173 réponses à ce sujet

[Twisted Path]

An easy way to cater to new players without dumbing everything down Mass Effect style would be to make a good solid story that stands up on it's own merits and is only tangentially connected to the first two games. Just saying.

[Dagr88]

... I don't get that "old players over new ones" and vice versa. At least not in DA settings. Developers can't make it more "shootery" or make doorknob's textures more friendly to new players at the cost of veteran player's experience. When they talk about "We must remember newcomers", the first thing that comes to my mind is that some of the dialogs must have "introduction context"

- You Templars hunt and kill us mages because bla-bla-bla!!!
- Silence! You know full well how dangerous demons are bla-bla-bla!!!

- 5th Blight bla-bla-bla. Ferelden bla-bla-bla.

- Dwarves live under the rock.

Dialogs must not only "tell" us new story, but also reintroduce us to the Thedas and it's rules.

Modifié par Dagr88, 30 mars 2013 - 10:52 .

[Cainhurst Crow]

Honestly the way dragon age has been made so far makes if perfect for the new players and old players to have common ground on this issue.

Think about it, you have a new protagonist and setting, the game can take place at a later or even parallel date, and best of all you can have old choices resurface ala butterfly effect while still haveing new players have a fresh experience and detracting nothing. Take for example if you run into a character you helped in the last game, old players can know the full context and help the situation as they see fit. New players can have this be similar to any "help this person out" quest in DAO and if they play DAO later, see what effect their choice in this game would have later on.

It's perfect, unlike ME where you have the same protaganist for all three games, and so the expectation for previous choices carrying over is that much greater. It's very KOTOR and KOTOR2 like.

[David Gaider]

Dagr88 wrote...

... I don't get that "old players over new ones" and vice versa. At least not in DA settings. Developers can't make it more "shootery" or make doorknob's textures more friendly to new players at the cost of veteran player's experience. When they talk about "We must remember newcomers", the first thing that comes to my mind is that some of the dialogs must have "introduction context"

- You Templars hunt and kill us mages because bla-bla-bla!!!
- Silence! You know full well how dangerous demons are bla-bla-bla!!!

- 5th Blight bla-bla-bla. Ferelden bla-bla-bla.

- Dwarves live under the rock.

Dialogs must not only "tell" us new story, but also reintroduce us to the Thedas and it's rules.

You're correct, and I'll point out to others that my response was in terms of the writing only-- we have to be careful, when writing the story for DA3, to not assume that everyone playing the game is intimately familiar with the previous two installments... and, indeed, may not know anything about them at all. That gets increasingly challenging as we move forward, and is a very easy thing for us writers to forget (as QA keeps telling us).

Taking my response to that writing-specific question as indicative of anything regarding gameplay or what-have-you would be a mistake. It may or may not apply, but that wasn't the question and I wouldn't advise trying too hard to interpret my response as applying to things which aren't part of my purview as a writer.

[Aldaris951]

Modifié par Aldaris951, 31 mars 2013 - 01:34 .

[Avalon The Elf]

Bizantura wrote...

Avalon The Elf wrote...

New players should never be put ahead of the old ones in games like these, it's what happened to Gears Of War, what happened to The Elder Scrolls, and it's what's happening to Assassin's Creed :/

Why not!  Well, I was astonished that Wrex in ME3 was not seen by most players.  Why?  Obviously the bulk of the buyers are NOT long time players thus NOT hardened fans of the franchise.  Go figure.....  But as a fan myself that was a humbling experience. 

It feels like a betrayal, like we got your money so what you want no longer matters

[Plaintiff]

Of course they're going to consider the wants and needs of newcomers to the series. That's only commonsense.

Who here sprung out of the ground as a fully-formed fan of Dragon Age? Come on, don't be shy, raise your hand. What, none of you? You had to play one of their games first? Well imagine that.

"Old fans" of any series are a constantly shrinking market. "Old fans" get jobs, they have kids and other responsibilities that eat up their free time. They die.

Bioware can't afford to cater solely to a shrivelling consumer base of "hardcore fans", and if "hardcore fans" had any sense, they wouldn't want that. A fanbase that doesn't get a regular supply of fresh blood is a fanbase that gets abandoned completely.

Modifié par Plaintiff, 31 mars 2013 - 12:10 .

[CuriousArtemis]

David Gaider wrote...

You're correct, and I'll point out to others that my response was in terms of the writing only-- we have to be careful, when writing the story for DA3, to not assume that everyone playing the game is intimately familiar with the previous two installments... and, indeed, may not know anything about them at all. That gets increasingly challenging as we move forward, and is a very easy thing for us writers to forget (as QA keeps telling us).

