895 réponses à ce sujet

[MillKill]

I find this feature unnecessary for Dragon Age. It does nothing but restrict writers heavily and prevent them from making characters from previous games too prominent. If they decide to ignore a decision for the sake of a better story, like Leliana's possible death, the forums scream bloody murder about retcons.

Just make a single set of choices canon. If you'd like to pretend that your previous choices are an AU what-if scenario, fine. The comics and novels took this approach. They turned out fine, because Gaider wasn't hamstrung about being ambiguous about whether Alistair was king or whether Wynne was alive. He simply went with the decisions that made for the best stories. Your savefiles where Alistair was a drunk, or Wynne died did not spontaneously delete themselves.

Baldur's Gate 2, which is often held up as Bioware's best game, completely ignored any decisions you made in the first game, even though you were playing the same character. A party from the previous game was made canon, even if you never recruited those characters or killed them. Somehow, the world kept spinning and the game was amazing.

Just let the writers pick the choices that make for the best story. That way, if they want to do a story about the Dark Ritual, they can. If they want to do a story involving Harrowmont being king, they can. Let's not restrict the writers into writing around previous our previous savegames. Let them make DA3 the best it can be by not putting in roadblocks that prevent them from telling the story they want to tell so that those who destroyed the ashes won't feel bad there wasn't a single line referencing how evil their ncharacter was. Plus, I don't want Sten to be prevented from being a prominent figure just because some people left him in Lothering.

Modifié par MillKill, 05 octobre 2012 - 09:54 .

[DarkKnightHolmes]

The only reason I like the save import in DA is to keep the universe consistant. I mean I don't want to hear about some other Warden Origin and how he stopped the blight instead of me.

[Maclimes]

No.

[King Cousland]

I too would like an alternative to the import system, but I want BioWare to avoid a canon like the plague.

I believe it's been stated an alternative to importing is indeed on the cards which would allow for choice recognition without those pesky bugs.

[Barneyk]

I love the save imports!
Gives me so much satisfaction to keep it going like that!

[Wulfram]

They're going to be importing this time around, from what's been said.

We can only hope it'll be the last import, and they can start afresh for DA4

[Vicious]

They are changing engines. I wouldn't expect much to carry over.

Most likely : Get A few choices during character creation, a la Dragon Age 2. Bare minimum choices can be imported, like [HAWKE sided with mages, or Alistair king!]

DLC possibility: an interactive prologue where you can say what happened. [was well recieved for Mass Effect]


What fans should realize: Nothing you did in Dragon Age Origins or Dragon Age 2 mattered. Small choices in Dragon Age Origins resulted in nothing more than FAN SERVICE CAMEOS in Dragon Age 2. Literally. That's it. They had absolutely NO IMPACT AT ALL on the story.


Even the most important choice in Dragon Age Origins, the choice Morrigan gives you at the end, was revealed/retconned into being a pointless choice. Go play Witch Hunt with a character that denied her, she tells you flat out she didn't need it anyway.


Dragon Age's import failed because all it did was give you the illusion of choice and a few fan service cameos.


Development time can and should be better spent elsewhere, like making the overall game plot better. And yes, while i like the cameos myself, it's not Mass Effect. Thedas is supposed to be huge and everyone makes their journeys on foot.


Also: Leliana. With Dragon Age 2, Bioware proved that they are going their own way with Dragon Age. Better to just can an import feature and tell their story, like Bethesda does with TES games.

Modifié par Vicious, 05 octobre 2012 - 10:00 .

[Iakus]

 I favor a checklist of decisions that can affect the game, rather than an import.  If the Warden is going to be mentioned, let us select the Warden and any pertinent decisions.

Orzammar going to factor into it?  pick who the king is.

Anders alive or dead?

Was Hawke a viscount or exile?

ect.

Not only would this allow the player to maintain a degree of continuity within their games, and give teh developers fewer things to keep track of, it would also avoid the headaches of lost saves, or import glitches.

