7 réponses à ce sujet

[sympathy4sarenreturns]

This is one stipulation of my economic demand. What are yours?

[Allan Schumacher]

Maybe they all bought dao expecting voiced protagonist and then abandoned the franchise! Sarcasm aside i am skeptical that the voiced protagonist contributed as much as others aspects of the game.

Although i am sure there will be those that include it in their 1/10 scores because they are upset that we aren't making a game specifically for them.

[Allan Schumacher]

No, he's completely right, you implied that having a voiced protaganist was detrimental to DA2's sales, a claim to which there is zero evidence to support it.

The issue is more that it's tough to disassociate. There's a lot of people that really enjoy voiced protagonists, while a lot that don't really care for it. It's tough to say "DA2 did poorly, and DA2 didn't have <feature Y>, so <feature Y> is a cause for the poor performance."

There are some things that are pretty uniform in the critiques (reused areas), and some that I find are much more common (issues with Mage Hawke, lack of a clear motivation for why Hawke should care about certain things, including the primary plots) that even if there are supporters, I still think that those are still issues that trip up more people than otherwise and could be improved upon. Especially with competition providing some good alternatives (exploration wise: Skyrim, narratively: The Witcher 2)

[Allan Schumacher]

In any case I'd prefer this tangent to die down.

I agree it's the sum of the parts. Personally I don't consider the voiced protagonist to be as significant of an issue with our game as other parts of it. It may be. We'll find out I guess.

[Allan Schumacher]

I think The Witcher 2 is also a good example (just played it and really enjoyed the narrative and cinematic quality of the game).

[Allan Schumacher]

I said the sales of the games was due to the sum of their parts. The voiced PC being one part of DA2.

Without knowing how it broke down, it doesn't say much. There's a lot of logical deductions that can be made, but that doesn't mean they reflect reality. As such, I'd really like to see this tangent die with me saying:

I don't think it's as big of a factor as other aspects of DA2, especially since lack of voice protagonist was not a trivial component of the feedback for DAO. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm not. It's the decision that we're going with for DA3 so I guess we'll find out.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 25 décembre 2012 - 09:01 .

[Allan Schumacher]

That assumes the voiced protagonist of DA3 will be judged simply for being voiced and not judged for having a less-than-stellar voice like Sheploo or something. The fans and critics alike are quite fickle. I was never fond of FemShep's but everyone raved about how awesome she sounded compared to Sheploo, who I always found to be just fine. I personally think the voiced PC in DA2 was overlooked in and of itself by a lot of critics and fans because the abbreviation system was a big complaint. Mass Effect always had the problem of abbreviations not reflecting the tone of what was said by Shepard, but DA2 had the problem of the abbreviations not reflecting what Hawke said at all. It takes attention away from the fact that the PC is voiced and puts focus on the fact that the spoken dialogue and our dialogue options were not at all in sync. And that also sort of disconnects us(or me at least) from the character, making the voice less of an issue since it doesn't feel like us in the game anyway.

As stated, I'd like to see this tangent die. It's filled with suppositions that can't really be proven or disproven.

I disagree with your assessment, and we're going with voice in DA3. So lets agree to disagree since we are obviously on other sides of the fence in terms of how much impact it has among those that like it compared to those that prefer it.


If people want to use their thread to discuss why the like/hate voiced protagonists, that's fine.  Using the relative success of DAO/DA2 as evidence of one system being innately superior is something that can't be shown.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 25 décembre 2012 - 09:22 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Closing this thread.

I had asked people to not bother discussing the financial implications of the voiced protagonist and any effect it may have had on DA2's lower sales. This goes for those that disagree with Basil's perspective as well.

It's fine if you think that. It's fine if you think it helped DA2 sales. I actually don't know myself. It's something we aren't equipped to ascertain.

Locking.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 26 décembre 2012 - 08:19 .