130 réponses à ce sujet

[Melca36]

ames4u wrote...

Felya87 wrote...

so..."the player leads the Inquisition - and the Inquisition is not part of the Chantry."

so, no real motivation to have a forced human protagonist. AGAIN.

Hawke 2.0 is coming.

My thoughts exactly.
I thought Hawke was a one dimensional piece of worthless garbage (in context to the game), but I'll bet the Inquisitor will top Hawke tenfold. What the hell is wrong with giving actual choice in race? Is it really that much of a problem? I was infuriated when Hawke was treated like trash because he/she was human and not an elf/dwarf. Being treated that way because there was no option to choose a race came across as d*ckish to me.

Thing is, they can say that 'the inquisitor is not part of the Chantry' all they want, because the inquisitor is affiliated with the Chantry. Which brings me back to the above gripe-mages and pro-mage characters will treat the Inquisitor like sh*t because he/she is AFFILIATED with the Chantry. There will be no bloody distinction. Mark my words.

As for Empress Celene-if there is no murder knife option upon meeting her, then the story can go to hell. Because you just know she'll be Meredith 2.0, oh my maker, zis fool champion killed Gaspard?! Kill ze Champion Inquisitor or I shall have you publicly quartered. Though I will do so anyway because you are a threat to me, but kill ze Champion first and ve shall get to killing you afterwards. Vy? Because I am a b*tch and ze plot railroad says so.

Ugh. Hawke 2.0 indeed.

I think I will stay firmly on the side of pessimism until this game proves itself to it's fans, not the gaming media. I also can not wait to see just how many more class skills they've cleaved out this time around and how much more 'streamlined' (lobotomised) the remaining skills will be.

Please do tell how you know all of this because assumptions like this make me laugh

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

When we're talking about an incredibly racist world that runs elves out of town and burns their homes outside the alienage in racially motivated crimes, then I find it a bit immersion breaking when my being an elf is suddenly entirely ignored.

You're an elf who'se rising above his station by not behaving like an elf.  Perhaps they'd rather just pretend you're not one - it might make them feel better.

Your experience with discriminiation might be more aggressive and confrontational, but that doesn't mean all discriminiation is like that.

[Das Tentakel]

BellaStrega wrote...

EntropicAngel wrote...


You're presupposing that they pretend you're male, an elf, or a shapeshifting Zoryada yada. The fact that they don't acknowledge your difference has no bearing on whether they recognize it, NOR on whether it exists, and thus on whether you can role-play as that.

The fact that person X doesn't seem to notice that I'm an elf has nothing to do with me being able to think as an elf, being able to respond as an elf, being able to act as an elf. They are irrelevant.

Ah, but they are relevant. It's a significant part of worldbuilding. If your choice to play an elf instead of a human results in minor changes to how your character is treated, that isn't true to the material. I found in paper and pencil games that one of the fastest ways for players to lose interest in their characters is if the game world did not interact with their characters as their characters and acknowledge what made those characters who they are.

While I agree with you, some people are quite capable of roleplaying a CRPG 'in their head', and they enjoy it. Both positions are 'true' from the POV of the player. Lack of reactivity of a game towards my character's in-game identity (class, race) and actions is certainly an issue for me - it means that the gameworld quickly and clumsily reveals itself as being no more than cardboard, and pretty cheap and low-grade carboard too. Any idea of being an Elf, or a Human noble, or whatever, goes out of the window really quick.

But some people can overcome that in their mind. Good for them.

Back to the issue of race and the whole thing about player preferences, it's well known that in most RPG's, humans are the most common choice, but with Elves usually a close second. Dwarves are never popular. In the case of DA:O, there may have been some reasons for the fact that even Elves weren't that popular. Usually, Elves are pretty (comparatively speaking) and in many ways the equivalent of a fantasy Herrenvolk (prettier / wiser / older / more civilized / more magically potent etc.). In DA:O, however, you have to make some effort to create a pretty Elf, and they're either ghetto scum or tree-hugging fantasy gypsies with Irish accents. And no, that doesn't sound remotely sexy. 

In WoW, one of the problems they ran into was that far more players chose the Alliance, primarily Humans (of course) and Night Elves (tree huggers, but cool sexy mystic treehuggers, sans faux Irish accents), which led to balance issues. Blizzard tried to solve this by adding Blood Elves (sexy, sophisticated and somewhat insane) to the Horde. Apparently with some success. If you look at these WoW census figures ( www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php ) Humans take the no. 1 spot with 18%, but Night Elves and Blood Elves share a respectable second place with 11 and 14% respectively. Note that Dwarves are just a miserly 4%.

