335 réponses à ce sujet

[Cainhurst Crow]

So your saying that the only measurable way we can actually gauge what our character says in a silent protag game, the other characters reactions, don't matter. Oh that is rich.

I'm playing kotor and it's silent protag glory, and it sucks. My character is the worst part of the game because of how uninteresting he is. These alive cities the budget would supposedly get spent on aren't any more alive than the citadel from mass effect, which has a voiced protagonist. In fact dragon age origins had an even smaller, less alive feeling place than the citadel from all three mass effect games, no matter which one you pick.

Where's this boost of quality that's suppose to come from having a silent protaganist again? I'm failing to see it.

[o Ventus]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Gender, in the ME series especially (less so in the DA one, but still much the case) has incredibly little effect on options, gameplay or content. Romance is one of the very few arenas where this comes into play, and even then, those were limited, as the vast swath of romanceable characters are "player" sexual.

In the ME series? No, the "vast swath" of romances were not bisexual.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Tvorceskiy wrote...

In DAO you could choose whatever line you wanted, for example choosing 'I'm sorry' in response to Alistair's loss of Duncan. In your head your character could be saying it with a ****-eating grin and dripping with sarcasm but that doesn't change how Alistair reacts to it; he reacts as if what you said was sincere. If your character had actually said it the way you 'wanted' to he'd most likely react poorly.

First of all, you're using an extreme example.  What about subtle differences in tone?  To express skepticism, or mockery, the tone might change only a tiny amount, and could easily be missed by listeners.

Voicing the line robs us of this.

Second, Jimmy's right - there's no way to know why Alistair responded as he did.  We can't read his mind.

So how is having a voiced PC any different? A voiced PC can actually speak in a tone of voice, and thanks to the dialogue wheel you know whether it will be sarcastic, sincere, or down right rude and you know how the other character will react.

But we don't know what he'll say.  We often have no idea what he'll say.

For a lot of people having a voiced PC helps with the immersion process, and if you dislike it then mute the voices and stick with the captions. You don't HAVE to listen to the voices if you don't want to.

The captions could still contradict us if we're not able to choose the full line.  As long as we have obfuscatory paraphrases, there's no way to make the game work.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Filament wrote...

To me, the game is telling you you were wrong either way, the voiced protagonist just takes away your ability to be in denial of that.

If you can plausibly deny it, how do you know it was happening in the first place?

[o Ventus]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Second, Jimmy's right - there's no way to know why Alistair responded as he did.  We can't read his mind.

Sure we do. The tone was forced.

But we don't know what he'll say.  We often have no idea what he'll say.

Sure we do. That's what the paraphrases are for. Save the odd times when the paraphrase is way off (which IS a problem), the paraphrase will give you an idea of the message of the dialogue. Fortunately, the paraphrase beig inconsistent with the intended message is not all that common. People blow it comically out of proportion.

The captions could still contradict us if we're not able to choose the full line.  As long as we have obfuscatory paraphrases, there's no way to make the game work.

See the above. DA2 worked, and all 3 ME games worked with it.

[Fast Jimmy]

Darth Brotarian wrote...

So your saying that the only measurable way we can actually gauge what our character says in a silent protag game, the other characters reactions, don't matter. Oh that is rich.

I'm playing kotor and it's silent protag glory, and it sucks. My character is the worst part of the game because of how uninteresting he is. These alive cities the budget would supposedly get spent on aren't any more alive than the citadel from mass effect, which has a voiced protagonist. In fact dragon age origins had an even smaller, less alive feeling place than the citadel from all three mass effect games, no matter which one you pick.

Where's this boost of quality that's suppose to come from having a silent protaganist again? I'm failing to see it.

Quoting a game from close to a decade ago with a quarter of the budget of ME3 and using that as measure of quality is a little lopsided.

Let's look at Skyrim. Skyrim has dozens of cities, forts and towns, towns where you can speak with every character. ME3 barely had that many planets to scan.

Each of these characters can react to your actions (such as stealing, sneaking, attacking, defending them from a dragon) and have schedules where they have tasks, roles a s sensitivity to night/day. NPCs in ME3 that you can't directly talk to simply stand like statues in the same place the entire game.

 Skyrim let's you craft your own weapons, armor, even enchantments. ME3 gives you a dozen or so weapons with upgrades as diverse as "levels 1, 2, 3... all the way to 10!"

Skyrim has a host of skills that are not combat-centric, such as picking locks, persuasion, smithing, not to mention different ways to use magic other than smashing with a super punch at enemies. ME3... does not.

In terms of scale, Skyrim feels like a huge world, despite being one country in a huge world. ME3 feels like a cramped set of levels that you barely get to explore, despite taking place across an entire galaxy.

That's what people mean by quality. 

