Hold on. That part of the guide wasn't a walkthrough or anything. It was in the strategy section. It's not talking about the prologue, it was speaking to Hawke's personality and the conversation system in general.
That's fine. It still makes reference to Hawke's first dialogue option. It doesn't have to be a part of a walkthrough in order to make reference to the first line that the system comes into play.
Because NEITHER of those is how the whole section of the guide reads for me, nor what i understood from all the marketing and talk of dominant tone for DA2 when it was released.
Allan, I know you are trying to help, and I appreciate it, but I'm getting MORE confused by your clairifications.
Why did you grab the word FIRST so strongly there? The next paragraph in the guide, the one I didn't quote but Dave of Canada is referencing, says that the stack is halved at the start of each new act.
I grabbed the word first, because you seem to think it's referring to something more than a mere reference to the first time the system comes into play.
I think you need to Occam's Razor your interpretation of what you read in the strategy guide, because you seem to think that my explanation, and what the guide said, aren't in alignment. They are, but you seem to be reading more into the words. At least the passage that you quoted from page 160 anyways.
To rephrase the section from the strategy guide that you quoted:
There is a dominant tone system in the game, which starts with your very first dialogue choice. Which ever option you pick adds a value to that tone, also setting your dominant tone. To establish a new dominant tone you must pick enough dialogue options that are of a different tone to exceed the dominant tone's value.
The tone scores also appear to be halved at the end of each act, which means it'll be easier to change your dominant tone at that point.
So, imagine (for simplicity) that every time you pick a tone option, you add one (1) to the score for that tone.
At the start of the game, you have the following values:
Diplomatic: 0
Humourous: 0
Aggressive: 0
At your first dialogue option, you pick something. Lets pick Humourous. This adds +1 to the Humourous tone score. So now we have:
Diplomatic: 0
Humourous: 1
Aggressive: 0
As this was our first use of the tone wheel, picking humourous has set our dominant tone to Humorous (I show this with the bold). We will now use humourous lines for some of the auto dialogues, as well as the choice responses. Some NPCs may even reference our dominant tone in their lines.
Now, we have another dialogue response. We have picked... Diplomatic. So now we have:
Diplomatic: 1
Humourous: 1
Aggressive: 0
Humorous remains our dominant tone, because we have a tie and the way we resolve our ties is by keeping which ever one you chose first. Now we pick an aggressive option.
Diplomatic: 1
Humourous: 1
Aggressive: 1
Humourous remains dominant, since it was the first. Lets pick an aggressive:
Diplomatic: 1
Humourous: 1
Aggressive: 2
Aggressive is now leading, and has become the dominant tone. (Note: there may be some specifics with the algorithm here that I don't necessarily recall. They may have made it so you have to exceed the dominant tone by double or some other measurement. This detail of the system I never had to worry about, so I never really knew these finer details. At this point, however, it's just semantics). So the values "stack" in that, by picking more options, you keep adding 1 to the existing value.
Now, if I understand the "halving, at the end of the act." Lets assume that, right at the end of Act 1, we have:
Diplomatic: 10
Humourous: 18
Aggressive: 13
Then, once we start act 2, the values will have changed to:
Diplomatic: 5
Humourous: 9
Aggressive: 6
As such, you retain your previous dominant tone, but 6 aggressive choices to change to an aggressive tone, you only need to make 4. As such, it's easier to change your dominant tone after an act change.
What I am feeling certain of is that you are trying to explain that dominant tone was rarely used at all in DA2. At which point, if that is what you are trying to say and that is the truth, why was it used AT ALL and spoken of as a feature?
I'm not saying it was "rarely" used. I'm saying that the idea that some people had, that ALL lines of dialogue were influenced by the dominant tone, is incorrect. There were posters in this thread that thought it meant that we had to record 3x the VO for each dialogue response, which isn't the case.
I certainly wouldn't say it was used "rarely," but it certainly wasn't used 100% of the time, and I'd wager not even a majority of the time. I mean, I guess it depends on what you mean by "rarely" but, for example, if it was only used 10% of the time, it's not so significant to balloon our VO costs, but I certainly wouldn't describe it as rarely, nor would I say it's splitting hairs over your interpretation of the system.
As for why it was done? Probably to provide a degree of replayability and allowing the game to respond in a certain why based on the prior choices that the player made. For some, it worked and they liked it. For others, it compounded issues they had with the wheel in general.
I didn't really follow the forums so I don't know how much it was talked up prerelease. However, given that I actually found out about the system myself
by accident (localization couldn't get a line to play right in the prologue, and I noticed I was getting a different line, so I investigated). I'd be surprised if it was heavily communicated out as a feature since it didn't seem to be really all that known even internally. But like I said, maybe I was wrong.
The dominant tone discussions more seem to be a manifestation of the repeated discussions about the pros and cons of the dialogue wheel and its use in DA2.
:lol:
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