95 réponses à ce sujet

[hobbit of the shire]

I'm big on lore, so I do enjoy the deep history of Thedas and its people. However, the sheer amount of codices to pick up and read in a relatively short amount of actual game time, makes for disinterest. I'm playing a game, not reading a history book! Yeah I know I can just ignore them or read them later. But it's just sheer pages and pages of text. What could make it more interesting is if they were voiced as if by the writer (e.g., Brother Genitivi recounts his travels). Or, let the codices be different. Different shaped books pop up, different handwriting, you have to interact with the book (flip pages, scribble to uncover dust, apply a flame to reveal invisible text), etc. Entice the player to want to know about this rich world you've created. Some more history in cutscenes, too.

<edit: spelling... bah me suck>

Modifié par hobbit_of_the_shire, 29 septembre 2012 - 01:53 .

[Lokiwithrope]

That would be awesome. +1

[Direwolf0294]

I'd like to see them do what Mass Effect does. Have one section that briefly covers major lore aspects and is voiced by a narrator and than have another section that's not voiced and goes into heaps more detail on certain parts. Maybe for the narrator have the VA's who voice the PC do it so it's like the players character is reading the entries out loud.

[cindercatz]

If they would pop up like a storybook sort of thing, it would be awesome, but it would also be very expensive. You'd have to create all new art assets, all new tools for opening and displaying them, basically each book a cutscene unto itself. I think it's just too expensive. It'd take away from more important areas, as a big a game as DA3 will be. And voices I think would be a poor investment, because I'm gonna read them a lot faster than they'd be narrated, as I'm sure many would. There's so much of it that in order to save time, I'd end up skipping the voice narration most of the time.

I love the codex as it is. :-)

[Wentletrap]

DAO codex was amazing. Whoever did the dwarves stuff was truly inspired. And the revenant entries still give me the shivers.

What DAO had (don't remember seeing it in DA2) was codex entries that were letters / journals / fragments written by random folk, and not just encyclopedia type entries. Love that kind of variety.

[LTD]

Eh, I loved the sheer amount of stuff to read in DA:O. Tis nice to settle down by campfire and browse through couple of pages of rich Thedas history. All of it was so well written. Such depth!  And as dude above me remaked, so many different " voices" too.

Having said that, I do agree that little bit more should have been done in DA:O to " sell" all these awesome journal entries to player. A scribe NPC joining players party perhaps, with sole purpose of maintaining PCs journal, collecting tales of old.

What an awesome game DA:O was. Methinks it is soon time for a replay, been too long.

Modifié par LTD, 27 septembre 2012 - 03:57 .

[holdenagincourt]

Direwolf0294 wrote...

Maybe for the narrator have the VA's who voice the PC do it so it's like the players character is reading the entries out loud.

This is very intriguing. I like it. Maybe some of the codex entries that concern specific characters or topics could be voiced by other characters, like the Rivain codex entries could be voiced by Isabela, the blood magic entries could be voiced by Merrill, the Hawke entries could be voiced by Varric, Hero of Fereldan by Leliana...and so on.

[Yevetha]

holdenagincourt wrote...

Direwolf0294 wrote...

Maybe for the narrator have the VA's who voice the PC do it so it's like the players character is reading the entries out loud.

This is very intriguing. I like it. Maybe some of the codex entries that concern specific characters or topics could be voiced by other characters, like the Rivain codex entries could be voiced by Isabela, the blood magic entries could be voiced by Merrill, the Hawke entries could be voiced by Varric, Hero of Fereldan by Leliana...and so on.

I'm kind of intererested in this also, but also very, very wary.  If you're playing a blood mage, your character is going to read codices regaurding the Chantry or deamons very differently than a devout templar would.  But now what if you're playing a mage that is reading about the fall of the black city?  Most mages don't take the Chant's version of events as totally literal, but maybe you want your mage to be devout so they would take it literally.  Just so many conflicting issues with tone.

What could be cool, would be to ahve the people who voice those characters/factions read the entry.  So you get a templar or revered mother VA if its reguarding the chant or Andraste and you get demons/spirits/mages reading you stuff about the fade.

That said, I think giving voice to the entirity of the codex would be too expensive, and I'd rather see other things done with that type of funding.