[Vicious]

It would absolutely be better if they spent their time ensuring the game wasn't as obviously rushed as Dragon Age 2 than putting in fan service cameos of Zevran and Leliana and [whomever] that makes the world feel tiny instead of huge.

[Battlebloodmage]

No way, I love save import. My mage saved Ferelden and went into the mirror with Morrigan while my Hawke stopped the Templar-Mage war in Kirkwall and became fugitive with Anders. I kinda hate if they have an official canon for the game because it's no longer RPG. It's just a pretending RPG giving the illusion that your choices actually matter.

[Wulfram]

Vicious wrote...

They are changing engines. I wouldn't expect much to carry over.

Changing engines would only be relevant if they were trying to import appearance, which they're not.  It's not going to stop them reading decisions from a save file.

[Bfler]

In case of an import, you would need the saves of DA1 and DA2. DA2 wouldn't be enough, because some flags aren't recognized, like for example a possible romance with Leliana, if you import a save from Awakening.

[Vicious]

Changing engines would only be relevant if they were trying to import appearance, which they're not. It's not going to stop them reading decisions from a save file.

Oh I don't disagree. People simply need to manage their expectations... they are not good at that around here.

[King Cousland]

Vicious wrote...

They are changing engines. I wouldn't expect much to carry over.

Most likely : Get A few choices during character creation, a la Dragon Age 2. Bare minimum choices can be imported, like [HAWKE sided with mages, or Alistair king!]

DLC possibility: an interactive prologue where you can say what happened. [was well recieved for Mass Effect]


What fans should realize: Nothing you did in Dragon Age Origins or Dragon Age 2 mattered. Small choices in Dragon Age Origins resulted in nothing more than FAN SERVICE CAMEOS in Dragon Age 2. Literally. That's it. They had absolutely NO IMPACT AT ALL on the story.


Even the most important choice in Dragon Age Origins, the choice Morrigan gives you at the end, was revealed/retconned into being a pointless choice. Go play Witch Hunt with a character that denied her, she tells you flat out she didn't need it anyway.


Dragon Age's import failed because all it did was give you the illusion of choice and a few fan service cameos.


Development time can and should be better spent elsewhere, like making the overall game plot better. And yes, while i like the cameos myself, it's not Mass Effect. Thedas is supposed to be huge and everyone makes their journeys on foot.


Also: Leliana. With Dragon Age 2, Bioware proved that they are going their own way with Dragon Age. Better to just can an import feature and tell their story, like Bethesda does with TES games.

Just because a choice wasn't shown to matter, it doesn't mean it won't in the future. For example, with tensions hotting up between Orlais and Ferelden (again!) I'd be interested to see the differing results gained by a diplomatic, gentle (perhaps even timid) but militarily competant King Alistair or by a confrontational, decisive, adept Queen Anora. 

There are of course certain choices whose consequences should be shown in-game (it really is vital that BioWare show more impact in-game) and never heard of again. In DA II, for example, the decision to pretend that Nature of the Beast would have some kind of effect in the Free Marches was blatant fan service and frankly, ridiculous. 

[Stippling]

Wulfram wrote...
We can only hope it'll be the last import, and they can start afresh for DA4

This would be one of the few things that would make me stop playing these games.

Modifié par Stippling, 05 octobre 2012 - 10:12 .

[marshalleck]

I'd be fine with this. Mass Effect showed that save imports are just a pointless gimmick, and I'm quite confident the stories would only improve with the writers not being chained to the past.

Modifié par marshalleck, 05 octobre 2012 - 10:12 .

[bleetman]

If you can't reasonably accurately reflect decisions made in earlier games later on in the series, then you shouldn't have allowed me to make them in the first place.

[MillKill]

iakus wrote...

 I favor a checklist of decisions that can affect the game, rather than an import.  If the Warden is going to be mentioned, let us select the Warden and any pertinent decisions.

Orzammar going to factor into it?  pick who the king is.

Anders alive or dead?

