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[In Exile]

bEVEsthda,

 

Whereas, of course, my situation with Hawke is much different from the Warden. I'm trying, at the best, to make a few interactive choices (which often only results in different dialogues), and then I just passively watch a Bioware character act and speak with a stranger's voice (and not so rarely pulling a surprise as well).

 

It's funny that you say that you're "passive" with a voiced PC, because there's nothing more passive and submissive in a cinematic Bioware game than the Silent Protagonist. Every important moment, you taken a knee and hide your head in the bushes while some other character takes charge of the situation and dominates the conversation. All you do at the critical moments is defer. That's all DA:O, Jade Empire and KotOR is about: running errands for your betters and letting your party do the talking for you. 

 

Even if everything you said about the VO was true, at least a voiced protagonist actually does things. If you want to have a character who isn't passive and defers to basically any NPC that can be called even remotely important, then a silent PC breaks your character from day 0. The epitome of this is KoTOR, when Bastilla/Carth take the lead in the end-game with the PC standing as a mute side character throughout the action. It's the same in the DA:O endgame. Or at Ostagar when you meet Cailan. Or when you get named as the leader of Ferelden's armies, but suddenly Eamon comes up with the actual plan and Alistair addresses the troops and literally uses you as a mute statue and a nice story he tells the troops (or Anora tells the troops). That's passive. Your big role in the DA:O endgame is to be a nifty anecdote while Eamon and Riordan draft the plan and Alistair does the talking. That, and stab things in the throat.

 

The one thing that makes VO so, so much better than its absence is the fact that a protagonist with VO can finally take the lead in a 3D game. 

 

The Warden is very much my own creature and creation. Certainly all the inner life. Feelings, motivations.

 

Like that time I got to tell Wynne that the Grey Wardens are a bunch of incompetent, sadistic kidnappers when she asked me what I thought about being a Grey Warden. I definitely wasn't stuck with four options that basically broke down into (i) duty and servitude! (ii) muwahaha power! and (iii) why does it have to mean anything? 

 

There's absolutely no more freedom in DA:O in terms of any kind of inner life than DA2, since any kind of inner thought you have can get unexpectedly crushed and railroaded by dialogue options that not only do not let you express your inner view, but actively contradict and diminish it. You don't need either VO or cinematics for that. 

[In Exile]

I really appreciate the movement toward making the game more cinematic. I have never felt there is anything wrong with hearing my protag speak; of course I want to. I also agree with others that I don't mind him doing a lot of physical interaction while speaking, like putting a hand on a companion's shoulder. Obviously, I get why people say how odd it looks when the Warden says something moving and important (well, in text, anyway), but stands there expressionless and practically lifeless in the scene while it's happening. 

 

I've been thinking about this, and I actually disagree with this. I think that physical interaction is an important part of expression, and while I don't mind gestures (whether you have a character that talks with their lands a lot or not, or chooses a particular posture, etc.) I have a lot of issues with interacting with the world. There's a trade off between actually allowing you to express things in-game and having to pre-script them. That's just the nature of the medium. 

 

But actually interacting with the world is different. That takes away agency, IMO. It's like how DA:O had to be stoic... except for a few scenes where you have a preset emotion and reaction that's just confusing (like running back toward Wynne concerned when she collapses). 

 

 

On the other hand, I felt disconnected from Hawke in a different way. The Warden felt like a shell I was inhabiting. I really got a sense of his inner life, at least in the sense that his thoughts lived in his words. Hawke was impermeable to me. It really was more like watching an actor I was directing in a movie, than being that actor, inhabiting his consciousness, sensing his inner life, controlling his choices and destiny. Thus in that sense, it created that disconnection which for me, anyway, felt just as disconcerting as the earlier kind of disconnection people felt with the Warden since he was always expressionless and silent and rarely moving/doing while reciting his lines. 

