3855 réponses à ce sujet

[Scott Sion]

TheJediSaint wrote...

silentassassin264 wrote...

I didn't mind people calling me knife-ear. It let me know who to kill next.

Strange, I felt the same way about shem...

When someone insults me my first instinct isn't to run up and stab them, but I respect your life style....  sort of.

[silentassassin264]

Well then you clearly need to play renegade more.

[Scott Sion]

silentassassin264 wrote...

Well then you clearly need to play renegade more.

I know I'm being much too reasonable and understanding.

[TMZuk]

Brohammed wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...
For those that feel this is a necessary component to "making the character theirs" I'm curious what peoples thoughts are to games like the Ultima ones, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Knights of the Old Republic, or even Planescape: Torment.

The Ultima series never had race options, KotoR never had race options, Jade Empire never had race options etc.

Try to imagine a new Baulders Gate without race customization,  if you will. 

QFT

This is excactly the point. Bioware started the series out with the ability to choose between races  and with playable prologues. That did set the scene. It was new, it was original and it was exciting. I expected them to elaborate on the idea, enhance it and refine it.

And then it was gone.

It's so much wasted potential and frankly, I can't see how Bioware will make up for it. DA2 was an epic failure. Admittedly, there was many reasons for that, not just the lack of origins. But it was definately ~one~ of the many things missing from the original game, that created this lackluster and dull sequel.

Then there's the tired comparison with Planescape: Torment. Please..... First of all, PS:T had one protagonists, yes. A male human. But, who was he? The whole game was a quest for this human male to rediscover who he was. So it did not feel like a character forced upon you, it felt as blank slate when the game opened. It was, however, much more than a blank slate character, it was genius.

But, Bioware is not going to make a new PS:T. Not with a voiced protagonist and the present day demand for "awesome buttons" in CRPGs. PS:T was walls of text, and long periods simply pondering the choices before you. It was slowpaced, elaborate and intellectual. In short, a far cry removed from the Dragon Age franchise, even though that franchise is scizophrenic. What ever it is, it isn't slowpaced and elaborate.

The point remains: Bioware started out with a cool feature, and then removed it. That is the wrong way to go for any sequel.

Modifié par TMZuk, 24 octobre 2012 - 02:53 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Brohammed wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...
For those that feel this is a necessary component to "making the character theirs" I'm curious what peoples thoughts are to games like the Ultima ones, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Knights of the Old Republic, or even Planescape: Torment.

The Ultima series never had race options, KotoR never had race options, Jade Empire never had race options etc.

Try to imagine a new Baulders Gate without race customization,  if you will. 

I can.

[LobselVith8]

silentassassin264 wrote...

I didn't mind people calling me knife-ear. It let me know who to kill next.

That reminds me of when my Warden encountered Vaughan, imprisoned.

[Dominus]

Race customization to me will always be icing on the cake, but isn't a deal breaker. I had an interest in DA:O's race choices less due to customizing, but more due to the origins themselves. It reminded me of something Seiken Densetzu 3 attempted with having pre-built stories based on your character(s).

In the interests of autonomy and personal player freedom, yes - the more races, the better. But as has been alluded to earlier, there may be too much engrained within the narrative, dialogue, etc. that isn't going to make it possible.(Or at least financially reasonable)

Modifié par DominusVita, 24 octobre 2012 - 03:09 .

[Palipride47]

LobselVith8 wrote...

silentassassin264 wrote...

I didn't mind people calling me knife-ear. It let me know who to kill next.

That reminds me of when my Warden encountered Vaughan, imprisoned.

That reminds of when Vaughn kidnapped me.

There were no survivors......

[Ser Fish]

I admit I'm a little disappointed I can't play a dwarf or a qunari. And I had names and backstories picked out for them, too...
I can live with playing a human, but I can understand why other people might be upset. It was a great feature in DA:O and I can understand people feeling cheated that it was removed. I personally hope it does come back in a future game.

No matter what race we are, I do hope we keep options for being arbitrarily racist to elves. That's always hilarious.
(I kid. I don't hate city elves, only dalish elves, the smug bastards.)

[Icinix]

Palipride47 wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

silentassassin264 wrote...

I didn't mind people calling me knife-ear. It let me know who to kill next.

That reminds me of when my Warden encountered Vaughan, imprisoned.

That reminds of when Vaughn kidnapped me.

There were no survivors......