Was Hawke a viscount or exile?

ect.

Not only would this allow the player to maintain a degree of continuity within their games, and give teh developers fewer things to keep track of, it would also avoid the headaches of lost saves, or import glitches.

Or it creates needless restrictions on what they can write. If they decide to include the king of orzammar, he can't be too prominent or they'll need to do much more VO and writing to account for two completely different people possibly being king. If they decide to contradict a decision, like with Leliana, people get upset beecause the system is inconsistent.

In Oblivion, there was a quest to collect a bunch of Nirnroot. I never bothered completing it on any character. In Skyrim, completing that quest is made canon. There was no import feature. Bethesda simply made a choice about what happened and went with it. I was never bothered by this or offended that Bethesda had chosen to ignore my choice, because they never bothered to offer an import feature. Had there been one, I might have been annoyed that it was a inconsistently applied feature. Since the purpose of an import is consistency, this makes the import feature pointless, such as in the Leliana situation.

I usually made Alistair king in Origins. Had DA2 not offered an import feature and made him remaining a Warden canon, I think I could recover from the trauma of seeing a world that wasn't exactly the same as the one I ended the first game with when the sequel never claimed it would be.

Just ignore every decision in a previous game. A few lines of dialogue as callbacks aren't enough to justify the problems with an import. Write what works best for the current story.

Modifié par MillKill, 05 octobre 2012 - 10:16 .

[Miss Greyjoy]

I agree with the OP. When I think of all the interesting characters/plotlines that have to be avoided in order to keep continuity between games, the tradeoff isn't worth it, IMO.

[EpicBoot2daFace]

I can't say I would be bothered if it were removed. None of the decisions seem to make a difference.

[King Cousland]

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

I can't say I would be bothered if it were removed. None of the decisions seem to make a difference.

They haven't been so far. They doesn't mean they won't be. 

It shocks me how many people favour the establishment of a canon. What's the point of role playing at all if everything our character did will be steamrolled with a big, fat "NOPE."?

Modifié par King Cousland, 05 octobre 2012 - 10:17 .

[Vicious]

I would have thrown out every cameo and 'carried over choice' in DA2 for more time spent making Act 3 and the rest of the game not suck.

And i would do it again for DA3. Most would. This isn't Mass Effect, i'm not playing the same guy over and over. My next protagonist doesn't know who the hell these people are and doesn't care.

[marshalleck]

King Cousland wrote...

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

I can't say I would be bothered if it were removed. None of the decisions seem to make a difference.

They haven't been so far. They doesn't mean they won't be. 

It shocks me how many people favour the establishment of a canon. What's the point of role playing at all if everything our character did will be steamrolled with a big, fat "NOPE."?

LOL. 

RPGs didn't exist before Mass Effect, amirite?

[Selene Moonsong]

By excluding imports and enforcing a specific cannon, you render the games played by a great number of people wasted effort. So I highly disagree with this idea.

Besides, these would be variables based on player events reduced to T/F (True/False) values, not direct imports of a load of data for every detail of conversational choices and character models.

Variety is the spice of life. One set cannon renders a game dull and not worth replaying.

[deuce985]

I like how Bioware makes worlds feel more personal to me. Import saves usually end up with minor impact on the universe. Removing them would disconnect that personal feeling for me. However, removing import saves probably means they can make choices that feel like they have major weight behind them. They don't have to make design decisions with multiple variables for future DA games. That's a positive.

This is probably why not many companies allow import saves. I remember even in Witcher, they're so minor you almost don't notice them. But the positive to that is they make a world where choices are felt.

It's hard for me to say which I favor. In a perfect world, I'd take both. But Bioware seems to be great at allowing me to build bonds with my companions and making everything feel like my world. No matter how artificial it feels. So, I guess I do kinda want to see imports stay...

Overall, I'd say removing imports destroys a very large part of the RP aspect in their games for me...that's just me though.

Modifié par deuce985, 05 octobre 2012 - 10:26 .