 

To me, the Warden was a soulless robot. Shell is a good word, because when you looked inside there was nothing there. The plot constantly and unexpectedly railroaded me - whatever aims/goals/etc. my character had were basically unexpectedly and constantly not supported by the game. The biggest annihilation of my character was DA:A's decision that you're a "Warde4Life!" if you wanted to keep playing, but DA:O had plenty of moments that basically went the same way. 

 

You couldn't dislike the Wardens post-Ostagar. You could be a reluctant recruit before that - even though it basically overlapped with being cowardly - but after Ostagar you were stuck and had three places you were forced to (unnecessarily) own the identity of a GW: to get into Orzammar, when you first met Zathrian, and when Wynne asks you what being a GW means to you.

 

You couldn't hate Duncan. You could dismiss him, and dismiss Alistair, but, say, calling him a kidnapping bastard that chose to let your parents die in-front of you to steal you away for his darkspawn killing army isn't an option.

 

Trying to guess which like was sarcastic or tongue-in-cheek was like playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun. 

 

It goes on. The Warden was a pre-set character who was completely unknowable until you went through enough of the game to know how you were limited so that your character didn't wind up straight up broken at every single point in the game. I basically game up through my two DA:O playthroughs once I realized I wasn't ever going to have a character concept the game didn't break until I learned what 70% of the options in the game happened to be, and created a character that was a dedicated GW who wanted to be with the order 4evah. 

 

I like PC VO because it's honest about what it is - restricting, but it gives you enough information to get a consistent voice and personality going. 

[In Exile]

You can to an extent. It depends on the character. A Dalish can tell him "You'll pay for this human!" if you get conscripted.

 

Then you can steal from him at Ostagar, for good measure. Afterwards, you can tell Alistair that Duncan deserved to die.

 

I admit that saying "[y]ou can't hate Duncan" is so generally worded that it's false. But, like I said, you can't, as I've said, call "him a kidnapping bastard that chose to let your parents die in-front of you to steal you away for his darkspawn killing army".  These other things, sure, you can do. But that's not what this particular character wanted to do. And treating these options as being the same thing is just not right. It's like saying that the paraphrase is "good enough". It's not. 

 

That's the thing with this generic dialogue. Saying "Duncan deserved to die" isn't saying "I hate him for what he did" because, among other things, you could hate him for what he did and not think he deserved to die for it. 

If you accept that generic dialogue is good enough, then the paraphrase should be good enough. 

[In Exile]

It could be better, I admit. I want to say a lot more. But I'm content enough... I guess. It's enough for me to work with.

 

This is probably why I prefer VO. I'd rather have three very specific options - even if they miss my ideal mark - than 6 generic ones. Because the generic options will never, ever capture a character motivation any character I have will ever express. I just don't do characters who speak or express themselves like that. 

 

Same way I don't do passive characters who defer to others, and get frustrated when the game forces me to do that. 

[CybAnt1]

It goes on. The Warden was a pre-set character who was completely unknowable until you went through enough of the game to know how you were limited so that your character didn't wind up straight up broken at every single point in the game. I basically game up through my two DA:O playthroughs once I realized I wasn't ever going to have a character concept the game didn't break until I learned what 70% of the options in the game happened to be, and created a character that was a dedicated GW who wanted to be with the order 4evah. 

 

 

I understand everything you're saying, except for one thing. It seems to be a complaint with how the dialogue for the Warden was written, not with the actual dialogue mechanics. 

 

I mean, Origins certainly could have had a dialogue option where you tell Duncan to go to hell and that you're going to ****** on his grave, and of course yes without voicing you'd have to imagine him yelling and screaming it, the lack of that option being written into the dialogue by the writers has nothing to do, per se, with dialogue mechanics. 

 

Though I do understand your point about how mechanics affects one thing: if the Warden is not going to speak (well other than the brief "combat blurts"), then any address to an army in a scene needs to be done by someone standing next to him. And I agree that does take away from sense of agency.

 

Thing is, and I'll let bEVE take his own position, but I think I am like many people in that I can definitely see the advantages of a voiced protagonist, but that we have to look at the tradeoffs that has come with it, and then ask one other question: is there a way to keep the voiced protagonist, and reduce the tradeoffs? 

