122 réponses à ce sujet

[TJPags]

kathic wrote...

You can't have 4 mages. This is why Beth had to die.

Why?  Or, more properly, why not? 

[Scarlet Rabbi]

The only thing I'm concerned about is locking companions into your party during certain quests. I HATE that. For instance, locking Ogrhen into your party towards the end of the Branka quest, or locking Varric in during the Deep Roads expedition. That practice is horrible and it needs to die fast. It complety shatters the tactical aspect of my party I have honed and adjusted to, and makes an otherwise fun quest feel like work, which is a dangerous thing for an RPG. When I feel like the game I'm playing is starting to feel like work, the thought of shutting the game down starts to sound sweeter each time it crosses my mind.

Now, I know a lot of people would say locking party members in is sometimes unavoidable, especially during companion-specific quests. I've always thought that if a certain companion's quest is vital to story and they absolutely have to be present, we should have the option to retain our original party, and have that one companion tag along as a, well, a 'tag along'. Similar to how you can have 4 party members and your mabari in DA2, something along those lines would work. The 5th companion, during a battle, would not be controlled by the player and does the absolute minimum damage (or no damage at all) to keep it balanced. It would still look like they're engaged but it reality they're just there because their presence is vital to the quest.

Bioware actually did this already in DA2, during Anders' Karl quest. You (and your 3 party members) meet Anders in front of the Chantry and accompany him during his quest, but the player never actually controls him, even during the fight with the templars. I would love it if we had this 'Anders/Mabari' option during non-optional, companion specific quests. It just sucked playing as an archer in DA2, then having Varric locked into your party during the Deep Roads. I now have 2 archers, and I need a tank, so in reality I can only choose 1 party member during that quest. And a tank, 2 archers and a mage is totally not my ideal team, so I often avoid playing an archer in DA2 for this very reason. That's a real drag and I hope it changes in Inquisition.

No locked-in companions for DA3!

Modifié par Scarlet Rabbi, 03 février 2013 - 05:37 .

[Missy_MI]

ISpeakTheTruth wrote...
How your party is structured should be your choice. If you want to be a mage ans start the game out with your mage sister you should be allowed to do that. Having the game dictate how my team should be structured is the ultimate lack of choice in an RPG. If I want the start the game with a team that is structured 'wrong' then that's my choice.

I disagree with this because one of those 'wrong' team combinations affects the story too much.

If Hawke is a warrior or rogue and can choose to let Carver live, then what is the real motivation for them to join the expedition into the Deep Roads after year one in Kirkwall? Getting money is always nice, but the urgency comes from needing that power to hide the Hawke family apostate mage.

I'm perfectly fine with restricting player choices if it's done to make the overall narrative more interesting. In this case, I think it did that. So I personally wouldn't be bothered to hear about any of these so called 'warning signs' for Inquisition.

[TJPags]

Missy_MI wrote...

ISpeakTheTruth wrote...
How your party is structured should be your choice. If you want to be a mage ans start the game out with your mage sister you should be allowed to do that. Having the game dictate how my team should be structured is the ultimate lack of choice in an RPG. If I want the start the game with a team that is structured 'wrong' then that's my choice.

I disagree with this because one of those 'wrong' team combinations affects the story too much.

If Hawke is a warrior or rogue and can choose to let Carver live, then what is the real motivation for them to join the expedition into the Deep Roads after year one in Kirkwall? Getting money is always nice, but the urgency comes from needing that power to hide the Hawke family apostate mage.

I'm perfectly fine with restricting player choices if it's done to make the overall narrative more interesting. In this case, I think it did that. So I personally wouldn't be bothered to hear about any of these so called 'warning signs' for Inquisition.

Problem is, the Hawke family mage - Hawke him or her-self perhaps - wanders around Kirkwall with no problems throughout the game and makes no attempt to hide.  In fact, an apostate mage just trying to ENTER Kirkwall the way Hawke and company did should be arrested on sight, given the amount of power we are led to believe Meredith wielded and the feeling about mages in Kirkwall.