[hobbit of the shire]

Hmmm, yes, having some of the companions read out the entries would be cool. Perhaps a few major ones could be read by different companions (roll of the dice). Say I get a Chantry codex about templars and then if Anders is in the party, a cutscene (recurring, so no need to make a new one each time) with him says "let me look at that". Then, he'd read the codex (inflected with his emotions) while we have the text on the screen. He could then make some remark after the entry is read too. If Sebastian was in your party, however, then it'd play out totally differently. Probably costly if done this way. However, even if we don't have fancy visually-different books, I'd like the writer to voice some of the entries (not all). You'd so get the effect of what they're trying to bring across!! A boring chantry scholar. A heads-on mercenary. A lover (heh, imagine Correspondence Interruptus letters being voiced), an apostate reading out his manifesto. It could be a very integral part of the game. And it shouldn't be more costly than, say, adding more party banter, which I know is something lots of people want.

Modifié par hobbit_of_the_shire, 27 septembre 2012 - 07:13 .

[Swagger7]

I really don't want a voiced codex. If it's voiced anyway, then I really hope there's an option to turn that off. I read much faster silently than I've ever heard anyone read aloud, so it's just distracting.

[Dagr88]

ME3 Codex was good. The most important entries were voiced and same could/should be done with DA:I (Elves are...; Qun is...; Demons are...) to fill in new players what is what in the world of Thedas while they are making a cup of coffee. (That's called user friendly)

Secondary codex should be mute for several reasons:
- I hope most of the people who play 18+ game will finish reading codex faster than narrator
- $$$

Modifié par Dagr88, 27 septembre 2012 - 08:56 .

[nightcobra]

idea:

have relevant codex entries to quests, characters, locations be shown during the loading screen alongside artwork depicting the content of the codex.

example 1- while on a quest regarding the Qunari and you enter a new area the loading screen shows codex entries related to the Qunari culture.

example 2- empress celene has summoned you to a hearing, when you enter the area where she is a loading screen shows codex entries related to her.

Modifié par nightcobra8928, 27 septembre 2012 - 09:06 .

[TimB991]

 Make codexes more interesting?

How about let's do some 'show don't tell' stuff? Why not incorporate the lore into the narrative itself instead of stuffing it into a mere 'dictionary entry'? Why not have conversations with main characters that serve as exposition rather than stuffing it into a mere dictionary entry? etc etc

I think OP's Diablo III suggestion could we interesting, you'd pick up a book of some researcher or historian, and this narrator would start telling about the lore, which should be directly involved with whatever you're doing in-story at that time. Hell, why not make these pieces of information relevant?
Example: you're going into the fade. You learn beforehand about its denizens. You now know how to bluff your way out of Demon encounter X.

How's that for the lore becoming more involved? 

[Kidd]

I do hope the feature of codex entries being shown at once is retained in DA3. Have a hard time imagining any person who generally disliked DA2 had a problem with that. No rummaging through the codex to find what you want, no box appearing in the lower left that must be clicked before it goes away or rummaging will be what you do etc.

[BouncyFrag]

Well, for Skyrim there is a guy who has been voicing it's texts and is actually quite brilliant. Not so sure it would work well with DA, but this reading here is well worth the time to give it a listen. His voice work is so good, that whenever I get back into Skyrim, I'll listen to the audio as I find new books.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUYJwrFawQA&feature=context-chv


I'd love for the codex entries to make specific references to what we did in the first two DA games and even go so far as to have illustrations of what our very own Warden as well as pics depicting big moments. I've always felt that DA2 could have had a stronger connection to the first game and doing this would be a good step in the right direction.

[Ser Fish]

Oh, please no narrators reading the codex! That always annoys me in games. I can read so much faster than the narrator speaks, and the voice just ends up being horribly distracting. I skipped a lot of important lore in the ME series because I didn't want to have the narrator ramble on at me. I want to read my freaking codex, not have somebody read it to me like I'm a six year old child.
What I WOULD like to see in the DA codex is pictures (the irony of saying that after complaining about being read to is not lost on me.) But seriously, diagrams and concept art of different things would be cool. So a page about the Seekers would maybe have the Seeker icon, or a picture of Cassandra, or something like that. Unlike the narrator, it's not disruptive to your reading experience, and it also gives you a quick burst of visual information if you're short on time. It also might entice more casual players to explore the codex, so they could find out what the pretty picture is for.

[Quicksilver26]

they should be read by Claudia Black

[Herr Uhl]

nightcobra8928 wrote...

idea:

have relevant codex entries to quests, characters, locations be shown during the loading screen alongside artwork depicting the content of the codex.

example 1- while on a quest regarding the Qunari and you enter a new area the loading screen shows codex entries related to the Qunari culture.

example 2- empress celene has summoned you to a hearing, when you enter the area where she is a loading screen shows codex entries related to her.

