97 réponses à ce sujet

[SwobyJ]

We'll have to disagree, that's all.

[cap and gown]

I do NOT want more choices. That's right, you heard me, I DON'T WANT MORE CHOICES!

 

Why? Because it is a resource sink that results in horrible, non-sensical scenes. "OK, we know what we want the Paragon choice to be here, now we have to dream up two more choices. Hmm, well, let's try this out. It doesn't make any sense, but heck, most people will never see it."

 

Just look at the scene with Joram Talid. You can kill Joram Talid right in front of two cops and the scene plays out almost exactly as if Shepard had taken the paragon interrupt and shot the lamp instead. And then Bailey says he's not arresting them because the kid has obviously never committed a crime, though he is not so sure about the father. WHAT ABOUT SHEPARD WHO JUST COMMITTED MURDER?!

 

There are any number of scenes like this where one of the options is ridiculous. Now add even more options and the story descends into absurdity.

 

I say make the game about alignments, not about whether the PC is polite or rude. Align with one faction or another. Side with the Quarians, or side with the Geth, whatever. But the difference between "help me please" and "help me you a-hole" should be ditched as a game play device.

[ZeroPhoenix94]

I would like to see a full dialogue wheel of things to say in future installments. Y'know, as long as they all say something different. If they do go down the auto-dialogue route again, I'm hoping they do it like Dragon Age 2. Just not as frequent as in Mass Effect 3.

[Nightwriter]

Some conversations were better than others. For example the speech when Shepard takes over the Normandy and they prepare to leave the Citadel was really well done. Or Khalisah's interview. Lots of roleplaying opportunities here. But there were also some bad scenes (the conversations with the council or most scenes with Kaidan).

I'm almost certain the Shepard who was able to handle Khalisah with such political savvy was not the same Shepard who spoke during Council meetings. Multiple personality disorder, I'm thinking.

[katamuro]

I would like to see a full dialogue wheel of things to say in future installments. Y'know, as long as they all say something different. If they do go down the auto-dialogue route again, I'm hoping they do it like Dragon Age 2. Just not as frequent as in Mass Effect 3.

 

I loved how in DA2 you could choose between the paragon, renegade and the funny thing to say. While the amount of options did seem a bit limited it was rather fun. 

[AlanC9]

The next ME game presumably won't be burdened by all the alternate dialogue paths ME3 had to support. It's easy to forget that ME3 has lots more total dialogue than ME2, which had more than ME1.

 

I would like to see a full dialogue wheel of things to say in future installments. Y'know, as long as they all say something different. If they do go down the auto-dialogue route again, I'm hoping they do it like Dragon Age 2. Just not as frequent as in Mass Effect 3.

 

What if they went the ME1 route of a full wheel where they all say the same thing?

[Bob from Accounting]

I would think it's rather obvious that the neutral option was removed due to resources, not because the developers intentionally wanted to take away the dialogue from the player.

 

I guess not.

[Nightwriter]

The neutral option was there before, so people don't assume resources would suddenly be a problem. An explanation must be provided for why ME3's resource situation was different enough that it could no longer afford what it had before.

[Bob from Accounting]

The explanation isn't incredibly obvious? That ME 3 has to take into account far more character variations and such than ME 1 and ME 2 did?

[cap and gown]

The neutral option was there before, so people don't assume resources would suddenly be a problem. An explanation must be provided for why ME3's resource situation was different enough that it could no longer afford what it had before.

 

The resources were spent on contextualizing mission dialogue much more than previously. (For instance, doing Tuchanka Bomb before or after the Coup. Or taking a squadmate on a mission and then having their post-mission dialogue change based on whether they were on the mission or not.) And in providing much more post-mission dialogue. In ME1 you got dialogue to advance once after each major story mission, so basically 3 or 4 times. In ME2 there was usually 1 or 2 dialogues pre-loyalty, and 1 or 2 post loyalty unless you were doing a romance. In ME3 you have dialogues after almost every mission except the N7 ones, and even those will sometimes come up in the case of Cortez.

[CronoDragoon]

The neutral option was there before, so people don't assume resources would suddenly be a problem. An explanation must be provided for why ME3's resource situation was different enough that it could no longer afford what it had before.

 

Well we know that ME3 has more dialogue lines than ME2 in total, so it had to go somewhere. Between the need to account for all the choices in the previous games taking up time (especially the Suicide Mission and the need for stand-ins if your playthrough had X or Y die) and the impressive amount of of eavesdropping conversations, we've certainly made a good bit of ground up.

 

Or, it could simply have been a stylistic choice. /shrug

[AlanC9]

Right, ME3 had, what, 45% more dialogue than ME2, for a game of approximately equal length. Arguing that the wordcount should have been spent differently is one thing, arguing that the resources weren't there is quite another.

[Fraevar]

The wordcount in ME3 was never really my issue, what bothered me was the overuse of autodialogue. I can appreciate the argument that it makes it easier to write a scene, but in a series built on the player's ability to select their character's personality it should only be used sparingly.

