207 réponses à ce sujet

[MerinTB]

AlanC9 wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
And I pose again - why have both a friendship/rivalry system, as well as a dominant tone system, if the game is going to preset cut scenes and auto-dialog and other responses to your companions that are contrary to BOTH your F/R rating with said companion AND your dominant tone?  My not-jokey Hawke, who had max Rivalry with Isabela, would constantly warmly greet her and chuckle at her bawdy humor.

Which system would you have wanted to govern those interactions? My understanding of the design intent is that F/R was supposed to govern that area. 

Ignoring, for a moment, that in a game where the character is more or less supposed to be created by the player (this is, I accept, debatable in DA2, as to whether Hawke is more a Warden or more a Geralt) shouldn't have ANY tone to auto-dialog (and ignoring more so that auto-dialog in such a game is a bad idea overall)...

I'd want each Hawke to companion interaction to have two to three sets of reaction dialog.  Before "that's too expensive" an argument pops up (voice is expensive, ignoring the argument for not having voice at all) you should limit how many responses are colored by tone and the cost is minimalized.  This kind of toned reaction in auto-dialog or cut-scenes or later additions to toned choice dialog (anytime you aren't, as a player, directly choosing your response.)  Try and keep most things toneless, but when you add tone for flavor, make the tone match the F/R meter for the given companion.

At least two - one for Rivalry, one for Friendly.  The third could be for a range of neutral, though it might be cheaper and nearly as effective to just have the "neutral zone" result in NO toned reaction dialog.

----

Example (with no Neutral specific reaction):

Cut scene or auto-dialog, no player choice of dialog.
Characters: Hawke and Fenris
Scene: Telling Fenris to "deal with" his brooding.

Lead in line -
Fenris: Woe is me, I had a sucky life.  My past is coming back to haunt me.

Auto-dialog response

Line One - the Reaction one, using tone, dependent on F/R meter (if Neutral, skip this part.)
Friendly Hawke: What you went through was more than most could endure, I sympathize, but you aren't alone.
Rivalry Hawke: Life is tough for everyone, but show some spine and realize that you've got allies now.

Line Two - all Hawkes
Hawke: I want you to understand that together we can solve the lingering threats of your past.

----

See that?  The auto-dialog is, in true DA2 spirit, leading to the same end result (as even the tone choice dialogs almost always do) but with the flavor lead-in.

[In Exile]

MerinTB wrote...
Rivalry system was created so that if you hated people you could just let them go?  I thought the Rivalry system was there so you could be absolutely unlikeable to your companions but they'd stick around?

No. The Rivalry system was there so that you could challenge your companions views while remaining friends with them. How well Bioware did this varies, but the idea is that you can have one issue where you're not seeing eye to eye, but otherwise have the warm and fuzzies for each other.

To use an example, in DA:O for Alistair an "R" path would essentially culminate in his 'hardened' character, where you push him to leave behind his more naive views, be pragmatic, etc. The same for Leliana. 

Why bother with tracking Friend / Rival if the game cannot track how you treat your companions....

Becuase it was never about how you treat your companions in the being a douchebag sense. 

Except that you get R points if you do. The whole system fails in execution because instead of making it just about conversation with characters on belief, it's a whole load of confusing inputs.

[In Exile]

MerinTB wrote...
Ignoring, for a moment, that in a game where the character is more or less supposed to be created by the player (this is, I accept, debatable in DA2, as to whether Hawke is more a Warden or more a Geralt) shouldn't have ANY tone to auto-dialog (and ignoring more so that auto-dialog in such a game is a bad idea overall)...

Fair, but I will point out that it's impossible not to have tone. The only way to pretend it isn't there is to engage in some spectacular reality denials.  

I'd want each Hawke to companion interaction to have two to three sets of reaction dialog.  Before "that's too expensive" an argument pops up (voice is expensive, ignoring the argument for not having voice at all) you should limit how many responses are colored by tone and the cost is minimalized.  This kind of toned reaction in auto-dialog or cut-scenes or later additions to toned choice dialog (anytime you aren't, as a player, directly choosing your response.)  Try and keep most things toneless, but when you add tone for flavor, make the tone match the F/R meter for the given companion.

