655 réponses à ce sujet

[Hazegurl]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

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?

Unless they squeezed all three ME games into one I don't see how they could have told that story by resetting the new game. That would have sucked and ME doesn't have the same issues as DA when it comes to carrying over choices. The endings have nothing at all to do with the import feature.

As for DA. Actually DA2 was an opportunity for the writers to start a whole new game. We had a different protagonist, different story, different companions, different locations. it would have been easy to still carry over the world changing events of the different choices made and do it as subtle as possible. Even the Ferelden circle could have been dissolved. it's not like Hawke was going to Ferelden and since the circles rebel no matter what, then what difference did it make in hand waving away that boon?

Did we really need DAO/ DAA cameos? Did we really need Anders/Justice? nope. But I loved the cameos nonetheless, I'm glad we got them and it was fun meeting up with the past characters and see the outcome of the things that happened after their time with the Warden. The world of dragon age will always feel more real to me because of it. I can immerse myself in the world, because just like the real world, when a choice is made, that world has to deal with it and so does any new protagonist stepping forward. 

I love games and there are certain characters I love, but I have never wanted to just simply spend time with them in the world like I wanted to do with the ME crew in the Citadel DLC. Never. That to me is the beauty of BW games. they give us this world and characters that we fall in love with a have these experiences with for good or bad. I don't want that taken away in favor of some default. BW has spoiled me. I'll never jump onboard the no import train.

Now I don't mind an alternate world in ME4. The Reaper story is over and done with.

[Cainhurst Crow]

I feel choices are an enjoyable part of the game, a bit of personalization with the story that helps me emphasize more with the characters and what they are going through.

[Cainhurst Crow]

I just feel that, well, it would serve better if audiences knew what to expect in the next game going into it if there was a set canon. Like, if they wanted to set a canon, they should provide us without a say in the big events going on, so that we can't be deluded into thinking we ever effected any of it in the first place. Don't let us annul the circle, or at the very least have alistar express how very unlikely and near impossible such a request would be to grant, but he would do his best. Don't have epilogues for events that might be retconned out, instead just say what happened to our companions and maybe a few npc's. Make the game less about shaping the world and more about shaping our character as they experience events in the world and give their say on matters. Don't be afraid to have the game say "No, just because you want this to happen doesn't mean it will" if our player tries to do something crazy like wipe out the qun everywhere or burn all of ferelden to the ground. I can't speak on behalf of the characters, due to mostly not having an answer of how to solve that without the writers inventing a reason said character survived and having them explain that.

A what if story can be fun at times, but I'd rather be told "hey, this path in the game is just a what if scenario" then be told that it was all the path of how the story played out, only to be told no it wasn't in just the next game. Don't want to read through codex entry after codex entry to see what did or didn't get retconned to know what to expect in this world as an informed member of the populous, don't want to just cynically embrace everything as being a lie so that when the truth is revealed I don't see as bad, and I would rather the game just be honest. At least in this system I know mostly what I'm going to get from one game going into the next, or a 90% accuracy rate of what is going to be reflected.

It's just my own neurotic way of approaching gaming in which I see my serious "this is what happened" presona and my "I'm doing this cause lolz" presona as two seperate entities that should stay seperate, and don't think I can reconcile it in a old style bioware game without just making myself bored to death or overly stressed over trying to read between the lines and tell which option is what for why and when.

Modifié par Darth Brotarian, 25 décembre 2013 - 10:36 .

[Il Divo]

Guns wrote...

Bad storytelling never improves anything, much less a game

Because Bioware's handling of the Collector Base (for example) was totally awesome story-telling?

[Il Divo]

SaltBot wrote...

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.

That's the problem here; what you consider "done well" and why I and others consider done well are very different things.

Bioware certainly never needed the import mechanic to design an excellent game and in more than a few cases, it's constrained their narrative to very awkward scenarios. If people are comfortable with giving up world-changing decisions, maybe it could work. If people are willing to pass on voice-acting or high end graphics, maybe more resources will be available.

[Toasted Llama]

I actually like a canon. While I do appreciate having choices and being able to see my own personal choices and preferences per playthrough/character return in the games that follow, I also like the game to tell me "NO." every once in a while.

Playing a character in god-mode that can bend everyone and everything to his will gets boring after a while. "Oh look, another person or event that I can completely turn around because I said so...."

What's the point of choices anyway if everything is choices?

