21 réponses à ce sujet

[Avarazac]

Sorry to bring up another game in BioWare's official forums. It's just that I keep seeing references to Dragon Age: Inquisition's graphics saying that they aren't that great. One article I read said DA:I is caught in that "awkward between-generations spot" when it comes to visuals, and that Witcher 3 is "certainly better-looking."

It kind of makes me feel dumb, because to me the games look almost the same graphics-wise, with DA:I even having the upper hand in some areas. Am I just a terrible judge of graphics? Or is 75% of the internet biased towards the Witcher franchise?

[Allan Schumacher]

Is it? Have we seen any gameplay vids with her that show her with BLACK CURLY hair? Because if we don't all we have is CDPs word and no devs word is 100% true.

 

Remember that the game is still in production too.

 

 

 

To the thread in general, less back and forth attacking of each franchise.

[Allan Schumacher]

And yes, The Witcher looks pretty stellar and I wouldn't be surprised if their game had a tech edge over ours.

 

 

But for my own biases, graphics have been in the "good enough" stage for a quite a while now and despite my bias, I still think DAI looks pretty darned good too.

[Allan Schumacher]

No. CDPR is showing great art design and graphics belong in any genre. It's even more important in an RPG where immersion is critical. FPS are all about gameplay, they honestly don't need fancy graphics. 

 

I disagree.  First, concepts of immersion still exist for any game, not just RPGs.  If there's a game genre that I consider should place higher importance on graphics, it's not RPGs.  It could be my legacy of playing RPGs that often didn't have the best graphics.

 

Immersion is a nebulous concept though.  Graphics has little overall impact on my immersion I find.  I can still go back and play an Infinity Engine game and find myself immersed in the game even today.

 

That's not to say I don't enjoy nice graphics.  It's just less of a concern for me compared to a lot of other aspects.  Different strokes for different folks I find.

[Allan Schumacher]

I would argue RPGs rely more on setting, writing and atmosphere than any other genre. A shooter doesn't emphasize my role like an RPG does. They benefit from immersion, they don't thrive on it. Immersion is a vague term, but I don't know a better one. When a game nails the visuals, art design, voice acting, weather effects, sound design etc. That's sensory immersion.

 

A shooter puts me in the role of that soldier/whatever.

I consider it important for almost any game, but I find it most important if I'm in a first person perspective.  If you're someone that greatly values character customization (I'm not) for example, then things like hairstyles (and having them look good) are more important.

 

I also think RPGs are more complex than shooters, and as such it's easier for shooters to place that level of focus on graphics because it comes with less opportunity costs.

 

 

It may just be we have different things we consider vital to an RPG experience.  The Witcher 3 could look identical to The Witcher 2 and it wouldn't really affect my interest level in the game.  The Witcher 2 already looks pretty good IMO.

 

 

I mean, DAO was hardly a good looking game when it came out, but I preferred it over many other games I played at that time.

[Allan Schumacher]

This was Redcliffe castle in DAO

 

 

This is Redcliffe castle in DAI

 

 

I find it hard to believe they would level and rebuild an entire castle from the ground up, even in 10 years.

 

 

Part of the challenge is overcoming the immense shortcomings of the DAO engine.  I don't mind an updated look at the Redcliffe castle (I'm not someone that notices the throne room being the same in The Witcher either) or other areas we've visited, because frankly the DAO engine is antiquated and levels had to be created much more in mind of "The level size can't be too big or else."
 

 

Technology compromises artistic vision all the time.  Dragon Age Origins had one character rig.  For a game franchise that focuses on characters (from a game studio that focuses on characters...) this places artificial constraints on what can be done.  Things have to end up looking pretty samey, which is pretty absurd for the focus on characters.  I mean, we could cut Sten out of DAO altogether since we couldn't do horns, but I think that DAO would be weaker without Sten.

 

There's other consistency issues that don't bother me as much either, and the Witcher has those too (some characterizations and so forth).

 

 

Now, having said that... I'm not you.  So if they are problems for you then that's the case that it is.  I am more amenable to critiques about general aesthetic (i.e. if you're not happy with the elves, or the qunari, or what have you) concerns.  But at the same time, some places in DAO and DA2 don't even respect Euclidean space very well (or at all).  So fundamentally some areas that get revisited will need to be changed because in DAO the interiors of them are actually larger than the exteriors.

[Allan Schumacher]

Aren't you suppose to say that though?

 

 

I know you're being cheeky, but some probably wonder.  I don't feel as though I have to say that my game is better than others.  Fortunately I was able to play DAO "as a fan" since I started so late in the project, though, so I'll never be able to make a fair comparison again for a game that I work on (which is unfortunate).

