655 réponses à ce sujet

[Hazegurl]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

joere wrote...

Players who are not happy with option a are welcome to chose option b.
However, I don't know why some people are telling Bioware to drop option a, even though there are many people who obliously enjoy that option.

Because the need to support that option constrains development.

They can't let us overthrow the Chantry or start an invasion of Tevinter as an optional outcome, because it would be too difficult to support that in future games.

But if each game stood alone, with a fixed background over which the previous games had no effect, then they could design the games without this limitation.  Even more, they could design multiple games with incompatible backgrounds.

But as long as they allow the import option, the games' design is constrained by the need to support that option.

I disagree completely. Every game sequel, linear or not, all have a story that continues on from one game to the next. Why have a linear game where a character overthrows the Chantry then a sequel where that never happened?  Even if the game stood alone players will be wondering what happened in the last game, how did the Chantry repair itself, and so on. All sequels must have something to do with the previous events of the last story or it's some sort of alternate verse or the "it was all a dream" card and even that must be explained. Quite honestly, I don't see that concept selling too well. Who is going to keep playing a franchise where the events of the previous story don't add up? 

The writers are not under any constraints other than making sure that they tell a consistent story. It's the same restraint all writers face. I think that at the end of the day people simply want their choices to carry over in some fashion or acknowledged in some way. I can actually understand the boon to free the Circle not carrying over, but at least acknowledge why with some dialogue. 

"The boon was rewarded but the Templars contacted the Seekers or the Divine and the ruler of Ferelden thought best to allow them to handle it."  

If Cullen turned into a crazed killer in someone's playthrough, then replace him with someone else in their DA2 play through or keep the story where he is sent to Kirkwall  and make it so that Meredith stepped in even though he was crazy. 

Overall, the import feature isn't preventing the writers from giving us a richer playthrough. I would blame marketing and budget first if I were to place blame anywhere. Besides we're coming into the next gen of consoles et al and I think Bioware is in a unique position to give their fans something wonderful. If they can create a game where we can overthrow the Chantry or invade Tevinter AND have those choices carry over to the next story that would be massive and downright awesome. Why run away from that possibility and retreat to old gen concepts over a few mistakes? 

[Hazegurl]

AlanC9 wrote...

Hazegurl wrote...


Actually you get Reaver abilities for doing it. So yeah. If a person is playing a Warden who desires power more than anything and doesn't care about anyone's religious beliefs, Andraste or otherwise then they are doing it for a purpose. Yes it still makes that Warden a douchebag. But I don't see why that means the choice should be taken away from the player who played their Warden this way.

Your choice is evil = Yes it should be retconned.
 

Just to be clear, I didn't mean that I was in favor of retconning douchebaggery. Defiled Ashes should stay defiled. I'm just not especially concerned with worrying about a side effect of the douchebaggery.

Ah, thanks for clearing it up. I thought you were in favor of retconning choices you didn't like, sorry about that.

[DPSSOC]

Hazegurl wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

joere wrote...
Players who are not happy with option a are welcome to chose option b.
However, I don't know why some people are telling Bioware to drop option a, even though there are many people who obliously enjoy that option.

Because the need to support that option constrains development.

They can't let us overthrow the Chantry or start an invasion of Tevinter as an optional outcome, because it would be too difficult to support that in future games.

But if each game stood alone, with a fixed background over which the previous games had no effect, then they could design the games without this limitation.  Even more, they could design multiple games with incompatible backgrounds.

But as long as they allow the import option, the games' design is constrained by the need to support that option.

I disagree completely. Every game sequel, linear or not, all have a story that continues on from one game to the next. Why have a linear game where a character overthrows the Chantry then a sequel where that never happened?  Even if the game stood alone players will be wondering what happened in the last game, how did the Chantry repair itself, and so on. All sequels must have something to do with the previous events of the last story or it's some sort of alternate verse or the "it was all a dream" card and even that must be explained. Quite honestly, I don't see that concept selling too well. Who is going to keep playing a franchise where the events of the previous story don't add up?

