895 réponses à ce sujet

[Wrathion]

Actually, I like the save imports. But I wouldn't mind if they removed it. Unless the Male Human Noble is the default Warden and Morrigan is his love interest. Because we've never seen that before...

Any default history without this would be alright with me. But it's your game, do what you do.

[JWvonGoethe]

hhh89 wrote...
Zevran was a bug and was fixed, or so I read some days ago. Nathaniel didn't return if he was dead in Awakening (I played from an import where I left him at the Keep, and for the bug that the Keep was conquered no matter the upgrade you did he died, and he didn't show up in DA2). Justice couldn't really "die" in Awakeniing, since he'd return in the Fade. Anders and Leliana did return in DA2, but Anders died in the epilogue slide, and was somewhat explained in Act 3 during the encounter with Nathaniel (I didn't like his return, but it was more acceptable than Leliana's). The problem with Anders is that his presence in Act 1 screwed up the timeline, and depending on your choice in Awakening there's the change he'd have never meet Justice.

Agreed. I should have edited my post to add greater clarity to this, but I'll leave it as is and allow your post to stand as the correction.

I was unaware the Zevran bug had been fixed, so that is good news if true. I was plainly mistaken about Nathaniel. With regards to Anders and Justice, I should have elaborated more - as you point out, there is a token one line explanation for Anders' being alive, which does seem to go against at least the spirit of the promotional material if not the letter. However, the whole complication with Justice/Anders that you point out is not exactly a retcon, but DA2 could hardly be said to respect the impacts of your decisions in previous games regarding he events surrounding these two characters (for example, as to whether not Justice and Anders ever met in the first place.) I stand by my position on Wynne and Leliana (pending a reasonable explanation for Leliana's apparent resurrection in a future DA title.)

Personally I would prefer imported save files where choices carry through, are not contradicted with little to no explanation, and have meaningful consequences. However, the point of my last post was only meant to be that if this is not to be the case, I would like that to be reflected honestly and accurately in the publicity for the game. I felt that the promotional material for DA2 was misleading.

Modifié par JWvonGoethe, 06 octobre 2012 - 12:46 .

[FaeQueenCory]

The only problem in DA2 with the imports isn't with the imports. It's with the lack of choice that DA2 was rampant with.
Take Sophia Dryden, for instance.
In Origins, you can let her live or kill her upon meeting her.
And should you let her live....
In DA2..... You kill her.

THAT is the problem with the import flags in DA2.... 90% of the stuff that gets imported... just gets invalidated due to DA2's lack of choice. There should be no reason why a Hawke that is a Blood Mage would not let her leave "alive".
It basically seems like Bioware is either lazy, pushed into pumping out a game before it can be fleshed out, or building their own canon that makes any amount of choice worthless in previous titles.
I'm more inclined to believe that DA2 was rushed without being fleshed out instead of laziness or evil schemes of control.

That being said, I still want the import.. even if it means every choice I made, Bioware decided was "wrong" and so with the import flag, they "fixed" the situation.
I would also really like DA3 to import saves from BOTH Origins AND DA2... So either you only need one, or so that it reads both saves so that the import bugs from DA2 are irrelevant.

[davepissedatending]

David Gaider wrote...

There are indeed certain things that would be made much easier, story-wise, by simply establishing canon and proceeding from there. No doubt about that. It's the reason the vast majority of games don't have such continuuity between games, and arrange matters so that such continuuity wouldn't even be relevant.

Thing is, you'd lose something too. Yes, perhaps we'll never be able to take this to the ultimate point everyone imagines this to be-- where all those decisions branch out until they create a player's own personal storyline, completely divergent from everyone's else's and where every decision has complete relevance between games... but is that really necessary? Even if there are only select points of influence, that's really no different than in a single game itself. It's a question of maintaining the illusion.