[Allan Schumacher]

booting up my old games like Ultima 7 Fallout 1 & 2, and Baldurs Gate

 

Evidently we are kindred spirits (I'm hoping Planescape: Torment rounds out the list? <.<)  hehehe

[Allan Schumacher]

Are Dragon Age fans not guilty of bias? One only need look at Deflagratio's most recent posts to see that isn't true, if anything Dragon Age fans are far quicker to bash other series for things that they would give the Dragon Age series a free pass on.

 

It's a matter of perspective.  People who say the things you agree with are more inclined to say things you consider well founded, logical, appropriate, and reasonable.  Those that say things you disagree with are more likely to be wrong, ill tempered, inconsiderate, and hostile.

 

My experience outside of the BioWare forum is seeing more Witcher fans trash BioWare than the other way around.  But I can't say if that's a majority perspective or anything like that.  Just that it's my experience.  I'll acknowledge that my bias is that I'm more inclined to see those posts, get frustrated, and take note of them (even if I don't respond) as another tick in the box of Witcher fans trashing on BioWare.

 

That said, if you're coming onto a BioWare message board, I wouldn't be too surprised to meet some resistance.  I'd consider it poor taste if I were to head over to CDPR's forums to talk about how much I dislike the game and how they are biased for things they otherwise give a free pass on in The Witcher games.

 

 

Which is why I said it reminds me a lot of Nintendo and Sega from when I was a kid.  As much time was spent trashing the other as building up your own, when the reality is that they both had games and both provided entertainment and, as far as I was concerned, up to the task of delivering that with a variety of entertainment.

 

Not everyone is going to like the SNES.  Not everyone is going to like the Genesis.  But I have a feeling a good number of people would have actually liked what both had to offer if they weren't entrenched in the ideological war.  As such, they give free passes to franchise they prefer, and are harder on the one they don't like as much.  The issue comes when people evangelize about it, and the dislike for the product is associated with the fanbase that represents it.

[Allan Schumacher]

Everyone or at least most have a favorite sure, however bias seems to indicate an unfair favoring or prejudice to one side over the other.

 

I would bet large sums of money that if the DAI footage shown said The Witcher III on it, there'd be groups of people that would like it when they scoff at it because it has BioWare's name on it.

 

I would bet the same large sums of money that if The Witcher footage was shown and it said Dragon Age on it, there'd be gruops of people that would like it when they scoff at it because it has CD Projekt's name on it.

[Allan Schumacher]

Some?  I'd say most if not all.  (A really great example was Hawke's mansion.)

 

I just mentioned DAO.  DA2 would be more egregious.  Things like houses are the biggest culprits.  But I suspect Castle Redcliffe is a problem as well.

 

 

I understand that DAO was antiquated and some areas need to change for the better. But do those areas need to be redesigned so drastically to the point where it looks completely unrecognisable? Did Redcliffe castle really need to lose it's rounded towers for blocky ones?

 

I'm not an artist, but I wouldn't be surprised if it has a lot to do with the framing of the shot.  Do we ever see Castle Redcliffe's exterior in any meaningful way than the courtyard?  As such, it's circular and it may be seen as a more appealing aesthetic to make it rounder.  Now that it's more visible from the exterior, perhaps now the circular aesthetic makes less of an issue.  Or it's seen from the vantage point where suddenly "ugh.... these circle towers actually kind of look like crap."

[Allan Schumacher]

Not sure I can recall seeing anyone unfairly bashing Inquisition's footage but perhaps I am just not looking hard enough, so far Inquisition is looking good and I would like to think that no matter whether you are a fan of Dragon Age or the Witcher you would still be able to appreciate it.

 

Oh yes, I've seen people bash Inquisitions footage.  Lots and lots of it.  When it's something you work on, it's the type of stuff that can really stick out.  On the Lead them or fall trailer page there's no shortage of scathing remarks.  I actually interacted with one of them for a bit too (Ctrl-F for Peter White).

 

 

I am getting better at being more receptive (and remembering) the feedback as a whole.  I've grown a bit, and learned to better understand what people mean when they may say some things.  I used to get really upset at the term "lazy" for instance, but it bothers me a bit less now.

[Allan Schumacher]

As a BW employee you are spot on with this.  When I managed to contact two of CDPR's top dogs to get permission to port their resources over for a DAO mod they were very accommodating and IMO encouraged to see that people wanted to see their product in other games.  Hostility (foolishness really) comes from the "fans".  There is no X staff vs. Y staff war/battle/fight going on no matter how many times I see someone post something along those lines.

 

I don't have any issues with CDPR.  They're a bunch of game devs trying to make something that they think will be awesome.