Point being, there was little reason to be in - or stay in - Kirkwall, regardless of which member of the family is a mage, or if ANY are.

[n7stormrunner]

if your dev one is if no matter what you do your fan base hates any new games you make no matter what... your fan base is broken and I don't think we should even ask the king's men

[Commander Kurt]

ISpeakTheTruth wrote...

If the next game has information saying that there are two or three major things that could happen but then you're railroaded into which one you get based on nothing other then your class then that is more than fair to say that they aren't going to have a problem doing it again.

I knew before playing the Witcher 2 that I wouldn't get to choose who MY character was no matter what, still the game was full of interesting choices. You are going to get railroaded, it's a fact. Knowing about one thing railroading you at one point says absolutely nothing about the amount of railroading you're in for.

Beth/Carver was the only instance in DA2 where you were railroaded due to class. All you learned finding that out was that the game would be making some choices for you, but you MUST have already known that. Going into the choice itself, it was necessary to do it that way as the story played out. You didn't know making the choice that the next companion would be a warrior, and I suspect people ending up with three warriors for quite some time would have felt a bit shafted. 

[HTTP 404]

ISpeakTheTruth wrote...

How your party is structured should be your choice. If you want to be a mage ans start the game out with your mage sister you should be allowed to do that. Having the game dictate how my team should be structured is the ultimate lack of choice in an RPG. If I want the start the game with a team that is structured 'wrong' then that's my choice.

narrative vs freedom sometimes conflict. 

[Commander Kurt]

TJPags wrote...

Problem is, the Hawke family mage - Hawke him or her-self perhaps - wanders around Kirkwall with no problems throughout the game and makes no attempt to hide.  In fact, an apostate mage just trying to ENTER Kirkwall the way Hawke and company did should be arrested on sight, given the amount of power we are led to believe Meredith wielded and the feeling about mages in Kirkwall.

Point being, there was little reason to be in - or stay in - Kirkwall, regardless of which member of the family is a mage, or if ANY are.

Is there one game you like that doesn't have gameplay/story segregation? But, I guess we're venturing off-topic now... 

[Plaintiff]

 You have complete freedom in how you structure your party, with the characters that are in it.

You are not necessarily entitled to make narrative decisions, and a game that allows you to make narrative decisions is not required to let you make all of them.

You have control of the characters while they consent to be under Hawke's command. That does not give you the right to stop them from dying, or leaving of their own volition for narrative reasons.

[Kidd]

Carver would've required a ton of rewriting if he survived next to Warrior/RogueHawke. Not only his own arc, but the whole expedition part of the story as well.

I never minded this. Much more concerned with the limit of choice elsewhere. For instance, being unable to kill Petrice during Shepherding Wolves and being unable to side with the Chantry unless Hawke was of aggressive tone.

[Sad Dragon]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

I guess they probably figured no one would save Carver if given the chance. Maybe that's why he's such a bummer to be around all of the time.

Primarily narrative.  Part of the dynamic with the siblings was that there was something intrinsically different between them and the player character (one is a mage, one is not).  Allowing full player choice over which sibling dies would require additional writing for the sibling/PC dynamic to make sense.  Could be done, yes, but then this ends up becoming similar to other requests for more content.


The primary reason why I, as a game player, have little issue with who dies in the prologue is because it requires metagame knowledge to know that there's a difference, and it's a character that isn't the player making their own decision to do their own thing.  Yes, we do not strictly adhere to this in normal content.  Though in order to remain consistent would require us to remove all control from the party, and allow the player to only influence the player character.  In this sense it's something that wouldn't allow us to make everyone happy, because there are those that would miss the full party control in combat.

The problem with this is that you are going down a very slippery slope. If you have no problem with choice being taken away from you as it requires metagaming to know that there could have been another outcome than one could expand that to a compleetly linear game.

Now I think the fact that you guys make RPG's makes this more of a slippery slope than if you made action-adventure games as it also has to do with managing expectations.