Final Fantasy, Zelda, Super Mario, Metroid, Sonic the Hedgehog, and those are off the top of my head.

Keep in mind though Sylvius is talking about optional outcomes.  Without the import feature Bioware could develop games with largely divergent outcomes and just pick one to continue on with, the rest are for the amusement of the player.

Nobody would have a problem if Bioware just said, we're giving you a wide range of choices but these are the ones we're going with for the next game.  Instead they're saying, we're giving you a range of choices that you can carry over, and then making the whole experience largely identical regardless of what you import.

Hazegurl wrote...
Besides we're coming into the next gen of consoles et al and I think Bioware is in a unique position to give their fans something wonderful. If they can create a game where we can overthrow the Chantry or invade Tevinter AND have those choices carry over to the next story that would be massive and downright awesome. Why run away from that possibility and retreat to old gen concepts over a few mistakes? 

"Next-gen" (current gen I guess now) improves graphics.  That's it.  We're not going to see anyone pushing the bounds of what it can do from a hardware/software standpoint for years.  Besides the ability to allow, log, and carry over these choices has never been a hardware issue; it's a time and investment issue.  EA and Bioware are not going to spend the time and money it would take to have meaningful carry over of radically divergent choices, it would make the game prohibitively expensive to produce and they'd probably have to sell each copy for around what you'd pay for a new console.

People calling for the import feature to drop get this, they understand the games are never going to be able to have meaningful carry over of different choices so rather than accept what we've got, choices that don't amount to any difference period, they're calling for the feature to be dropped so we can at least have varied and meaningful choices within a single game.

[ianvillan]

Hazegurl wrote...

Goneaviking wrote...

101ezylonhxeT wrote...
[/snip bunch of quotes]

You have obviously never seen my post and thoughts on the chantry and religion in general lol. I would happily kill every single religious person in Thedas if I could because i hate every single one of them and by killing them i will be saving them.

So basically you've embraced Douchebaggery as a way of life for your characters. No wonder desecrating a healing artifact doesn't stand out as particularly douchebaggy, it's apparently one of the less odious objectives you aspire to.

The way I see it if the Warden doesn't defile them all the religious idiots including Leliana defile them anyway by treating it like it's some circus side show until the place is destroyed.

Plus I would not want to put the power of life and death into one persons hands, how many wars would be fought over the ashes, how much support would the nations and nobles be forced to give to who ever controls them or else be cut off from the ashes.

How much would be charged for access to the ashes and who is deemed worthy of access to them. Surely life and death is the makers decision and going against that and making yourself equal to the maker would be against the Chantrys doctrine, so the destruction of the ashes is not wrong.

[Lotion Soronarr]

101ezylonhxeT wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Why so butthurt about religion?

Because I find it unnecessary especially for a place like Tevinter. And religion does nothing but get in the way and the new info makes me dislike Tevinter a little bit now...I'm still looking forward to going there but my excitement has dropped a little bit now.

You have obviously never seen my post and thoughts on the chantry and
religion in general lol. I would happily kill every single religious
person in Thedas if I could because i hate every single one of them and
by killing them i will be saving them.

...
Dude...
Take a deep breath.
Walk outside.

...
and don't procreate.

[Hazegurl]

DPSSOC wrote...

"Next-gen" (current gen I guess now) improves graphics.  That's it. 

 
We should expect more than just good graphics. It reminds me of the AngryJoe review of Killzone 4 and how upset he was over the fact that the gameplay in some areas was just nothing but the same old bs. He expected more out of a new game on a new system. I agree with him.