[o Ventus]

Skyrim and ME3 are also 2 totally different styles of game. Bethesda and Bioware have always been totally different. Bethesda specializes in the open world, Bioware is better with characterization and narrative. Unless you plan on telling me that Skyrim's main quest line was somehow between than ME or DAO's plot, or that Lydia is somehow a more realized companion than Morrigan, your counter example is even worse than that of the person you quoted.

That's like saying that Devil May Cry is a better hack n' slash than God of War because the combat is more stylized in DMC, despite the very clear differences in development style.

Modifié par o Ventus, 30 juillet 2013 - 07:42 .

[o Ventus]

LindsayLohan wrote...

Silent protagonist would from an analysis point of view bring out more fleshed out dialogue. This is because there is less voice over work to concentrate on. Remember how mass effect 3 had only 2 dialogue options? Or how you could choose different races in dragon age origins? Imagine creating voices for all classes both male and female?

Get 2 voice actors and have them read from the same script (besides the obvious gender differences), like in ME. There was no reason at all for ME3 to have 2 picks in each dialogue, when both of the previous games featured at less 3 in 95% of the conversations. As far as races go, all they would need to do is take the default human voice and modify it in-studio. They don't need to re-record an entirely new actor.

[Cainhurst Crow]

Why do the voices for the elves and the dwarves need to be different than those of the humans? The three races all sound pretty much like eachother in game, so why make them sound different for the characters?

Modifié par Darth Brotarian, 30 juillet 2013 - 08:08 .

[Cainhurst Crow]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

So your saying that the only measurable way we can actually gauge what our character says in a silent protag game, the other characters reactions, don't matter. Oh that is rich.

I'm playing kotor and it's silent protag glory, and it sucks. My character is the worst part of the game because of how uninteresting he is. These alive cities the budget would supposedly get spent on aren't any more alive than the citadel from mass effect, which has a voiced protagonist. In fact dragon age origins had an even smaller, less alive feeling place than the citadel from all three mass effect games, no matter which one you pick.

Where's this boost of quality that's suppose to come from having a silent protaganist again? I'm failing to see it.

Quoting a game from close to a decade ago with a quarter of the budget of ME3 and using that as measure of quality is a little lopsided.

Let's look at Skyrim. Skyrim has dozens of cities, forts and towns, towns where you can speak with every character. ME3 barely had that many planets to scan.

Each of these characters can react to your actions (such as stealing, sneaking, attacking, defending them from a dragon) and have schedules where they have tasks, roles a s sensitivity to night/day. NPCs in ME3 that you can't directly talk to simply stand like statues in the same place the entire game.

 Skyrim let's you craft your own weapons, armor, even enchantments. ME3 gives you a dozen or so weapons with upgrades as diverse as "levels 1, 2, 3... all the way to 10!"

Skyrim has a host of skills that are not combat-centric, such as picking locks, persuasion, smithing, not to mention different ways to use magic other than smashing with a super punch at enemies. ME3... does not.

In terms of scale, Skyrim feels like a huge world, despite being one country in a huge world. ME3 feels like a cramped set of levels that you barely get to explore, despite taking place across an entire galaxy.

That's what people mean by quality. 

Dragon age origins was made a decade ago and only had a 1/3 the budget of mass effect? I did not know that.

As was brought up, skyrim is an open world game with a night/day system of time passing, and offer more freedom because of the style of game they are, that being an open world. It's the same reason grand theft auto games and saints row games have npc's who react to your characters actions, go about their routines, and also have those routines revolve around a night and day time passing system as well.

Bethesda exmphasis was exploration first, story second, character last. And it shows in how most character only have 1 or 2 things to say before they go back into looping the same thing over and over again. But that the enviroments are so much bigger and have a much bigger presence than any of the characters, which is almost opposite of bioware games where the characters are everything.

Silent protaganist work for open world games, and they work in games where no characters talk. But in a story or character driven rpg like those that bioware makes, silent protaganist are just a plain old aweful choice to go in my opinion.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Filament wrote...

Plausibility is subjective

You just said we had the ability to be in denial.  That was you.

As long as we have that abiliy, why not use it wherever it benefits us to do so?

[Sylvius the Mad]

o Ventus wrote...

Sure we do. The tone was forced.

How?  Show me how.  By what mechanism can you consistently determine how people will react and why?

I don't think you can.  I know I can't.

Sure we do. That's what the paraphrases are for.

That paraphrases are remarkably light on information.

Save the odd times when the paraphrase is way off (which IS a problem),

At least once per conversation.

the paraphrase will give you an idea of the message of the dialogue.

What good is "an idea"?  In order to know we're choosing an option that is compatible with the character we've designed, we need to know not only what will be said, but we need to know what won't be said.  And that's something the paraphrase appears entirely incapable of providing.  If I want the PC to answer a question, but do so in a way that avoids revealing some specific piece of information, or avoids displaying weakness, I can't do that with the paraphrase because I can't tell (and neither can you) whether the corresponding line doesn't do those things.