 

That's what I've been suggesting throughout the thread. The one tradeoff I don't like living with is really basically more or less guessing what he's going to say and do. 

[In Exile]

I understand everything you're saying, except for one thing. It seems to be a complaint with how the dialogue for the Warden was written, not with the actual dialogue mechanics. 

 

I mean, Origins certainly could have had a dialogue option where you tell Duncan to go to hell and that you're going to ****** on his grave, and of course yes without voicing you'd have to imagine him yelling and screaming it, the lack of that option being written into the dialogue by the writers has nothing to do, per se, with dialogue mechanics. 

 

Though I do understand your point about how mechanics affects one thing: if the Warden is not going to speak (well other than the brief "combat blurts"), then any address to an army in a scene needs to be done by someone standing next to him. And I agree that does take away from sense of agency.

 

Thing is, and I'll let bEVE take his own position, but I think I am like many people in that I can definitely see the advantages of a voiced protagonist, but that we have to look at the tradeoffs that has come with it, and then ask one other question: is there a way to keep the voiced protagonist, and reduce the tradeoffs? 

 

That's what I've been suggesting throughout the thread. The one tradeoff I don't like living with is really basically more or less guessing what he's going to say and do. 

 

It's not a complaint about how dialogue was written per se. Rather, it's a complaint about what the choices are and how the very existence of the choices is something that makes it impossible to represent a particular inner state. 

 

It's not about imagining a character do something - which is a whole other kettle of fish - but whether or not the option exists. Let's use another example. Let's say you have a Cousland who wants to be King. Other than bending over and licking Anora's boots, there's no way to become King. Even though the Landsmeet could choose its own leader - and even though if you lose the outcome is that they choose a peasant who isn't even remotely related to the Theirin bloodline - there's no option to ask them to choose the scion of the (second) greatest noble family in Ferelden, who (among other things) has literally just found the Thedas equivalent of the Holy Grail and brought Eamon back from (pretty much) the dead. That's King Arthur level heroism there. But that option doesn't exist. 

 

Whereas a totally different (and great!) contrast is the opportunity to keep Flemeth's grimoire for yourself (and you even get a dialogue option with Flemeth) despite the fact that there's no in-game consequence for it. 

 

Obviously different people want different things. I'm not trying to convince anyone that silent PC isn't what they should like - just that the idea that silent PC somehow automatically means greater control over the inner state of your character is wrong. 

 

It only whens when (i) you are OK with the character being passive (ii) you are OK with the character having a particular kind of emotional range and (iii) you have a character concept that falls very close in line with the plot. 

 

Even though the paraphrase wasn't always something I perfectly predicted, Hawke just never, ever strayed from my character concept because a sarcastic, Mage Hawke (who half the time wasn't even that funny and just laughed at his own jokes) who didn't care about any of the conflict in Kirkwall (Mage-Templar included) pretty much fit my character concept to a T. 

[tmp7704]

It's funny that you say that you're "passive" with a voiced PC, because there's nothing more passive and submissive in a cinematic Bioware game than the Silent Protagonist. Every important moment, you taken a knee and hide your head in the bushes while some other character takes charge of the situation and dominates the conversation. All you do at the critical moments is defer. That's all DA:O, Jade Empire and KotOR is about: running errands for your betters and letting your party do the talking for you.

It's funny how you've apparently played entirely different game from me, because through whole DA:O my Wardens have been making decisions how things are going to happen. So just out of curiosity, who was it in your party that decided the fate of Redcliffe, Mage Tower, the Dalish, the dwarves, and all these others, taking charge and dominating the conversation at every important moment, while your passive, submissive protagonist was hiding their head in the bushes? Who stood up to Loghain at the Landsmeet? Who decided whether to perform the Dark Ritual? Etc, and so on.
 

The biggest annihilation of my character was DA:A's decision that you're a "Warde4Life!" if you wanted to keep playing, but DA:O had plenty of moments that basically went the same way.