I don't like the idea of the import feature being dropped so they can make another final fantasy sonic the hedgehog game. They shouldn't strive to do what other companies are already doing and have been doing for years.  It's not like I would rage "preorder cancelled!" if they did do that. Heck I wouldn't even mind it if it was done in some alternate Dragon age verse series or something. But not for the main game. I'd rather have them end the story than go there.  But the way I see it, they can always improve on what they are already doing to give fans a great experience while sticking to their main selling point. It doesn't even have to cost an arm and leg just to replace certain dead characters like they did in Mass Effect or add extra dialogue explaining why X couldn't happen.  The main reason why threads like this pop up anyway is because the DA team think they should revive every popular character in the series.

@Ian, that is also a great way to think of it. Even when I don't defile the ashes I always kill off brother Genitivi. Too bad it doesn't stop everyone from going there. lol! But I agree, the ashes is better off destroyed and gone once found.

Modifié par Hazegurl, 24 décembre 2013 - 09:35 .

[SaltBot]

 If I want to lead a pre-defined character through an epic tale of adventure over which I have no control, I will play FF7, or FF8, or AC2, or Lost Odyssey, or BioShock, etc.

If I want to experience an adventure vicariously through a unique digital avatar whose personality I get to personally build through choice of action and dialogue, I will play BG, or BG2, or ME, or ME2, or ME3, or DA:O, or DA2, etc.

As much as BW has stumbled, screwed up, or even failed utterly, and as much as DA2 felt like a step backwards in many respects, these games are ambitiously pushing into unfamiliar territory in an attempt to make something unique and entertaining.  Saying that BW should just cut their losses and give up on save imports is like saying we should abandon space exploration because we cannot even put a man on Mars 60 years later.  If there were intense competition and one or more other studios were already doing it better, I would agree that BW should give up and stick to what they are good at. As far as I can tell, they are currently the only developer with the guts to at least try.  I would rather see this whole "choices" endeavour go down in a huge ball of flames than ponder what might have been if BW had not given up early on.

Nobody is hurting for sequel options where our choices do not matter at all (I loved Sgt Johnson in Halo 2, and where would we be if everyone was up in arms about him surviving the hidden Legendary ending).  Having something new and interesting that does not work, but is steadily improving, gets me more excited than a highly polished carbon copy.  And I love me some highly polished carbon copies (says the guy who owns every AC game).

[AlanC9]

SaltBot, I don't follow that argument. Not having a save import in the next game doesn't mean having no choices in the current game. Fallout 1 had plenty of choices, and Fallout 2 had no save import.

[In Exile]

AlanC9 wrote...

SaltBot, I don't follow that argument. Not having a save import in the next game doesn't mean having no choices in the current game. Fallout 1 had plenty of choices, and Fallout 2 had no save import.

In fact, all of Fallout:NV is basically a follow up on a particular choice with regards to Shady Sands. That's "retconning" choices to a scale Bioware never dreamed. It's like basing the core plot and history of an entire game on the PC saving Redcliffe (or Feros, for ME fans). 

[SaltBot]

AlanC9 wrote...

Fallout 1 had plenty of choices, and Fallout 2 had no save import.

This is precisely my point. There are other games that already offer the experience people are advocating that BW adopt. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like a number of people here are advocating removing save imports because the results have been less than satisfactory. I am arguing that, while the results aren't perfect, at least BW is trying something new and unique. I hope they continue trying, even if it sometimes means failing, rather than have them fall into the same pattern of hard resets a la the Fallout series (and others) that you have aptly offered up as evidence for how games can work without save imports.

I never meant to argue about choice within games, which many games do successfully, rather I am arguing the merits of continuing the use of save imports, which is pretty much exclusive to BW games. I'd rather see them try and fail than give up and copy other successful franchises.

[Angrywolves]

SaltBot wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

Fallout 1 had plenty of choices, and Fallout 2 had no save import.

This is precisely my point. There are other games that already offer the experience people are advocating that BW adopt. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like a number of people here are advocating removing save imports because the results have been less than satisfactory. I am arguing that, while the results aren't perfect, at least BW is trying something new and unique. I hope they continue trying, even if it sometimes means failing, rather than have them fall into the same pattern of hard resets a la the Fallout series (and others) that you have aptly offered up as evidence for how games can work without save imports.

