235 réponses à ce sujet

[Fast Jimmy]

The voiced protagonist.

Next question!

[legbamel]

The world of RPGs used to be a different place. It used to be made for and cater to people who wanted to role play deeply. But those same roles sometimes took place in real time (you walk seveneen miles to the Cave of Doom in Evil Forest--come back later tonight when you get therr znd we'll go questing!) JRPGs are generally far more set than anything BioWare has done (at least the ones I've played have been).

Dragon Age was the first game I played with a really robust character creator and I've never looked back. You could give your warden a name but no one ever used it, just like Hawke. Your vaunted origin rated a few references in the game and only affected the ending if you wanted to sit on the throne. For the most part, the conversations were identical and the events followed the same course no mattet what your role playing head canon. These are limits that are expensive and time-consuming to stretch and AAA companies rarely get the time and money thet need.

Bah, forget it. We've been down this road a hundred times on the BSN. Just do a search for "what makes an RPG". And, as has been said, if you're so stuffed with the "right" way to do it then why aren't you a dev and not an armchair critic? To me, BioWare makes real RPGs certainly more than Final Fantasy or Risen, just not the same as that other wildly popular game that people seem to think is the only way to do it anymore.

[wright1978]

Personally i prefer the benefits to roleplaying immersion that a voiced protaganist gives.
I enjoyed the approach of Mass Effect using backgrounds and i hope that the DAI approach improves upon this even if they aren't full blown playable origins. The removal of the race choice aspect is a shame but one i find understandable.

[Boycott Bioware]

having voiced protagonist have some advantage, the character may sing...

In Skyrim, there's Bard College, but the character can't even sing or playing drum at all, so it just a waste and boring, bard College in Skyrim is just the same with other guilds, fetch quest givers

So in DA3 they could make Bard College where the character may sing, reciting poems, dancing, playing lute and so on, because of the character have voice...

I really want to see Hawke juggling rodents and sing...

[Sejborg]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

The voiced protagonist.

Next question!

That is hardly THE answer. A dwarf, elf and a human could all be given the same voice for instance. 

The answer is probably that Bioware don't value this type of agency as much as some of their fans. 

[Lulupab]

discosuperfly wrote...

DA:Origin had pre-set names.

All of them are irrelevant anyway. Even the human magi origin that has Amell last name has no impact on DA2. And its confirmed its Hawke's cousin.

[apascone]

It's obvious isn't it? It sells better then a non voiced protagonist. You can hit a wider group of people. If this wasn't the case they wouldn't do it.
As a general rule of thumb. There are always the exceptions

[Plaintiff]

Two reasons:

1) Because the story warrants it. The setting of Dragon Age is full of bigotry and it's not feasible that an elf or dwarf would be able to do and have all the things that a human character can do and have. Some barriers are just insumountable. Until something occurs within the setting to facilitate a change in the way society operates, an elf or dwarf hero may not be feasible for the narrative Bioware wants to tell.

2) Cinematics. Elves and dwarves and humans are different heights. In conjuction with the shift to a new engine, accommodating the height disparity isn't a feasible option for DA:I, but the possibility still exists for a future title to include it.

Bioware has stated that implementing race choice at this stage would be extremely difficult. It would be easier to scrap the work they've already done and build the game from the ground up. It should be pretty obvious why they're not going to do that. It would be costly and time-consuming with scant benefit.

Voice acting has little to do with it. That's an issue Bioware could work around easily, or at least with less difficulty than cinematics.

Modifié par Plaintiff, 13 mai 2013 - 02:25 .

[Enigmatick]

apascone wrote...

It's obvious isn't it? It sells better then a non voiced protagonist. You can hit a wider group of people. If this wasn't the case they wouldn't do it.
As a general rule of thumb. There are always the exceptions

Pretty much this a Human voiced protagonist will be palatable to people who haven't played a Dragon Age game or don't usually play these types of games in general, as opposed to say a set voiced Dwarf player character. So yeah I blame the casuals.

Modifié par Enigmatick, 13 mai 2013 - 02:28 .

[The Elder King]

apascone wrote...

It's obvious isn't it? It sells better then a non voiced protagonist. You can hit a wider group of people. If this wasn't the case they wouldn't do it.
As a general rule of thumb. There are always the exceptions

You're talking about games in general, right?
Because in the rpg field we have both an example of a game extremely successful in term of sales with no voiced PC (Skyrim, with 10k copies sold), and the example of Bioware's own games. DAO sold more copies than ME, ME2 and DA2. Only ME3 sold more copies than DAO. So it's not a general rule for rpgs that a voiced PC boosts sales.

[Enigmatick]

Plaintiff wrote...

Two reasons:

1) Because the story warrants it. The setting of Dragon Age is full of bigotry and it's not feasible that an elf or dwarf would be able to do and have all the things that a human character can do and have. Some barriers are just insumountable. Until something occurs within the setting to facilitate a change in the way society operates, an elf or dwarf hero may not be feasible for the narrative Bioware wants to tell.

How is not a bad thing that a story in a RPG disallows flexibility for races

[Plaintiff]

Enigmatick wrote...

Plaintiff wrote...

Two reasons:

1) Because the story warrants it. The setting of Dragon Age is full of bigotry and it's not feasible that an elf or dwarf would be able to do and have all the things that a human character can do and have. Some barriers are just insumountable. Until something occurs within the setting to facilitate a change in the way society operates, an elf or dwarf hero may not be feasible for the narrative Bioware wants to tell.

How is not a bad thing that a story in a RPG disallows flexibility for races

Why are you asking me?

[Giltspur]

Sharn wrote...

After how Origins allowed you to pick a name, race,  and origin story for your character with dialogue options that weren't just either nice, sassy, or mean we're suddenly back to DA2 or Mass Effect. Why are we forced to play as a voiced human who mostly likely has their own preset name and back story when we had so many options in Origins? Who could possibly prefer that over being able to create their own hero instead of someone else's? 

