38 réponses à ce sujet

[Fast Jimmy]

SpEcIaLRyAn wrote...

You can't argue that the opening to ME2 wasn't incredible. It was. But it made more sense to be thrust right into the action since it was the same character in the same story.

ME2's "action" wasn't action at all. For the first ten minutes, you walked through the Normandy as it fell apart (with no time limit, giving you plenty of time to acquaint yourself with the controls). You talked to the VS and Joker (showing you how the dialogue system worked). You walked some more. You watched a cutscene of you "dying." You watch another cutscene of you being "brought back to life." Then you begin a tutorial level that teaches the basics of how to select a weapon and how to use cover. You then join a companion, who teaches you how to use both your powers, as well as the powers of your team mate. You go through a level that teaches you all basic mechanics you need to know, such as using medigel, opening doors and hitting switches.

What you see as "actiony" I see as a good integration of story, tutorial and gameplay.

DA2 drops you into a mud slide of a level (both in design as well as visually), giving you zero time to acquaint yourself with controls, characters or story. It fails on practically every level you can fail in setting up a game.

With DA2 it was a little out of place because we didn't know these people yet. Sure we can say "Oh he/she lost his/her sibling. How awful." But we don't really feel it because we don't know who he is really.

In Origins the Human Noble Origin, for example, introduced to the characters and gave us ample time to talk with them and interact with them. Than when the Couslands die we feel that sense of pain and urge to get revenge on Howe. Which to this day still remains one of my most favorite plot devices of that game.

The point of bringing up the two different openers of Origins and ME2 is that the opener should be different depending on what the setting is like. In the case of DA2 it would've benefited from some more build up and understanding.

A game doesn't have to have tons of dialogue to be an opening that focuses on story. ME2 didn't have lots of dialogue, but it had no combat until about fifteen/twenty minutes in. You felt the tension and the story of your ship, your crew, your world being torn apart... and you didn't shoot a single bullet until the second or third room in the Cereberus base mission (the SECOND mission area of the game). 

If you give your character a weapon and have them kill something within the first two minutes of your game, then you have started out on the wrong foot of focusing on story and letting your player immerse themselves. Even Gears of War doesn't do this. They have aciton-y openings... but they don't have COMBAT focused openings. Even games like the old school CoD, where you open with a storming of the beaches of Normandy, have opening segments where you can look around (to see a rookie puking his guts out) and then walking before throwing you into total combat. 

DA2 gave you, literally, zero time to acquaint yourself with the game before you were fighitng. It demanded that you start banging on the "A" button as soon as you hit the ground. It is destructive to the video game experience, not to mention the story-telling one.



I feel this came about, as I feel so much of DA2 came about, from people sitting around talking about what "sounded cool." And not taking the decades of video gaming experience and why it works into consideration before committing to it as a design concept.

[Plaintiff]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Plaintiff: They explored a town with three total buildings I could enter - "fully"?

I think so. What more is there to learn about Lothering? Let's not pretend, here. It's a ****ty little village, same as all the ****ty little villages in every RPG. The Blight was probably the first and last interesting thing to ever happen to it. I'll happily forego bull**** tutorial "quests" about fetching the neighbour's chickens and killing giant rats in the tavern's cellar.

I'm roleplaying. Hawke is not me, he is a character I am playing. I do not need to know anything about Lothering, or its people, to understand that Hawke, who's built a whole life there, will be sad to see it destroyed. Unless he's a complete sociopath.

[KingGunDragon]

I have always felt like you should have started in lothering for the intro then if your werent a mage you go to Ostagar with Carver for a bit an tell you realize its a hopeless battle and run back to save your family.

And if you were a mage you could have stayed in lothering and have to do some thing with Bethany.

I have only played a warrior through DA2 so i never really got to know carver other then watching my room mate play mage. So the death just felt kinda cheap. Where had i been with the family in lothering for a bit and then had carver fight at my side at Ostagar I would have been pissed that the ogre had killed him but in a good way.

Also i was rather found of the Couslands story it pissed me off that how killed all but my brother and i want him dead. that drove me through the hole DA1 story although my chacter became more at peace after meeting the keeper of the ashes and doing the whole trial thing.