I'm not sure your line to actually works with you R. 

Modifié par In Exile, 03 juin 2013 - 11:54 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

MerinTB wrote...

I role-play my thought processes and different impulses.  Doesn't everyone?

And thus neatly demonstrate that it is absolutely possible to roleplay more than one character at a time.

Thank you.

[In Exile]

MerinTB wrote...
I role-play my thought processes and different impulses.  Doesn't everyone?

No. I look at issues from multiple vantage-points, but it's all me. I mean, I could add labels to the various views I play arond with, but that would be misleading because it would be somehow acting as if they aren't a unified whole and that the whole thought process is actually like a conversation instead of... a flash of insight. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
Ignoring, for a moment, that in a game where the character is more or less supposed to be created by the player (this is, I accept, debatable in DA2, as to whether Hawke is more a Warden or more a Geralt) shouldn't have ANY tone to auto-dialog (and ignoring more so that auto-dialog in such a game is a bad idea overall)...

Fair, but I will point out that it's impossible not to have tone. The only way to pretend it isn't there is to engage in some spectacular reality denials. 

Like my insistence that only denotative meaning is meaning?

Do you infer tone when reading what I write here?  If so, try rereading each line with a radically different tone   Did the meaning change?  At least one of those meanings must be wrong.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
Like my insistence that only denotative meaning is meaning?

Yes, it's a reality denial. Not only does it get the actual operation of language and grammer backwards, but it fails to describe the actual inferences and informaton that people rely on when infering content. 

Do you infer tone when reading what I write here?  If so, try rereading each line with a radically different tone   Did the meaning change?  At least one of those meanings must be wrong.

You just don't get pragmatism. I don't mean this in a pejorative way - I just mean that I don't think that you appreciate the significance of prediction and manipulating the world as an end in itself. 

It doesn't matter whether in some plantonic abstract, I grasp the "true" tone that you have. What matters is whether or not whatever operative model of tone I use actually gets at what information you're trying to convey, so that we can meaningfully interact (e.g. exchange information, plan behaviour, understand our varying emotional states/wants/goals, etc.). 

You've got a binary view of things - they're either true or false, you have no process available to you that can with certainty show you things to be true, so you live in a world of vacuous conditionals. But you're whole system is conceptually unsustainable because you have to actually make decisions at some point, which means you need to rely on inputs external to your system to do it. You just seem to refuse to acknowledge how those inputs work. 

It's like science - maybe all of our theories are completely wrong. It's perfectly plausible that, through a kind of natural selection of ideas, we've just come up with a load of systematic nonsense that happens to let us build thngs. But it doesn't matter - because we have those things. For more on that, see Bas van Fraassen on constructive empiricism. 

Modifié par In Exile, 04 juin 2013 - 12:16 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

Yes, it's a reality denial. Not only does it get the actual operation of language and grammer backwards, but it fails to describe the actual inferences and informaton that people rely on when infering content.

No, it describes them more accurately.  As inventions, rather than well-supported inferences.

You just don't get pragmatism. I don't mean this in a pejorative way - I just mean that I don't think that you appreciate the significance of prediction and manipulating the world as an end in itself.

I don't understand why you rush headlong into a conclusion, even when you know it might be wrong.

I can see possible conclusions, and experiment with them, without necessarily holding them to be true.  It's that last step alone - holding them to be true - where I think you go wrong.

I'm not suggesting we should never draw conclusions unless they're 100% supported by logical deduction.  I'm saying we shouldn't hold them to be true unless they're 100% supported by logical deduction.  We should always be aware of where our uncertainty lies and how big it is, lest we grow too confident in our positions.  Error compounds.  Even potential error compounds.

It doesn't matter whether in some plantonic abstract, I grasp the "true" tone that you have.

Of course not.  That's (probably) impossible.  What matters is that you know you didn't.