[hawkirony01]

as long as no small or BIG details get overlooked i'll be a happy gamer. Congrats to the people at work, I can't wait to see how this game turns out once its finally complete...PRE ORDER!! lol

[Jorji Costava]

I would suggest that however important reactivity to the player's choice of race and class is to RPG's generally, it is especially important that a game like Dragon Age exhibit this kind of reactivity, as Dragon Age is explicitly attempting to confront themes of race and class inequalities. If you made a game about the height of slavery in the US and allowed the PC to play as an African American, but this choice made no difference to the game at all, then that's just a failure of story-telling.

I'm not saying things would be anywhere near this egregious if they happened in Dragon Age, but the basic idea is the same: If you want to say something about how race, class, occupation, etc. affects others' perceptions of you, then you'd better dramatize how those things affect others' perception of you. That seems to require a relatively high degree of NPC reactivity to the PC's class and race.

[ElitePinecone]

osbornep wrote...

I would suggest that however important reactivity to the player's choice of race and class is to RPG's generally, it is especially important that a game like Dragon Age exhibit this kind of reactivity, as Dragon Age is explicitly attempting to confront themes of race and class inequalities. If you made a game about the height of slavery in the US and allowed the PC to play as an African American, but this choice made no difference to the game at all, then that's just a failure of story-telling.

I'm not saying things would be anywhere near this egregious if they happened in Dragon Age, but the basic idea is the same: If you want to say something about how race, class, occupation, etc. affects others' perceptions of you, then you'd better dramatize how those things affect others' perception of you. That seems to require a relatively high degree of NPC reactivity to the PC's class and race.

That's an interesting argument, but perhaps the resources required to show reactivity to race selection simply aren't worth it, in the eyes of the developers.

I mean, if the feedback to race selection in DAO was people complaining about it barely being mentioned after the origin story (which has come up as criticism even in this thread), and 80% of DA Origins' users never played anything other than the human noble, what's the impetus to bother improving and investing *more* resources in reactivity to the protagonist's race in future games? 

Perhaps those themes of racial conflict can be explored just as well through companion characters or major sidequests, or well enough that they feel comfortable making the protagonist only human. Moving that content to sidequests or companion arcs also mean many more people will actually see it, given that you don't need to pick a particular race or origin story.

I don't doubt that it's probably not as effective as putting the player in the shoes of a city elf in DAO, but arguably that content delivery method (if that's even a term) wasn't nearly as popular as it needed to be to justify future investment. 5% of the entire playerbase playing dwarven origins is hardly a ringing endorsement to massively increase the level of reactivity, or even to do that sort of thing ever again. 

[Wompoo]

ViSeirA wrote...



That's the only captured photo of the artwork showed at the panel so far, it was posted by HD3 at the Dragon Age Wiki, I'll be on the hunt for the rest... probably appear first at NeoGAF

Why is it when I look at that art work I expect to see a chat bubble beside the Qunari saying Mum... they certainly like  the steer horn look. Nice art all the same

Modifié par Wompoo, 22 juillet 2013 - 07:12 .

[Firky]

Is there some link between the qunari and dragons?

I mean the horns do sometimes look similar.

[Iron Star]

Firky wrote...

Is there some link between the qunari and dragons?

I mean the horns do sometimes look similar.

From what I've read here on BSN it seems like the writers want us to make that connection. I'm not sure if I'd like the qunari to be some kind of offshot from the dragons a la tales from Earthsea-style, imo it makes the qunari too "much", but now that I think about it, it does seem like this could be something the writers have had in mind for the qunari the whole time. I mean, back in DAO they were supposed to have horns, and back in Baldurs Gate they were a race of humanoid reptiles, right? I never played BG so I might have gotten that part wrong though.

[Paul E Dangerously]

I'm a little apprehensive with messing around with choice results. I'm not saying everything needs to be black and white and sunshine and roses, but most of the time a developer says this it winds up with every single choice resulting in your character screwing up somehow and leaving a bad taste in your mouth.

[Firky]

I don't recall qunari in baldur's gate ....

Maybe you're thinking of kobolds? Or kuo toa? Not sure.

