338 réponses à ce sujet

[KainD]

Cimeas wrote...

Example II:  NWN2

This isn't actually a Bioware game (it's by Obsidian) but it's got an especially ridiculous version of this problem. The game is about tough choices in a strange and cruel world, and as such has no default good ending, but of course, if you collect all three pieces of a mysterious mask that requires a method so obscure you would almost NEVER come across it without a guide, you get the perfect happy ending.  Once again, any sense of 'tough choices' destroyed.

NWN2 had two perfectly happy ednings actually, one without the mask.  

[Thomas Andresen]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Cimeas wrote...

I'm not trying to dictate how people play the game, simply saying that choices in the relatively harsh, supposedly cruel world of Dragon Age should be between the lesser of two evils, not between a) people die people live.

Thedas is a dark heroic setting. Sometimes heroes win and they win big.

Fast Jimmy wrote...

However... IT SHOULD COST SOMETHING.

It costs you the time, effort, and intelligence needed to get the gold metal.

The game is not going to say 'You saved them both! ...but we're now going to kill your dog because this game is dark and edgy.'

Actually, I'm with Jimmy on this. For once. The risk involved with striving for the "best choice" shouldn't just be artificial. Because whatever effect it had on your first play-through, it will have lost it's "oomph" on your subsequent ones.

Regarding Connor, it's not that I don't choose to use blood magic or kill the child any more, it's just that, when I want to get help from the Tower, that choice is suddenly a lot easier, because I know there's no risk in it. What I'd have liked to see there would be that going to the Circle for help would indeed take too long, at least in some circumstances. Such as, going to the Circle Tower after your first visit to Redcliffe. But if you'd solved the situation in the Tower before your first visit to Redcliffe, you'd be able to get there and back again in time. So the "optimal" outcome would still be there.

Modifié par Thomas Andresen, 01 septembre 2013 - 12:48 .

[Wulfram]

Thomas Andresen wrote...

Regarding Oren, it's not that I don't choose to use blood magic or kill the child any more

Connor.  Oren always gets to see a sword up close, in the HN origin.

Modifié par Wulfram, 01 septembre 2013 - 12:46 .

[Medhia Nox]

@Thomas Andresen: If you don't know the outcome - the "Risk" can't be artificial even if everything turns out okay.

Sometimes - things turn out okay.

And you using game knowledge your character shouldn't have from previous playthru... is writing a story. Totally awesome - I'm all for it, but don't say that the game isn't allowing roleplay when you write the story instead of roleplaying someone who couldn't possibly know the consequences.

Edit: The possibility of saving Oren and his mother would have been equally great.  The "risk" everyone is looking for is easy.  Adding the people who are trying to kill them to the fight you're already engaged in.

Modifié par Medhia Nox, 01 septembre 2013 - 12:48 .

[Thomas Andresen]

Wulfram wrote...

Thomas Andresen wrote...

Regarding Oren, it's not that I don't choose to use blood magic or kill the child any more

Connor.  Oren always gets to see a sword up close, in the HN origin.

Damnit!

I'll fix that.

[Thomas Andresen]

Medhia Nox wrote...

And you using game knowledge your character shouldn't have from previous playthru... is writing a story. Totally awesome - I'm all for it, but don't say that the game isn't allowing roleplay when you write the story instead of roleplaying someone who couldn't possibly know the consequences.

What I'd prefer to see, most of all, is that taking the moral high road, the "sacrifice nothing," doesn't always pay off, and even sometimes, leaves you worse off. Taking the moral high road in spite of adversity is much more rewarding than taking the moral high road and nothing goes wrong.

In my book.

[Jamie9]

Thomas Andresen wrote...
What I'd prefer to see, most of all, is that taking the moral high road, the "sacrifice nothing," doesn't always pay off, and even sometimes, leaves you worse off. Taking the moral high road in spite of adversity is much more rewarding than taking the moral high road and nothing goes wrong.

In my book.

Yeah, like in TW2, taking the moral high ground almost always screws you over in a major way. Even if it doesn't during the game, the epilogue reveals that it screwed something up further down the line.

Obviously I don't expect it to be so grim in DA:I, but for a mix of situations.

Modifié par Jamie9, 01 septembre 2013 - 12:57 .

[PsychoBlonde]

caradoc2000 wrote...

And you couldn't save everyone in DA2, even with a guide.

I was going to say, I think there were a couple of places in DA2 where you couldn't save ANYONE.

Actually, WASN'T THAT THE ENTIRE FREAKIN GAME?

[Reever]

It's not their problem if the players want to have a perfect playthrough and look for a guide to make it happen.