You can't leave Kirkwall if you want to keep playing until the plot railroads you into But You Must, either. Objectively, if that's "annihilation of the character" then by the same logic Hawke was no less of "a soulless robot"... and yet you're not only cutting him/her way more slack here but actually singing praises, merely because his/her lines are voiced.

[In Exile]

It's funny how you've apparently played entirely different game from me, because through whole DA:O my Wardens have been making decisions how things are going to happen. So just out of curiosity, who was it in your party that decided the fate of Redcliffe, Mage Tower, the Dalish, the dwarves, and all these others, taking charge and dominating the conversation at every important moment, while your passive, submissive protagonist was hiding their head in the bushes? Who stood up to Loghain at the Landsmeet? Who decided whether to perform the Dark Ritual? Etc, and so on.

 

I don't usually get upset, but this post is just disrespectful. It's one thing to be snarky - I'm always snarky in my posts, and I don't object to that. But at least show me the minimum level of respect necessary to acknowledge what my point is: that because of cinematics in major moments the PC is not the centre of the scene, but rather the NPC. That's being unforgivably passive and submissive to me. 

 

As for your actual comments. There is one time in DA:O the Protagonist does something of his/her own volition: convincing the werewolves to kill the elves. Everything else is picking an option from a menu that your betters make available for you, only after you run every available errand for them (the one exception being when you can tell Teagan to stuff it initially at Redcliffe). 

 

1. Who decided the fate of Redcliffe? Teagan and/or Jowan. The blood mage ritual is an option that only exists because of Jowan. The option to go back to the Circle is brought up by an NPC - like Wynne. The option to kill Connor is brought up by Teagan. Yeah, you get to be the "Decider", but you don't drive the scene - you're the passive observer who has the options put out before you.

 

2. Who decides the fate of the mages? Knight Commander, technically. But I admit this is one scene in the game where you're actually active - because you're the one who makes the suggestion, not hin. 

 

3. Who decides the fate of the dwarves? Bhelen or Harrowmont. You're they're murdering licksplittle the entire time, and when you have the Crown - even if you're a dwarf, noble or otherwise - your options are to pick one of the two as leaders and that's it. And then they drive the scene again. 

 

4. The Dalish? Zathrian straight up gives you a task to execute and the dialogue even lampshades how you have to run errands for him to get his support. 

 

And that's not even to mention who (i) comes up with the idea to use the treaties (Alistair/Flemeth); (ii) who comes up with the Dark Ritual (Morrigan and Flemeth); and (iii) who are the characters who drive those scenes, i.e., Flemeth/Alistair in the former case and Morrigan in the latter. 

 

 

 You can't leave Kirkwall if you want to keep playing until the plot railroads you into But You Must, either. Objectively, if that's "annihilation of the character" then by the same logic Hawke was no less of "a soulless robot"... and yet you're not only cutting him/her way more slack here but actually singing praises, merely because his/her lines are voice ad.

 

But DA2 doesn't pretend like "leaving Kirkwall" is an option or an identity I can have. There's a difference between DA:O being about stopping the Blight and DA:A being - suddenly - about how your character's only aim in the DA setting is apparently to be a Warden and kill darkspawn. 

 

If a natural consequence of your character concept was "leave Kirkwall", then obviously it would be broken by not leaving it. But I've never objected to options being limited. I have constantly objected to these limited options being hidden. 

[AlanC9]

You pose a question which you should have gotten answered many times by now. It's been asked many times by a very small number of specific individuals here.

Asked, yes. But never answered. Thanks for actually trying.

 

The Warden is very much my own creature and creation. Certainly all the inner life. Feelings, motivations. I don't just "pick stuff from a list". I make the words my Warden's. It's a process. The words do not come out until they're my character's. Typically, a much more elaborate conversation is also perceived, though not explicit.
Do you, for instance, take for granted that the only interaction the protagonist have with others, is the Bioware-authored, written and voice-acted lines?
Do you, for instance, see that the question you formulate suggests that you accept this as the actual situation?