I never meant to argue about choice within games, which many games do successfully, rather I am arguing the merits of continuing the use of save imports, which is pretty much exclusive to BW games. I'd rather see them try and fail than give up and copy other successful franchises.

fast jimmy is the obvious leading advocate of ditching the save imports.
And he's right.It would seem to me save importing confuse things for the developers and make it more difficult to concentrate on just that game.With save imports you have to worry about the previous games and being sure their info gets over and included in the process.

[Guns]

I have zero interest in a canon choices. It's interesting to eradicate all the circle mages in Fereldan, but if in the next game Bioware says, ''Oh no we wanted to use Irving so we're ignoring your choice.'' it really detracts from my experience. If massive choices aren't going to be acknowledged I'd rather not be able to shape the world.

David Gaider stated the comics aren't canon. They are just his story for Alistair. Our choices should be like that where our games are more focused on our character's life instead of being in charge of the future of an entire pack of werewolves that doesn't affect our character in any way. I should be reading about my character's future I choose for him in the epilogue rather than reading about the escapades of a king and then my character just disappears.

[Angrywolves]

eh, the comics aren't canon but are the books ?
Wynne is dead, that's pretty much canon.
Canon is whatever a developer feels it is at that particular point in time, imo.
cynical but true.

[Guns]

Angrywolves wrote...

eh, the comics aren't canon but are the books ?
Wynne is dead, that's pretty much canon.
Canon is whatever a developer feels it is at that particular point in time, imo.
cynical but true.

Fine, but then don't give me option to save her if she's just gonna be dead in the next game anyways. Give me an option for my character instead.

[Mike3207]

Angrywolves wrote...

eh, the comics aren't canon but are the books ?
Wynne is dead, that's pretty much canon.
Canon is whatever a developer feels it is at that particular point in time, imo.
cynical but true.

It's canon if DA3 reports her as dead.

Canon-"something that occurs across all possible playthroughs"

I don't think you can do that in books or comics, so they're not canon.

i'll amend this somewhat. The books before the first game, they might be considered canon because you need a default history to set the background of the first game. Otherwise, i'm very reluctant to give any credibility regarding canon to any books/comics.

Modifié par Mike Smith, 25 décembre 2013 - 03:12 .

[SaltBot]

Guns wrote...

I have zero interest in a canon choices. It's interesting to eradicate all the circle mages in Fereldan, but if in the next game Bioware says, ''Oh no we wanted to use Irving so we're ignoring your choice.'' it really detracts from my experience. If massive choices aren't going to be acknowledged I'd rather not be able to shape the world.

Yet there are folks here arguing that this very hand-waving technique makes something like Fallout: New Vegas superior to, say, something like Mass Effect 2. In-game choice and consequence has been done and done well by BW and many others. If carry-over mechanics don't matter to you, I humbly suggest that there are other franchises out there better suited to your tastes. BW claims "all your choices will matter", and through a series of unfortunate events only a few of them matter. That's a bad marketing practice, not a bad development practice. The fact that they are trying something new with save importing and getting some results amidst the myriad failures seems like a step in the right direction to me as someone who is interested in where video games can grow as a medium. Marketing a flawed system as a perfect one is a corporate decision which I hold great scepticism and ill-will towards, but that is not on the shoulders of the dev team. I'd still rather see BW keep at it with incremental improvements than have them scrap it all and settle for being the same as their competitors.