The NW2 example you gave is a good one actually, if it's actually hard (not like the ME2 mission, if you follow the hints you'll get everyone through the mission in one piece) enough for the player not to get it on the first playthrough, it's okay.

Of course, there also should be some real dilemmas where if you choose one thing over the other it's over for the latter, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

I'd rather be able to determine who lives and dies rather than being able to save everyone or no one.

[In Exile]

Thomas Andresen wrote...
What I'd prefer to see, most of all, is that taking the moral high road, the "sacrifice nothing," doesn't always pay off, and even sometimes, leaves you worse off. Taking the moral high road in spite of adversity is much more rewarding than taking the moral high road and nothing goes wrong.

In my book.

The moral highroad seems to always involve lots of sacrifices. It's just that the player is an immortal engine of death, so the only way you can make the moral highroad suck is if you make it lead to a crapsack world, and then that has its own IRL moral problems. 

[PsychoBlonde]

Jamie9 wrote...

Thomas Andresen wrote...
What I'd prefer to see, most of all, is that taking the moral high road, the "sacrifice nothing," doesn't always pay off, and even sometimes, leaves you worse off. Taking the moral high road in spite of adversity is much more rewarding than taking the moral high road and nothing goes wrong.

In my book.

Yeah, like in TW2, taking the moral high ground almost always screws you over in a major way. Even if it doesn't during the game, the epilogue reveals that it screwed something up further down the line.

Obviously I don't expect it to be so grim in DA:I, but for a mix of situations.

I would prefer to "occupy" the moral high ground--as in, be able to convince people, at least somewhat, that my approach is the *correct* one to a given situation.  You can do everything right and still have stuff go wrong.   You can do everything wrong and still walk off smelling like a rose.  The really hard part is getting your peeps on the same page so you can move FORWARD regardless of what life throws at you instead of bogging down in a bunch of name-calling and blame-assigning because "I told you so".

[RogueWriter3201]

Yeah, simply put I couldn't disagree more with the OP. One of the best aspects of BioWare games (with the exception of ME3...) is that you have choice. You can choose to be a Hero in the classic Grand Fantasy sense, the one who truly can save the day in a capacity no one else can. Sometimes it's through skill, other times it's through sacrifice.

Or, in some cases, you can chose to not necessarily save everyone. There have been so many instances of this in BioWare games I honestly don't know where the OP is coming from. In ME2 you had the option to save everyone, but you didn't *have* to, so how is that not a choice. In all the Dragon Age games you could save everyone or be hard handed and save only those you thought were effective with the exception of, say, Orzammar, where choosing one side meant condemning the other or being forced to eliminate the other.

The point is BioWare allows you to chose how big a Hero you want to be. There are plenty of games out there where the story, and choice, is taken away from you or it's brutal and it's somber and that's that. Dragon's Dogma would be an example. I never want that in my BioWare games. If I want to be the good guy I can revel is doing so and saving the day without having to make great sacrifices that would leave me feeling like less of a hero and more like someone who "just tried."

[Luiren]

I don't think guides or walkthroughs should be consulted until after you have beaten the game at least once. When DA:I comes out, I just want to save my horse (or whatever mount is available).

[Fast Jimmy]

Medhia Nox wrote...

@Fast Jimmy: Did your DM "tell" you the outcomes of the choices you were making?

No. And neither should the game. 

If you are required to use an agent to get the perfect ending in Situation A, that agent shount neccessarily be available for Situations B, C, D, E, etc. That's not something that should be spelled out except by the game instructions of the mechanics. "You can only assign an agent to do X type of task at a time." If you have to send the agent to give you a perfect ending for Situation A, then he wouldn't be able to do the same thing elsewhere.

This is just an example, but it the same principle throughout. If you deploy troops to one area, you can't deploy them elsewhere. If you bring a companion along who is the only one who can talk an NPC into surrendering their family home to avoid bloodshed, but your companion hates you for if, that is a valid price to pay instead of having that NOC die, or you be forced to kill someone to save that NPC's home.

If you make it so you can't have a "perfect" playthrough, where EVERYTHING turns out as good as possible, but your player has to determine which things they want to work and sacrifice to make things better, and which ones the player is willing to sacrifice. That's a real choice. That's what makes you think. That's what makes intriguing and character driven moments... not just picking the "auto-win" button that makes everything junky dori.

[Fast Jimmy]

Thomas Andresen wrote...

Medhia Nox wrote...

And you using game knowledge your character shouldn't have from previous playthru... is writing a story. Totally awesome - I'm all for it, but don't say that the game isn't allowing roleplay when you write the story instead of roleplaying someone who couldn't possibly know the consequences.