That reminds me of when Vaughan kidnapped Shianni....

They were killed like dogs.

[Rawgrim]

Brohammed wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...
For those that feel this is a necessary component to "making the character theirs" I'm curious what peoples thoughts are to games like the Ultima ones, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Knights of the Old Republic, or even Planescape: Torment.

The Ultima series never had race options, KotoR never had race options, Jade Empire never had race options etc.

Try to imagine a new Baulders Gate without race customization,  if you will. 

Pretty much this. Ultima only has the human race to begin with. No elves in that setting.

Kotor never let you play anything other than human to begin with. But I do wish we could have played other races in it, sure.

Jade Empire. Set in ancient China (I think?). No elves there.

Planescape Torment: A sick amount of potential character development. Still...could have had a better character creation bit at the beginning. Being so chock full of every possible rp option known to man, i hardly noticed.

Baldur`s Gate with no racial options wouldn`t have been half the game it was.

[Palipride47]

Ser Fish wrote...

I admit I'm a little disappointed I can't play a dwarf or a qunari. And I had names and backstories picked out for them, too...
I can live with playing a human, but I can understand why other people might be upset. It was a great feature in DA:O and I can understand people feeling cheated that it was removed. I personally hope it does come back in a future game.

No matter what race we are, I do hope we keep options for being arbitrarily racist to elves. That's always hilarious.
(I kid. I don't hate city elves, only dalish elves, the smug bastards.)

Arbitrarily? Madam, I have perfectly good reasons to hate elves 

I kinda miss being a jerk to humans, though. Maybe we can be jerks to specific nationalities, like Orlesians. (I mean, they're ORLESIANS!)

Icinix wrote...

Palipride47 wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

silentassassin264 wrote... 

I didn't mind people calling me knife-ear. It let me know who to kill next.

That reminds me of when my Warden encountered Vaughan, imprisoned.

That reminds of when Vaughn kidnapped me.

There were no survivors......

That reminds me of when Vaughan kidnapped Shianni....

They were killed like dogs.

I ALWAYS get a nice "finishing move" when killing him (of the "head-on, head-off" variety). It is the gift that keeps on giving. It is also why I cannot play male Hawke in DA2 (and I've tried, a lot)

Related to thread: I hope we get nice story changes based on backgrounds (some that are even bigger i.e. return to a village in Tevinter or whatever, everyone remembers you)

Modifié par Palipride47, 24 octobre 2012 - 03:29 .

[Brohammed]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Brohammed wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...
For those that feel this is a necessary component to "making the character theirs" I'm curious what peoples thoughts are to games like the Ultima ones, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Knights of the Old Republic, or even Planescape: Torment.

The Ultima series never had race options, KotoR never had race options, Jade Empire never had race options etc.

Try to imagine a new Baulders Gate without race customization,  if you will. 

I can.

And it would be mega-lame.

[Rawgrim]

I am not sure BG2 would have been as popular with a human only option. Probably wouldn`t have gotten an enhanced edition either. Just speculation on my part, though.

Modifié par Rawgrim, 24 octobre 2012 - 03:39 .

[Uzzy]

Mims wrote...

I think its obvious that adding additional races would take money and time. But it still feels ...concerning that that's the first thing bioware thinks to cut, when it was one of the more liked features of origin. And perhaps most rpgs.

I mean, look at project eternity, and how excited people got with adding races to the campaign. People want to play through a story. They want to feel like its 'theirs'. You can obviously still have that with a human centric story, but its one more block that you're going to have to go through. The story is going to have to be damn good for people to go, "ok, I see why it wouldn't work."

And by a lot of talk here, it went from story issues to money issues. So that's a little concerning in itself.

Bioware are all about the money now. It's quite sad really, to see them go from a 'lets make great games, and to do that we need money' policy to a 'lets make lots of money, and to do that we need to make games that turn us a quick profit' policy.

[Rawgrim]

Uzzy wrote...

Mims wrote...

I think its obvious that adding additional races would take money and time. But it still feels ...concerning that that's the first thing bioware thinks to cut, when it was one of the more liked features of origin. And perhaps most rpgs.

I mean, look at project eternity, and how excited people got with adding races to the campaign. People want to play through a story. They want to feel like its 'theirs'. You can obviously still have that with a human centric story, but its one more block that you're going to have to go through. The story is going to have to be damn good for people to go, "ok, I see why it wouldn't work."