The problem with that is that the loading screens don't allow for much more than a sentence or two. It is infuriating to start reading something and then getting cut off.

[Wulfram]

Voiced codexes might be useful if you could listen to them while continuing on with the game, but generally I just find them annoying.

KiddDaBeauty wrote...

I do hope the feature of codex entries being shown at once is retained in DA3. Have a hard time imagining any person who generally disliked DA2 had a problem with that. No rummaging through the codex to find what you want, no box appearing in the lower left that must be clicked before it goes away or rummaging will be what you do etc.

My only annoyance with that was that it made it more difficult to track which ones you'd already read.  Could have done with a mark as read checkbox at the bottom.

[formaristarry]

What concerns me about having an audio codex is that if it plays in the background while you're running around it can sometimes overlap with other sounds, it would be horrible to have a codex playing and then your party starts some banter at the same time. It would also be horrible if the codex was to override the party banter so it didn't occur at some points because an audio codex was playing, or vice versa. Also horrible if you walk into a battle and it keeps playing or stops, because either way you are going to be distracted or miss out on listening to it.

I've played a few games that had this feature and they were sp games that had no party and stuff like this still happened with random npcs that I had to talk to, or I ran into a cutscene or battle, so I think it would be a nightmare to have with companions following you around. And no, I don't want to stop and stand around waiting for the audio to finish every time that I find a codex to avoid any of this happening. Which is what I found myself doing in these other games until I just gave up on listening to them.

If this is included in da3 I would like the option to turn it off and for there to be a written copy stored in my journal.

Modifié par randomlycosmic, 27 septembre 2012 - 02:28 .

[Palipride47]

randomlycosmic wrote...

What concerns me about having an audio codex is that if it plays in the background while you're running around it can sometimes overlap with other sounds, it would be horrible to have a codex playing and then your party starts some banter at the same time. It would also be horrible if the codex was to override the party banter so it didn't occur at some points because an audio codex was playing, or vice versa. Also horrible if you walk into a battle and it keeps playing or stops, because either way you are going to be distracted or miss out on listening to it.

Agreed, it would be a technical problem, I've had glitches with banter during combat, or worse, combat sounds (like the sizzling "Walking Bomb" sound) during cutscences. Mood. Killer.

I also read faster than the narrator could read it to me. 

I really liked how the codexes changed based on class and race in DAO (i.e. dwarves speaking derisively about the story of the Maker as the origin of darkspawn if you are a dwarf, whereas you get that story if you are an Andrastian). I also felt a little more steeped in the history of where I was, as it was SHOWN. In Kirkwall, you know the templars are powerful, but you don't find out how they got that way until Act 3 from Bran, unless you read the codex. Also, a lot of them were riped from DAO and wouldn't make sense in context (talking about Morrigan's mother with Flemeth codex if you didn't play DAO) and even worse: the calendar codex states it is 9:30 Dragon Age (from DAO) when you are acquiring it a few years after 9:30 Dragon.. 

Modifié par Palipride47, 27 septembre 2012 - 05:51 .

[nightcobra]

Herr Uhl wrote...

nightcobra8928 wrote...

idea:

have relevant codex entries to quests, characters, locations be shown during the loading screen alongside artwork depicting the content of the codex.

example 1- while on a quest regarding the Qunari and you enter a new area the loading screen shows codex entries related to the Qunari culture.

example 2- empress celene has summoned you to a hearing, when you enter the area where she is a loading screen shows codex entries related to her.

The problem with that is that the loading screens don't allow for much more than a sentence or two. It is infuriating to start reading something and then getting cut off.

possible solution:

options menu

automatic loading screens (like normal)

manual loading screens (press a button when you want to exit the loading screen giving you plenty of time to read the entry and look at the artwork as well as serve as a sort of pause button whenever you want to take a breather)

Modifié par nightcobra8928, 27 septembre 2012 - 08:58 .

[DarkKnightHolmes]

They're already interesting.

*Opens Codex*
*Falls asleep in 5 minutes*

[Blacklash93]

Well I 'd like there to be more new entires of significance, which DA2 lacked in. I would also like picture to accompany the text with things looking badass in them like Mass Effect.

Don't really want Bioware wasting time on voicing the codex.

[BrookerT]

I liked it in Dragon Age 2, when Companion codex entries updated though the years, and each had new quotes from the characters.