When i pick up an action-adventure game i expect it to be linier and  that the story that it tells, if story focused, to be more akin to movies or books -- that's to say non-interactive. With RPG's on the other hand i expect my choices to at least vaguely matter and that i can influence outcomes. DA2 is not bad if you look at it as an action-adventure, indeed much of my problams with the game would probably have been lessened with that label. The problem is that it is labled as an RPG, and every step of the way, all major plot points have already been decided upon before i even start the game.

Now bioware games in the past has been fairly linier but for me that worked as you are never presented with any bad outcome that you could see coming from miles away, or having the narrative forcing your character to act stupid or neglecting -- something that sadly DA2 did. For some characters though it might make sense but it just didn't work for me. This disconnect forced me to become keenly aware of the railroad-tracks which actually removed the need for replaying to see -- what i looked at as -- the problems with that game.
True all this can be said to be a metagaming of sort but if this was a pen and paper campaign the fault would lie with the DM /GM not the players.

Now as far as the Bethany vs Carver part is conserened i dont have too much problems with that as you as a character lacks control of what is happening -- after all, if you were in full control of the battle the oger wouldn't have been able to kill either sibling. So i guess it comes down to how much control -- or rather opportunity to gain controll -- the character has. If the narrative have to step in from prefenting the player from gainign controll it is a bad thing, if it makes sense to everyone involved that the character should have no control of a given situation it shouldnt impact the immersion negativly. Just dont stack such scenes ontop of one another or you run the risk of impacting the immersion anyway and showing the railroad-tracks.

Though i think i am rambelign now so i should better stop ^^;


Hope that made atleast some sense

-TSD

[Allan Schumacher]

I don't think that would have taken that much time for the VA to do things of that nature. Would it have made some of the tension between Hawke and the sibling away because they'd be more similar? Yes. But why is that a bad thing?

It's not a bad thing, it's just a different thing.

Also the fact that our sibling is only in 1/3 of the game again was it really that tight on time that it couldn't be done?

DAO had several factors more time, and was still "tight on time." Unfortunately, it's not just as simple as going in and adding a few more lines of dialogue here or there, especially if the decision comes late in the development cycle.

Your suggestion would go a lot faster earlier in the development cycle, but would actually take a lot longer, and be more expensive, the closer it gets to the end of the development time. So how difficult it would be would depend in large part on when we decided "This isn't going to work."

Making decisions in software development is almost always faster and cheaper the earlier you decide to do something (same goes for things like fixing bugs and so forth - the earlier you find them, the less cost is incurred).

On top of the actual costs of doing the content itself, is also the opportunity cost. There's pretty much never any time when people aren't working on something. Any time spent on one thing is time not spent on something else. So again, the earlier we catch it, the lower the opportunity cost. The later, the higher the opportunity cost.

[Allan Schumacher]

The problem with this is that you are going down a very slippery slope. If you have no problem with choice being taken away from you as it requires metagaming to know that there could have been another outcome than one could expand that to a compleetly linear game.

Now I think the fact that you guys make RPG's makes this more of a slippery slope than if you made action-adventure games as it also has to do with managing expectations.

When i pick up an action-adventure game i expect it to be linier and that the story that it tells, if story focused, to be more akin to movies or books -- that's to say non-interactive. With RPG's on the other hand i expect my choices to at least vaguely matter and that i can influence outcomes. DA2 is not bad if you look at it as an action-adventure, indeed much of my problams with the game would probably have been lessened with that label. The problem is that it is labled as an RPG, and every step of the way, all major plot points have already been decided upon before i even start the game.

I can understand your criticisms in terms of player agency and lack of differences in an RPG when applied towards DA2, but I think the criticisms are better applied to other parts of the game and not the sibling death in the prologue.  Especially since the sibling death actually does reflect some level of difference that happens within the game.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 03 février 2013 - 09:53 .

