114 réponses à ce sujet

[KiwiQuiche]

Yeah no.

I was fine with finishing moves like those killing the High Dragon in DA2.

And how the hell would you "comedy style" kill someone? And killing someone is already brutal and touturing them to death is a dumb thing to do.

[snackrat]

I'm.... between you guys on this. It's a good idea, but I only see applications for Diplomatic and Aggressive.

HOWEVER: one thing that irks me in DAII is the assumption 'diplomatic' is 'good' and 'aggressive' is 'bad'.

I would consider a manipulative weasel, a sycophant, sly and cunning, to be 'diplomatic'. But if he is doing it for his own goals, he is not 'good'.
I liked the idea of playing a character who was blunt, didn't bear around words, hated playing mind games. But the assumption was automatically that he was a heartless ***hole.

I know it is an unrealistic expection, perhaps, but I would like for MORALITY to be tracked SEPARATELY from personality.

THEN, you could have quick finishes for your merciful characters regardless of their table manners, or brutal finishers for them even if they know how to spin a charming tale.

[Arppis]

I hated the finishing blows in the first game, made my character unable to avoid damage from other enemies while was trying to stylish.

[Biotic_Warlock]

Skyrim style please. Not the broken DAO one where your character floats in mid air stabbing air.

[Big I]

Bring back decapitations.

[ScarMK]

Arppis wrote...

I hated the finishing blows in the first game, made my character unable to avoid damage from other enemies while was trying to stylish.

That's odd, whenever my character did a finishing move, they were invincible.  Could be just a mod I added and forgot about however.

[Boss Fog]

ScarMK wrote...

Arppis wrote...

I hated the finishing blows in the first game, made my character unable to avoid damage from other enemies while was trying to stylish.

That's odd, whenever my character did a finishing move, they were invincible.  Could be just a mod I added and forgot about however.

They were invincible if I recall correctly, but it prevented them from doing something else more useful.  Biggest example I can think of is, "hey Zevran, I really need you to toss sand in this guy's face who is shield bashing/assaulting me.... oh I see you're too busy decapitating someone.  Thanks anyway!"

[John Epler]

Finishing moves are very, very expensive content to create - even the Legacy finishing moves, which all used existing combat animations, took a total of about three weeks to produce (and that's 12 hour days, plus weekends). If I had the choice between reflecting the player's class/weapon or reflecting their personality, I'd choose the former - it's a better application of limited resources.

[John Epler]

I should also add that, if we do choose to do finishing moves again, we would probably only do it for the absolute last creature of a group or for very specific situations where it makes sense. Having your character dramatically stab an ogre in the face was swell, right up until all of his buddies made mincemeat of your party because the guy you rely on to tank was busy being dramatic.

[nightcobra]

John Epler wrote...

I should also add that, if we do choose to do finishing moves again, we would probably only do it for the absolute last creature of a group or for very specific situations where it makes sense. Having your character dramatically stab an ogre in the face was swell, right up until all of his buddies made mincemeat of your party because the guy you rely on to tank was busy being dramatic.

unrelated to the topic but i just would like to ask Mr.Epler



for both DA:O and DA2 the animations for conversations were a bit limited from what i can tell as after a while one could see the repeating motions making the characters seem more like puppets rather than active participants in the conversation with few exceptions (such as riordan's explanation of the blights and grey wardens as walks around the room and looks into the inside of a cage).
For DA3 with the frostbite engine, are any of the conversation animations being ported to the new engine or are you tackling those in a different way? such as mo-cap acting like in "the last of us" or "uncharted" for important characters and scenes? or would that approach be too costly or rather make the quality between the animations of major and minor npcs too disparate from each other breaking the suspension of disbelief? 

[John Epler]

nightcobra8928 wrote...

John Epler wrote...

I should also add that, if we do choose to do finishing moves again, we would probably only do it for the absolute last creature of a group or for very specific situations where it makes sense. Having your character dramatically stab an ogre in the face was swell, right up until all of his buddies made mincemeat of your party because the guy you rely on to tank was busy being dramatic.

unrelated to the topic but i just would like to ask Mr.Epler



for both DA:O and DA2 the animations for conversations were a bit limited from what i can tell as after a while one could see the repeating motions making the characters seem more like puppets rather than active participants in the conversation with few exceptions (such as riordan's explanation of the blights and grey wardens as walks around the room and looks into the inside of a cage).
For DA3 with the frostbite engine, are any of the conversation animations being ported to the new engine or are you tackling those in a different way? such as mo-cap acting like in "the last of us" or "uncharted" for important characters and scenes? or would that approach be too costly or rather make the quality between the animations of major and minor npcs too disparate from each other breaking the suspension of disbelief? 