What matters is whether or not whatever operative model of tone I use actually gets at what information you're trying to convey,

I don't think that's possible.

so that we can meaningfully interact (e.g. exchange information, plan behaviour, understand our varying emotional states/wants/goals, etc.).

I don't think that has anything to do with understand each others' intent.  I think we can do it.  I just don't think it works the way you think it works.

You've got a binary view of things - they're either true or false,

So do you, or your system of reasoning is nonsensical.

you have no process available to you that can with certainty show you things to be true, so you live in a world of vacuous conditionals.

I would argue that the word vacuous here is being used pejoratively.

I will concede they are conditionals.  I don't really know what the word vacuous would mean in this context.

But you're whole system is conceptually unsustainable because you have to actually make decisions at some point, which means you need to rely on inputs external to your system to do it.

I don't need to hold things to be true in order to make decisions as if they are true.

You just seem to refuse to acknowledge how those inputs work.

I don't know what that means.

It's like science - maybe all of our theories are completely wrong. It's perfectly plausible that, through a kind of natural selection of ideas, we've just come up with a load of systematic nonsense that happens to let us build thngs. But it doesn't matter - because we have those things. For more on that, see Bas van Fraassen on constructive empiricism.

This has largely been my point on dialogue all along.  I'm willing to use whatever standard of evidence I need to produce the outcomes I like.  You, however, insist on using a broadly applicable standard of evidence all of the time, even if, in this specific instance, it produces suboptimal results.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 04 juin 2013 - 03:19 .

[MerinTB]

In Exile wrote...

MerinTB wrote...
I role-play my thought processes and different impulses.  Doesn't everyone?

No. I look at issues from multiple vantage-points, but it's all me. I mean, I could add labels to the various views I play arond with, but that would be misleading because it would be somehow acting as if they aren't a unified whole and that the whole thought process is actually like a conversation instead of... a flash of insight. 

uhm....

to quote EDI -

That was a joke.

[MerinTB]

In Exile wrote...
Fair, but I will point out that it's impossible not to have tone.

Really?

So, the following line, as written, you know enitrely what tone it is being written in?

You poor thing.  What you must have gone through.  I am shocked.

Was that tone empathetic?  Hysterically sad? Calm but reassuring?  Monotone?  Enraged and ready to lash out?  Sarcastic?

Modifié par MerinTB, 04 juin 2013 - 04:58 .

[Fast Jimmy]

EntropicAngel wrote...

I think InExile is not saying he automatically KNOWS the tone, but that there WILL be a tone, regardless of him finding the correct one.

I figured that you, EA, of all people, would appreciate that it doesn't matter the consequence of the choice (the scripted NPC reaction that would indicate a particular tone was, at the very least, interpreted by the NPC in a certain way) does not determine the inherent value of such a choice. 

I can choose to read some of the Warden's written lines to be spoken like a spineless ninny, even if people react to them with fear. I have that choice, even if the consequence isn't demonstrated outright. I do not have that choice with a voiced protagonist. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

EntropicAngel wrote...

I think InExile is not saying he automatically KNOWS the tone, but that there WILL be a tone, regardless of him finding the correct one.

And my point is that, since finding the tone cannot be reliably done, it makes more sense to ignore it as meaningless.

[Sylvius the Mad]

EntropicAngel wrote...

Similarly, if I choose to ask Wynne if her Warden story has griffons in it, and I intend to say the sentence seriously, but the game indicates that it's a silly line ("Maker, it's like talking to a child!"), the game is actually telling me that I did NOT make a toneless choice, or a choice in my preferred tone, but that there was a specific tone assigned to that sentence.

No it is not.  It is telling you how Wynne reacted.  That's all it's telling you.

And while I can understand how Sylvius deals with this (by assuming they misunderstood) and do it to a small extent myself, I do agree that this is harder with a voiced protag.

I don't assume they misunderstood.  I simply don't believe that I can read their minds and know why they reacted as they did.

But I agree the voiced protagonist makes things more difficult, mostly by knocking me out of character by having the PC behave in ways different from what I intended.  I find, however, that I can mitigate that considerably by muting the voices.

