245 réponses à ce sujet

[mickey111]

Why are there so many people on BSN who seem to think that voiced player characters are "them" in game form?

I'm okay with auto dialogue combined with voiced protagonists because a voiced protagonist is not a player character to begin with, so whatever,  If you ever played an RPG with a voiceless main character you'd know this to be true, and I'm damned sure that Gordan Freeman didn't become a popular character for autodialogue... The whole idea of putting your own personality onto the character begins to fly right out the window as soon as the character starts talking. Auto dialogue would only be unacceptable if your character was a mute like in DAO, and choosing Shepards every word is bad for cinematic flow which is the whole point of giving him a voice.

Bottom line is that there is just no getting around the fact that giving the player character a voice is going to be a serious obstacle whenever it comes to stuff like imagining yourself banging on your favourite digital waifu.

Modifié par mickey111, 23 février 2013 - 01:15 .

[Nefla]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

EntropicAngel wrote...

Or is this nature vs. nurture?

To be from somewhere means you lived there for some period of time.  If you grew up in Castle Cousland, then you can't have a personality consistent with a desire to kill all nobles (to use an extreme example) because you should have then already killed those nobles, having lived with them for years.

But you didn't.  Therefore, you can't have a personality that requires such behaviour.

A person in any situation can have any personality. You can be a noble and yet hate all nobles. Maybe you hate the way your peers treat lesser castes, the gluttony and overindulgence while never helping the people they are lords over and responsible for. I can decide that Cousland goes out into the streets of Highever and often mingles with the commoners, learning their stories and helping them in whatever way she can, eventually learning of a planned uprising and deciding she will join and leave her title behind to help the common man. You can imagine she planned to leave in 3 days time when the mob of villiagers would gather and protest, but Howe slaghtered her family and Duncan forced her into the grey wardens before she could go.

A noble Aeducan could have grown up a free spirited prankster, always a frustration to her brother Trian and a secret ammusement to her father. She could have felt trapped by all the rules, restrictions, and formalities of nobility and what she wanted more than anything was to be a warrior defending Orzammar, to be able to marry Gorim and not have to worry about their different castes.

Even the pshychotic "kill everyone" personality you mentioned could be played. Just because they didn't kill everyone they saw before doesn't mean they don't have that personality. They could have been too weak, or not been able to get away with it. Being a grey warden meant power, freedom, and experience in battle. This could have been the opportunity the psycho was waiting for, and they can now kill whoever they want.

Any of these personalities could easily color your choices for the rest of the game.

[Fast Jimmy]

^

Yet you cannot be a man who has lost his wife and child to a crime lord who you have wreaked your vengeance on, but must now run away, hoping to be lost in the shuffle at Ostagar... and maybe find a noble death so that you can be with your family in the afterlife.

Such a character is impossible with the Origins, but may exist in a game without a clear background. This character could be found by Duncan at Ostagar and follow the same path. They could have a profound sense of duty and may take the Ultimate Sacrifice willingly, and it would be a truly great arc to their character. And, if Bioware didn't tell you anything different, this character could exist, even if only in your head and not in the game proper.

I loved the Origins. But to say any character is possible with them is a bit of a misnomer. A lot of character permutations are possible. But not all characters are.

[mickey111]

About 10 times more possibilities than if your character was voiced who didn't talk in the abstract, but who's counting... it's not like Bioware want to sell an RPG to a million people when they could sell a fully cinematic experience that 3 million people will buy to be emotionally engaged by the fully voiced protagonist.

[imbs]

mickey111 wrote...

Why are there so many people on BSN who seem to think that voiced player characters are "them" in game form?

I'm okay with auto dialogue combined with voiced protagonists because a voiced protagonist is not a player character to begin with, so whatever,  If you ever played an RPG with a voiceless main character you'd know this to be true, and I'm damned sure that Gordan Freeman didn't become a popular character for autodialogue... The whole idea of putting your own personality onto the character begins to fly right out the window as soon as the character starts talking. Auto dialogue would only be unacceptable if your character was a mute like in DAO, and choosing Shepards every word is bad for cinematic flow which is the whole point of giving him a voice.

Bottom line is that there is just no getting around the fact that giving the player character a voice is going to be a serious obstacle whenever it comes to stuff like imagining yourself banging on your favourite digital waifu.