What I'd prefer to see, most of all, is that taking the moral high road, the "sacrifice nothing," doesn't always pay off, and even sometimes, leaves you worse off. Taking the moral high road in spite of adversity is much more rewarding than taking the moral high road and nothing goes wrong.

In my book.

Couldn't agree more. Bioware has a TERRIBLE track record with making the goody-two-shoes option beig ALWAYS the best one. You'd think making the hard choice for the greater good is completely impossible in the realm of the narrative creative process. 

[David7204]

The player character finding and using a third option can be an incredibly intriguing and character driven moment. Many of the charm and intimidate speeches in Mass Effect were outstanding, and played an immense role contributing to Shepard's reputation as a competent player character.

Modifié par David7204, 01 septembre 2013 - 01:39 .

[Huntress]

iakus wrote...

Not everyone spoils themselves with strategy guides, you know.

Some people, if they screw up, simply not that and go "Next playthrough I'll try something else"

I re-load the last save when I make big OPS...:innocent:
I know it sux but I rather lose 20 minutes walking to kill x that lose 2 of my great companions and have x teleport to my chart feets to die. X destiny is  to die, now my companions destiny is to live long and prosperous!

[Fast Jimmy]

glenboy24 wrote...

Or, in some cases, you can chose to not necessarily save everyone. There have been so many instances of this in BioWare games I honestly don't know where the OP is coming from. In ME2 you had the option to save everyone, but you didn't *have* to, so how is that not a choice. In all the Dragon Age games you could save everyone or be hard handed and save only those you thought were effective with the exception of, say, Orzammar, where choosing one side meant condemning the other or being forced to eliminate the other.

Yet why wouldn't you save everyone? It leads to the best outcomes, the best companion reactions, the best rewards, the most XP and the best endings. Bioware constantly rewards the "good" path with nearly every form of positive reinforcement imaginable. Sure, you have a choice... but the game goes out of its way to tell you it's the wrong one. Narratively, mechanically, socially... you basically get told "even if you made this decision for what you thought were the right reasons, you were wrong."

And I'm not the only one who thinks this. David Gaider, Lead Writer of the Dragon Age series; says he regrets doing this in DA:O, particularly the Isolde/Connor choice in Redcliffe. He said it devalued the other choices to the point that only the ignorant or the sadistic would take them. And he thought that the other options were made weaker from a story-telling perspective because of this escape hatch of an option.

I can appreciate the fact that you think Dragon Age is all about being a Perfect Heroic Story type of game, but the writers don't want it to be. That's not their goal.

[crimzontearz]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

glenboy24 wrote...

Or, in some cases, you can chose to not necessarily save everyone. There have been so many instances of this in BioWare games I honestly don't know where the OP is coming from. In ME2 you had the option to save everyone, but you didn't *have* to, so how is that not a choice. In all the Dragon Age games you could save everyone or be hard handed and save only those you thought were effective with the exception of, say, Orzammar, where choosing one side meant condemning the other or being forced to eliminate the other.

Yet why wouldn't you save everyone? It leads to the best outcomes, the best companion reactions, the best rewards, the most XP and the best endings. Bioware constantly rewards the "good" path with nearly every form of positive reinforcement imaginable. Sure, you have a choice... but the game goes out of its way to tell you it's the wrong one. Narratively, mechanically, socially... you basically get told "even if you made this decision for what you thought were the right reasons, you were wrong."

And I'm not the only one who thinks this. David Gaider, Lead Writer of the Dragon Age series; says he regrets doing this in DA:O, particularly the Isolde/Connor choice in Redcliffe. He said it devalued the other choices to the point that only the ignorant or the sadistic would take them. And he thought that the other options were made weaker from a story-telling perspective because of this escape hatch of an option.

I can appreciate the fact that you think Dragon Age is all about being a Perfect Heroic Story type of game, but the writers don't want it to be. That's not their goal.

hence why I will likely fully spoil myself before buying the game....just to be sure

[Stella-Arc]

It's a choice, OP. You can be the hero....or not. The choice is yours. Why some people want to limit it for everyone boggles my mind. So these are the only options for those supporting "no compromise":

1. Do good....get screwed.
2. Do bad...get screwed.
3. Choose one bad or other bad.

If this is the case, if I do something horrendously evil, does something good pop up down the line? Two wrongs make a right? It seems that there should be no good outcome regardless of choice...which was what DAII pulled off. Bioware is an RPG company. They give us choices. If people want to "write" their story, they can but to hinder "roleplay" is not right. I'm all for making the "best outcomes" very difficult. I just don't want to always sacrifice something to get a good outcome. Occasionally? Fine. All the time? Hell no!