It being more difficult to do with a voiced protag doesn't mean there WASN'T a tone assigned to the voiceless conversations, as we seem to have found out recently.

We have not found that out.  There was no tone in the unvoiced lines.  The writers intended a tone, yes, but it's not actually there.

[MerinTB]

Not only can people misunderstand, they can have agendas. They can purposefully disregard, exaggerated, or lie about what you just said. They can fail to hear what you said. There are so many ways that communication fails, that intent is lost even with voice and body language.

---

But that aside, the "toneless" part of what I meant needs to be in context (which my example to In Exile was, admittedly, NOT the right context, but it was in response to his taking the concept of TONE out of context in the first place... digression digression...)

The context being the three possible tone choices - Diplomatic, Humorous and Aggressive. Everyone here should be on the same page that the majority of Hawke's voiced lines are NOT using those three tones. You'll get the majority of the game's lines being the same for every playthrough, meaning that dominant tone and tone choice don't affect them. I accepted that this was true BEFORE it was pointed out to me, ad nauseum at this point, that "tone" affects even less of the dialog than I had presumed.

This is a separate, though tangent, line of discussion from the F/R scale. Tone used in that discussion can mean what tone, friendly or antagonistic, Hawke takes with a companion. To have tone choices, dominant tones, and a friend/rival rating in a game about choices and then to default all companions into "treat them friendly in all dialog and cut scenes short of romance and big decisions" seems a major oversight or poor choice on my part, but that's opinion at this point.

[Fast Jimmy]

I have a feeling you're being facetious, but I'll take you seriously.

In this instance, I am actually being serious. Written dialogue is impossible to determine intent and tone with!

As an example, if ME3 had pretended that I DID keep Maelon's data, and had Shepard confirming this, this would have been the game saying I actually didn't make a certain choice.

You should know better than to use a Save Import choice when having a discussion with me. As I pretty much summarily dismiss their use and purpose in general. 

But, that aside, this is an example where content is vastly different. The words are different than what the player intended. That isn't the same as tone, which is a reflection of FEELING. Your example may have worked if you had said Shepherd was forced to feel happy about the genophage cure, I suppose, rather than saying that the content of your choice was completely disregarded. 

Similarly, if I choose to ask Wynne if her Warden story has griffons in it, and I intend to say the sentence seriously, but the game indicates that it's a silly line ("Maker, it's like talking to a child!"), the game is actually telling me that I did NOT make a toneless choice, or a choice in my preferred tone, but that there was a specific tone assigned to that sentence.

 disregarded. 

Similarly, if I choose to ask Wynne if her Warden story has griffons in it, and I intend to say the sentence seriously, but the game indicates that it's a silly line ("Maker, it's like talking to a child!"), the game is actually telling me that I did NOT make a toneless choice, or a choice in my preferred tone, but that there was a specific tone assigned to that sentence.

I'd disagree. Sten has a very serious, deadpan delivery of all of his lines. That doesn't mean that when he, earnestly and eagerly, asks you about cookies that it doesn't make you think you are talking to a child. How do we know this isn't the same exact scenario? The character making the determination that you are being silly is Wynne, not the Warden. When Hawke delivers a line with shouted hostility, Hawke is making the determination that he is being hostile. In both cases, the player isn't making those determinations... but the stated concept of the game was not to control Wynne's (or any other NPC's) reactions, but rather the main character's. Only the instance of Hawke violates that premise. 

It being more difficult to do with a voiced protag doesn't mean there WASN'T a tone assigned to the voiceless conversations, as we seem to have found out recently.

As Sylvius would likely argue, the writer's intent isn't entirely (or at all) relevant to the player's experience. 

For instance, if memory serves me correctly, the original script of DA:O didn't have the Dark Ritual and instead had a quest where the Warden was sent on a MacGuffin chase to kill the Archdemon. 