Maybe someone feels that illusion hasn't been kept, and can't be kept unless their every decision is kept sacrosanct. And they feel that, if we can't do it, we shouldn't even try. I get that, and there are certainly days when I feel exactly the same myself. But there are also those for whom the illusion makes the world and the story so much more theirs, and that's not something they're apt to get anywhere else. They don't necessarily want to be told a story so much as they want to be part of it. Isn't that the ideal, here?

Ultimately, regardless of the arguments, it's a trigger that Dragon Age has already pulled. I suppose one could argue we could un-pull it, as we've done with some other pretty fundamental points of design... but I'd say this goes beyond game mechanics and is more of a promise which would be pretty hard to unmake now.

There are plans for how we're going to do the import thing, which I'm not at liberty to discuss. All I'll say is that the goal is to do it better... not to scrap it.

I agree with your op at the end of the day I cart think of any other dev who does this and for me anyway makes it feel like you say im part of the story. I'm really looking forward to this dragon age all the stuff you guys at bioware are talking about sounds cool as fu##

[Persephone]

EpicBoot2daFace wrote...

Barbantious wrote...

Yes lets make everything you do pointless to prevent railroading.

makes sense.

The better solution would simply be to put more effort into the import mechanic.

The Tuchanka mission in ME3 was a good example of this, there was about four or five different ways you could have started this mission based on what happened in the previous two games, yet the end result was what many consider to be the best part of the game, because they put a lot of effort into it.

If we weren't talking about BioWare, I would agree.

Except they are the only dev group who have used that feature in a meaningful way thus far. CDPR's save import was a joke. Lionhead's save import from Fable II to III was awful.

Is it perfect? Nope. But BioWare has done it better than all the rest so far. Yes, I also liked the Imports into DAII.

[CELL55]

The Grey Nayr wrote...

CELL55 wrote...

If we are indeed going to be keeping the save import mechanic, I could stand to see it used less often. It seems like everyone and their mother stopped by from DAO to let Hawke (and thus, us) know seemingly everything that we did in DAO. In case we forgot, apparently. It all seemed too contrived and too frequent. At least in Mass Effect, we were still playing the same character, so it would at least make sense that he bumps into some familiar faces from time to time if they are not actively seeking him out. But Hawke doesn't have any meaningful connection to the Warden (even the Mage Warden. Whoop-de-do, a cousin that they've never met), so it was really kind of jarring for me to run across all of the Warden's old decisions despite there being no discernible reason for Hawke to come across them as well.

Of course, it has been some time since I played DA2, and it could just be my memory making me think that I saw more callbacks than what actually happened.

Alistair, Leliana, Teagan, Zevran, and Nathaniel are "everybody"

Anora, Eamon, Loghain, Oghren, Wynne, Sten, Morrigan, Velanna, Sigrun, The Warden, and Connor would disagree with that.

I don't just mean who shows up, but sometimes what. You can come across a former werewolf if they survived, and a distant relative of Harrowmont if Bhelen took the throne, for example. They're all over the place, it seems.

[Master Xanthan]

Removing save imports would be a terrible idea. It would render all of your choices pointless.

[jkflipflopDAO]

David Gaider wrote...

There are indeed certain things that would be made much easier, story-wise, by simply establishing canon and proceeding from there. No doubt about that. It's the reason the vast majority of games don't have such continuuity between games, and arrange matters so that such continuuity wouldn't even be relevant.

Thing is, you'd lose something too. Yes, perhaps we'll never be able to take this to the ultimate point everyone imagines this to be-- where all those decisions branch out until they create a player's own personal storyline, completely divergent from everyone's else's and where every decision has complete relevance between games... but is that really necessary? Even if there are only select points of influence, that's really no different than in a single game itself. It's a question of maintaining the illusion.