There was one bit in the Aussie panel where they mentioned a bit in one of the MEs (I haven't played ME, but Shepard obviously can kill someone) where they explained the writing process to sound like they were very careful to make the choice explicit, so you'd definitely know the outcome. Probably Pinecone could elaborate.

[ElitePinecone]

Sopa de Gato wrote...

I'm a little apprehensive with messing around with choice results. I'm not saying everything needs to be black and white and sunshine and roses, but most of the time a developer says this it winds up with every single choice resulting in your character screwing up somehow and leaving a bad taste in your mouth. 

Firky wrote...

There was one bit in the Aussie panel where they mentioned a bit in one of the MEs (I haven't played ME, but Shepard obviously can kill someone) where they explained the writing process to sound like they were very careful to make the choice explicit, so you'd definitely know the outcome. Probably Pinecone could elaborate.

It was the Renegade option for a certain salarian on Tuchanka, if I remember rightly.

They wanted to make absolutely sure players knew what they were choosing, so that scene involved Shepard saying something like "I'll stop you if I have to", then raising a gun, and the final option to shoot was actually in the player's hands. 

I think it's a difficult task for the developers to balance the need to include story twists and choices that turn out to have "poisoned chalice" consequences with some players' expectations that their protagonists are all-powerful. The fanbase is splintered on what it wants in the choice system (and how choices should influence the narrative), and I think there's a real possibility of resentment if there's a perception that choices don't mean anything - look at the reaction to Hawke and the sense of impending doom in DA2's third act. If everything turned out exactly like the player wanted, though, the game would be boring and predictable. 

When they have tried to do choices that aren't black and white it's often been excellent (Tuchanka and Rannoch) and occasionally horrific (ME3's endings), but there's still a fundamental tension about what the game wants to be, and whether it's enabling interesting reflection or empowering the player in a power-fantasy. 

[JWvonGoethe]

Firky wrote...

Is there some link between the qunari and dragons?

I mean the horns do sometimes look similar.

I don't know how relevant this is, but ogres in DA are a kind of blight-corrupted Qunari (read more on the wiki.)

It's possible that the the "dragon" in the screenshot is actually another form of blighted Qunari.

Modifié par JWvonGoethe, 22 juillet 2013 - 02:07 .

[Little Princess Peach]

ames4u wrote...

Felya87 wrote...

so..."the player leads the Inquisition - and the Inquisition is not part of the Chantry."

so, no real motivation to have a forced human protagonist. AGAIN.

Hawke 2.0 is coming.

My thoughts exactly.
I thought Hawke was a one dimensional piece of worthless garbage (in context to the game), but I'll bet the Inquisitor will top Hawke tenfold. What the hell is wrong with giving actual choice in race? Is it really that much of a problem? I was infuriated when Hawke was treated like trash because he/she was human and not an elf/dwarf. Being treated that way because there was no option to choose a race came across as d*ckish to me.

Thing is, they can say that 'the inquisitor is not part of the Chantry' all they want, because the inquisitor is affiliated with the Chantry. Which brings me back to the above gripe-mages and pro-mage characters will treat the Inquisitor like sh*t because he/she is AFFILIATED with the Chantry. There will be no bloody distinction. Mark my words.

As for Empress Celene-if there is no murder knife option upon meeting her, then the story can go to hell. Because you just know she'll be Meredith 2.0, oh my maker, zis fool champion killed Gaspard?! Kill ze Champion Inquisitor or I shall have you publicly quartered. Though I will do so anyway because you are a threat to me, but kill ze Champion first and ve shall get to killing you afterwards. Vy? Because I am a b*tch and ze plot railroad says so.

Ugh. Hawke 2.0 indeed.

I think I will stay firmly on the side of pessimism until this game proves itself to it's fans, not the gaming media. I also can not wait to see just how many more class skills they've cleaved out this time around and how much more 'streamlined' (lobotomised) the remaining skills will be.

One of the devs asked us if we want just the one specializeation for main char that will be mentioned in the game from time to time instead of having options, might of read it wrong but thats what it sounds like to me, the more dragon age games Bioware makes the less we seem to get.

[ElitePinecone]

Tharja wrote...

One of the devs asked us if we want just the one specializeation for main char that will be mentioned in the game from time to time instead of having options, might of read it wrong but thats what it sounds like to me, the more dragon age games Bioware makes the less we seem to get.

