491 réponses à ce sujet

[Navasha]

To me what makes Skyrim and Morrowind great games (Yes, I am purposely leaving out Oblivion), is the ability to just wander and do your own thing.

The quests in Skyrim are rather shallow and weak. If you are the type of person that wants to complete quests as quickly as possible and fast travels to the marker, completes the quest, and fast travels back, I can see Skyrim getting very old very quickly.

However, if you are like me and goes into town, talks to everybody, acquires every quest they can, then goes out, picks a direction and just wanders that way, explores caves and dungeons as you find them, quest or not, you will love games like Skyrim. Oh, and make sure you disable quest markers. Its about the exploration; of finding what is over that next hill.

If DA:I can take that as inspiration from Skyrim, that would be great! Exploration is about the thrill of discovery. Have a few dungeons that have absolutely no quest for them at all. You find it by mere chance and discover an amazing story inside. There is something really great about stumbling across something, its like finding a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk. It just makes you feel good.

[nightscrawl]

Brodoteau wrote...

My problem with any open world within a set story-line is that it takes away the sense of urgency. In BG if you wandered off to fight the Ogre Magi on the Sea Coast on your way to the Nashkel mines, you could justify it by thinking that you were discovering all possibilities for why the mines weren't working... or something. In BG2 and DAO though, wandering and side-questing sometimes felt downright irresponsible. In BG2 after all, your childhood friend has been kidnapped and your spending some time to fight druids that have gone crazy? Or fight dragons that have manipulated you? In DAO it was the same thing: Oh sure, I'll deliver your lyrium to that guy three towns away, we've got time (even as the Blight consumes everything). 

Now I understand that the side quests are almost necessary to make you feel more powerful, but an open-world does take away the urgency of the main quest if the world waits for you to be done some fetch quest so you can get a magic sword.

I've felt this too. It's one of the reasons that the sense of urgency for deciding to not go to the mage tower when making the Connor/Isolde decision falls flat. The NPCs may say that there is not enough time, but there is. By comparison, it's great that Lothering is actully destroyed after a time (sorry Hawke...), and that if you don't help Redcliffe, there is actually a bad result.

[Heimdall]

I just hope Bioware means to create bigger and better environments to traverse. That's really all I think they'll draw.

I mean, say what you want about characters, but Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls game and I found it a joy to simply explore the beautiful world they made. One minute I'm wandering through a blizzard on a mountainside, no clear idea where I'm going, then the sky clears and I see an aurora in the night sky and ancient ruins silhouetted against the stars, the ambient music: It was awesome. Lost some of the novelty after the first dozen hours or so, but if Bioware could work some of that effect into their art style it would be great.

[d-boy15]

I think if they need some guild lines, the witcher 2 would be better for bioware style than skyrim.

[Elhanan]

 Be it open world or not, I would choose to lose a sense of urgency in order to gain a better game if DA or Skyrim are held as examples. Same for many PnP games, as I prefer to suspend belief in order to weave a better tale.

And personally, I prefer Mages vs Templars with Elves struggling for respect and recognition over hating almost every High Elf in the game. Both were fun, but the latter was a bit too stereotypical for my taste.

P.S. Pls do not disble quest and map markers; hate to wait for the modding folks to activate them again.

Modifié par Elhanan, 09 décembre 2012 - 06:19 .

[MarchWaltz]

DA3 needs modding tools. No question 'bout it.

Skyrim came out a year ago. I have 300 hours clocked in and I am STILL playing it, a year after the fact. A year guys. I played DA2 twice and ditched it. Even on the second playthrough it was getting old. That was probably because everything was recycled.

That's another thing. Don't insult your customers by recycling the same old crap and thinking you "people" can get away with it. You can't.

[Elhanan]

MarchWaltz wrote...

DA3 needs modding tools. No question 'bout it.

Skyrim came out a year ago. I have 300 hours clocked in and I am STILL playing it, a year after the fact. A year guys. I played DA2 twice and ditched it. Even on the second playthrough it was getting old. That was probably because everything was recycled.