[Uhh.. Jonah]

Plaintiff wrote...

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Plaintiff: They explored a town with three total buildings I could enter - "fully"?

I think so. What more is there to learn about Lothering? Let's not pretend, here. It's a ****ty little village, same as all the ****ty little villages in every RPG. The Blight was probably the first and last interesting thing to ever happen to it. I'll happily forego bull**** tutorial "quests" about fetching the neighbour's chickens and killing giant rats in the tavern's cellar.

I'm roleplaying. Hawke is not me, he is a character I am playing. I do not need to know anything about Lothering, or its people, to understand that Hawke, who's built a whole life there, will be sad to see it destroyed. Unless he's a complete sociopath.

It's not so much that I want to learn about Lothering, it's more that I want to learn about the establishment of the characters. You know, maybe then I would have felt something when Bethany or Carver died. It would have made that scene a lot stronger for me.

[Plaintiff]

Uhh.. Jonah wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Plaintiff: They explored a town with three total buildings I could enter - "fully"?

I think so. What more is there to learn about Lothering? Let's not pretend, here. It's a ****ty little village, same as all the ****ty little villages in every RPG. The Blight was probably the first and last interesting thing to ever happen to it. I'll happily forego bull**** tutorial "quests" about fetching the neighbour's chickens and killing giant rats in the tavern's cellar.

I'm roleplaying. Hawke is not me, he is a character I am playing. I do not need to know anything about Lothering, or its people, to understand that Hawke, who's built a whole life there, will be sad to see it destroyed. Unless he's a complete sociopath.

It's not so much that I want to learn about Lothering, it's more that I want to learn about the establishment of the characters. You know, maybe then I would have felt something when Bethany or Carver died. It would have made that scene a lot stronger for me.

I don't believe Bioware intended for players to personally shed a tear over the death of Hawke's sibling anymore than they expected them to weep over the many, many early party members that have died horribly in the introductions of Bioware games.

Modifié par Plaintiff, 21 décembre 2012 - 08:22 .

[Uhh.. Jonah]

Plaintiff wrote...

Uhh.. Jonah wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Plaintiff: They explored a town with three total buildings I could enter - "fully"?

I think so. What more is there to learn about Lothering? Let's not pretend, here. It's a ****ty little village, same as all the ****ty little villages in every RPG. The Blight was probably the first and last interesting thing to ever happen to it. I'll happily forego bull**** tutorial "quests" about fetching the neighbour's chickens and killing giant rats in the tavern's cellar.

I'm roleplaying. Hawke is not me, he is a character I am playing. I do not need to know anything about Lothering, or its people, to understand that Hawke, who's built a whole life there, will be sad to see it destroyed. Unless he's a complete sociopath.

It's not so much that I want to learn about Lothering, it's more that I want to learn about the establishment of the characters. You know, maybe then I would have felt something when Bethany or Carver died. It would have made that scene a lot stronger for me.

I don't believe Bioware intended for players to personally shed a tear over the death of Hawke's sibling anymore than they expected them to weep over the many, many early party members that have died horribly in the introductions of Bioware games.

It doesn't really matter what their intention was, it's how the player feels at that point. Without any sort of proper introduction to that character who died then the scene is rendered weak. 

[Plaintiff]

Uhh.. Jonah wrote...

It doesn't really matter what their intention was, it's how the player feels at that point. Without any sort of proper introduction to that character who died then the scene is rendered weak. 

But it's obviously not how the player feels at that point, since you just said you don't feel that way when Hawke's sibling dies, because you don't know them well enough. So if Bioware didn't  intend for you to care, then they got the exact reaction that they were hoping for.

You think that the early death of Bethany or Carver is supposed to be emotional for the player. There's no reason to assume that would be the case.

[Uhh.. Jonah]

Plaintiff wrote...

Uhh.. Jonah wrote...

It doesn't really matter what their intention was, it's how the player feels at that point. Without any sort of proper introduction to that character who died then the scene is rendered weak. 

But it's obviously not how the player feels at that point, since you just said you don't feel that way when Hawke's sibling dies, because you don't know them well enough. So if Bioware didn't  intend for you to care, then they got the exact reaction that they were hoping for.

