98 réponses à ce sujet

[Allan Schumacher]

There's always exceptions.

Anyways, I think we've digressed enough.

[Allan Schumacher]

LilyasAvalon wrote...

Now see, this is what I meant and it was my favourite part of DA:O. Killing Howe as a Noble Human felt MUCH more satisfying than killing him as say, a Mage or an Elf. Just like denying Bhelen the throne as the Dwarf Noble was satisfying too.

I agree.  In this sense, I think we'll need to do something different in terms of the application of the backgrounds, since trying to convey those types of personal things don't come across as well.

[Allan Schumacher]

Note: Lets avoid "What is RPG" as well as "If you are/are not buying the game, your opinion is slanted" type stuff.

Thanks!

[Allan Schumacher]

Nerevar-as wrote...

Have you thought of making the backgrounds a kind of sidequest along the story of the game?

I don't know all the ways that they plan on using the backgrounds, but the idea of using the backgrounds to allow for unique sidequests is certainly a possible one.

[Allan Schumacher]

More like "could be"

[Allan Schumacher]

I'd go away from the statistics. The statistics also give an indication that people may be inclined to just pick the default options, so it's not necessarily authoritative.

As for the 700k players, it's also hard to determine whether or not they would have skipped on the game altogether had there not been racial choice. I'm sure some would have, but how many?


The issue starts to come down to, if the story you want to tell makes the most sense with a fixed player race, which race would be the best one to utilize?

[David Gaider]

Rawgrim wrote...
Several people I know won`t be pre-ordering this time. the reason for this was that they would have to play as a human, yet again. Its only 4-5 people, though. But the lack of races was the reason for it.

Good thing you've no need to make that determination yet, as you can't actually pre-order the game.  Once it's announced, then you'll be able to see what we've done and where our resources have gone. If that works for you, then great. If missing the other races can't possibly be made up for by anything else, and it was the only thing that added value for you, then consider yourself duly informed. DA3 won't be for everyone, regardless of what we do.

[David Gaider]

Rawgrim wrote...
Ohh I will wait and see. As I said in the other post (probably got posted while you were typing this one), Its about replayability. 100 dollars for 30 hours of gameplay is a tad expensive.

I'm not sure that racial options are the only other things that add replayability, but sure. I get that. We do make the game with the knowledge that the vast majority of our players only play the game once (if they finish it at all) and thus replayability isn't as high a priority as the player having agency and options within that first playthrough (as well as having a length that is appropriate for a meaty RPG) -- but it's still important. I guess we'll see how that goes once the reveal begins.

[Allan Schumacher]

I ask posters to try to keep the quote pyramids down somewhat. No need to carry on the last 7 posts in a quote when the last (maaaybe last 2) are typically sufficient. Thanks.

[Allan Schumacher]

Drasanil wrote...

Cstaf wrote...

For me wanting multiple races has never been about the game acknowleding that i am non-human. Neither is it about cosmetic reasons. For me it is pure roleplaying reasons. What race the character i am playing will affect how he/she will make decisions during the game.

But... but... how dare you... Bioware said....this doesn't make sense... you can't possibly just roleplay a different race or make those relevant choices like if you have your own interpretation of a character! You need to have Bioware's express permission and guidance to sort through those sorts of infinitely complexe not to mention counter intuitive and likely confusing permutations. Unfortunately,  including all that special stuff (ie: a few extra lines of dialogue and a couple of camera angle adjustments) would just cost too much "oppurtunity".

I'm so confused now, some one suggested I could use my own imagination to fill in the gaps!? If I don't get spoon fed what I'm supposed to do by Hawke facsimile #3974 I may just get an aneurism. Please Bioware help me:( 

These types of posts are unproductive.

[Allan Schumacher]

Lets not deviate too much from the topic of this thread. Witcher discussions, and how they relate to the idea of a human only protagonist are preferred.

Thanks.

[Allan Schumacher]

In your opinion anyway. In mine, humans are deceitful, power hungery jerks whom goal is to enslave anything that's coherently self-aware. Personally an elf seems more "heroic"

I guess we just need to stop hiding the deceitful, power hungry elves then.

[Allan Schumacher]

This is what I am argueing about as well, If Bioware are not including race choice because of short development time and less funds, then say this not say how the story would only work for Human only or how 80% of players were Human.

It's implicitly always the case. With more time and more money, we add more things. Always.

The problem with saying "due to development time" people then assume "then the game isn't being given as much time."


As Mark Darrah said in the wake of Baldur's Gate 2: "Give me a game with infinite resources, and I'll show you a game that never ships." Because we'll always add more stuff if we have more time and money.

So let this be confirmation that you're right, we aren't doing multiple races because we're choosing to spend our finite resources in another way. Since we're only making the game for a single race, it does allow us to cater the story to said race. In this case, the race we chose was human. Some may not like that, but this is the situation where seeing how people choose their races is valuable.

We don't go "Well, only 2% of people play Dwarves. We should just cut dwarves. In fact, most people only play human, so we should cut the others." We go "Okay, we've decided to keep things to one race? Which one should we choose?"

IF your an elf, Merril could be your sis, and her plight and plot could be yours together, the whole Maerithari thing wth the eluvian.