So the writer's original intent for an unknown amount of time when creating DA:O was to not have a Dark Ritual or to have Morrigan's involvement in your party to be anything more than just her coming because Flemeth said so. Does that mean that any scenes where Morrgian may have been written during this newer Dark Ritual premise somehow invalidate anything? Say for instance that the entire part of Morrigan's character during the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest was written with the idea that there would be no Dark Ritual. Does the scene with The Guardian no longer seem suspicious when Morrigan instantly shuts him up?

I'd argue no, it doesn't. There could be a number of reasons why Morrigan told The Guardian she didn't want to hear his riddles that could include the Dark Ritual or could not, regardless of if that was the writer's intent or not.

Another (arguably better) example of this is the musical piece Threnody for 52 Strings.

This orchestral piece is a somewhat dark piece involving deep, dissonant strings combined with shrieking high pitches. The piece was an experimental piece by the composer, who attached no intent on it outside of experimentation and evoking a mood.

Yet those who listened to the piece said they could hear the high pitches as screams and the deep tones as similar to a bomb blast. Over time, it began to be said that the piece was a recreation, using stringed instruments, of the bombing of Hiroshima. The composer had no intent of this being the case, but, as this story and myth around the piece grew, it became the composer's most famous piece. Retroactively, he renamed it as a tribute to the Hiroshima victims, though that wasn't his intent when composing the piece at all.

So intent is not really relevant, it is all about how the end-used experiences the content that matters. So the fact that the writer's had the intent of tone during DA:O's dialogue construction but the player could choose to have different interpretations of the line and could make that interpretation work within the constraints of the game means that that style of play is valid and, in a roundabout way, supported. To yank said support out and say "you were playing it wrong" is entirely within Bioware's purview to do, but it doesn't mean anyone has to like them for it.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 04 juin 2013 - 06:18 .

[In Exile]

[quote]Sylvius the Mad wrote...
No, it describes them more accurately.  As inventions, rather than well-supported inferences.  [/quote]

But your view doesn't accurately descripte them as inventions. 

[quote]I don't understand why you rush headlong into a conclusion, even when you know it might be wrong. [/quote]

It doesn't matter whether the conclusion is right or wrong. It matters whether it has instrumental value. This is the underlying basis for our entire system of inference, and for our approach to science. 

[quote]I can see possible conclusions, and experiment with them, without necessarily holding them to be true.  It's that last step alone - holding them to be true - where I think you go wrong. [/quote]

I don't hold them to be true. This is what you have difficulty appreciating. I take a particular conclusion - on the basis of all of the available evidence - to be the most likely to be true. Because, to act, you have to assume one conclusion is actually true. You have to make some choice, which requires more than empty conditionals. 

[quote]I'm not suggesting we should never draw conclusions unless they're 100% supported by logical deduction.  I'm saying we shouldn't hold them to be true unless they're 100% supported by logical deduction.   [/quote]

But - and we discussed this before - what you use "truth" and "knowledge" to mean simply don't apprehend the concept as anyone uses them. 

[quote]We should always be aware of where our uncertainty lies and how big it is, lest we grow too confident in our positions.  Error compounds.  Even potential error compounds. [/quote]

I would completely agree. You're not in the abstract. You're just wrong about how this view should apply to be functional IRL. 

[quote]Of course not.  That's (probably) impossible.  What matters is that you know you didn't. [/quote]

No. What matters is whether my best estimate has instrumental value. An engineer doesn't "know" anything about the nature of the world. Yet somehow she manages to build and design metal contraptions that fly through the sky and can build other machines that trasmit information at a distance using "best guesses". 

By your standards, all science is just about holding conclusions to be true when they're not 100% supported by logical deductions and acting on them accordingly. 

[quote]I don't think that's possible. [/quote]

Then you would be wrong. If it is better than random chance, for example, it's more instrumental, even if the difference is minute. The actual accuracy is much higher.

[quote]I don't think that has anything to do with understand each others' intent.  I think we can do it.  I just don't think it works the way you think it works. [/quote]

Right, but this is just wrong. Or rather, it flies in the face of all available evidence to such an extent that you would have to demonstrably undermine our entire framework of obtaining empirical knowledge to demonstrate it to be wrong. 