That's another thing. Don't insult your customers by recycling the same old crap and thinking you "people" can get away with it. You can't.

I have ca.300 hrs in DA2; almost 1350 in Skyrim, a score of full playthroughs in DAO (ie; 2000+), and over a decade of play in NWN1; have enjoyed all of them. If we can get a DA story with an immersive world, customizable Character Creation and development, and optional rule sets for misc things like Crafting, I will not mind setting aside funds now to enjoy next year or so.

Agree that modding tools would be helpful, as some of the Techies can really do a great job of augmenting the game and bypassing the bugs.

[Plaintiff]

The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...

From what I know of the ES series, no, they have not. Skyrim's main story is not the same as Oblivion's. They're similar in that they're save the world stories, but they are not "the same simple stories" because they have different reasons for happening, different characters as a part of the main story, and so on.

Yes it is. They tick the same boxes every time. The fact that you're always a prophesied hero preventing a world-ending catastrophe is grating enough, but they don't even try very hard to disguise the fact that they've been using the same story skeleton for years and just cram a handful of random words in the blank spaces.

And while I can't comment on the faction quests, I highly doubt Oblivion had the same exact stories as sKyrim's factions do.

Go places, steal things/murder people/cast spells, reapeat ad nauseum until you defeat the main antagonist and become leader of said faction, being promoted over people who have been in it for years and years. It doesn't matter if you're defeating Mannimarco, King of Worms, or... whoever it was in Skyrim, I never found out because I didn't finish. Once you've seen one evil wizard, you've seen them all.

I never said the stories were the "exact" same. They are not different enough to be interesting, and they're incredibly transparent. But an abysmal lack of creativity has been plaguing Western Fantasy ever since Tolkien poisoned the well, so I guess it would be unfair to accuse Bethesda of being complete hacks when that's really just par for the course.

I never said that the world of Thedas was a gleaming gem of originality. It isn't. But the characters are vastly more interesting and that makes all the difference.

[Plaintiff]

MarchWaltz wrote...

DA3 needs modding tools. No question 'bout it.

Skyrim came out a year ago. I have 300 hours clocked in and I am STILL playing it, a year after the fact. A year guys. I played DA2 twice and ditched it. Even on the second playthrough it was getting old. That was probably because everything was recycled.

That's another thing. Don't insult your customers by recycling the same old crap and thinking you "people" can get away with it. You can't.

Bioware games are story-driven, not open-world. They're not designed for longevity or exploration, they're designed to be finished.

Who cares how many hours you log in a single-player game? The company already got its money before you even started playing.

[Plaintiff]

Filament wrote...

Evidently MarchWaltz cares and it's relevant to his/her purchasing decision for DA3.

But the Dragon Age series was always story-driven, and always had much, much, much less content than any Elder Scrolls game ever. The two series work on completely disparate (I would say almost incompatible) design philosophies.

If MarchWaltz demands extreme longevity in his or her videogames, I wonder that they bothered with Bioware's offerings at all.

Modifié par Plaintiff, 09 décembre 2012 - 07:18 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Holy crap. I have invested 160 hours into Shogun 2 and felt that was taking up huge chunks of my time :S

[Sylvianus]

If this article is true, this is good. A good influence.

Customization ( I want many armors and outfits ), a big world that feels alive, ( and beautiful with a good artstyle, otherwise it serves no purpose to do it... )

To be honest I wasn't really bothered with a linear world in DAO, ( even in DA2..) But that was before. After Skyrim which I am currently playing, yes, I would definitely think it would be a bit boring now even if It isn't really necessary for me... It is a good thing in a fantasy game and rpg to be bothered by something else than the story and the characters.

Times change, minds change.

Modifié par Sylvianus, 09 décembre 2012 - 09:37 .

[Elhanan]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Holy crap. I have invested 160 hours into Shogun 2 and felt that was taking up huge chunks of my time :S

Well, in my case, I am now homebound and unemployed; not recommended. But I do like playing CRPG's.