Taking my response to that writing-specific question as indicative of anything regarding gameplay or what-have-you would be a mistake. It may or may not apply, but that wasn't the question and I wouldn't advise trying too hard to interpret my response as applying to things which aren't part of my purview as a writer.

I knew right off what you meant because I played DA2 first. Some of it was confusing, but I was able to get through the game and thoroughly enjoy it without having played DA:O. Of course playing DA:O ultimately enhanced my experience, especially now that I've gone back and replayed DA2 several times. 

ME3 (which I know you're not a part of) was also easy to jump into; I've yet to play 1&2 and I still greatly enjoyed ME3. Yeah I love sci-fi and fantasy so some of these tropes I'm going to be familiar with and will jump right into. It's only the little references to previous games that are confusing... Varric's transitions between acts in DA2 for instance were immensely confusing. After the Hawke's escaped from Lothering, Varric told us about the death of some king and how he had been betrayed... I thought the game was going to be about this, but it wasn't. Etc, etc.

[Twisted Path]

Introducing players to the basic concepts of the setting is great, heck I'd probably need to be reintroduced to some stuff. Hope the exposition dialogue isn't as clunky and bad as it was in Mass Effect 3 though.

One thing I'm hoping we don't see in Inquisition though is an enormous amount of plot elements that tie in to previous little events and characters in the dragon age games and all the tie-in books and comics that I've never read just for the sake of continuity and fanservice, plus the clunky expository dialogue that would have to go along with all of that.

Modifié par Twisted Path, 31 mars 2013 - 12:46 .

[dheer]

For an article supposedly about DA2's flaws, it sure doesn't seem to ask about or mention many of them.

To be fair, Mr. Gaider is the lead writer and apart from a few complaints about the game's writing most everything I see mentioned are either gameplay or design problems.

Modifié par dheer, 31 mars 2013 - 12:57 .

[Mickael1991]

Aldaris951 wrote...

Mr Gaider sorry for going offtopic but, Can the Duncan fanbase please have a cameo of Duncan, Maybe as a flashback from Alistair? Just once.

Please O_O

Duncan is dead.

[Asch Lavigne]

The whole "DA2 was about being Powerlessness" thing bothers me. Hawke did stuff regardless of any "power."

And really, once he/she became Champion, what "Power" did Hawke have? None. "Champion" is not a political/religious/etc office. Before becoming Champion Hawke was Kirkwall's errand boy/girl. After becoming he/she just became the official errand boy/girl. He/She never got to make any real decisions, it was all "Champion, go here and do this. Go here and do that."

Modifié par Asch Lavigne, 31 mars 2013 - 01:32 .

[Foolsfolly]

RPS: That was another thing that took a lot of people by surprise about Dragon Age II. A lot of the themes were pretty relevant. I think that’s more the purview of sci-fi in a lot of cases: “Let’s take these themes that are present today and abstract them into the future.”

Gaider: I actually don’t like that. People put fantasy as a genre into a much smaller box than something like science fiction. I don’t think that necessarily needs to be the case. I think there just hasn’t been a lot of fantasy that’s been done that way. The sort of fantasy you get tends to follow the same sort of “epic ancient evil threatens the world” thing almost out of habit. I don’t think that fantasy needs to be inherently limiting in the types of themes it addresses. I’d like to see us vary it up.

Fantastic. I never got why people think genres should restrict storytelling. I mean if it HAD to why would anyone write anything in fantasy? It would all just be redressed Toiken... which plenty of it is.

[In Exile]

David Gaider wrote...
Taking my response to that writing-specific question as indicative of anything regarding gameplay or what-have-you would be a mistake. It may or may not apply, but that wasn't the question and I wouldn't advise trying too hard to interpret my response as applying to things which aren't part of my purview as a writer.

Nothwithstanding what I am sure would be objections from some on this forum, is there a chance for the PC to offer explanations of this sort via dialogue choices (or investigate-like options), as ME1 did in its introduction (e.g. Shepard offering that the Terminus systems would not start a war with the council)?

[EpicBoot2daFace]

Gaider: The Kickstarter market is definitely more niche-oriented. The niche isn’t a bad thing. It’s a segment of the audience that is intensely interested in this particular thing. They don’t have to worry about going broad and having mass appeal. They don’t need it.