[SirGladiator]

I agree with the general idea that the primary goal is for the choices to matter within the game itself. Of course it's important to carry over as many of the truly major choices as reasonably possible, and to do so in as meaningful a way as possible, but DAI will obviously not be judged on how well the decisions we make in it are carried over into the next game (as that's something we won't know for years), it will be judged on whether or not the decisions we make have a meaningful impact in the game itself. Having said all that, I believe that the Keep will help them with the ability to carry over our choices in a better way than Bioware has ever done before, so I do believe that our choices will have more impact than ever. Of course it will never be enough to satisfy the most demanding of folks, but I feel good about the likelihood of it being more than enough to satisfy myself and most everyone else.

[Guns]

Il Divo wrote...

Guns wrote...

Bad storytelling never improves anything, much less a game

Because Bioware's handling of the Collector Base (for example) was totally awesome story-telling?

Well I think Mass Effect 1 was better, especially the story, so that's irrelevant. 

[Hazegurl]

I'm still wondering how a no import feature is suddenly going to open up a flood gate of cash so that BW can create drastically different choices on the level of invading a whole country or march on the Divine.

As for ME2. I love how making shyt decisions can get your people killed and they stay dead. So not every choice made is magically right because the PC made it.

[Nerevar-as]

You had to try to get partners killed in ME2, besides Mordin holding the line (a hacker...Jack you go). In general, the most significant a choice looked in ME, the less effect it´d have. If DA follows the same trend, OGB or who rules Ferelden decisions will be cosmetic at best. Which is a given unless the devs create a game with very diverging paths, unlikely in any of the big ones.

Maybe the answer is not putting the player in those apparent high impact decissions, so s/he doesn´t get disappointed when nothing of scale happens. BW´s however is doing it, and then wonders why players get dissapointed and annoyed.

[Meltemph]

Mdoggy1214 wrote...

I'm not trying to be a smartalec or attempting to cause trouble. I am being real with you.

After ME3, DA2, and David Gaider's comments on past choices being retconned, why should I care about the choices you present to me in Dragon Age: Inquisition? I'm going to be playing this game under the assumption that there's likely going to be another installment of this franchise in the future, depending on it's success. But seeing how you've been handling choice in your past few games, whenever you talk about decision making in DA:I, it comes off as empty words to me.

I understand that carrying over all these choices into future games can be a nightmare in terms of coding and narrative. But I'm of the opinion that if you cannot fulfill the task of properly carrying over every choice you presented us in a game, and flesh out all these variations into at least an acceptable quality, then don't give us the choices. Or at least don't present us with as many. I don't think I'm being unfair with this.

I would prefer a hell of a lot less world/setting altering changes, and have mainly personal choices that I can make along the way.  World changing decisions leave no real sense of satisfaction, to me, if I am in anyway a fan of the setting.  I don't want 50 different versions of Thedas for them to write for or consider, when extending the lore, history, and world of the setting.  I just see no benefit from deciding who rules the Dwarves, since the only way for that to work is to either have 2 versions of the kingdom written or reduce the scope of that decision.  I would wrather be able to decide who I support, and based on who ended up becoming king, would decide what happened to my character(whether he was kicked out and in odds with the kingdom or in favor).  

It would also, to me, give more weight to decisions if the choices I make could go in conflict of the story, and in so doing, make the impact of my choices more personal.

[Angrywolves]

Nerevar-as wrote...

You had to try to get partners killed in ME2, besides Mordin holding the line (a hacker...Jack you go). In general, the most significant a choice looked in ME, the less effect it´d have. If DA follows the same trend, OGB or who rules Ferelden decisions will be cosmetic at best. Which is a given unless the devs create a game with very diverging paths, unlikely in any of the big ones.

Maybe the answer is not putting the player in those apparent high impact decissions, so s/he doesn´t get disappointed when nothing of scale happens. BW´s however is doing it, and then wonders why players get dissapointed and annoyed.

More than likely the choice issues in the ME series were mistakes made by the ME team as opposed to part of a dedicated plan.
I feel sure Laidlaw, although he wouldn't admit it is well aware of the mistakes made not just in DA2 but by the ME team in that series and will take steps to avoid those mistakes.
He seems prudent enough to know that he must do everything he can to avoid repeating prior mistakes as well as mistakes made by others.:innocent:

[Abraham_uk]

ElementalFury106 wrote...

Unlike the majority here, I agree with you.