 

I met one on the Obsidian boards, and briefly met one here (Jan, who has since moved on to other things).  Both strike me as reasonable and respectful people.

[Allan Schumacher]

What do they mean when they say lazy, then? I'll admit I lobbed that criticism a few times.

 

I used to take it literally: we didn't put something in because we simply couldn't be bothered to do it.  We'd rather sit back with our feet up doing nothing.

 

It may shift somewhat depending on the context, but it's really just a qualitative statement about the thing that they didn't like.  It came across as low enough quality that it feels unsatisfactory to them.  There may be some implicit assumption as to their perception of the difficulty of a task, but in reality they don't actually know that.  But I can't fault them necessarily for it.  I could split hairs over the semantics that they don't understand the challenges, or simply recognize that it's a criticism that says "This comes across as unfinished or unpolished, and is negatively affecting my experience."

 

 

Of course I'd prefer them to actually say that, since I'm human and get defensive.  But hey, they're probably emotional too so it behooves me to examine a critique and try to look past the method of delivery of a critique (the tone) and try to understand what the critique actually is referencing.

[Allan Schumacher]

As far as I'm aware the game was always intended to be available on the next gen platforms.  But that doesn't mean that it always was (there was preliminary work that started before I was on the project).

[Allan Schumacher]

Ehhh. I don't know what to make of this comment. CDPR has some of the best trailers around, and the devs have mentioned Bioware as an inspiration for TW2. ME2 for example, it's cinematic quality and the art direction. 

 

I'm saying that some people have an affiliation to the developer name, on both sides.  Like Nintendo vs Sega, or Nike vs Reebok.

 

 

Like sports fans that think a call for their team is a good call no matter how awful it was.  Or a call against their team is a bad call no matter how fair it was.

 

Heck, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't more tolerant/understanding to game studios that tended to produce games I liked, compared to game studios that made games I actively disliked.

[Allan Schumacher]

That's what I thought. 

 

But since I believe you only got your hands on the new dev kits last year, I was wondering if the project was originally intended to be next-gen as well.

 

There was a ton of NDAs regarding dev kits.  I wouldn't take public knowledge of when you learned a studio had them for very much weight.

 

 

Hey Allan I have to ask now that you're here: Given enough time do you think Bioware could've made an engine better suited for RPGs than Frostbite? Do you think it could've produced the same amount of fidelity? And would you have preferred an in-house engine to Frostbite?

 

In terms of fidelity, probably not.  I mean, there's always advantages to knowing "we're going to build this system knowing it precisely needs to handle exactly what we want it to do."  But I think that fails to appropriate take into account that that's no guarantee that preplanned solutions may not have been viable come implementation anyways, at which point you haven't necessarily gained much.

 

The challenges, from my perspective anyways, are less about the engine itself and more with the tools and some of the assumptions that went into making it.  If those assumptions were RPG assumptions, things may have been different.  But to be honest I'm mostly speculating.  Engine development is complex, because involved with it is also the development tools and pipelines to deploy said content.  Graphics updates can come in reasonably smoothly, but a tool update has higher risk for negatively affecting workflows.

 

Because of the demands of Battlefield 3/4, some of the tools (particularly cinematic conversation stuff) didn't exist.  It might have been better if we could lay the foundation with the knowledge of what we'd need it for.  But I've never really worked on an engine specifically.  I also think that there are advantages of having other teams able to help us out and technology sharing, but that's a bit beyond the scope of the question.

 

A verbose "It probably would in some ways but I don't know for sure."

[Allan Schumacher]

Tiny question: Would you say that the engine has been severely modified for DAI? To keep on topic I mean something similar to how the NWN engine was modded for Witcher 1

 

It "depends."  We've modified how cameras worked, and we've added in some features and engine extensions for game systems we use.  But my understanding is that we could still swap out some modules and start working on an FPS game pretty easily if we were so inclined.  We'd just also have the benefit of bringing in the conversation system and maybe other things as well if we would like.

 

The tools is a definitely.  A lot of what we do FrostEd simply didn't support in an efficient manner.  DICE hand set up a lot of scenes and spoken lines in their games but we have too much of that in our games so we need to find ways to create and deploy that content faster.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm not keen on either game getting crapped on in this thread.

[Allan Schumacher]

Be respectful to fans of each franchise.

[Allan Schumacher]

Bwahahaha, i was going to say "the picture looks like it has all those things" until I realized you made modifications

[Allan Schumacher]

I think the thread has mostly expended the point of its original topic now.  The "Why don't you play <game X>" always comes up and I suspect the answers are often ones that have already been shared.

 

Locking.