And by a lot of talk here, it went from story issues to money issues. So that's a little concerning in itself.

Bioware are all about the money now. It's quite sad really, to see them go from a 'lets make great games, and to do that we need money' policy to a 'lets make lots of money, and to do that we need to make games that turn us a quick profit' policy.

in all fairness; games do cost alot more money to make these days, than they did when the BG games came out. Everything is fully voiced now. that alone pushes the price up quite abit, i would think.

[Allan Schumacher]

And it would be mega-lame.

Disagree. Then again, I never identified Baldur's Gate's race customization as being particularly essential. The only way it was was that I was forced to play as a Human because Paladin was my preferred class. Race was a nice to have, but especially for myself as a game player at the time, it pretty much only served as a way to reallocate my attribute points and garner particular power gaming type advantages.

Pretty much this. Ultima only has the human race to begin with. No elves in that setting.

To be perfectly frank, I consider this an exceptionally weak argument.

Ultima didn't have elves, but they did have Gargoyles/Daemons, trolls, and a variety of other nonhuman, sentient species.

Planescape was a game set in a rules universe that had a strong history of racial selection, but forced the player to be a Human Male. Of course, then people make the excuse for it "Well BioWare isn't going to make a PST" which is just mental gymnastics to prevent cognitive dissonance. Jesus I could go on almost forever for the vast variety of races that exist in this game that can never even become a part of your party, let alone are not the main protagonist of the game.


Going "Well, it was the only race" only serves to reinforce that racial selection is not an essential part of roleplaying, because the only way for your predicate to be true, would mean that a game that does not even have different races cannot possibly offer the same level of roleplaying. It's a logical contradiction.

I'm not buying it.


As for "Baldur`s Gate with no racial options wouldn`t have been half the game it was." I think that's an immense disservice to the game and trivializes so much of what made it wonderful. The second one especially.

People like Minsc, Jaheira, Viconia, Edwin, and Imoen would all still be amazingly interesting characters even if they were all human. The only racial context that serves any meaning is Viconia, which essentially boils down to a woman in a matriarchal society that breaks free of it's oppressive rule and finds herself battling extreme fear and prejudices when walking among different societies.

At this point I guess we agree to disagree, because good story and good writing transcends those details. That the plot of each Baldur's Gate is indifferent to your race demonstrates this. I'd still love the game if it existed in a fantasy setting like Ultima's, and the NPCs fit their archetypes but were still human.

[labargegrrrl]

walked away from the thread for a couple of days to do, you know, LIFE stuff. and then...

it's become utterly unholy at this point.

please just kill it now?

[Gamemako]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Take nothing as an admission of anything... Please don't read more into what I'm saying as it only discourages me from posting for fear that more stuff will be misinterpreted and taken with a greater degree of authenticity based upon said interpretations.

But that's no fun. We're here to speculate and pick apart everything you say in excruciating detail until we're not sure what we actually started with. It's kinda like politics, except without an agenda!

//EDIT: Come to think of it, some people here do have an agenda...

Modifié par Gamemako, 24 octobre 2012 - 04:06 .

[Rawgrim]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

And it would be mega-lame.

Disagree. Then again, I never identified Baldur's Gate's race customization as being particularly essential. The only way it was was that I was forced to play as a Human because Paladin was my preferred class. Race was a nice to have, but especially for myself as a game player at the time, it pretty much only served as a way to reallocate my attribute points and garner particular power gaming type advantages.

Pretty much this. Ultima only has the human race to begin with. No elves in that setting.

To be perfectly frank, I consider this an exceptionally weak argument.

Ultima didn't have elves, but they did have Gargoyles/Daemons, trolls, and a variety of other nonhuman, sentient species.

Planescape was a game set in a rules universe that had a strong history of racial selection, but forced the player to be a Human Male. Of course, then people make the excuse for it "Well BioWare isn't going to make a PST" which is just mental gymnastics to prevent cognitive dissonance. Jesus I could go on almost forever for the vast variety of races that exist in this game that can never even become a part of your party, let alone are not the main protagonist of the game.


Going "Well, it was the only race" only serves to reinforce that racial selection is not an essential part of roleplaying, because the only way for your predicate to be true, would mean that a game that does not even have different races cannot possibly offer the same level of roleplaying. It's a logical contradiction.

I'm not buying it.


