you're acting as though there's no evidence to the contrary.

I'm not saying he wasn't up to something dubious, all I'm saying is there was no in-game evidence to deduce things would go down the way they did (chantry explosion) on a virgin playthrough.

[Beerfish]

Nomen Mendax wrote...

I think the case of Sister Petrice is a great example. I'll try and keep this relatively vague but there may be some spoilers.  You don't get the chance to kill her in Act 1 even though you have a perfect opportunity (you are in a secret location and you can at least assume that no-one else knows she is meeting with you).  But the game doesn't allow you to. I read a post by one of the developers (I forget where) who said that he would have preferred it if the game gave you more of a reason why you couldn't kill her -- whereas I think the player should have been given the opportunity to do so.

It would have only been a minor plot divergence since her role in Act 2 could easily have been taken by someone else since she there were clearly other people who felt the same way she did.

If you had been allowed her to (try to) kill her I would also have liked her to have a chance to flee, if she manages to get out of the building before you take her down then she gets away (since murdering a member of the chantry in full view of multiple witnesses would result in Hawke being arrested and executed).  This could be brought up in Act 2, but needn't be more than a relatively minor divergence.

This kind of thing gives me the impression (rightly or wrongly) that the developers are more interested in telling their story than in building a story with the player being more of an equal partner.

The diffculty with this is resources.  They establish a charcter for a specific part.  The design the look, hire a voice actress, lay out a plan for how that character is to progress....and then the player kills that character after one scene.  So, I hguess we have to get another chracter to fulfill what she was all about,. 2nd meeting, player kills her.  You see where this is going don't you?  They simply have to keep some key chracters in play for the story to be cohesive, other wise you get a sandbox game where you don;t care a wit about any of the characters because they are all shallow, one offs.

As another poster stated they needed to find a more iron clad reason why you couldn't try and do her harm right off the bat. 

It is an endless battle for a developer with the trade offs between freedom and a tight story line.  It's not an easy line to walk.

[Nomen Mendax]

Emzamination wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

Sela Petrae = Saltpetre, which is a fairly big red flag. Though I don't know if Hawke should know that.

I didn't even know that

Maria Caliban wrote...

My first playthrough, I kicked him out of Kirkwall because it was obvious the dude was losing it and up to no good.

It's fine if you liked Anders and thought he was a benevolent, loving soul your first playthrough, but you're acting as though there's no evidence to the contrary.

I'm not saying he wasn't up to something dubious, all I'm saying is there was no in-game evidence to deduce things would go down the way they did (chantry explosion) on a virgin playthrough.

There is a conversation in Act 2 when he talks about starting a revolution, it was one of those occasions when my PC didn't have a choice to say what she wanted, that was certainly a pretty big clue that he might do something rash in the future. 

[Wozearly]

Sacred_Fantasy wrote...

That's the thing. You guys don't make open-world games with boatloads of meaningful decisions either short length or long length. Not anymore. Instead you guys believe in strict linear story, complete railroading and tons of meaningless illusion of choices that make even games like Baldur Gate have to be played longer.  So can you guys at least try to develop system to allow multi-ways to complete a task in your story driven RPG? 

I'm not going to disagree that more recent Bioware games have felt a lot more linear than in the past, and that this is not necessarily a good thing, but its rather harsh to talk about Bioware as if its employees are a faceless set of clones religiously pursuing a course that's self-evidently wrong.

Its especially odd to aim this at Allan, who is one of the few Bioware employees who regularly contributes to the discussions here with his own personal views... 

Of course, he may be an evil mastermind co-ordinating the downfall of Bioware from within, but in the absence of any evidence I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. For the time being, at least.

[Emzamination]

Nomen Mendax wrote...

Emzamination wrote...

Wulfram wrote...

Sela Petrae = Saltpetre, which is a fairly big red flag. Though I don't know if Hawke should know that.

I didn't even know that

Maria Caliban wrote...

My first playthrough, I kicked him out of Kirkwall because it was obvious the dude was losing it and up to no good.

It's fine if you liked Anders and thought he was a benevolent, loving soul your first playthrough, but you're acting as though there's no evidence to the contrary.

I'm not saying he wasn't up to something dubious, all I'm saying is there was no in-game evidence to deduce things would go down the way they did (chantry explosion) on a virgin playthrough.

There is a conversation in Act 2 when he talks about starting a revolution, it was one of those occasions when my PC didn't have a choice to say what she wanted, that was certainly a pretty big clue that he might do something rash in the future. 

Doesn't he say "someday everyone is going to have to pick a side"?

Modifié par Emzamination, 13 septembre 2012 - 07:44 .

[Allan Schumacher]

batlin wrote...

DA:O found a good median.