The PC certainly does have interactions with other NPCs offscreen; what we're seeing in the game is an edited-down version of the character's life, hitting only the important points. Whatever happens offscreen would be consistent with the onscreen stuff, and since that's true I'm not particularly concerned with it.

But the onscreen stuff happens exactly the way we see it. Those are the lines spoken at that moment and no others, whether we're playing DAO or ME1.

If I'm reading you right, we may have a basic interpretive difference here.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The different "types" of wheels are more or less invisible to the end user.

I'm not sure whether this is a good thing.  It might be.

 

In DA2, having this distinction be invisible was a detriment, I think, because the way the paraphrases related to the actual dialogue differed based on what kind of wheel it was.  The meaning of the tone icons also seemed to differ.  As such, I think it would have been handy to know what kind of wheel event I was experiencing.

 

However, if the relationship between the paraphrases and the spoken lines is always the same, and the tone icons can always be interpreted using the same mechanism, then I would rather not know what kind of wheel event I'm experiencing, because I'd rather not know what effect my selected lime might have on the other characters.

 

What I want, when I select dialogue, is to know what my character will say and how he will say it.  And nothing more.  If opacity serves that end, then I favour opacity.  If transparency serves that end, then I favour transparency.

[AlanC9]

As for your actual comments. There is one time in DA:O the Protagonist does something of his/her own volition: convincing the werewolves to kill the elves. Everything else is picking an option from a menu that your betters make available for you, only after you run every available errand for them (the one exception being when you can tell Teagan to stuff it initially at Redcliffe).

Note that ME does this too,. Especially egregious when Shepard initially has the wrong idea, like wanting to stay on Earth and fight.

It's a problem for DS Revan too, who IIRC has to be talked into things by Bastila, even if the player's been hacking innocents to bits right and left up to that point.

[tmp7704]

I don't usually get upset, but this post is just disrespectful. It's one thing to be snarky - I'm always snarky in my posts, and I don't object to that. But at least show me the minimum level of respect necessary to acknowledge what my point is: that because of cinematics in major moments the PC is not the centre of the scene, but rather the NPC.

I'm sorry, it's just when you choose to misrepresent the game to the point where you paint black as white, I have to wonder whether that's something you genuinely blinded yourself into believing, or it's just being disingenuous for the sake of "winning" the argument. And as neither option evokes much respect, that's why my reply was perhaps more curt than needed.
 

As for your actual comments. There is one time in DA:O the Protagonist does something of his/her own volition: convincing the werewolves to kill the elves. Everything else is picking an option from a menu that your betters make available for you, only after you run every available errand for them (the one exception being when you can tell Teagan to stuff it initially at Redcliffe).

You're trying really hard to downplay the actual decision making that happens on behalf of the protagonist, but let's leave it aside for now. Since you do admit that there is decision making that the protagonist does, can you explain why you chose to misrepresent their actions in the previous post as "All you do at the critical moments is defer"?

(edit: looks these forums have a quote limit? well, there goes some readability)


"1. Who decided the fate of Redcliffe? Teagan and/or Jowan. The blood mage ritual is an option that only exists because of Jowan. The option to go back to the Circle is brought up by an NPC - like Wynne. The option to kill Connor is brought up by Teagan. Yeah, you get to be the "Decider", but you don't drive the scene - you're the passive observer who has the options put out before you."

In one of my games the fate of Redcliffe was decided when I chose first to plain leave it to that fate, and then upon return that there was no time to run back to the ruined Mage Circle that I've just recently visited and came back from. In another, it was decided when my protagonist chose to annul the Circle. In neither case that decision was made by Teagan and/or Jowan -- and it makes zero sense to me to equal them supplying the options with making the actual decision. By this logic, if I suggest now that you can either stop or keep breathing, I'm deciding whether you'll choose one or the other?

 
"3. Who decides the fate of the dwarves? Bhelen or Harrowmont."