When a slaver asked me, "Can I go now", and I chose the paraphrase "Yes", what do you think the corresponding line was?  How was I supposed to know?  Is Hawke going to be polite?  Dismissive?  Angry?  The icon was the choice arrows, so no help there.  I wanted Hawke to be polite, because he and the slaver had just completed a business deal, and the slaver had dealt fairly, and Hawke was happy with the outcome.

Hawke sneered "Get out of my sight!".

What?  How was I supposed to have known that?

Fortunately, the paraphrase beig inconsistent with the intended message is not all that common.

The problem isn't just that the paraphrase is inconsistent with the line, but that the line contains extra detail that cannot be foreseen, and that detail might be sufficient to cause the player to want to have chosen a different option.

See the above. DA2 worked, and all 3 ME games worked with it.

ME broke my character.  ME2 broke my character.  DA2 broke my character.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

I'm playing kotor and it's silent protag glory, and it sucks.

Quoting a game from close to a decade ago with a quarter of the budget of ME3 and using that as measure of quality is a little lopsided.

Dragon age origins was made a decade ago and only had a 1/3 the budget of mass effect?

No.  KotOR.  You were talking about KotOR.

[Sylvanpyxie]

Any dialogue system that forces a player to constantly reload in order to correctly role-play their character, or forces out of character responses with utterly no player input, is more than a little broken.


Edit: Before someone states that they aren't "our characters" they're "Bioware's characters" -:

If Bioware are so keen on abandoning the ability to Role-Play then they should just bloody well get it over with and stop faffing about with this horrific pretense of player involvement. Either go back to a system where the player is in control of their character's actions or just go full modern generic mode and give us your pre-defined blob of protagonist blandness.

Modifié par Sylvanpyxie, 30 juillet 2013 - 09:36 .

[MerinTB]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
Many recent comments in this thread prove why Bioware shouldn't have put the voiced protagonist in DA2.

Not because it was good, bad or indifferent, but because it was a change. Some players who loved the old way of doing things and the freedom it gave are suddenly jilted by the new way. The new players are then threatened by any suggested changes to make the new feature more palatable to the fans of the old (like the negative response many DA2 fans gave at hearing the dominant tone is going to be gone).

The voiced protagonist isn't a simple feature - it is a design philosophy about how you want to create your RPG, down to its core. It is just as radical a change as changing Splinter Cell, a series about sneaking and stealth, into a FPS where you now down hundreds of enemies without batting an eye.

The genie is out of the bottle now, obviously, so Bioware is in a weird limbo where they are trying to make everyone as happy as possible while also sticking with their own wants as developers, but I still think it was a mistake to change course mid-series.

Just like if you suddenly couldn't choose your gender in ME3, but could only play male, despite the option being present up to that point in the series. It would be jarring to many, yet many others wouldn't care. And it could even allow them to make the character more "real" by halving the VA budget and tailoring the experience to being all from the male perspective. Sure, you might lose some female gamers or gamers who are all about choice... but maybe the more polished product would sell better?

But DA2 did not sell half as well as DA:O, for what reasons, we don't know. But the loss of freedom for "more personality" found in a voiced protagonist could possibly be one of those reasons.

QFT.

IMO, DA and ME should have been separate series with seperate design philosophies.  DA:O worked, ME1 worked.  They didn't have to merge.

For better or worse, BioWare's shifting design philosophy over the years has shed loyal fans at a rate that is comparable to how many new fans they pick up for the changes.  But shifting in the wind, or by whim, isn't good for branding.

Beyond that, trying to bring their type of game into the market of needing ten millions sold copies to be successful is a recipe for disaster.  The game market has started contracting.  The explosive growth of the 00's is gone.

If you want a billion downloads, you need to be Angry Birds.  If you can be happy with (budget for, set your expectations at) five hundred thousand sales, you can be The Witcher or DA:O or V:TM-B.  Well, maybe the budget on the latter two would have to be smaller...  point being, if you want a deeper, more complicated game, then you have to target genre, and probably a niche of said genre.  Then you can make it great for that genre, or awesome for that niche.  And you keep your budget and team small, and you aim for selling hundreds of thousands, not millions, of copies.

Take those huge teams, break them up.  Take those huge game budgets, divvy them up.  You get far more games, far more targeted games, games that cost less so can sell for less and need to sell fewer copies to be profitable.... and every so often you'll get a Clerks or a Blair Witch.

You keep making John Carters and Lone Rangers, and all you do is upset audiences and lose millions.

[Cainhurst Crow]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

I'm playing kotor and it's silent protag glory, and it sucks.

Quoting a game from close to a decade ago with a quarter of the budget of ME3 and using that as measure of quality is a little lopsided.

Dragon age origins was made a decade ago and only had a 1/3 the budget of mass effect?