Mocapping entire scenes is a great idea - but it's not really practical in our case. Where Uncharted and Last of Us have a big advantage is, simply, in quantity. The entirety of their cinematics/conversations (at least in the Uncharted games - I can't speak to Last of Us in quite the same way) total around, maybe, an hour and a bit? Thereabouts, anyways. Whereas the entire cinematic content of an average BioWare game (post-KOTOR) is much closer to the 50-60 hour mark. That's including branching, minority content, etc, which is why you only see a fraction of that per playthrough.

Mocap is not cheap. Animator time is also not cheap - and as such, we have to use the same animations in multiple places in order to finish the massive amount of content we have on a game-by-game basis in anything approaching A) a reasonable amount of time and without blowing our budget (and, for that matter, the budget of our next six projects) completely out of the water.

Now! That being said, we have a goal of replacing a lot of our more common animations with new ones, and mocapping some new basic gestures. But, just as a result of how much content we're building per game, you are always going to see some animations repeat. Yeah, that means that we take a bit of a hit to the cinematic quality of our games, but the only real 'solution' would be to shift to completely linear experiences with minimal conversations/dialogue, and that's not really a trade off we're going to make.

[John Epler]

Cerberus Commando wrote...

John Epler wrote...

I should also add that, if we do choose to do finishing moves again, we would probably only do it for the absolute last creature of a group or for very specific situations where it makes sense. Having your character dramatically stab an ogre in the face was swell, right up until all of his buddies made mincemeat of your party because the guy you rely on to tank was busy being dramatic.

dude, a finisher during a "cut scene" cut scene! Not during actual combat! Oh and will you guys please take the nudity suggestion into consideration? I mean come on, we're never gonna climax wearing boxers.... U know what I mean.

That comes with its own problems, though - I didn't like doing the finishers in cutscene because it completely pulls the player out of the experience. Honestly, the less often a player ends up in a conversation or cutscene, the better. Not only from a purely player experience point of view (not wanting to feel like you're 'watching a movie' is a criticism that we see, and fair enough), but also from a designer standpoint - the more often you're pulled out of gameplay, the less impactful those moments become.

There's also a logical weirdness that comes up when we play finishers on mooks - if I can use my two daggers like scissors and cut off this guy's head, why haven't I been doing it all along? Seems like it worked really, really well, so why am I using any other ability?

[andar91]

Oh, thank you thank you thank you Epler. Your info on finishing moves makes me happy. There were a few times where I couldn't heal or something because somebody was locked in an animation.

[Eternal Phoenix]

John Epler wrote...

I should also add that, if we do choose to do finishing moves again, we would probably only do it for the absolute last creature of a group or for very specific situations where it makes sense. Having your character dramatically stab an ogre in the face was swell, right up until all of his buddies made mincemeat of your party because the guy you rely on to tank was busy being dramatic.

Well I hope we get this at least. On another note, I didn't know finish animations took so long to produce since Origins had quite a few of them. In any case I hope this is actually implemented because finishing moves are cool *and* satisfying.

I mean even random finishing moves for certain NPC bosses would be a nice add (so each playthrough the finishing move is different).

[thats1evildude]

John Epler wrote...

That comes with its own problems, though - I didn't like doing the finishers in cutscene because it completely pulls the player out of the experience. Honestly, the less often a player ends up in a conversation or cutscene, the better. Not only from a purely player experience point of view (not wanting to feel like you're 'watching a movie' is a criticism that we see, and fair enough), but also from a designer standpoint - the more often you're pulled out of gameplay, the less impactful those moments become.

I'm always aware that I'm playing a game, so the finishers don't really pull me out of it.

John Epler wrote...

There's also a logical weirdness that comes up when we play finishers on mooks - if I can use my two daggers like scissors and cut off this guy's head, why haven't I been doing it all along? Seems like it worked really, really well, so why am I using any other ability?

I would argue that your second point isn't as big an issue as you may think. The player is already being asked to make peace with one of the biggest examples of logical weirdness in gaming — hit points. You know, that infamous mechanic that allows you to stab an opponent 10,000 times without killing him, so long as he retains that last precious hit point.

I don't question why the Warden didn't just cut off an enemy's head earlier in battle. I know he does that because the opponent ran out of HP, and I accept it unconsciously.

Modifié par thats1evildude, 25 septembre 2012 - 05:46 .