So we should just stop there?  When you say "median" it seems evident that in the end it was still a compromise.  Is a system that shows you nothing superior than a fully cinematic system that actually lets you do everything that you want to do?  Should we not strive for the latter simply because it's difficult to accomplish?

If Mass Effect or Dragon Age are Infinity Engine games, are they as well received?

Again, nothing to do with the engine.

I think the engine chosen very much impacts the type of game delivered, especially when it involves significant changes in the type of presentation.

[Wulfram]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

So we should just stop there?  When you say "median" it seems evident that in the end it was still a compromise.  Is a system that shows you nothing superior than a fully cinematic system that actually lets you do everything that you want to do?  Should we not strive for the latter simply because it's difficult to accomplish?

Well, you could try to work from the DA:O base rather just scrapping it and going for Mass Effect, but with less player control, which is what it felt like DA2 did as far as cinematics and dialogue.

(At least Mass Effect gave you some control over Shepard's speeches)

Modifié par Wulfram, 13 septembre 2012 - 08:28 .

[ianvillan]

Wulfram wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

So we should just stop there?  When you say "median" it seems evident that in the end it was still a compromise.  Is a system that shows you nothing superior than a fully cinematic system that actually lets you do everything that you want to do?  Should we not strive for the latter simply because it's difficult to accomplish?

Well, you could try to work from the DA:O base rather just scrapping it and going for Mass Effect, but with less player control.

(At least Mass Effect gave you some control over your speech)

or If you believe the changes you have in mind are a better direction to head in you should make a new IP and see how it it recieved by fans, that way you dont disregard the fans of the original IP and can make new fans, If the changes are as revolutionary as you believe you will get your mass market appeal and still keep your current fans happy.

Modifié par ianvillan, 13 septembre 2012 - 08:29 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Well, you could try to work from the DA:O base rather just scrapping it and going for Mass Effect, but with less player control.

(At least Mass Effect gave you some control over your speech)

IMO adding a dialogue wheel is adding to the DA:O base, is it not? (Behind the scenes the engine treats conversations virtually the same in both games, with DA2 having improvements in the ease of rapid scene development and other little tweaks that we saw).

As an anecdote, the most frequent "complaint" (and they all said it was a minor one) with DAO amongst my friends was why we regressed in terms of how we presented the player in conversations. There ARE people that felt the lack of VO and dialogue wheel (especially among console players) was a let down in the game.

So is adding the wheel truly a "scrapping" of the (IMO already heavily cinematic) system of DAO?

[Wulfram]

Adding the dialogue wheel, voiced PC, paraphrases and auto-dialogue is, from the players point of view, the same as scrapping the DA:O system and replacing it with the Mass Effect system.  The only discernible difference is that "Neutral" is replaced with "Funny"

I can only speak for myself, not for what everyone else thought, but I liked the situation when DA and ME were different series striving to achieve different things. With DA offering a more "first person" perspective, while ME offered a more movie type experience.

Modifié par Wulfram, 13 septembre 2012 - 08:41 .

[eroeru]

^ True story.

Also, I'd add that the wheel gives new semantics, in applying very specific (and boring) set functions to every line in the game. I was mindlessly going "left-upper (investigate-1); left-middle (investigate-2); left-bottom (investigate-3); right upper option" all the time. And in a possible world where there'd be another ok character-option (that doesn't feel stupid. eg subtly ironic hawke), then I'd still not have any difference of what to choose (the dialogue system would be just as exciting and involving/engaging in letting me think through the choice... not). Because it's only two very well-known and set characters we get to choose from then. (or the maximum of three).

Leaping past the problems of the character coming off psychotic or schizophrenic, shallow, the lack of understanding in paraphrases etc, we still get the problem of role-playing AND "involved interactiveness" in the centre of it all.

If you don't get anything surprising or sufficiently widely interpretational from your choices (of dialogue options), then it degrades the game-system's value. As simple as that.

The first problem (of involvment/engagement and boredom) is because of the brilliantly patented dialogue wheel.

Modifié par eroeru, 13 septembre 2012 - 09:21 .

[Sylvianus]

It is interesting to learn what were the complaints about DAO before I was there, years ago. Many changes in DAII I couldn't understand make much sense now. At least the will behind that.

Modifié par Sylvianus, 13 septembre 2012 - 08:57 .

[Brockololly]

Allan Schumacher wrote...
As an anecdote, the most frequent "complaint" (and they all said it was a minor one) with DAO amongst my friends was why we regressed in terms of how we presented the player in conversations. There ARE people that felt the lack of VO and dialogue wheel (especially among console players) was a let down in the game.

So is adding the wheel truly a "scrapping" of the (IMO already heavily cinematic) system of DAO?