[quote]So do you, or your system of reasoning is nonsensical. [/quote]

No, because the very idea that logic operates as a hard constraint is nonsensical. 

[quote]I would argue that the word vacuous here is being used pejoratively. [/quote]

I apologize. I thought that the primary meaning was empty, but looking up the definition, I was very much in the wrong. So, again, I apologize. 
 
[quote]I will concede they are conditionals.  I don't really know what the word vacuous would mean in this context. [/quote]

Empty, as in, they add no value (and , in fact, are less valuable) compared to a system of inference that is "perform action dictated by random number generator", where the random number generator pops out a pre-set sentence every minute. 

[quote]I don't need to hold things to be true in order to make decisions as if they are true. [/quote]

No. What you need to do is to concede that "truth" is irrelevant, and that some workable standard of inference based on probabilites and incomplete evidence has to determine what is likely true - or at the very least the most accurate description of reality to meaningfully interact with it - based on criteria that are external to your system of inference.

Which is what all people do, and what I do. 

[quote]I don't know what that means. [/quote]

That any decision you make has to be based on considerations external to your system of inference.

[quote]This has largely been my point on dialogue all along.  I'm willing to use whatever standard of evidence I need to produce the outcomes I like. [/quote]

But I don't. I don't create a system of inference to get me to a favoured conclusion. The very reason logic is a useful analytical tool is because it lets us avoid bias and manipulate a pre-determined set of information clearly.

[quote] You, however, insist on using a broadly applicable standard of evidence all of the time, even if, in this specific instance, it produces suboptimal results.
[/quote]

No, it produces superior results. The standard of evidence has to be external to subjective likes, because otherwise it's just equivalent to it, and it makes dealing with reality (which isn't subjec to subjective likes) impossible. 

[In Exile]

MerinTB wrote...
So, the following line, as written, you know enitrely what tone it is being written in?

You poor thing.  What you must have gone through.  I am shocked.

Was that tone empathetic?  Hysterically sad? Calm but reassuring?  Monotone?  Enraged and ready to lash out?  Sarcastic?

Did you just - seriously and honestly - ask me to asses tone from a written line? The thing that is by its very nature auditory? 

[In Exile]

MerinTB wrote...

Not only can people misunderstand, they can have agendas. They can purposefully disregard, exaggerated, or lie about what you just said. They can fail to hear what you said. There are so many ways that communication fails, that intent is lost even with voice and body language.

Did you know that medical science isn't 100% accurate 100% of the time? Man, better get some witch doctor to treat that cancer with inflatable banana pig™! Because that's how evidence works - if something isn't infallible, obviously it's just completely wrong and an inaccurate description of reality! 

The context being the three possible tone choices - Diplomatic, Humorous and Aggressive. Everyone here should be on the same page that the majority of Hawke's voiced lines are NOT using those three tones. You'll get the majority of the game's lines being the same for every playthrough, meaning that dominant tone and tone choice don't affect them. I accepted that this was true BEFORE it was pointed out to me, ad nauseum at this point, that "tone" affects even less of the dialog than I had presumed.

What do you mean, voiced lines? The lines you pick are all voiced with that tone.

[In Exile]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
I'd disagree. Sten has a very serious, deadpan delivery of all of his lines. That doesn't mean that when he, earnestly and eagerly, asks you about cookies that it doesn't make you think you are talking to a child. How do we know this isn't the same exact scenario? The character making the determination that you are being silly is Wynne, not the Warden. When Hawke delivers a line with shouted hostility, Hawke is making the determination that he is being hostile. In both cases, the player isn't making those determinations... but the stated concept of the game was not to control Wynne's (or any other NPC's) reactions, but rather the main character's. Only the instance of Hawke violates that premise.  

No. You're just wrong. A misunderstanding occurs for lots of reasons - but it's empirical true that some people are very good at reading tone and body language and some are not. For this idea to actually work writ large, it has to mean that (in some cases) 100% of the characters are wrong 100% of the time - like the basic aura of leadership that the Warden has and all defer to. It requires that you characterize people as insane or socially incompetent despite in-universe evidence to the contrary. 