Some example that really tick me off were the following

1) Leliana appearing in the ending even though my cynically ruthless Warden playthrough in DA:O killed her. What gives
2) Oghren appearing in Awakening even though my same Warden mentioned above ^ killed him. Lame ass excuse too.
3) Anders appearing in DA:2 even though he was left behind at the keep and we saw his corpse...with an arrow through his neck...yeah.

And finally the BEST one of them;

Anders still manages to blow up the chantry in DA:2 even if I

- Told him to screw off in Act 2
- Refused to even start his Justice quest in Act 3
- Refused to distract the Grand Cleric while he plants the "bomb".

The dev back there said the choices you make in the game should impact the game's outcome. Well explain how no matter what I did with Anders, the outcome is the same. Help him or not, same result.

Say what you will about Mass Effect trilogy (controversial ending aside)


If Garrus Vakarian died, he didn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.
If Tali Zorah died, she didn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.
If Kaidan Alenko died, he didn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.
If Ashley Williams died, she didn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.
If Udnot Wrex died, he didn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.

If Miranda Lawson, Jacob Taylor, Jack, Kasumi Goto, Zaeed Massani, Thane Krios, Samara, Morinth, Legion and Udnot Grunt died, then they wouldn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.

I unlike the opening post, am not asking every single choice to have an impact on future games.
However if a character who you saw die, appears then there is a ligitimate criticism to be made.
Dead means dead. Maybe Commander Shepard didn't get the memo, but Shepard's squad certainly did.

[Il Divo]

Guns wrote...

Il Divo wrote...

Guns wrote...

Bad storytelling never improves anything, much less a game

Because Bioware's handling of the Collector Base (for example) was totally awesome story-telling?

Well I think Mass Effect 1 was better, especially the story, so that's irrelevant. 

Considering the post you were responding to was made with respect to save imports, Mass Effect 1 would be the irrelevant comparison.

My point is that choosing a canon storyline between games is not good or bad story-telling. Mass Effect 1 is a terrible example because there is no import mechanic on which to base whether it's story-telling is good or bad.

Dragon Age 2, The Witcher 2, Mass Effect 2 and 3, etc. These are games where we can evaluate the impact of the save import on the narrative.

Modifié par Il Divo, 25 décembre 2013 - 08:14 .

[spirosz]

To be honest, I feel the story of Inquisition is going to be a train wreck because of ][, though I did enjoy the story of ][, I'm just not to comfortable with Bioware's writing ability in relation to stories in the past few years, though the character writing is always done well for my tastes.

[AresKeith]

Il Divo wrote...

Guns wrote...

Bad storytelling never improves anything, much less a game

Because Bioware's handling of the Collector Base (for example) was totally awesome story-telling?

Stop reminding us 

[Il Divo]

Morocco Mole wrote...

You can exclude the Witcher 2 from that last. Since they blatantly ignored choices from the first game in favor of their own storyline and the game was a lot stronger for it.

I was on Xbox so I only got to play Assassin of Kings, but from what I heard this was largely the case. And while Wild Hunt does look pretty amazing so far, it seems like they're going for that approach of setting the game in a completely different location, to limit the number of variables they have to take into account.

[Hazegurl]

Abraham_uk wrote...

Say what you will about Mass Effect trilogy (controversial ending aside)


If Garrus Vakarian died, he didn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.
If Tali Zorah died, she didn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.
If Kaidan Alenko died, he didn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.
If Ashley Williams died, she didn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.
If Udnot Wrex died, he didn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.

If Miranda Lawson, Jacob Taylor, Jack, Kasumi Goto, Zaeed Massani, Thane Krios, Samara, Morinth, Legion and Udnot Grunt died, then they wouldn't appear in subsequent games with your Shepard.

I unlike the opening post, am not asking every single choice to have an impact on future games.
However if a character who you saw die, appears then there is a ligitimate criticism to be made.
Dead means dead. Maybe Commander Shepard didn't get the memo, but Shepard's squad certainly did.

Right. As much as I hate Liara and would have loved killing her off, if the devs wanted future content with her I'm glad they didn't offer me the chance to kill her if she was just going to pop up in another game.  Killing off a character means I never want to see their mug in my face again.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Morocco Mole wrote...

You can exclude the Witcher 2 from that last. Since they blatantly ignored choices from the first game in favor of their own storyline and the game was a lot stronger for it.

To be honest, that was one of my few criticisms of the game.