It just doesn't make sense and greatly restricts the role playing in a game that is supposedly an RPG. Having a voiced character also means there are less dialogue options which origins had so many of. 

This was one of my main peeves with Mass Effect, shepherd was just so boring and lifeless.

I don't know.  But hey this is a forum so time for wild internet speculations.

I imagine it's more a matter of cinematics than voices--though voices probably matter as well.

Imagination a cinematic requires that one character touch another character.  SInce you can't do that in the course of regular gameplay, you need a cinematic.  ( I gather.  It's always possible that I'm misusing the term.)  Now if you have different models, that means more work has to be done for the extra races since you can't simply sub in a new model as you have to make other adjustments for the new actor.  So Bioware is going to have x # of cinematics they can do within the time allocated for a project.  (Unless they want to add people or add time to allow for more stuff to be made.)  So they can either have more cinematics for a human male or female or they reduce to the total number any individual player will see due to sarcrifices made to make elf versions and dwarf version.  In other words, they're unlikelyl to simply add dwarf and elf.  They will have to delete from human to make room for dwarf and elf.  (Unless again they allocate more time or people to cover extra work.)

So I imagine that's the main thing.  Granted, I'm just a forum jerkbag making guesses from the peanut gallery.  But that's my best guess as to how it works.

What about voices?  Eh, they don't seem like any big deal.  It's easier to cough up money than it is to create time.  So they could just pay more voice actors.  I doubt that's actually any big obstacle for them.  However, there are storage requirements for VO.  And play-from-disc considerations for X360 might be an issue there.

So basically as games become more cinematic and as the cost of game development rises in such a way that risk goes up in alarming ways, we as gamers are at this awkward interregnum of seeing games look better than ever but have less customization than we've seen in the past.  My hope is that as tools improve, the burden on developers will go down and allow us to eventually see the customization that we saw in the past.

Modifié par Giltspur, 13 mai 2013 - 02:44 .

[apascone]

hhh89 wrote...

apascone wrote...

It's obvious isn't it? It sells better then a non voiced protagonist. You can hit a wider group of people. If this wasn't the case they wouldn't do it.
As a general rule of thumb. There are always the exceptions

You're talking about games in general, right?
Because in the rpg field we have both an example of a game extremely successful in term of sales with no voiced PC (Skyrim, with 10k copies sold), and the example of Bioware's own games. DAO sold more copies than ME, ME2 and DA2. Only ME3 sold more copies than DAO. So it's not a general rule for rpgs that a voiced PC boosts sales.

thats why I said a general rule I knew someone was going to bring up origins. But I'm talking about RPGs too. And sure it boosts sales it doesn't hurt them because if it did then video game companies wouldn't have voiced pc. Of course I have no proof other then the rules of business. 

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

What? If there is no character creation in a fantasy RPG, that game more likely sucks!

[Sutamina]

Enigmatick wrote...
How is not a bad thing that a story in a RPG disallows flexibility for races

what?

[Shevy]

Catroi wrote...

^what this great man said

hey guys I has an idea

multiple voice actors for the hero depending of the race/gender

just an idea for a non-lazy developper

It's not about laziness, it's about economic feasibility. The charges would never justify the benefit.

As to why we won't get race selection: (suggestions)

1. Maybe the story demands the protagonist to be human. As it would have been impossible to make Hawke and thus his/her family dwarves. All the aspects of being a mage or really tight connected to one would be missing.

2. Since the data from Origins suggested that human was choosen the most, they are going with human again and put the effort to different things like maybe providing backstories for your NPC with actual relevance during the game, providing a better character creator or armor related things because the body is set.

Or some other reasons.

I'm not a fan of "only human"too, but maybe the benefit justifies the decision.

[Aolbain]

Money. It costs to much recourse to make every scene with 6 different VAs (or letting every VA do every scene with 3 different voices) and 6 different character heights..

[windzero]

well, if you want a 'real rpg' there's always an option of pen and paper game with other people or maybe yourself as dungeon master

Bioware is just a company,that has its own budget and aiming for profit to create another game
a company sometimes cannot fulfill all the demands of its customer.
Sure they have their mistakes and all, but no matter how loud and how much you scream, they won't change their minds unless there are thousands like minded people.

Remember ME3?when there are thousands of unsatisfied customers and mostly pointed out the ending,so Bioware create 'new ending(s)' for them. And seeing as how the franchise has more followers than before and people are demanding for more of its kind, so they made it another sequel.

Take a look at Disney as example, just because there are a lot of fans of Star Wars franchise and seeing how much they would made profit out of it they made another film(s) of the franchise.many people despise the idea for various reason(me included), but that doesn't mean they (Disney) will change their mind, because seeing profit they would made out of the franchise (casual&fan watching the film,souvenirs,games,etc.)

TL;DR they won't hear you scream unless there are thousands of people like you which means millions of bucks will lost if they dont do what their you want

Modifié par windzero, 13 mai 2013 - 03:06 .

[azarhal]

StreetMagic wrote...

Besides that, it's only one game. Some stories need to be told, Bioware thinks, to set up stories for other events. It's only 10 years into the Dragon Age. You've got 90 more years of different stories. 

hmmm, DA2 ends in 9:40, 40 years into the Dragon age. DA:O happened in 9:30. But BioWare still have plenty of timeline to fill in both the past and the future...

[Beerfish]

DA Origins was nice but was hardly the norm for RPG's or even good rpgs.

[windzero]

Beerfish wrote...

DA Origins was nice but was hardly the norm for RPG's or even good rpgs.

perhaps you could enlighten me, what is the norm for RPGs or even a good RPGs?