All of these arguments about misunderstands only work because of the one-off artificial examples people pick.

So the writer's original intent for an unknown amount of time when creating DA:O was to not have a Dark Ritual or to have Morrigan's involvement in your party to be anything more than just her coming because Flemeth said so. Does that mean that any scenes where Morrgian may have been written during this newer Dark Ritual premise somehow invalidate anything? Say for instance that the entire part of Morrigan's character during the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest was written with the idea that there would be no Dark Ritual. Does the scene with The Guardian no longer seem suspicious when Morrigan instantly shuts him up?  

This is dealt with all the time in law, with regards to legislation being redrafted multiple times before being passed. The answer is simple: the intent is overwritten and irrelevant to the extent that the final change directly contradicts it. The newer scenes invalidate anything that is explicitly and necessarily in contradiction with the new direction, which is the "final say" on the matter. 

If the entire scene was written with the DR not in mind, then to the extent that her character in that scene contradicts the DR, it is just not there. 

So intent is not really relevant, it is all about how the end-used experiences the content that matters. So the fact that the writer's had the intent of tone during DA:O's dialogue construction but the player could choose to have different interpretations of the line and could make that interpretation work within the constraints of the game means that that style of play is valid and, in a roundabout way, supported. To yank said support out and say "you were playing it wrong" is entirely within Bioware's purview to do, but it doesn't mean anyone has to like them for it.

Your argument collapses. What you've made the case for is that, everyone, after the fact, interprets X as really being Y, and that the creator of X conceded - despite what he meant originally - that X is indeed Y, based on the preponderance of people that take it to be Y. 

That doens't mean that the player can say that Y is really X. It actually works against your point, because if all the NPCs interpret a line of dialogue a particular way, then the player is wrong about the impact of the line on that world. 

Bioware doesn't say, moreover, that anyone played it wrong. They just say that whatever headcannon people invented that wasn't designed to be in the game is not a "feature". 

With your experimental piece example, if the composer thought (somehow) that the music was actually an uplfiting and happy piece, and then goes on to only compose uplifting and happy pieces, then the fanbase is not in a position to say that somehow he changed what he did, or that he was ever intended to be anything other than a happy and uplifting composer. 

[Fast Jimmy]

As a writer, I think I would find it very very annoying if people misinterpreted my work, and didn't bother the clarify with me or outright disagreed with me on what I had written (See: "Is Unrequited a romance novel?"). I think the intent of the author is paramount--however, that isn't to say we can't pretend it's something else. But to DECLARE it as something else, I find offensive. Personally.

You are totally fine to find that annoying. And offensive. But is a different interpretation inherently a MISinterpretation? I'd say given the uncountable volume of shared knowledge, perspectives and overall human experience, I'd say it isn't outside the realm of possibility to say that a writer could be using tools, artifacts and constructs from so many places without even realizing it that they could be enabling a number of possible experiences and perspectives that were well outside their scope of intention.

One need only point to the oft-discussed Gaider blog post about the unintended rape scene. A male writer designed a scene with no intent of rape. But the female writers interpreted the scene as conveying that feeling. This was lauded as a great value to having female staff involved in the creative process. Why is the outsider's experience able to trump the writer's intent in that instance, but not in others?

And I've never, ever thought of the Dark Ritual with playing the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest--and I always take Morrigan with me. I do find her shutting him down suspicious, but there are so many other things about Morrigan that invite curiosity that I never...progressed to the place of thinking of the DR.

I am not saying that the Dark Ritual WAS the reason Morrigan dodged the inquiry. Nor am I saying there is no other explanation.

But if, hypothetically, that entire scene was written before the Dark Ritual was fully conceived, and the writers had no intent to foreshadow that particular secret, is my interpretation of that possibility inherently wrong? If the writer's intent, instead of my experience, is tantamount, then I am "playing the game wrong." I am feeling what I should not feel.