This is pretty much it. Once Bioware decided to go voiced protag the game was over on this particular topic. To have a voiced protag and a random no auto-dialogue condition would be awkward and/or limiting in many obvious ways.

[Kidd]

mickey111 wrote...

Why are there so many people on BSN who seem to think that voiced player characters are "them" in game form?

There are? More than anything I think people are just lazy about writing "my character." It's much easier to just say the first person pronoun. I hear the same thing all the time during pen&paper games as well; "I grab her by the collar and push her into the wall" vs "My character grabs her by the collar and pushes her into the wall."

mickey111 wrote...

a voiced protagonist is not a player character to begin with, so whatever,  If you ever played an RPG with a voiceless main character you'd know this to be true

Apparently I've not played a ton of games that I've beaten multiple times. The more you learn!

[mickey111]

You know what I meant.

[addiction21]

mickey111 wrote...

Why are there so many people on BSN who seem to think that voiced player characters are "them" in game form?

I'm okay with auto dialogue combined with voiced protagonists because a voiced protagonist is not a player character to begin with, so whatever,  If you ever played an RPG with a voiceless main character you'd know this to be true, and I'm damned sure that Gordan Freeman didn't become a popular character for autodialogue... The whole idea of putting your own personality onto the character begins to fly right out the window as soon as the character starts talking. Auto dialogue would only be unacceptable if your character was a mute like in DAO, and choosing Shepards every word is bad for cinematic flow which is the whole point of giving him a voice.

Bottom line is that there is just no getting around the fact that giving the player character a voice is going to be a serious obstacle whenever it comes to stuff like imagining yourself banging on your favourite digital waifu.

Voiceless or not playing a self insert has always been a big thing.

Bottom line is that not everyone thinks, likes and plays video games like you do. Not everyone is looking for the same experience you want.

[mickey111]

If people want to self insert, then perhaps Bioware games aren't for them. And they don't have to like what I like either, but it's really not an opinion that auto dialogue is good for the type of games that Bioware make. It's either that, or have the player character become mute for no reason during all of the fast paced drama and the cinematic action sequences and that has potential to disrupt the flow which would be a bit dumb. You know what else is ****ty for the kind of interactive movies Bioware makes? Ad breaks. Ad breaks are the single reason why I stopped watching television (also because I'm too ****ing cheap to subscribe to a decent network that plays with no commercial breaks.)

Anyway, auto-dialogue = good flow and no auto = bad flow.

[Sylvius the Mad]

KiddDaBeauty wrote...

So much talk about words in here. Do people generally think in wordings so much? =O When I'm roleplaying, my head always goes more like "oh no, my character does not like this one bit" and then I choose an aggressive option. Or perhaps, "my character would be surprisingly okay with this" before I accept a quest I personally find repulsive. I don't formulate an exact line of dialogue in my head and then hope there's some similar wording in the list in front of me.

That's how I play, but it doesn't work in DA2.  I can be thinking that my character is calm and unperturbed, so I choose the non-violent option, and Hawke suddenly sneers threateningly at people.

That's character-breaking.

But I'm also well aware that DA2 was horribly rushed.  Maybe, with a more sensible development cycle, the DA team can make the paraphrases work better than they ever have before.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 23 février 2013 - 05:07 .

[PsychoBlonde]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

RPGs have never provided me with exactly the line that I would like to say (especially the way I'd like to say it).  I'm always trying to discern which response best works for the message that I want to convey.  It's probably in large part why I like Alpha Protocol so much as well.

Me neither, although I've never played Alpha Protocol.  I like some of the things that the voiced PC dialog brings to the table (although IMO they aren't implemented as well as they could be in the magical fairy land inside my head).  Some of my most memorable moments in DA2 were when the PC's action surprised and delighted me.  (Particularly the whole knife-throwing bit with Sarcastic Hawke when you go to rescue Feynriel.)  I can't honestly remember most of what my PC "said" in Origins.  I remember what the NPC's said, sure, but not my PC's responses.

I do think the 100% voiced dialog probably limits some choices that I WOULD like to have (extensively different races and backgrounds), but I don't have to get All Teh Options from every game.  I also play DDO which has basically nonexistent story and only the tiniest amount of voiced dialog, but MAN can I ever make up about three billion character builds, it is INSANE.