[vaire]

Personally I find that (with some efforts in time and money naturally) it could be made so that our choices could carry over well. The point would be: not giving the player determinate choices if those could cripple future games. Not impossible, difficult of course, but I am more than willing to forgive some "changes" to what I did if they are not the majority, don't make someone else out of an old character and help making the new game interesting.
What I think would be a loosing move is eliminating the whole choices carry over, since that is a very interesting "experiment" in the gaming panorama and (while still in need of improvement) adds value to the roleplaying aspects of the game.
Could this make some choices off-limits for a character of ours? Yes; yet again: what choices would end up being off limits? In my opinion only ones with extreme consequences (as in: killing every dwarf/elf/human/mage/non mage in Thedas) and those would hardly be the result of a single man/single group actions.
So, at the end of the day, Bioware has, in my opinion, everything to gain in allowing the player to import his choices and much to loose in taking the possibility from him/her.

Modifié par vaire, 25 décembre 2013 - 04:06 .

[Spectre slayer]

Mike Smith wrote...

Angrywolves wrote...
eh, the comics aren't canon but are the books ? Wynne is dead, that's pretty much canon.Canon is whatever a developer feels it is at that particular point in time, imo.cynical but true.

It's canon if DA3 reports her as dead.

Canon-"something that occurs across all possible playthroughs"
I don't think you can do that in books or comics, so they're not canon.

i'll amend this somewhat. The books before the first game, they might be considered canon because you need a default history to set the background of the first game. Otherwise, i'm very reluctant to give any credibility regarding canon to any books/comics.

I always see these types of posts, the books are technically canon but it's their canon and the default settings not ours, and it seems like your definition of canon matches what Gaider was talking about when they announced their default canon.

The problem here is that people have a strange idea of what "canon" means-- almost a paranoia, really.
We have a default canon, which applies if you import nothing. So if someone comes to DAI with no import of previous games, they get a certain set of previous decisions being presumed-- and those tend to be ones that don't promise future content.

And if your version of the definition of canon is "it overrides my previous story", then rest assured that will not happen. The story may not go exactly as you want/expect (as in Leliana being alive, if you killed her in DAO), but that's not the same as those previous actions being treated as if they never happened at all. 

If we ever decide to move Dragon Age over to one canonical story in-between games, I'm almost positive we would give lots of advance notice to allow fans time to rend garments, burn effigies, and send cupcakes. Until that point, just wait for news on the import feature.

They still have a canon but it doesn't really effect us all that much, Wynne will probably be dead in DAI no matter what because of Asunder or some player's killing her. 

Leliana being alive will eventually be explained and she will react accordingly to the decision whether or not you "killed" her or attempted to according to Gaider so people should just expect it already.

Nope, sorry. We have many instances of characters who are killed and who remain so. So long as we don't say that their death (or your attempt to kill them, anyhow) never happened in the first place, it's fair game for sometimes that resulting in them still returning.

I get that some people find this frustrating, but to imply this is the same as no character being killable or death itself having no meaning (or no choice having any impact at all) is a bit of an exaggeration.

Absolutely. Her being alive in DA2 even if she was killed in DAO was consistent, if largely unexplained, and the variable will remain present going into DA3. The explanation, once it's offered, doesn't negate the fact that some people are not getting the result they want (ie. Leliana is not there at all), but the choice will be recognized nevertheless and will have reactivity.

As we've said before, some choices carry forward between games and have big effects. Some will have small effects, such as simply being referred to. We will rarely just ignore them entirely unless we have no other choice (or if it's irrelevant in the current context). I resist the exaggeration that not having big reactivity for every choice is the same as having no reactivity for anything. I get that some people seem to think the entire purpose of putting a choice into a game is that so it can carry into the sequel, and that every choice should thus create complete divergence... but that's not really possible (and thus why the vast majority of games simply don't do it).

With regards to how we intend to do the import feature to avoid the GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) bugginess, that's something we'll talk about in the months to come.

http://social.biowar...9402/2#14561597

The DA Keep will look for whether you killed her (or attempted to, if you prefer) in DAO, and DAI will react to that. It doesn't mean she's dead in DAI, your desire to kill her and (evidently) stomp on her corpse notwithstanding.

In this case, as I've said many times before, decisions from earlier games will have varying levels of impact in DAI. The decision to kill Leliana (which, incidentally, is not the decision you're offered, but rather a reaction to it) is not disregarded as it did happen and will be reacted to.