You think that the early death of Bethany or Carver is supposed to be emotional for the player. There's no reason to assume that would be the case.

Are you saying that if the intention of the developers matched the feeling of the player, even though the feeling might be bad, it's right anyway?

I don't want to argue about whatever the developer's intention was for that scene, because really, we'll never accurately know. What I do know is that that scene was unmoving and forced, whether they wanted it or not. 

[Realmzmaster]

I have no problem with the beginning of DA2. Varric is telling the story and relating events of what happened. The beginning part of the story was related to Varric by either Hawke, Aveline, Bethany, Carver or Leandra. Being the story teller he is Varric is not going to start the story with family life in Lothering.
Varric is the kind of story teller who starts with a bang. Fleeing Lothering is that bang.

The Origins used for DAO was another plot device that worked. Some on those Origins threw the PC right into the action. It boils down to taste and preference. Either one works for me.

[Plaintiff]

Uhh.. Jonah wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Uhh.. Jonah wrote...

It doesn't really matter what their intention was, it's how the player feels at that point. Without any sort of proper introduction to that character who died then the scene is rendered weak. 

But it's obviously not how the player feels at that point, since you just said you don't feel that way when Hawke's sibling dies, because you don't know them well enough. So if Bioware didn't  intend for you to care, then they got the exact reaction that they were hoping for.

You think that the early death of Bethany or Carver is supposed to be emotional for the player. There's no reason to assume that would be the case.

Are you saying that if the intention of the developers matched the feeling of the player, even though the feeling might be bad, it's right anyway?

I don't want to argue about whatever the developer's intention was for that scene, because really, we'll never accurately know. What I do know is that that scene was unmoving and forced, whether they wanted it or not. 

As opposed to the deaths of Jenkins, Wilson, Mhairi, Daveth, Jory and so on, which were all total tearjerkers?

[Medhia Nox]

Actually - I would have rather had Alistair die than Daveth. I liked what I saw of him - and disliked what I knew of Jory.

The Hawke's felt like refugees - not Lothering residents. At "least" have them start out fleeing their homestead for crying out loud.

While I do NOT agree with it 100% of the time - "Show" don't "TEll" is a very important part of current storytelling tradition.

Modifié par Medhia Nox, 21 décembre 2012 - 09:11 .

[Uhh.. Jonah]

Plaintiff wrote...

Uhh.. Jonah wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Uhh.. Jonah wrote...

It doesn't really matter what their intention was, it's how the player feels at that point. Without any sort of proper introduction to that character who died then the scene is rendered weak. 

But it's obviously not how the player feels at that point, since you just said you don't feel that way when Hawke's sibling dies, because you don't know them well enough. So if Bioware didn't  intend for you to care, then they got the exact reaction that they were hoping for.

You think that the early death of Bethany or Carver is supposed to be emotional for the player. There's no reason to assume that would be the case.

Are you saying that if the intention of the developers matched the feeling of the player, even though the feeling might be bad, it's right anyway?

I don't want to argue about whatever the developer's intention was for that scene, because really, we'll never accurately know. What I do know is that that scene was unmoving and forced, whether they wanted it or not. 

As opposed to the deaths of Jenkins, Wilson, Mhairi, Daveth, Jory and so on, which were all total tearjerkers?

I actually thought Jory, Daveth, and Mhairi's death were quite sad. You know why? I got a sense of their being. Did anyone play Fable 2? I thought that Rose's death was so tragically sad, mostly due to the fact that I ran around with her in the streets for a little bit. If the game immediately started with the King calling Rose and I to the castle, I probably wouldn't give two craps about her death. 

[Twisted Path]

There's nothing wrong with beginning a story in medias res if it's done well. Dragon Age 2 just didn't do it well. Just look at the nickname people gave the ugly tutorial level before the game even came out.

My biggest complaint about the DA2 opening though is that you're forced to play through an action sequence where you blow up a bunch of hurlocks before you even get to character creation. The first time I played I reloaded about five times after leaving the character creator, seeing my character in the game's natural lighting and not liking it. Before I had even gotten into the game I was really sick of mindlessly destroying hurlocks with Bethany. Unsinkable content before you create your character gets real old real fast.