That's right, and people who want RPG's designed for people who actually play RPG's will be looking at Kickstarter and other indie projects with great interest. Bioware games must appeal to as many groups as possible and I think that's why we've seen so many problems with their games since they were bought by EA. That doesn't mean a Bioware game is going to automatically be bad, but I do believe it hurts the product.

RPS: I think I enjoyed it more than a lot of people. I found the story fascinating, even though choices felt very limited. It was almost a narrative about powerlessness. The fact that you were a guy or girl tossed into these terrible circumstances and you just had to react and deal with it. It wasn’t so much about Shepard-style heroics. It was kind of an un-epic.

I think it was a rushed, boring, repetative, and very uneventful adventure that never had any chance of living up to it's predecessor, epic or not. When do I get an interview with David Gaider?

Modifié par EpicBoot2daFace, 31 mars 2013 - 06:46 .

[LTD]

Every single in-game DA2 picture in that article makes me want to break things.
How is it even possible to make even a dragon look like such a ****? Literally, how was that achieved? Article seems interesting tho, I'm gonna have to copy/paste the text so I can read it without having to look at Dragon Age 2.

Modifié par LTD, 31 mars 2013 - 07:37 .

[Direwolf0294]

I've always found the idea of appealing to knew players in a sequel to be rather odd, but I guess that's just how I play games. I find it weird jumping into the second, third, fourth whatever game in a series without playing the previous ones, and the few times I have done it I haven't expected the game to appeal to me as a new player. I played Killzone 3 without having played any previous game in the series, but you know what I did before hand? I read the complete story of the first two games, because I didn't expect the third game to introduce me to the world and characters. I'm jumping into the middle of a story, or the end; it's my job to catch up, not the games to catch me up.

ME3 suffered slightly because of that trying to appeal to new players. It was the final game in an epic trilogy, its sole focus should have been on the people who had played the previous games. Any new players should have played the previous games or read the plot online. I don't want to see the same thing in DA3. I don't want long, boring explanations about things I already know. I don't want "noob" characters like Vega to introduce me to the world. I want the game to assume that since I'm playing the third game in a series, I have some idea of what's going on.

[Paul E Dangerously]

Avalon The Elf wrote...

New players should never be put ahead of the old ones in games like these, it's what happened to Gears Of War, what happened to The Elder Scrolls, and it's what's happening to Assassin's Creed :/

This always makes me giggle. Bethesda's changes to the Elder Scrolls haven't been for the Joe Casual Call of Duty audience everyone online loves to whine about. They're almost direct responses to things the hardcore fans complain about on their forums. They might not handle them the way those fans want them to, but that's the case.

The fact Bioware wants a new player to buy their game and might make some aspect of the game geared toward them (concepts, terms, and so on) is just as valid as catering to Forum Goer X who wants every possible relationship in the known universe open to their character.

Really, I don't care who they're trying to appeal to if the core game is solid, and the writing doesn't make me
want to send objects flying at the screen. I liked DA2 despite the fact it was rushed to hell, and want only the best for 3. No matter how many people act like it, neither DAO or ME1 were perfect.

Modifié par Sopa de Gato, 31 mars 2013 - 11:19 .

[Androme]

David Gaider wrote...

Dagr88 wrote...

... I don't get that "old players over new ones" and vice versa. At least not in DA settings. Developers can't make it more "shootery" or make doorknob's textures more friendly to new players at the cost of veteran player's experience. When they talk about "We must remember newcomers", the first thing that comes to my mind is that some of the dialogs must have "introduction context"

- You Templars hunt and kill us mages because bla-bla-bla!!!
- Silence! You know full well how dangerous demons are bla-bla-bla!!!

- 5th Blight bla-bla-bla. Ferelden bla-bla-bla.

- Dwarves live under the rock.

Dialogs must not only "tell" us new story, but also reintroduce us to the Thedas and it's rules.

You're correct, and I'll point out to others that my response was in terms of the writing only-- we have to be careful, when writing the story for DA3, to not assume that everyone playing the game is intimately familiar with the previous two installments... and, indeed, may not know anything about them at all. That gets increasingly challenging as we move forward, and is a very easy thing for us writers to forget (as QA keeps telling us).

Taking my response to that writing-specific question as indicative of anything regarding gameplay or what-have-you would be a mistake. It may or may not apply, but that wasn't the question and I wouldn't advise trying too hard to interpret my response as applying to things which aren't part of my purview as a writer.

How about adressing that issue with the codex instead of in-game dialogue? In my honest opinion that seems like the best solution, you could like, have a codex by the name of: Events of Dragon Age: Origins & Events of Dragon Age II.