If, however, we acknowledge that Morrigan wanting to hide the real reason she joined the Warden's group as a possible reason she would have deflected the Guardian's questions (again, in this hypothetical situation where the scene may have been crafted before the Dark Ritual was conceived), then it seems possible that a totally valid idea that the game supports as, at the least, plausible, can exist, aside from the writer's intent.

To which I say, then, that writer's intent, whether crafting a scene, telling a story or assigning a tone, does not trump the end user's experience.

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 05 juin 2013 - 02:57 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

[quote]In Exile wrote...

I don't hold them to be true. This is what you have difficulty appreciating. I take a particular conclusion - on the basis of all of the available evidence - to be the most likely to be true. Because, to act, you have to assume one conclusion is actually true.[/quote]
No you don't.  You can merely suppose that one is true, rather than assuming it.  Rhetoric does this all the time.  Rather than assume something to be true in order to follow reasoning arising from it, we can suppose it is true as a rhetorical device to investigate the consequences of it actually being true, regardless of whether you know it to be true.
[quote]You have to make some choice, which requires more than empty conditionals.[/quote]
When you have to make some choice (which is not always the case), those "empty" conditionals make it very clear which sets of choices are nonsensical and should be avoided.
[quote]But - and we discussed this before - what you use "truth" and "knowledge" to mean simply don't apprehend the concept as anyone uses them.[/quote]
Who cares how people use the words?  If people take truth to be anything other than a binary condition, those people are wrong.

But we just don't know what the truth is, most of the time.  This is why I encourage people to apply Schrödinger's Cat on a macro level.
[quote]No. What matters is whether my best estimate has instrumental value. An engineer doesn't "know" anything about the nature of the world. Yet somehow she manages to build and design metal contraptions that fly through the sky and can build other machines that trasmit information at a distance using "best guesses". [/quote]
First of all, the metal contraptions appear to fly through the sky.  Don't get ahead of yourself.

Second, the engineer has mountains of empirical data supporting those best guesses.  You don't have anything like that same body of empirical observations to support your guesses regarding any individual's behaviour.
[quote]By your standards, all science is just about holding conclusions to be true when they're not 100% supported by logical deductions and acting on them accordingly.[/quote]
"There is no truth in science."  I had a professor in my first year of university who opened the very first lecture with  those exact words.  Science only tells us what isn't true, not what is.  Karl Popper FTW.
[quote]No, because the very idea that logic operates as a hard constraint is nonsensical.[/quote]
Do you think it's possible to know that something is false?

I spot contradictions.  It comes naturally to me.  No matter how far removed in time or space, I notice contradictions.  If someone says something to me now that is incompatible with a set of things he said to me earlier, I'll notice.  I'll know he's lying to me, or that he's mistaken, or that he misspoke on at least one occasion.  But I'll know the set of statements this person has made is, taken together, false.
[quote]I apologize. I thought that the primary meaning was empty, but looking up the definition, I was very much in the wrong. So, again, I apologize.[/quote]
I don't believe you.

...

Nor do I disbelieve you.
[quote]Empty, as in, they add no value[/quote]
They identify falsehood, so that I can avoid it.
[quote]No. What you need to do is to concede that "truth" is irrelevant,[/quote]
Of course it's irrelevant.  We can't ever have it.  Truth is beyond us.

But we can distinguish between things that are possibly true and necessarily false.  Conclusions that are necessarily false are conclusions we should never draw, but your system of reasoning will occasionally draw them.

Within the set of possibly true conclusions, yes, what you describe is eaxctly what we should do.  But that's not the first step.  First we need to find the set of possibilty true conclusions and stay within it.  If we don't do that first, then our reasoning will not be falsifiable.
[quote]That any decision you make has to be based on considerations external to your system of inference.[/quote]
With regard to action, yes.  No one disputes this.
[quote]No, it produces superior results. The standard of evidence has to be external to subjective likes, because otherwise it's just equivalent to it, and it makes dealing with reality (which isn't subjec to subjective likes) impossible.[/quote]
Games aren't reality.