Maybe someone feels that illusion hasn't been kept, and can't be kept unless their every decision is kept sacrosanct. And they feel that, if we can't do it, we shouldn't even try. I get that, and there are certainly days when I feel exactly the same myself. But there are also those for whom the illusion makes the world and the story so much more theirs, and that's not something they're apt to get anywhere else. They don't necessarily want to be told a story so much as they want to be part of it. Isn't that the ideal, here?

Ultimately, regardless of the arguments, it's a trigger that Dragon Age has already pulled. I suppose one could argue we could un-pull it, as we've done with some other pretty fundamental points of design... but I'd say this goes beyond game mechanics and is more of a promise which would be pretty hard to unmake now.

There are plans for how we're going to do the import thing, which I'm not at liberty to discuss. All I'll say is that the goal is to do it better... not to scrap it.

Have you guys ever sat down and had a good brainstorm session on how to get to that goal? I don't have any brilliant ideas to that end, but man you'd be rolling in money and acclaim if you could somehow structure you games as such while still keeping the storylines straight.

[The Elder King]

JWvonGoethe wrote...

I was unaware the Zevran bug had been fixed, so that is good news if true. I was plainly mistaken about Nathaniel. With regards to Anders and Justice, I should have elaborated more - as you point out, there is a token one line explanation for Anders' being alive, which does seem to go against at least the spirit of the promotional material if not the letter. However, the whole complication with Justice/Anders that you point out is not exactly a retcon, but DA2 could hardly be said to respect the impacts of your decisions in previous games regarding he events surrounding these two characters (for example, as to whether not Justice and Anders ever met in the first place.) I stand by my position on Wynne and Leliana (pending a reasonable explanation for Leliana's apparent resurrection in a future DA title.)

Personally I would prefer imported save files where choices carry through, are not contradicted with little to no explanation, and have meaningful consequences. However, the point of my last post was only meant to be that if this is not to be the case, I would like that to be reflected honestly and accurately in the publicity for the game. I felt that the promotional material for DA2 was misleading.

I don't remember what the promotional materials said about Anders and Justice. The problem is that, regardless the fact that they coudl've not meet in Awakening, Awakening happened roughly one year after Origins. Act 1 in DA2 is roughly one year after Hawke arrived in Kirkwall. Hawke left Lothering after Ostagar. The timeline is screwed. Even if DAA happened six months after DAO, there's not enough time for Anders to be with the Warden a bit of time and being well-known in Lowtown in Act 1.
About Leliana, I agree with you. About Wynne, I read that someone killed her in DAO and she didn't appear in DAA. Maybe there's a bug (considering the mess that is Awakening, I'd say it's probably).

[MichaelStuart]

I would prefer importing just be removed.

[esper]

I cannot express how much I enjoy the save import. I would not be able to play da2 if it in retrorespect made the canon warden a male who romanced Morrigan. And it would ruin da:o for me too, since I would feel that every choice I made is never the one that gets carried over in canon and I would stop enjoying the game.

But then again, I was happy with the flavor, it added to da2. It was no more than flavor, yes, but it made me feel like my warden existed in the world, and quite frankly I never expected more.

I would like some save game editor for da3 for all the consoles. And also think that as years passes the save import should be less and less important. Say we are in da9 and we are near yar dragon 99 or something. The only think that the world should largely remeber there is if the warden died fighting archdemon or not. Some king the installed in Orzommar has for example likely had his line been assassinated at least three times by then (Of course da9 should remember da8 very well).

[NedPepper]

Before even getting into the conversation, I'd like to say I'm in favor of this.

To be honest, it didn't really work that well. This isn't Mass Effect. The decisons felt arbritary. Almost unnecesssary.

Maybe if you pick like three of four major decisions, or a tiny subplot on a smaller decision, like if Fenryal is alive. But ultimately, I don't like that I have to suffer the loss of Alistar because someone killed him in one of their playthroughs. You're losing the King of Ferelden. I'd rather have canon to be honest. Or go with the most popular choices people made.