Heck, based on the number of "DA SHOULD BE LIKE TEH WITCHERZ!!!" threads, having a "fixed protagonist" is the way to go.  Of course then there's the "DA SHOULD BE LIKE TEH SKYRIMZZ!!" threads, so apparently there should be absolutely minimal dialog and character development, all badly written and much of it repeated about 10,000 times whenever you walk past somebody.

Actually, DA2 had that last bit in some places.

[Kidd]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

That's how I play, but it doesn't work in DA2.  I can be thinking that my character is calm and unperturbed, so I choose the non-violent option, and Hawke suddenly sneers threateningly at people.

That's character-breaking.

Yeah, there are a few instances of that. Have been scenes with much the same problem ever since the first BG. Seems to me you headcanon away your character not speaking in line with what you want in text, but you don't give the voiced characters the same leniency. Then again, if that's what comes naturally to you, then who can really blame you? =) I may even have done the same thing a few times without noticing.

[mickey111]

The ultimate RPG:

Get acquainted with the basic plot and main characters during Biowares obligitory 2-3 hour prelude.
Quit the game
Register an account at fanfiction.net.
Fanfic the remaining 20 hours of the game however you see fit.

There you go, that should take care of the majority of problems with character breaking due to poor implementations of the dialogue wheel and fully voiced everybody.

[wright1978]

JamieCOTC wrote...

 Though nothing comes close to being as character breaking as Shepard's auto-dialogue in ME3. Hawke's was "okay" though could have used a bit more refinement and a lot less auto in the dialogue. Somewhere between ME1 and ME2 there is a sweet spot that enables enough auto-dialogue to move the story, but not so much that some players feel like they have lost control of the character.

Yeah i'd agree  with this.

[Fredward]

Like I've said oh so many times this seems to be one of the core differences in RPG players. Some people want to put themselves in the game other people want to play/direct a character. I hate playing with myself (haha). So I'll always sketch the idea of a character out, sometimes this is uber easy like in Skyrim, sometimes it's a little harder ie Origins and sometimes yah haveta get really creative like in DA2. Anyway, point is you can make a character in any game. The amount of constraints just vary. I fleshed my Hawke out a LOT by what wasn't said. But if you approach a game with the idea of shoving yourself into it you are going to have a bad time. Not in ALL games mind you but seemingly so in Bioware's. It's like trying to shove one of those round pegs into the square hole, it just doesn't end well.

Now neither of these are objectively better than the other but Bioware seems to be leaning in the direction of us directors. So...

[bEVEsthda]

mickey111 wrote...

Why are there so many people on BSN who seem to think that voiced player characters are "them" in game form?

I'm okay with auto dialogue combined with voiced protagonists because a voiced protagonist is not a player character to begin with, so whatever,  If you ever played an RPG with a voiceless main character you'd know this to be true, and I'm damned sure that Gordan Freeman didn't become a popular character for autodialogue... The whole idea of putting your own personality onto the character begins to fly right out the window as soon as the character starts talking. Auto dialogue would only be unacceptable if your character was a mute like in DAO, and choosing Shepards every word is bad for cinematic flow which is the whole point of giving him a voice.

Bottom line is that there is just no getting around the fact that giving the player character a voice is going to be a serious obstacle whenever it comes to stuff like imagining yourself banging on your favourite digital waifu.

Exactly. I think you're almost on the point here. But I'm not into this subject much now, before DA3 is released and it's possible to judge what it is.

The problem is that Bioware used to do wRPGs. Whatever the remains of the teams were thinking then, and are thinking now, that's what the now departed design heads used to produce. You see - Half Life is a PC-shooter, yet another now extinct form of videogame, but not an RPG. Neither was DA2. It was a movie console game. And that's why it was burned. It's very convenient, of course, to discourage discussion of the 'RPG' term, and then label whatever as 'RPG', just because they used to make such games, and because the successful predecessor really was one. 

Gamers who grow up on movie console games, and accept that form of games as 'RPG', won't mind, and will also tend to be critical against real RPGs, like Skyrim, because they have no clue how to play them. There is a clash for the gamers perceptions and habits. Which way will DA3 go? Do the developers know? Are they gambling on that there are enough jRPG gamers and newcomers, that they will get away with another DA2 and find a market for their new style of jRPG, aka movie console game? Or have they ventured into developments which erase the borderline?

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 23 février 2013 - 10:09 .