Once you start doing this, then you've started to add more content. Which is fine, you as a game player want more content. But simply going "well if you're an elf, then make Merrill your sister." It's not the same as just allowing the story to exist, as is, but with elves. It requires more work than just creating an elf character model and some GUI screens that let you play as an elf.

[Allan Schumacher]

Wulfram wrote...

So why would this change in future games?  What part of the logic that says that it's not worth spending the  DA2 and DA:I wouldn't apply to any Dragon Age game?

Because it still depends on what type of game we want to deliver.

You're right, there's no guarantee that we don't decide the same thing with future DA games (or other games in general).

There are very much tech reasons for not doing so since we're transitioning to a whole new engine and a lot of the uncertainties that come with that.  In some regards, we hedged our bets and went conservative.  DA2 was the opposite, where we were too ambitious in the scope of what we wanted to do and the timeframe we had to do it in.  I think this contributes a lot to the faults of DA2.

[Allan Schumacher]

It was shown here in this interview how Hawke and dialogue wheel etc were decided on before Origins was released.

That quip at the beginning about how they started looking at the sequel before Origins was released is true. I remember seeing the animatic that they specified, and yes the idea of going with the conversation wheel was already strong prior to the release of Origins.

Funny story, what you saw there stemmed more from ideas for Inquisition than what DA2 ultimately became. Hawke as a character wasn't decided on until after Origins was released.

There was actually several different versions of the dialogue wheel as well. The first iterations only had 4 options show up, with a toggle to 4 additional options as well as an investigate. We ended up not going with it.

In fact, the character shown at 0:52 is NOT Hawke. It was a different character entirely. Aspects of the original animatic that Goldman refers to did end up being utilized in DA2, but that clip doesn't mention that we had decided on a single race playthrough prior to the release of DAO. It says that we started looking at the sequel for Origins before the release of Origins.

[Allan Schumacher]

ianvillan wrote...
The bit I was on about was Matthew Goldman at 1:22 talking about Ulric Von Hawke and how all the art should have him on it.

Eh... Matt Goldman is being pretty silly at that point.  It might not be clear to those that don't know him, but he chimes in with quotes like that all the time.  It's important to note that you're still watching a marketing fluff piece.  Going into the details of how it started as Inquisition (a title that wasn't announced for several years later), but then we spun off of it into Exodus (DA2) is beyond its scope.


I know for a fact that the character, Hawke, wasn't determined before Origins was shipped, because two weeks after Origins was shipped, I was put onto our next project (which technically wasn't actually Dragon Age: Exodus [code name for DA2], but shortly after became Exodus and eventually DA2).

Unfortunately I can only ask you to take my word on this, so if you're skeptical that's fine.  Hawke didn't exist until Exodus existed.  Exodus didn't exist until after Origins released, and was something that came out from what our original thoughts towards a sequel were going to be (which was actually Inquisition).

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 11 janvier 2013 - 11:29 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Cleaned up some recent posts.

[Allan Schumacher]

They can. We do so in The Old Republic.

This isn't a factor for not having multiple races.

[Allan Schumacher]

Bioware has no legitimate reason for wanting to confine DA3 to a human protagonist

If this were the case, then why are we doing it?

[Allan Schumacher]

DAO does a better job of reacting to player character race than the Infinity Engine and Gold Box games did.

[Allan Schumacher]

but I realized that most of my enjoyment playing the different races came from the changes in what I imagined or head canoned as opposed to actual changes in the game.

It should be noted that for some, this is still a significant part of what they enjoy about the choice, even if the game itself doesn't really reflect it from a narrative perspective.

[Allan Schumacher]

Could it have not been? Make Eden Prime a multi-species colony and have Shepherd be someone up for Spectre status, not just the first human Spectre. Make the Collector's attacking all colonies (since they didn't take the "Human Reaper is important" story line anywhere anyway) and, suddenly, you can have Shepherd be a Hanar, let alone a Turian or Salarian.

Shepard being human is quite tied into the game (and trilogy's) story arc.

It's easy to say "well they could have just done it differently," but be careful. I find it is easy to understate the costs associated with features that people want. I think that the changes you suggest would have meant a lot more significant structural changes to the narrative of Mass Effect.

Yes, it "could have" been done differently. But that doesn't make it equivalent. It could have been done worse, or even better. We don't know, but I think it's a bit simple to just write a few lines for the changes that would have been made to make it work. And that's just from a narrative perspective. Other costs haven't really been factored.

Fast Jimmy wrote...

The Infinity Engine was a popular
engine for making RPG's in the late 90's/early 2000's that typically
involved an isometric camera view. Examples are Baldur's Gate or Fallout.

I have seen this mentioned in the past and on other forums, but Fallout was not made on the Infinity Engine.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 30 mai 2013 - 08:53 .

[Allan Schumacher]

just wanted to put my 2 cents in and state that ANOTHER person is pissed at bioware for listening to EA

This decision was hardly motivated by any sort of "Corporate EA" influence.


As for voicing your displeasure, that's in large part why I went with this thread (it was easier to track, and some people got upset [justifiably] because I had closed off some other threads at the time because they got VERY hostile very quickly).

[Allan Schumacher]

Actually, DA2's lesser sales figures are often attributed to boycotting of the product by Elven and Dwarven protest groups.

In my experience, people typically feel that the lesser sales of a game like DA2 is because of whatever feature it is that they dislike the most.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 31 mai 2013 - 08:00 .