They wondered if allowing the player to choose one specialisation that came with its own chunk of story (perhaps a quest) was better than two largely irrelevant specialisations that offer customisation but very few consequences in the game world. 

I don't see how that's a bad thing. You're getting more content and customisation. Weren't people complaining that a blood mage Hawke had no reflection in the game?

[Iakus]

ElitePinecone wrote...

Tharja wrote...

One of the devs asked us if we want just the one specializeation for main char that will be mentioned in the game from time to time instead of having options, might of read it wrong but thats what it sounds like to me, the more dragon age games Bioware makes the less we seem to get.

They wondered if allowing the player to choose one specialisation that came with its own chunk of story (perhaps a quest) was better than two largely irrelevant specialisations that offer customisation but very few consequences in the game world. 

I don't see how that's a bad thing. You're getting more content and customisation. Weren't people complaining that a blood mage Hawke had no reflection in the game?

Indeed, I'll take one specialization that's actually plot relevant over two specializations that are little more than a list of bonus powers.

[jtav]

Do we still get to choose from more than one specialization?

[ElitePinecone]

I can see why people might be annoyed if a hypothetical change means fewer chances to dive into detailed RPG mechanics with powers and skill trees and stuff, but given we have no idea how any of that even works in Inquisition, at face value extra story content seems much more appealing. Not to mention the boon to customisation of the player-character, given that becoming a Templar/Reaver/Bard/whatever could actually be accompanied by some story, instead of being a title and nothing else.

(And like you said, even if it worked like DA2's specialisations, I'd still much rather have one with story content than two with more skills that I'll barely remember to use)

Edit: the specialisation stuff is all hypothetical at this point I think, any dev comments about it have just been them wondering about what could work well. Like a lot of other features we have no confirmed info. 

I assume they'd put more than one specialisation in, no matter what the other features look like. 

Modifié par ElitePinecone, 22 juillet 2013 - 05:19 .

[keightdee]

The potential for class specialization choices to carry weight within the story is really appealing to me. I always chose Hawke's abilities and specializations (and their companion's abilities) by what I thought made sense for their characters.Varric was a Scoundrel and a Saboteur, Sebastian was an Archer (duh) and a Specialist, and Isabela was a Duel Weapon-weilding Subterfugist.
Can you tell Rogues are my favorite?

And hey Pinecone, is that sig new? It's beautiful.

[cactusberry]

I am loving what I have heard about DA:I so far. Very excited for more.

/It'sgreatobeoptimistic.

[ElitePinecone]

keightdee wrote...

The potential for class specialization choices to carry weight within the story is really appealing to me. I always chose Hawke's abilities and specializations (and their companion's abilities) by what I thought made sense for their characters.Varric was a Scoundrel and a Saboteur, Sebastian was an Archer (duh) and a Specialist, and Isabela was a Duel Weapon-weilding Subterfugist.
Can you tell Rogues are my favorite?

And hey Pinecone, is that sig new? It's beautiful.

I was going to say the Bard would be super relevant to Orlais if it appears in DAI, but then that specialisation wasn't in DA2. Looking back on it now, Origins' specialisations actually had more story content than DA2's, in that they neeeded to be unlocked rather than just being given at a certain level.

Hopefully if they're considering a system that ties more into plot content it will make it easier to tailor specialisations to a character rather than necessarily a playstyle or combat role. I'd enjoy a chance to define the protagonist or other companions with a story role as well as extra skills or whatever. 

And my sig is just my own interpretation of the underlying "logic" of the Mass Effect storyline, in case I forget how absurd and nonsensical it all became by Leviathan. It's based on some of the reactions to the Catalyst from last year.

[Angrywolves]

Maybe the tc can condense this and post the relevant details in the what we know sticky.
I'm not going to read the whole thread.

[Equalitas]

I would like that npc should react on my class when i save them and how. They could make it sub class specific.
Like sword/sheild and 2 hander warrior.
Dagger/sword and archer rogue-
Healer, Bloodmage and Mage thats not an Bloodmage.
They only need to drop a funny one liner sometimes,

[Sylvius the Mad]

In Exile wrote...

You can substitute elf for anything - including my Zorblaxian. That's my point. If roleplaying to you is fan-fiction you've invented in your head that requires 0 reaction from the game to count, then yeah, you're right, you can always do that. But then the game being there becomes irrelevant.

The game provides the stimulus to which we react.