[Bob from Accounting]

The wordcount in ME3 was never really my issue, what bothered me was the overuse of autodialogue. I can appreciate the argument that it makes it easier to write a scene, but in a series built on the player's ability to select their character's personality it should only be used sparingly.

 

If you're concerned about autodialogue, then the wordcount is an issue. The two are directly related, after all.

[Astrogenesis]

ME2 had it about perfect.

ME1 had the 3 options, but generally the neutral option was the same as one of the others, but at least it made you feel like you had 3 choices. ME2 occasionally had 3 options, but there was generally only 2, neutral and one other. Depending on whether you were playing more paragon or renegade, the game would give you the option to continue that. ME3 however, only really gave you the option to be a nice guy or a jerk, and in the instance of love interests, sometimes you have to slap them don't to stop them being attracted to you. A neutral option would have been useful here so you could let them down gently.

 

As for auto-dialogue, when you've bee used to taking control every time Shepard opens their mouth, it was unwelcomingly jarring to say the least. 

[mybudgee]

Absolutely. ME3's dialogue was a slap-in-the-face... to put it lightly

[wright1978]

Word count is largely irrelevant. What matters is the percentage of times that the player gets no choice in dialogue and is instead forced to endure auto-dialogue. This percentage skyrockets in ME3 compared to the 1st two games and therefore the notion of a customised Shep gets punctured because retaining the imported character you have created is nigh on impossible when there's a doppelganger version of him/her jumping in and spouting characterising auto-dialogue every couple of minutes. That's before you even get down to the notion of removing the 3 rd choice in those moments when they deign it is ok to ask the player to have an input in Shep's dialogue.

[Dean_the_Young]

Except that each time you get a choice of dialogue, you double or more your word count for each branch of a scene. ME2 sometimes offered five different ways to progress from a single pause (P/N/R and two persuades), and eating word budget at five times the rate of a single line means that you have four lines of dialogue you can't use elsewhere- like reflecting carryover imports, or previous choices, or squadmate banter.

 

Word count is zero-sum. If you give Shepard more choices, you'll be taking dialogue from somewhere else: companions, reflecting consequences of choices, and so on. The more investment you want in one, the less you'll have for others.

[wright1978]

Word count has always been there, it's the design choice to go for a hyper verbose Shep rather than prioritising player characterisation with a mixture of dialogue choice, limited neutral auto-dialogue and tactiturness when Shep doesn't need to speak.

[Bob from Accounting]

Word count has always been there, it's the design choice to go for a hyper verbose Shep rather than prioritising player characterisation with a mixture of dialogue choice, limited neutral auto-dialogue and tactiturness when Shep doesn't need to speak.

No amount of 'design' can get around the simple fact that giving the player more dialogue options requires more work and autodialogue thus reduces the work required.

 

Yes, word count has always been there. And?

[MassivelyEffective0730]

No amount of 'design' can get around the simple fact that giving the player more dialogue options requires more work and autodialogue thus reduces the work required.

 

Yes, word count has always been there. And?

 

This methodology is incompatible with the espoused idea of providing players the ability to characterize their own Shepard, and its incompatible with the ideology of role-playing. You're basically saying that its ok to have auto-dialogue and limiting a players ability to make Shepard their own. 

 

To be frank, if BW wants to make an RPG with player input into their characters being maximized, then the easier path with auto-dialogue isn't going to hack it. The extra, harder work is necessary for the given proclamation that the game will indeed maximize player involvement in the characterization of their player. 

 

Not doing so makes BW look lazy and deceitful (since they specifically market their games as ones where player agency is given priority.)

[wright1978]

No amount of 'design' can get around the simple fact that giving the player more dialogue options requires more work and autodialogue thus reduces the work required.

 

Yes, word count has always been there. And?

 

The characterising autodialogue doesn't have to be there and it wasn't there in the previous installments by design. It wouldn't have required more work without it, It was a design choice to establish a awful verbose standardised auto shep. Just by stripping that down alone you would be restoring the sense of player characterisation as the percentage of dialogue controlled by the player would be much higher. Obviously cutting all that needless awful characterising auto-dialogue would also wordcount for elsewhere.

[SHEPARD 38]

agreed. Bring back the ME1 dialogue system.  

[Karlone123]

I didn't like the cinematic action route Mass Effect 3 took, it felt repetitive and forgetable, it is one of the many reasons why it is my least favourite game in the Shepard triology. I want to go back to the old roots of longer dialogue sequences like you had with crew members in ME1, I took the time to listen to my crew and cared about their stories and views on the galaxy and even had the option of expressing our own view, which sadly became lesser throughout the series.

 

Autodialogue was overused and abused in the way of not giving much control to the player, and shoehorning Shepard into a character that would contradict how Shepard acted before. I prefer autidialogue not cross the line of offering a opinion without any input from the player.