That way Zevran can show up as the head of the Antivan Crows and Sten can be the new Arishok. Give us that sense of conituity and growth. But if people killed them, you lose that completely.

[NedPepper]

Master Xanthan wrote...

Removing save imports would be a terrible idea. It would render all of your choices pointless.

WHAT choices?  The King of Ferelden?  The Ruler of Orzamaar?  Besides those two, what else even matters from one game to the next?

[Quicksilver26]

esper wrote...

I cannot express how much I enjoy the save import. I would not be able to play da2 if it in retrorespect made the canon warden a male who romanced Morrigan. And it would ruin da:o for me too, since I would feel that every choice I made is never the one that gets carried over in canon and I would stop enjoying the game.

But then again, I was happy with the flavor, it added to da2. It was no more than flavor, yes, but it made me feel like my warden existed in the world, and quite frankly I never expected more.

I would like some save game editor for da3 for all the consoles. And also think that as years passes the save import should be less and less important. Say we are in da9 and we are near yar dragon 99 or something. The only think that the world should largely remeber there is if the warden died fighting archdemon or not. Some king the installed in Orzommar has for example likely had his line been assassinated at least three times by then (Of course da9 should remember da8 very well).

hear hear couldn't have said it better myself. I like the flavor it adds dosn't need much more then that.

[Sir Ulrich Von Lichenstien]

Big fan of save imports as it is fun to see the different scenes that come from such. From a DA perspective Alistair is an obvious one to highlight it. In DA2 he can either appear as a King, a Warden, a Drunk or not at all depending on what choice you made in regards to him in DAO.

[EpicBoot2daFace]

Master Xanthan wrote...

Removing save imports would be a terrible idea. It would render all of your choices pointless.

The writers do that already.

[The Teyrn of Whatever]

No way. I like the save import. If you don't like it don't use it. Why is even being discussed?

[garrusfan1]

NO they are being given a lot of time so they can get it done right and save imports are one of my favorite things about bioware games is that a lot of their games use imports and it feels customized to me

[SeismicGravy]

Master Xanthan wrote...

Removing save imports would be a terrible idea. It would render all of your choices pointless.

This.

[NUM13ER]

I think having imports works across a trilogy of games, or rather a specific story arc but also means they can start "fresh" come a new story arc. I think having to deal with the different canons of so many playthroughs beyond a trilogy would quickly spiral out of control. I'd rather they wrap up the lose ends of this story and then move on.

[marshalleck]

SeismicGravy wrote...

Master Xanthan wrote...

Removing save imports would be a terrible idea. It would render all of your choices pointless.

This.

They already ARE pointless.

[ScarMK]

marshalleck wrote...

SeismicGravy wrote...

Master Xanthan wrote...

Removing save imports would be a terrible idea. It would render all of your choices pointless.

This.

They already ARE pointless.

For now, doesn't mean they will be in the future.

[marshalleck]

ScarMK wrote...

marshalleck wrote...

SeismicGravy wrote...

Master Xanthan wrote...

Removing save imports would be a terrible idea. It would render all of your choices pointless.

This.

They already ARE pointless.

For now, doesn't mean they will be in the future.

Bioware have made three games now where importing pretty much does squat. How long are you going to keep believing empty promises and unrealized "potential"?

Modifié par marshalleck, 06 octobre 2012 - 10:33 .

[ScarMK]

marshalleck wrote...

ScarMK wrote...

marshalleck wrote...

SeismicGravy wrote...

Master Xanthan wrote...

Removing save imports would be a terrible idea. It would render all of your choices pointless.

This.

They already ARE pointless.

For now, doesn't mean they will be in the future.

Bioware have made three games now where importing pretty much does squat. How long are you going to keep believing empty promises and unrealized "potential"?

I do hope you're referring to Mass Effect to having three games.  Da2 was rushed to hell and the cameos were simply there to appease some people.  I'm willing to wait until DA3 comes out and see how "pointless" our choices are.