The wheel in itself is just another means of conveying information, like a dialogue list. But once you add in paraphrases its an entirely different beast. Once you add in a fixed voice over for the player character, its further differentiated from Origins.

Yes, some people complained about the presentation of Origins' player character, but were they necessarily complaining about the lack of a voice or more in how the non voiced character was presented? If you iterated on and adjusted how the non voiced player character conversations were presented, would people have been satisifed? Maybe put them in a first person view to avoid blank stares by the non voiced PC?  That complaint in Origins feels like its actually several complaints that tend to get lumped together.

Wulfram wrote...

Adding the dialogue wheel, voiced PC,  paraphrases and auto-dialogue is, from the players point of view, the
same as scrapping the DA:O system and replacing it with the Mass Effect  system.  The only discernible difference is that "Neutral" is replaced  with "Funny"

I can only speak for myself, not for what everyone  else thought, but I liked the situation when DA and ME were different  series striving to achieve different things. With DA offering a more  "first person" perspective, while ME offered a more movie type  experience.

Totally agreed. In several of the interviews and pre-release stories for Origins, Zeschuk and Muzyka specifically made that distinction between DAO's more first person story telling and ME's third person as a postive thing for the 2 franchises. That telling a story in those different ways would attract a different audience to either game. Which makes the shift in presentation for DA2 kind of baffling, since a Dragon Age fan does not equal a Mass Effect fan. I just wish Dragon Age had something more unique than just slapping a dialogue wheel on it.

I want the different BioWare games and franchises to try to present story in a different way. As it is, it seems everything has been shoved into the same cookie cutter voiced PC, dialogue wheel, lots of cutscenes mold.

Modifié par Brockololly, 13 septembre 2012 - 08:59 .

[Nomen Mendax]

Beerfish wrote...

Nomen Mendax wrote...

I think the case of Sister Petrice is a great example. I'll try and keep this relatively vague but there may be some spoilers.  You don't get the chance to kill her in Act 1 even though you have a perfect opportunity (you are in a secret location and you can at least assume that no-one else knows she is meeting with you).  But the game doesn't allow you to. I read a post by one of the developers (I forget where) who said that he would have preferred it if the game gave you more of a reason why you couldn't kill her -- whereas I think the player should have been given the opportunity to do so.

It would have only been a minor plot divergence since her role in Act 2 could easily have been taken by someone else since she there were clearly other people who felt the same way she did.

If you had been allowed her to (try to) kill her I would also have liked her to have a chance to flee, if she manages to get out of the building before you take her down then she gets away (since murdering a member of the chantry in full view of multiple witnesses would result in Hawke being arrested and executed).  This could be brought up in Act 2, but needn't be more than a relatively minor divergence.

This kind of thing gives me the impression (rightly or wrongly) that the developers are more interested in telling their story than in building a story with the player being more of an equal partner.

The diffculty with this is resources.  They establish a charcter for a specific part.  The design the look, hire a voice actress, lay out a plan for how that character is to progress....and then the player kills that character after one scene.  So, I hguess we have to get another chracter to fulfill what she was all about,. 2nd meeting, player kills her.  You see where this is going don't you?  They simply have to keep some key chracters in play for the story to be cohesive, other wise you get a sandbox game where you don;t care a wit about any of the characters because they are all shallow, one offs.

As another poster stated they needed to find a more iron clad reason why you couldn't try and do her harm right off the bat. 

It is an endless battle for a developer with the trade offs between freedom and a tight story line.  It's not an easy line to walk.

I sort of agree and sort of disagree, part of my point was that yes its wasteful in terms of voice acting and cutscenes which is why cinematic presentation tends to conflict with player choice.  But I intentionally picked a character (Petrice) who I don't really think qualifies for plot armour, she is replaceable in a way that Loghain (in DAO) is not.  She doesn't appear often enough that there would need to be the chain of events you set out in your reply. You kill her, and she only has to be replaced by one other NPC (at least it could be set up that way fairly easily).

I'm not arguing for a sandbox game with dull uninteresting characters.  If you imagine a spectrum where there is a fixed story at one end and complete freedom at the other then I'd suggest that Bioware is going too far to the fixed story end of the spectrum.  Standard disclaimers apply of course: in my opinon, what I want to see in a CRPG, and so on.

Modifié par Nomen Mendax, 13 septembre 2012 - 10:04 .

[Renmiri1]

I prefer DA2 to DAO, please don't get the impression that all of us here want another DAO clone for DA3.

[Nomen Mendax]

Emzamination wrote...

Doesn't he say "someday everyone is going to have to pick a side"?

I can't remember the exact line.  What I remember is what I wanted to say was something on the lines of "slow down, I sympathize with your aims, and I'd love to get <spoiler> out of the chantry, but what exactly are you thinking of doing".

But I didn't get to say anything like that ...