As for "Baldur`s Gate with no racial options wouldn`t have been half the game it was." I think that's an immense disservice to the game and trivializes so much of what made it wonderful. The second one especially.

People like Minsc, Jaheira, Viconia, Edwin, and Imoen would all still be amazingly interesting characters even if they were all human. The only racial context that serves any meaning is Viconia, which essentially boils down to a woman in a matriarchal society that breaks free of it's oppressive rule and finds herself battling extreme fear and prejudices when walking among different societies.

At this point I guess we agree to disagree, because good story and good writing transcends those details. That the plot of each Baldur's Gate is indifferent to your race demonstrates this. I'd still love the game if it existed in a fantasy setting like Ultima's, and the NPCs fit their archetypes but were still human.

I think you are missing the point. The thing with ultima is that your character is from Earth. He gets transported into a fantasy world via a moongate.

And the strength of BG is the replayability. People still play that one religiously, because they can play so many race\\class variation. The mod community is still going very strong, as well. This is not the case for Planescape. However great Planescape was, it has a more limited replay value than the BG games has (or icewind dale for that matter).

[Rawgrim]

labargegrrrl wrote...

walked away from the thread for a couple of days to do, you know, LIFE stuff. and then...

it's become utterly unholy at this point.

please just kill it now?

Your life got unholy and you want someone to kill it?

[Icinix]

labargegrrrl wrote...

walked away from the thread for a couple of days to do, you know, LIFE stuff. and then...

it's become utterly unholy at this point.

please just kill it now?

I actually think that most of this thread has been pretty good discussion on the merits and cons of various aspects of game design.

[labargegrrrl]

Icinix wrote...

labargegrrrl wrote...

walked away from the thread for a couple of days to do, you know, LIFE stuff. and then...

it's become utterly unholy at this point.

please just kill it now?

I actually think that most of this thread has been pretty good discussion on the merits and cons of various aspects of game design.

and if that's what the thread was supposed to be about, then that would have been great.  

[Allan Schumacher]

in all fairness; games do cost alot more money to make these days, than they did when the BG games came out. Everything is fully voiced now. that alone pushes the price up quite abit, i would think.

I've never been a fan of the idea that we aren't making games that we want to make either. I can understand if a fan feels that we aren't making the game that they want us to make, but part of the reason why we got defensive in light of the backlash of DA2 is that it was a game that we really wanted to do well. I think part of what clouded my perspective, personally, is that it was easier for me to recognize the ideal of a particular feature since I was there during conception and I was excited for the types of prospects it could offer in terms of player agency and whatnot.

It's something that I recognize and I need to remain diligent to not let cloud my perspective, and to try to see things as a fan that has seen something for the first time.


For example, the dominant tone was something that, when I first saw how it worked (completely by accident when I was trying to reproduce a bug for the localization team and I couldn't get a line to display, so I investigated the conversation directly) and went "Oh hey! I didn't realize we were doing this! This is actually pretty cool. It's a system that responds to player choice and provides additional flavor to the character, helps add to replayability, and the things we can do with it seem like they could really add a lot!"

But for some, it's "uh, I feel restricted into having to pick a particular tone now" and "Well, I would have preferred to say that line differently... (or to have chosen it outright from a list)" and other stuff like that.


I know people are quick to blame EA and whatnot for DA2's shortcomings, but I don't believe in that. I think it's on BioWare and that had we had the foresight of the types of challenges we'd end up encountering, we probably would have ended up doing some stuff differently and probably provided a more interesting game for people. I'm not afraid to own up that DA2 had faults, and it's up to me to learn about what I can do better to make sure that DA3 is a better game. But I still enjoy DA2, and there are a lot of aspects about it I really enjoy, and it's still a game that I'm proud to have been a part of, even if it didn't hit the mark for a lot of people.

[LobselVith8]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I know people are quick to blame EA and whatnot for DA2's shortcomings, but I don't believe in that. I think it's on BioWare and that had we had the foresight of the types of challenges we'd end up encountering, we probably would have ended up doing some stuff differently and probably provided a more interesting game for people. I'm not afraid to own up that DA2 had faults, and it's up to me to learn about what I can do better to make sure that DA3 is a better game. But I still enjoy DA2, and there are a lot of aspects about it I really enjoy, and it's still a game that I'm proud to have been a part of, even if it didn't hit the mark for a lot of people.

I can respect that. And thanks for hearing us out.