[Sad Dragon]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

The problem with this is that you are going down a very slippery slope. If you have no problem with choice being taken away from you as it requires metagaming to know that there could have been another outcome than one could expand that to a compleetly linear game.

Now I think the fact that you guys make RPG's makes this more of a slippery slope than if you made action-adventure games as it also has to do with managing expectations.

When i pick up an action-adventure game i expect it to be linier and that the story that it tells, if story focused, to be more akin to movies or books -- that's to say non-interactive. With RPG's on the other hand i expect my choices to at least vaguely matter and that i can influence outcomes. DA2 is not bad if you look at it as an action-adventure, indeed much of my problams with the game would probably have been lessened with that label. The problem is that it is labled as an RPG, and every step of the way, all major plot points have already been decided upon before i even start the game.

I can understand your criticisms in terms of player agency and lack of differences in an RPG when applied towards DA2, but I think the criticisms are better applied to other parts of the game and not the sibling death in the prologue.  Especially since the sibling death actually does reflect some level of difference that happens within the game.

Agreed, the sibling death is a doesnt really have any real player agancy as there isn't really any player agancy to be had the way its set up. You aren't dominating the battle so you dont have control. Arguably you could have added to the narrative to give you more control. The Oger attacking both and you have to choose which one to save or having it go at Bethany and you can either send Carver to try and save her or go yourself and having the that choice be the desiding factor. But as the game and the narrative is set up now though no player agancy exist for such a choice and it make perfect sense within the world that you don't get a say. So im with you on that point.

Just wanted to point out that the metagaming angle can be one slipery slope that its probably best to stay out of.

-TSD

[Thomas Andresen]

I think that the term "slippery slope" is thrown around far too much on these forums. And I think that looking for "warning signs" is detrimental to your enjoyment of the game when it eventually is released. Take the game as it is, or will be, on it's own merits, don't measure it up to some ideal you hold for what is the ultimate game, and you will have a far more enjoyable gaming experience.

I've been playing Origins quite a bit lately, and beyond the technical issues(game crashes, memory leaks, non-functional quests), the game offers far less choice than some people on these boards seem to recall. DAII have the technical issues, but to a far smaller degree. It's true that player agency could have been much better handled in DAII, but to hold up Origins as a better game in that regard is ill-advised at best.

[Daralii]

Thomas Andresen wrote...

I think that the term "slippery slope" is thrown around far too much on these forums. And I think that looking for "warning signs" is detrimental to your enjoyment of the game when it eventually is released. Take the game as it is, or will be, on it's own merits, don't measure it up to some ideal you hold for what is the ultimate game, and you will have a far more enjoyable gaming experience.

Trust me, it isn't just these forums. The whole of the internet really loves bringing up slippery slopes as a response to anything and everything.

[JimboGee]

Wow, I actually didn't realise your class had anything to do with it. Sounds like a cheap move on Bioware's part to be honest. I think they might have learned that the way to get a reaction to a death is to get the player to like/hate them.

[Sad Dragon]

I feel i should elaborate some on my above posts in a more ontopic  sense as i feel they were at the very least skirting the boundries for off-topic.

Personally I believe that narrative is king. What i mean by this is that everything from mechanics to player agancy needs to be inline with the narrative. A better way of looking at it is that the mechanics and player agancy should be apart of the narrative not stand outside of it.

As stated above I think that DA2 has some serious flaws in its narrative -- some of which may only be seen through the lense of the genre the game has labled itself with others I feel are just narrative flaws. I do think the OP is however making a misstake in connecting the player agancy later in the game with the Sibling death at the start.

The death of the sibling at the start of the game makes narrative sense as it is, it hasn't really removed any player agancy as the scene makes sense as it is without the input of the player. Simply put, it makes logical sense that it plays out the way it does within the narrative. It's the siblings and ogers choises that matters in the scene not the players.