That's a dodge and you know it. Who chooses Bhelen or Harrowmont?

 
"4. The Dalish? Zathrian straight up gives you a task to execute and the dialogue even lampshades how you have to run errands for him to get his support."

It amazes me you can write that with, presumably, straight face, when merely couple paragraphs earlier you said yourself:

"There is one time in DA:O the Protagonist does something of his/her own volition: convincing the werewolves to kill the elves."

So let's try again. Who decides whether to convince the werewolves to kill the elves, or help the elves instead. Or maybe reconcile them both?


"And that's not even to mention who (i) comes up with the idea to use the treaties (Alistair/Flemeth); (ii) who comes up with the Dark Ritual (Morrigan and Flemeth); and (iii) who are the characters who drive those scenes, i.e., Flemeth/Alistair in the former case and Morrigan in the latter."

This is, again, equaling statement of option(s) with actual decision making, which is plain wrong. Here I'm going to suggest you can reply to my post, or ignore it. Does it mean I've reduced your agency and turned you into passive, submissive character with zero impact on how this conversation develops next?

[bEVEsthda]

The PC certainly does have interactions with other NPCs offscreen; what we're seeing in the game is an edited-down version of the character's life, hitting only the important points. Whatever happens offscreen would be consistent with the onscreen stuff, and since that's true I'm not particularly concerned with it.

But the onscreen stuff happens exactly the way we see it. Those are the lines spoken at that moment and no others, whether we're playing DAO or ME1.

If I'm reading you right, we may have a basic interpretive difference here.

 

There are always undercurrents. Who says that whatever a character speaks in any situation is always without guile or guard? And some things, though exactly represented, may mean very different things, depending upon the persons and their personal relations. So what happens offscreen, does affect the actual meaning of what is said. There may be consistency as you say, but it works both ways. Another thing is that things change.

 

On my other note. The funny thing, is that occasionally, very occasionally, I find myself agreeing 100% with something that In Exile posts, in some contexts.

Not here, of course. That has no meaning whatsoever for me, just jumbled words. But sometimes. And the stark contrast always amaze me, when it occasionally happens that I do agree.

[Il Divo]

If you'd like a more in-depth response on why toggles make me wince, I made a post about it on my blog.

 

To be clear, how do you perceive yourself as responsible for a player's dislike of a toggle option, assuming the wording of the option is clear? If a toggle says "add English subtitles to Mass Effect", ultimately it's not Bioware's fault if I suddenly find the subtitles ruining the cinematic experience.

 

While I understand some of the other issues brought up (the anti-gay toggle, play-testing, etc), this particular argument I'm having trouble getting behind. The player is the one who decides, based on wording, what toggle options they do or do not prefer. If it turns out to be not as enjoyable as they initially presumed, they have the option of turning the toggle back off. Is that any worse than scenarios without a toggle? In those cases as well, the player can still hold the developer responsible for what they feel is bad design.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I think there was some discussion about a toggle to turn the icons off (as that's pretty low-impact, insofar as toggles go),

That's a feature I specifically requested.  But I don't think it's particularly important, given I did find myself able to ignore the icons in DA2 (in fact, I found it made the paraphrases more useful).

[Sylvius the Mad]

You don't actually have any more access to the Warden's inner life than you do to Hawke's since someone else is writing all the dialogue for both.

Not true.  You have greater access to the Warden's inner life because you have perfect knowledge of what he will say.  Therefore, you can know before you select a dialogue option why he is saying that.

 

But in DA2, you cannot know that in advance, because you don't know what he's going to say.  As such, any inner life you create to justify the selection could well be contradicted by Hawke's behaviour moments later (or worse, hours later) with no warning given.

 

This is far less likely to happen in DAO because you always get to choose the options that avoid those contradictory events.  But in DA2, you can't tell which options will trigger contradictory events.  The DA2 paraphrases give some indication of what Hawke will say, but almost no guidance as to what Hawke will not say.  And I would argue that the latter is significantly more important when it comes to maintaining character coherence.

