As it was stated in the announcement of DA3, feedback was wanted so I thought I give mine.
The points I would like to go over are:
Feedback
Narrative
Combat
Level design
Dialog
Camera-use
Options/Customization
Animation
Feedback
Thought I just say that regarding feedback, we fans are really good saying what we want but not so good to weigh what we exclude by wanting something.
A lot of people could be saying they want to be able to play as whatever race the want but fail to realize that being able to play as the moose-toad hybrid of Gomorr or an Elf is going to make any character development more or less impossible (Skyrim). What do we answer if we get to choose between a main character that has a personality or is an avatar? Personally I prefer a personality that can drive the narrative over the brief joy over being able to play as a "grey" hero that I can customize.
Narrative
A lot of thoughts about this. Firstly the structure in how the story unfolds, there is a distinct Biowarian structure that is present is most of your games. It gets predictable:
Intro(scenario introduction).
Gather your band of brothers while you complete certain objectives but no one in your band can die and you can do companion quests.
Endgame starts after the sex (M-Effect) and people may die.
Actually DA2 did not follow this and I liked it. I enjoyed that I was given a family much more motivating then DA:O's "grey" hero.
Let characters be persons not simply a vessel for good/evil. Witcher 2 did this well and in that game you pick a side and I had a really hard time picking because I thought both sides had a point and I didn't want to let either side down. That is great storytelling. Bioware games are are a lot more obvious and I can see the moral scenario coming a mile away. I would like to not have moral scenarios but rather dilemmas born from friction between personalities/events.
DA2 did a good job avoiding stereotypes in your companions, keep it up!
Combat
Combat in DA2 was for me was pretty bad, balloon bursting waves of enemies is not fun and that should have been obvious to the developers. I can understand you felt a need for speeding up the action but I rather take slow but good then fast and boring. Also tried to play the game on a higher difficulty and to see your hero do a massive two-handed slash only to do very little damaged felt very mismatched.
I think in melee combat in games like this have always lacked when it comes to interaction between the fighters. Meaning that as it is now they poke at each other until one reaches zero life with no regard to what the opponent is doing.
How about a fight system that when you engage in a sword fight, you are not doing damage to HP at the start but you sacrifice stamina to attack and your opponent does the same to defend and when one of the fighters get low in stamina the other get to do a power move that inflicts an injury that either disables something on the enemy or is fatal. That way you can be sword fighting in a way that actually looks like a sword fight.
Level design
In DA2 it was bad, we all know it.
Partly because I think the level design was there to facilitate the story which sounds right doesn't it. Well in Da2 it felt that we had a story that needed a city rather then a city where a story takes place. The city in DA2(forgot the name) felt more like a bunch of theater-stages where parts of the plot took place then a living breathing city.
And if there is going to be a city in DA3, do it right. Lets say the city is 400 years old, look what you need at year 400 and then start at year zero. Ask yourself why was it founded, what did the landscape look like then, why and how did it grow. How does the architecture evolve. What practical solutions did they have that effected life and city planning at year 50,200, 300 and at present. After that you adapt your story to fit the city, not the other way around. It will make your levels come alive because everything will have a history behind it. There is a vid with the guy who made the city in Dishonored that is good.
Dialog
Not to keen on the Paragon/Rogue, Good/Evil thing, Especially if you get rewarded for being good or bad. I want to do good things to people I like and bad things to people I dislike. Focus on having distinct consequences to the answers then rewarding a player for choosing the A category of answers the entire game. Its a bad mechanic because it actually distracts from the story instead of enforcing it.
Camera-use
This ties in to the dialog. When two characters talk in the vast majority of the scenes in Bioware games they just stand facing each other and deliver dialog and the camera just alternates between them, sometimes a character does that circular hand motion I suspect have been around since Kotor.
Please let the characters do something while they talk (eat, read, walk, ride, climb, bathe, fish, haircut, shave, drink, gamble, clean, kill etc) and then the camera ha something to work with and the quality of the game goes up a lot.
Options/Customization
Having armors/weapon to choose from great but when it comes to customization of the main character so far I have never seen a custom character(face) that in the end looks better then a premade one. So I rather have a premade hero with options to change his look if it helps you give the main character a richer personality.
Animation
Animation has never been a strong in BW games. Stiff movements and above all bad face animation. I really hope you invest resources in this and with Frostbite2 and the ANT system it sounds like you have. Since BW is making a lot of RPG's maybe get something similar to what they used in LA Noire.
I hope some of this feedback can be of use.
Modifié par Maytrows, 18 septembre 2012 - 05:19 .
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