You could argue that you could tweek the narrative to include more player agancy -- like choocing which sibling should guard your mother or one of the various other ways mentioned within this thread. Though if we look at it from that perspective there are more things that could have been added to the game -- and I think we all have at least one thing we would have liked to see ingame that isn't there. Be it more varied environments, more romance options, more companion dialogues or some cool sidestory that the dev's hadn't even thought of that a fan would have loved to play through. Not saying that one request is any less valid than another just saying that i think we might be going about this the wrong way -- personally i wouldn't have minded seeing the idea that both siblings survive to the end of act 1 before being removed as companions as it would give us more time to bond with them both making their dissapearance more impactful.
Sadly it all comes down to time and money in the end and as I recall the production wasn't blessed with much devtime -- at least for an tripple-A RPG.


Oh and just felt i should add another elaboration:
As for the term "slippery slope" i feel its a generally term for "a line of thought, or and action, that can become dangerous if you dont take care with how it's applied". Which is exactly what i think the meta-gaming argument as i first read it was. Though I agree with Allan that in the instance of the Sibling deaths it may apply. I would also like to add that I think it's clear from Allan's replies that he regocnises this which may have made my original post a bit reduntant.


-TSD

[iOnlySignIn]

Maybe this is why they are reluctant to give out any information this time around? That will teach a lesson.

[Zippy72]

Two warning bells are alreay going off..

1. Human only.
2. No playable origin story.

However it would be silly to offer any judgements on the game yet, knowing so little.

[Thomas Andresen]

Sad Dragon wrote...

Oh and just felt i should add another elaboration:
As for the term "slippery slope" i feel its a generally term for "a line of thought, or and action, that can become dangerous if you dont take care with how it's applied".

There aren't any "slippery slopes". You might argue that there's a trend, but that's a whole 'nother matter, and you have no real reason to think that trend might continue, much less escalate. Even more to the point, arguing whether the trend is a good thing or not is a matter of taste, have nothing to do with "good game development practice", and should be treated as it is.

[Giga Drill BREAKER]

'AWESOME BUTTON' biggest warning sign.

[Dutchess]

Zippy72 wrote...

Two warning bells are alreay going off..

1. Human only.
2. No playable origin story.

Same here. For now this has really tempered my enthusiasm for the game.

[Wulfram]

I think everyone's "warning signs" as far as features will be pretty much different. There are plenty of things that people get excited about that I find rather bizarre.

Though if a lot of people's response to the demo, or to gameplay footage, is to try to dismiss it as not representative of the product, that's a pretty good sign that you're in trouble.

[Fast Jimmy]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

The problem with this is that you are going down a very slippery slope. If you have no problem with choice being taken away from you as it requires metagaming to know that there could have been another outcome than one could expand that to a compleetly linear game.

Now I think the fact that you guys make RPG's makes this more of a slippery slope than if you made action-adventure games as it also has to do with managing expectations.

When i pick up an action-adventure game i expect it to be linier and that the story that it tells, if story focused, to be more akin to movies or books -- that's to say non-interactive. With RPG's on the other hand i expect my choices to at least vaguely matter and that i can influence outcomes. DA2 is not bad if you look at it as an action-adventure, indeed much of my problams with the game would probably have been lessened with that label. The problem is that it is labled as an RPG, and every step of the way, all major plot points have already been decided upon before i even start the game.

I can understand your criticisms in terms of player agency and lack of differences in an RPG when applied towards DA2, but I think the criticisms are better applied to other parts of the game and not the sibling death in the prologue.  Especially since the sibling death actually does reflect some level of difference that happens within the game.

This is true. But in lines with the original topic, this smaller example of plot railroading from what we were presented pre-release was endemic of DEEPER examples of plot railroading later in the game.

So, looking back, we could have said "Uh-oh, if they are going to be making decisions for us about who dies in our family without player input, that could be indicative of a design mentality of taking choices away in other areas."

Would that have been a fair statement to say before DA2's release? Probably not. But it turned out to be a somewhat valid one, since the devs have stated they realized the lack of player agency in DA2 was a large complaint.


Again, tying it back into the original conversation, of things to look out for that may be a tip for DA3 having a design that a certain player may or may not like.