[Androme]

Plaintiff wrote...

Of course they're going to consider the wants and needs of newcomers to the series. That's only commonsense.

Actually, no, it isn't. It's a sequel, a sequel takes place after the game before said sequel, thus if you want to fully understand the events of the sequel, you should have played the game before the sequel. It's NOT ''common sense'' to babysit newcomers for the first few minutes or hell even hours of a game/movie/book whatever, just to make them acquainted with the universe and ruin the experience for people who have actually played the series through.

Modifié par Androme, 31 mars 2013 - 12:12 .

[BeatoSama]

There will always be people who buy the first game and not the second, who buy the first and second and not the third and so on. If you don't attempt to attract any new customers your audience will gradually shrink as you release new installments.

[Wulfram]

Androme wrote...

How about adressing that issue with the codex instead of in-game dialogue? In my honest opinion that seems like the best solution, you could like, have a codex by the name of: Events of Dragon Age: Origins & Events of Dragon Age II.

I don't think you can really put stuff that's actually necessary to understand the plot in the codex.

Though I'd guess that the things which are problematic are less the events of previous games and more setting elements that have already been established.  That Mages and Templars don't get along, that the Elves have lost two homelands called Arlathan and the Dales, that Orlais once occupied Fereldan, that sort of thing.

If anything the awkward thing for referring to the actual events of previous games is that this sort of thing can be catnip to established fans, but boring to the newbies.  It can be like having a couple of friends reminiscing - even if you know what they're talking about, the fact that you weren't there and didn't experience it means it's not half as interesting to you.

Modifié par Wulfram, 31 mars 2013 - 12:27 .

[SpEcIaLRyAn]

Simple solution. Just make the game unplayable to those who haven't played the previous installments. See. Simple. (I'm totally kidding btw.)

They could always make the game somehow detect if you haven't played the previous instalments and play a little intro movie for you if you haven't. Or have the intro movie in the game by default and you can choose if you want to view it or not. At this point it'd be up to new players to let the intro play.

[Sejborg]

David Gaider wrote...

Dagr88 wrote...

... I don't get that "old players over new ones" and vice versa. At least not in DA settings. Developers can't make it more "shootery" or make doorknob's textures more friendly to new players at the cost of veteran player's experience. When they talk about "We must remember newcomers", the first thing that comes to my mind is that some of the dialogs must have "introduction context"

- You Templars hunt and kill us mages because bla-bla-bla!!!
- Silence! You know full well how dangerous demons are bla-bla-bla!!!

- 5th Blight bla-bla-bla. Ferelden bla-bla-bla.

- Dwarves live under the rock.

Dialogs must not only "tell" us new story, but also reintroduce us to the Thedas and it's rules.

You're correct, and I'll point out to others that my response was in terms of the writing only-- we have to be careful, when writing the story for DA3, to not assume that everyone playing the game is intimately familiar with the previous two installments... and, indeed, may not know anything about them at all. That gets increasingly challenging as we move forward, and is a very easy thing for us writers to forget (as QA keeps telling us).

Taking my response to that writing-specific question as indicative of anything regarding gameplay or what-have-you would be a mistake. It may or may not apply, but that wasn't the question and I wouldn't advise trying too hard to interpret my response as applying to things which aren't part of my purview as a writer.

I found that the writing in DA2 contradicted what else was going on in the game.

A couple of examples:

"There is no more room in Kirkwall for you refugees!". However Kirkwall looked mostly empty and the sounddepartment had even added an echo effect to dialogues because Kirkwall was nothing but stonewalls with nothing in between. There was lots of room but the writing told me something else.

Timeskips. The writing told me time had passed but it wasn't shown anywhere else in the game. Kirkwall looked the same as always, everyone was wearing the same outfit, no NPC's looked to be aging, and the merchants were all the same and stood exactly in the same spot as they did years before. There was even the same dude standing around for 10 years demanding to speak to the count/king (whatever it was). Funny? Perhaps, but it didn't exactly add to the illusion of timeskips.

Mages can't go freely around Kirkwall. All the templars will catch you. Yeah. 


I think all the different parts of the DA department need to cooperate better, so everything fits together - from the writing, to the gameplay, to the sound and music, to the art.

[HolyAvenger]

A lot of players don't read the Codex and aren't interested in exploring the lore to that detail. You can't put important info there, only background stuff.

I also love the fact that somehow someone who spend $60-80 on this game but hasn't on the last one is, for some reason, a customer BioWare should happily f*ck over during the game. Hilarious.