[Pasquale1234]

Foopydoopydoo wrote...
Like I've said oh so many times this seems to be one of the core differences in RPG players. Some people want to put themselves in the game other people want to play/direct a character. I hate playing with myself (haha).

Wanting to play a character concept of my own design =/= wanting to play a self-insert.

Wanting to play a cohesive, consistent character whose motivations are fully known and understood by me =/= wanting to play a self-insert.

For some of us, the difference is as simple as wanting to actively role-play rather than watch a fully pre-programmed toon go through the motions.  For me and my playstyle, the difference is so striking that I may as well be watching a movie, because ithe experience is nearly identical.

I'd like gaming to be an entirely different entertainment experience than watching a movie.  Melding these technologies in this way diminishes much of what makes gaming uniquely rewarding imho.

[WoolyJoe]

I'm kewl with whatever choose to go with.

If they implement one system over another and it doesn't work, then the game's dones something wrong.
If they implement one system over another and it does work, then the game's done something well.

I personally think they did it right in the two previous Dragon Age games, as well as throughout the Mass Effect Trilogy. I assume none were perfect, but nor were any flawed enough that with hindsight I can bring up a specific, glaring example. Whatever the mistakes I enjoyed them as a whole.

[Icesong]

mickey111 wrote...

Why are there so many people on BSN who seem to think that voiced player characters are "them" in game
form?

I'm okay with auto dialogue combined with voiced protagonists because a voiced protagonist is not a player character to begin with, so whatever,  If you ever played an RPG with a voiceless main character you'd know this to be true, and I'm damned sure that Gordan Freeman didn't become a popular character for autodialogue... The whole idea of putting your own personality onto the character begins to fly right out the window as soon as the character starts talking.

Roleplaying yourself is what you do when you first start out; it seems to me most "experienced" roleplayers would rather create a mulitude of different characters and appreciate a game that allows for as much freedom as possible in that. A voiced protagonist is more restricted than a silent one in what you can do there, but that doesn't mean the whole idea of making your own character is tossed out. And I have little idea what point you're making with Gordon Freeman, but I just want to be clear you know Half Life isn't an RPG.

Auto dialogue would only be unacceptable if your character was a mute like in DAO, and choosing Shepards every word is bad for cinematic flow which is the whole point of giving him a voice.

ME1's cinematic flow, which had almost no auto-dialogue, was just fine for me. ME2 also had minimal auto-dialogue at least until LotSB. And cinematic flow is hardly the only reason for a voiced protagonist.

If people want to self insert, then perhaps Bioware games aren't for them.

Perhaps RPGs aren't for you if you don't want to create your own characters.

mickey111 wrote...

The ultimate RPG:

Get acquainted with the basic plot and main characters during Biowares obligitory 2-3 hour prelude.
Quit the game
Register an account at fanfiction.net.
Fanfic the remaining 20 hours of the game however you see fit.

There you go, that should take care of the majority of problems with character breaking due to poor implementations of the dialogue wheel and fully voiced everybody.

Some ideal games for you based on the criteria of leaving the character up the developer and good cinematics:

Metal Gear Solid
Final Fantasy
God of War
Warcraft 3
Halo

Modifié par Icesong, 23 février 2013 - 04:35 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

EntropicAngel wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

^

Yet you cannot be a man who has lost his wife and child to a crime lord who you have wreaked your vengeance on, but must now run away, hoping to be lost in the shuffle at Ostagar... and maybe find a noble death so that you can be with your family in the afterlife.

Such a character is impossible with the Origins, but may exist in a game without a clear background. This character could be found by Duncan at Ostagar and follow the same path. They could have a profound sense of duty and may take the Ultimate Sacrifice willingly, and it would be a truly great arc to their character. And, if Bioware didn't tell you anything different, this character could exist, even if only in your head and not in the game proper.

I loved the Origins. But to say any character is possible with them is a bit of a misnomer. A lot of character permutations are possible. But not all characters are.

You're talking about a history, Jimmy, not a personality. Any personality is possible, but not any history.

But each personality precludes some histories.  If you're a person who doesn't understand loss, then you can't have experienced loss.

[bEVEsthda]

^ think you missed what st Mad said here.

[Nefla]

You can have a character who has been broken by the loss of their loved ones and has given up on life no matter what origin you play. I'm talking about personalities and motivations here, not 100% rigid back stories. You can always come up with a story to fit whatever personality you play.