[Sylvius the Mad]

It's funny that you say that you're "passive" with a voiced PC, because there's nothing more passive and submissive in a cinematic Bioware game than the Silent Protagonist. Every important moment, you taken a knee and hide your head in the bushes while some other character takes charge of the situation and dominates the conversation. All you do at the critical moments is defer. That's all DA:O, Jade Empire and KotOR is about: running errands for your betters and letting your party do the talking for you.

Why are you assuming that action affects others?  Every decision you make is an action.  When you decide what you think of someone or something, that's an action.  When playing the Warden, I am an active participant because I get to make decisions for him.  But I don't get to make decisions for Hawke.

 

Hawke may well be active, but I am not when I am playing him.  And the Warden may well be more passive than Hawke, but I am more active when playing the Warden.  Playing the Warden involves me actually doing things, rather than just watching a story someone else wrote.

[fchopin]

It comes down to whether or not it's a good user experience.
 
It's something (along with some other variations thereof) that's been the subject of a number of meetings and various revisions. What we have now I -think- works, but I've been involved with it for almost two years and it's really hard for me to be objective about it.
 
Essentially, it's something we'd really like to put out there, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, and that's a call we'll make at some point before ship.

Please use betatesters that have different viewpoints in life and from different countries so you get different opinions from the reports.

[David Gaider]

To be clear, how do you perceive yourself as responsible for a player's dislike of a toggle option, assuming the wording of the option is clear? If a toggle says "add English subtitles to Mass Effect", ultimately it's not Bioware's fault if I suddenly find the subtitles ruining the cinematic experience.

 

Yes, it is.

 

The majority of players, after all, will not reach the conclusion "the subtitles are ruining my experience". They will say "the dialogue is dull and repetitive" or similar things. So we cannot take all feedback at face value—it's up to us to interpret it, and also consider what kind of game we want to make. We have to consider how toggle changes the play experience, as well as whether or not it's the type of experience we agree with and want to put out there. Because, as I said in the post, we do have to support it once it's in the options.

 

If we don't like what an option does to the game experience, and don't intend to support it, then we're not going to do it. It doesn't matter how many people on a forum are convinced it would be life-altering. The basic conceit in these dialogue threads seems to be that we're trying to make a dialogue interface that is all things to all types of roleplayers.

 

We're really not, and never have done.

[Bond]

Yes, it is.

 

The majority of players, after all, will not reach the conclusion "the subtitles are ruining my experience". They will say "the dialogue is dull and repetitive" or similar things. So we cannot take all feedback at face value—it's up to us to interpret it, and also consider what kind of game we want to make. We have to consider how toggle changes the play experience, as well as whether or not it's the type of experience we agree with and want to put out there. Because, as I said in the post, we do have to support it once it's in the options.

 

If we don't like what an option does to the game experience, and don't intend to support it, then we're not going to do it. It doesn't matter how many people on a forum are convinced it would be life-altering. The basic conceit in these dialogue threads seems to be that we're trying to make a dialogue interface that is all things to all types of roleplayers.

 

We're really not, and never have done.

   Would you explain to me how having a toggle for dialogue icons will ruin the experience ? I am just curious, cause this feature is basically two days work at most. I already decided that i am sticking piece of paper to the middle of wheel on the screen, so i am just curious how is it hard to implement in options (icons are default) having a toggle for blank space in the middle of the wheel.  I read your post in your blog, but i cant see having blank space or simple 2d icon will need stress testing and huge amount of effort. Would the game be mod-friendly these threads wont even exist on BSN. Skyrim had its terrible features, like inventory, but community can build around it when they have the opportunity to mod the game. 

  I wil use the opportunity to beg Patrick Weekes (if he is working on ME as well), to please let the team know, that these features are not appreciated by many people. I wont see we are the vast majority, because i cant prove it, but i can assure you can take my word for it. This dude (Patrick) is my fav bioware writer by a country mile, so i hope he works on ME as well.