Modifié par Stella-Arc, 01 septembre 2013 - 02:01 .

[Killer3000ad]

I bet the OP was someone who liked the original non-extended endings of ME3.

[TheRealJayDee]

Cimeas wrote...

I'd wager the first thing anyone did upon not saving everyone in the suicide mission (if they hadn't looked it up and saved everyone), is checked out if you were able to.   Then reloaded their save and gave it another shot.

All that is is wasting 3 hours of your life.   You will know the outcome of your choices eventually, and most players want to know them in advance (heck, that's why they've added the new dialogue preview wheel [also because paraphrasing was terrible]), which is why I guarantee you on day 2 after launch there will be 50 threads in the Campaign section of the forums saying "Need Help At Keep" and "How Do I save [SPOILER] in Tevinter?" etc..

I saved everyone on my first ME2 playthrough without looking up anything. I wasn't in time to rescue my whole crew, though, which made the whole thing still bittersweet. I never look up things in games I play for the first time unless I'm totally stuck somewhere. To this day I haven't looked at any details about how exactly the parameters of the Suicide Mission work, and I'm satisfied with the outcomes of all my different Shepard's SMs. 

Hell, I was perfectly happy finishing Heavy Rain with about the worst possible ending scenario there was. It was harsh and I was sorry for the characters, but damn, it had come to this because of how I played the game and failed at certain points. No reloads, but a second, different playthrought. Of course I ackknowledge that that's the way I like to play, and my time I'm willing to invest for it.

Fast Jimmy wrote...

And I'm not the only one who thinks this. David Gaider, Lead Writer of the Dragon Age series; says he regrets doing this in DA:O, particularly the Isolde/Connor choice in Redcliffe. He said it devalued the other choices to the point that only the ignorant or the sadistic would take them. And he thought that the other options were made weaker from a story-telling perspective because of this escape hatch of an option.

I just have to disagree. When I first played DA:O I didn't know you could save everyone in Redcliffe. My first Warden decided to sacrifice Isolde, despite wanting to always help everyone, because he decided the trip to the Circle was too big a risk and he couldn't choose to sacrifice a boy. On my second playthrough I knew about the so called "best solution", although it didn't influence my game. The second Warden did go to the Circle, but basically because he was so full of himself that he was certain he'd be able to deal with everything that could happen while he was away - he didn't really care for either mother or son. My third Warden, a rather racist Dalish elf, decided that killing Conor was the way to go, because it would help his goals and as well as hurt everyone else the most.

Do I think there should have been some consequences for leaving Redcliffe and going to the Circle? Yeah, that definitely wouldn't have hurt - at the very least if the problems in the tower hadn't already been solved by the time of the decision. But declaring the Redcliffe choice scenario as a whole as a definite "how it should not be done" example irks me.

PsychoBlonde wrote...

caradoc2000 wrote...

And you couldn't save everyone in DA2, even with a guide.

I was going to say, I think there were a couple of places in DA2 where you couldn't save ANYONE.

Actually, WASN'T THAT THE ENTIRE FREAKIN GAME?

DA2 managed to go straight from "you can save everyone by playing in certain ways and/or metagaming" of other titles to me feeling "you can't save anyone ever", which was completely frustrating. It left me with a character who after Act 2 had no reason for being part of the story anymore. Hurm, actually DA2 was on of the few titles I went full metagaming on during my second playthrough, just trying to create a character that made sense for the story.

Anyways, while I agree that not every scenario should have a particular ending option that has a huge blinking "you win by picking this choice" sign over it I don't think that no such options should exist. Just because some people somehow feel compelled to read a strategy guide prior to playing the game, finding the best solution to any given scenario, picking it and then complaining it existed in the first place doesn't mean story-based games with choices should be made primarily with them in mind.
No offense to anyone who likes to play like that!

Modifié par TheRealJayDee, 01 septembre 2013 - 02:26 .

[In Exile]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
Couldn't agree more. Bioware has a TERRIBLE track record with making the goody-two-shoes option beig ALWAYS the best one. You'd think making the hard choice for the greater good is completely impossible in the realm of the narrative creative process. 

The problem is that Bioware doesn't have hard choices - they have the morally good choice and the stupid/reckless choice. And then they run into the problem where either there's no reason after the fact to pick the stupid/reckless choice they created, or they have to basically bite the players in the ass with the other choice to make their original stupid/reckless choice make sense. 

One of the few choices they handled well - the Anvil of the Void choice - I don't think really needs changing. It strikes the right balance: you pick your moral highground, and you lose valuable troops, the potential for golems, and the chance to improve the lots of the dwarves.