Is that not what some people wanted? Sure, obviously, but that doesn't change the fact that it still happened, and doesn't mean there still aren't other decisions which cause more divergent reactivity (including character deaths). If some want to harp on this particular piece of reactivity as if it unravels all reality, that's fine. I get why they want what they want--fans tend to want every decision they've made to cause completely divergent effects on the story, regardless of the feasibility of us doing so--but this is how it is.

Zevran being alive when you killed him is a bug, and the keep is a clean base to input your decision which means if you kill him with the keep he's dead.

Not sure if Oghren is a bug or not, but if it is the same principals apply with Zevran or any other characters that you kill besides Leliana decapitation finsher is NOT BEING TRACKED,  Morrigan and Flemeth.

Modifié par Spectre slayer, 25 décembre 2013 - 05:47 .

[Sylvius the Mad]

Darth Brotarian wrote...

What's the point of providing options that are just going to be ignored in later installments?

The later intallments are irrelevant.  It's about your ability to play your character and have him make meaningful choices within his own reality.

That's harder to support is subsequent games are set within the same reality.

No reason to be constrained by consistency so why not screw you to logic as well and turn the main character into a my little pony and have them blasting magical beams at a balrog? They'll just be retconed in the next game to be the human male noble we know is suppose to be canon.

It wouldn't be retcomming, since the second game's reality would be separate from the first game's reality.  They wouldn't be saying that the things you did in the first game didn't happen, but that those events simply unfolded differently in the reality in which the second game is set.

The way they could really drive this home is by producing two games which rely on incompatible backstories.  Say, one game that assumes the Old God Baby, while another assumes the Darkspawn Chronicles.  There would be no way to reconcile those, thus demonstrating that there's no one coherent reality being built.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Hazegurl wrote...

I disagree completely. Every game sequel, linear or not, all have a story that continues on from one game to the next. Why have a linear game where a character overthrows the Chantry then a sequel where that never happened?

Because it might make both games better.

The writers are not under any constraints other than making sure that they tell a consistent story. It's the same restraint all writers face. I think that at the end of the day people simply want their choices to carry over in some fashion or acknowledged in some way. I can actually understand the boon to free the Circle not carrying over, but at least acknowledge why with some dialogue.

There's no need for consistency between the Mass Effect and Dragon Age titles.  So why should there be across DAO and DA2?  The Darkspawn Chronciles was an alternate reality.  Why not do every game like that?

[Guns]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Hazegurl wrote...

I disagree completely. Every game sequel, linear or not, all have a story that continues on from one game to the next. Why have a linear game where a character overthrows the Chantry then a sequel where that never happened?

Because it might make both games better.

Bad storytelling never improves anything, much less a game

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

The writers are not under any constraints other than making sure that they tell a consistent story. It's the same restraint all writers face. I think that at the end of the day people simply want their choices to carry over in some fashion or acknowledged in some way. I can actually understand the boon to free the Circle not carrying over, but at least acknowledge why with some dialogue.

There's no need for consistency between the Mass Effect and Dragon Age titles.  So why should there be across DAO and DA2?  The Darkspawn Chronciles was an alternate reality.  Why not do every game like that?

I don't understand what this means. Are you asking why two games within the same universe should be consistent with each other because two different universes aren't? I have a hard time believing someone with that logic could even survive past childhood yet alone grasp how to operate a computer.

The Darkspawn Chronicles was a what if story that many franchises have done. It was gimmicky and not strong story wise.

Modifié par Guns, 25 décembre 2013 - 07:04 .

[Cainhurst Crow]

@Sylvius, as someone else put it in this thread. If both options lead to the exact same outcome, then where is the difference?

Retconning or setting it in a separate universe, either way your previous choices are wiped from the board and the writers tell you what actually happened. It leads to the exact same result, new game, new canon, your canon is gone.