[The Teyrn of Whatever]

Villiamus wrote...

MODEDIT: Fixing link.

http://www.tgdaily.c...ore-like-skyrim


what do you think good or bad, I personally think good if bioware melds the explorabiliy of skyrim and the great writing they've done before your looking at a high dragon of a game.

Skyrim is a nice-looking tech demo for Fallout 4 (whoops did I say that aloud?) er, I mean game. If BioWare chooses to take a cue from Bethsoft as far as aesthetics go, more power to them, just so long as the resemblance ends there. Story and characters has never really been Bethesda's forte...

[Yrkoon]

Guiverno wrote...

These games are very different. Exploration could suit DAIII unless it ends up diluting the main plot. Personally, I attach more importance to writing, although it's true that I would like to see a somewhat more open world.

Meh, the concepts aren't mutually exclusive.   You can have tons of both, and the game will be better for it. People have been citing BG1 on this thread.  It's a fine example.  Its open world *enriched* its story, as the player was able to *witness* the effects that the Iron shortage was having on the Sword Coast first hand (for example), instead of just hearing the plot characters talk about it in some boringly linear fashion.

That, plus there are  many types of stories and plots that simply work better with an open world.  "Civil War"/Faction conflict type storylines almost  HAVE to be done in a large, explorable world setting, otherwise they lose their depth and much of their meaning.  Same with Mystery/Conspiracy type plots. It makes for a much better story when a who-done-it spans  multiple towns and settlements and the player must travel  from one end of the map to the other to gather evidence and learn what really happened, as opposed to just going door-to-door on one street to pick up clues. or whatever

Modifié par Yrkoon, 10 décembre 2012 - 12:04 .

[Pelle6666]

I think it looks more like mass effect. Those plains reminded me of the mako missions and the ruins of Ilos. I doubt they will take much from skyrim except visual input and layout if more open areas. We'll probably recognize the result as a DA game after all.

[LPPrince]

As far as hours and playthroughs go, I never finished my second playthrough of DA2. How many hours did I get out of it, probably 60-70 since I got far into my second playthrough before I gave up.

Skyrim, one playthrough, 400+ hours thus far. Still playing it.

So anything that can make something like that happen is gooooood.

[StElmo]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I have replaced the link. (You shouldn't have a virus, but it was jumping through some ad system)

THANKS ALAN!

[Allan Schumacher]

Haha, my most time spent in any single game is EU3 (I am not counting Football Manager since I literally just kept that open in a window)

I can't imagine coming close to a thousand hours on any single game.  Maaaaaaaaaaaybe the original XCOM (but I have no stats for that), but even then that was 2 month summer holidays where I played that and even at 15 hours a day that's still only 900 hours!  LOL.

[In Exile]

Navasha wrote...
If DA:I can take that as inspiration from Skyrim, that would be great! Exploration is about the thrill of discovery. Have a few dungeons that have absolutely no quest for them at all. You find it by mere chance and discover an amazing story inside. There is something really great about stumbling across something, its like finding a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk. It just makes you feel good.

Or the most annoying thing in the world, like having to take a subway, a bus, and another bus to get to buy mild, and then have to do all fof that to get back home all over again.

[Yrkoon]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Haha, my most time spent in any single game is EU3 (I am not counting Football Manager since I literally just kept that open in a window)

I can't imagine coming close to a thousand hours on any single game. Maaaaaaaaaaaybe the original XCOM (but I have no stats for that), but even then that was 2 month summer holidays where I played that and even at 15 hours a day that's still only 900 hours! LOL.

Well, for me, I don't buy a lot of games. Usually just one or 2 per year (and I haven't bought any this year, for example), so my gaming time isn't spread out on a ton of games.

I'm pretty sure that the "average" gamer spends about the same amount of hours per year gaming as I do, it's just that he'll probably spend those hours playing a dozen games, instead of just one or 2 like me.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 10 décembre 2012 - 12:38 .