No.  KotOR.  You were talking about KotOR.

I covered it and da both breifly, focusing on one and not the other doesn't do an argument well. I'll give him kotor because he has a point, but not DAO, since the worlds were hardly as lively or as populated compared to mass effect and it's hub worlds.

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
You still have total control over what he thinks and how he feels.  And then you can use those states of mind to inform his choices from among the available actions.

Except that I don't. The wordplay that you're using illustrates that. I've helpfully bolded the problem. 

The available actions are, for the most part, incredibly restricting. They are only consontant with a few narrow band of incredibly passive personalities, and at minimum require that you fully incorporate an adherence to an organization or goal that you're (typically) introduced to a fair amount after you've crafted your character. 

The only Bioware game where this isn't true is in Mass Effect, where you know from the onset that Shepard is an Alliance Marrine. 

But if even I don't have total control over what he thinks or how he feels, then the game is irrevocably broken.

That control requires control over action, and we don't have that in games. Total control over thinking or feeling is, therefore, impossible. 

[In Exile]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
Say my character does not believe in the Maker, for instance. They believe in the Old Tevinter gods. With the silent protagonist, there are no options expressing belief in this BUT all dialogue is clearly laid out, so I know, word for word, what my character will say, so I can be sure to NOT express belief in the Maker, or the Elven pantheon, or the Dwarven Paragons, etc.

With the paraphrase system of the voice protagonist, I can choose the tone, but not the words. By choosing a diomatic tone after you mother's death in DA2, the paraphrase says something along the lines of "she is at peace" but your character actually says "She is with the Maker now." Suddenly, the character I've been playing has just violated one of their core, tenet beliefs and I, as the player, bad no idea that would happen, let alone any control over it.  

I just want to point out that this has nothing to do with VO. TW1 is an excellent illustration of this. It is a game with VO, but with the full line. There are no surprises. 

Was every choice this schizophrenic? No. But all it takes is one mess up and suddenly you be one fearful of it happening with EVERY dialogue choice. You have no clue and are flying blindly in the dialogue darkness, with no sense of control on your character and more just a passive role, watching the "cool" character Bioware has written for you to through the motions of the adventure.  

The silent protagonist is equally passive and equally schizophrenic. You're playing russian roullete to determine whether this time the writer is taking the line to be sarcastic, angry or diplomatic. 

As every single cutscene shows (best exemplified by the Human Noble Origin and the conversation with Cailan) your protagonist takes a backseat to every NPC when engaging in a conversation. Would you say it's active that my PC just happens to stand there like a moronic door knob when Duncan explains how my family was murdered for cinematic effect? Or when Alistair or Anora parade my PC as a pig at a show and give their favoured epic speech? Or when, in KoTOR, my PC stands around like a mute while Bastilla or Carth adress the Jedi fleet at the Star Forge? 

And as for the dialogue, I'm sure you'll come back with the reply that I could make believe in my head that characters are always misunderstanding me. Let's say I even agree with this. I'm still unable to correct that misunderstanding, so again I have to stand around like a passive doorknob while my PC can't actually affect the world around him or her, being forced to either re-load the conversation or be stuck with an out of character choice I wouldn't make because the UI isn't giving me enough information. 

I don't bregudge your preference for silent PCs. I do object to your mischaracterization of the design benefits of that choice. 

Modifié par In Exile, 30 juillet 2013 - 10:32 .

[In Exile]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...
You're limited to the delivery of each line provided by the voice actor.  With a silent protagonist, each line can be delivered however you'd like.

Except it can't. The only way it can is to engage in a reality denying exercise the likes of which is tantamount to pretend that in-game events just full-on don't ever happen. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

The available actions are, for the most part, incredibly restricting.

Yes, they are.  But they're even more restricting when the dialogue options are tied to animations and voiced lines.

We should all that those actions to be less restricting, not more.

They are only consontant with a few narrow band of incredibly passive personalities, and at minimum require that you fully incorporate an adherence to an organization or goal that you're (typically) introduced to a fair amount after you've crafted your character.

I disagree.  You're not required to accept these things.  You're merely required not to object openly.

The PC still gets to reject (in his mind) the idea that he belongs to that group, and you can then choose the available option that is most compatible with that rejection.

The only Bioware game where this isn't true is in Mass Effect, where you know from the onset that Shepard is an Alliance Marrine.

But not that he supports the Alliance military structure, or speaks in a shouty voice, or any number of other things.

That control requires control over action...

No, it absolutely does not.  Whatever your state of mind from moment to moment, there exists a wide range of possible actions you might undertake.  Each moment, you undertake one of them, with some of those opportunities then lost forever.

...and we don't have that in games. Total control over thinking or feeling is, therefore, impossible.

Why do you think there's a necessary connection between thinking and action?  I still don't get this.