And David Gaider, since you asked me couple of days ago, why i decided to die on this hill (speaking of icons)....for the very simple reason i can not take anything in DA 2 seriously, because i see it by using olive branch, smiley face, hammer etc. The entire game i feel like i am in bad skype conversation with my nephiew. I understand you are really trying this time around and DAI have much more time development, judging from dev info and probably we will see much better writing and so on, but if i see another angry fist, or these angel wings from fable i will probably just  keep thinking about Hawke and his funny voice.

I am more curious why the dev team consider icons useful and why they are useful ? i mean, after the first dialogue in the game, you understand how responses work, cause they do not change positions. I would barely accept icons if every line appears in random place during dialogues in the wheel, but with these fixed positions you can not possibly mistake something. Top is good, middle is neutral/funny, bottom is rude/direct/angry. On the left is investigate. We get it. 

[David Gaider]

   Would you explain to me how having a toggle for dialogue icons will ruin the experience ? I am just curious, cause this feature is basically two days work at most.

 

As I said the last time I responded to you, we have discussed a toggle for icons primarily because it's pretty low-impact.

 

It does, however, depend on whether we think it's an improvement, or at the very least doesn't actively detract from anything...meaning we must consider the information that the icons are meant to convey (not all of them are tone icons, after all) and whether we'd be in a situation where some icons must be kept while others are discarded. In that case, the work is more complicated.

 

We must also consider whether the work involved is worth doing. Are there a lot of people who want such an option? Is this an option they actually want, or is this something being requested because they really want something else we won't offer, and consider this a halfway measure even if it doesn't actually satisfy them? By "worth doing", after all, I mean "worth the programming time that could be spent on something more important". Even if your estimation of "two days work at most" is correct (which I rather doubt, but let's assume), we are never in a situation where programmers are sitting around looking for extra work to do, particularly when it comes to a game with a new engine. "Triage" is a term that we use to weigh such work, where we weigh bugs and tasks and decide where our effort is better spent because we simply cannot do it all. Many "nice to have" things drop off the list out of necessity because we must focus on the "must have" and "absolutely critical" stuff first.

 

So we could look at a toggle for icons, decide it would indeed be nice to have, and still not include it. Such things must justify their addition, not justify why they won't be added. That's not how development works.

[Farci Reprimer]

For crying out loud.

 

How long do you plan to continue this parody of a constructive discussion mr. LoyalFan?

 

You say your way about iconless dialoque in games is superior in every way. WE GET IT. Actually we got it ages ago in your first message.

 

And all you are doing right now is trying desperatly to get attention from devs and everyone else who still stand to read your ranting. I dont know about you, but I find it pretty sad and lame.

[AlanC9]

Not true.  You have greater access to the Warden's inner life because you have perfect knowledge of what he will say.  Therefore, you can know before you select a dialogue option why he is saying that.

 

 

Occasionally true, though not often. I'm averaging about three mismatches per Bio game, myself. I don't know what's typical for a Bio player in this regard, though I expect that folks participating in this thread will average lower than the playerbase as a whole since there's a selection bias in the topic.

 

But after I've selected the dialogue option, we have the same degree of knowledge. This is the line, and we have to model our character conception to match it. Unless for some reason one of us picks a line that's not the best one out of the options available, both systems leave us in exactly the same place after the line's been said. I don't see why it's particularly relevant whether we reach that place before or after pushing the button.

 

In all of Bio's voiced-protagonist games, I can only recall one case where I chose the wrong line and it was Bio's fault. (I misinterpreted how Renegade paraphrases work in ME1 a couple of times, but that's on me for not understanding how the system works.) There's an egregious paraphrase during Merrill's "A New Path " quest where it's not at all clear what Hawke's going to take responsibility for; the spoken line is about keeping Merrill under control, but I read "I'll take responsibility" as referring to the Keeper's death, which my Hawkes typically wouldn't feel responsible for.

 

Of course, it's conceivable that there are other such cases that I didn't find memorable, or are associated with options that I never consider in the first place.