117 réponses à ce sujet

[Gtdef]

You don't remember Cicero? Sweet poor Cicero? You're th' lisna!

[Elhanan]

Most NPCs completely lack any depth. Even the story-relevant ones at best say a dozen lines in the entire game. They are completely forgettable. I played Skyrim for about 200 hours and the only named NPCs whose name I still remember are:Ulfric stormcloak, Alduin, Aela, Serana, Lydia and the daedric princes. With a few expections the quests are repetetive and 80% of the time follow the formula of. Go to a ruin/cave/old grave, kill some bandits/Vampires(which are basically just bandits with a few extra abilities)/bears/frostbite spiders/undead and bring me <insert random quest item>.
There are some quests that are rather intruiging story-wise but those are few and drown in the sea of generic fetch quests with shallow story.

Most NPC's are minor, yet have full VO and dialogue; something new to me. And Skyrim is not driven by story, but is open for exploration and investigation.

Radiant quests are random and many are repetitive. That said, these are for those seeking coin and experience; easily skipped if one wishes. But there are so many quests and locations that it is doubtful those were encountered in 200 hrs, as I still am finding locations I have missed.

As for interesting quests and locations, that will be based on the opinion of the Player. There are some notable stories I have seen and experienced (eg; Frostflow Lighthouse), but may not appeal to others. For me, Skyrim easily won the GOTY.

[LEXX]

Skyrim flourishes because of mods.  The environment, buildings and landscape are very high fantasy and epic like that I really like.  Too bad gameplay is pretty boring.  For me DAI's environment and world lack that epicness.  It's like I'm running through a Canadian wilderness with medieval like castles.  If DAI can't be modded.  It would be a very BIG shame.

[Sylvius the Mad]

People say that Skyrim's gameplay is boring, and by gameplay they probably mean combat, but I actually prefer Skyrim's combat to DA2's - despite the fact that I don't like action combat.

But DA2's was so repetitive and tedious that the simplistic absurdity of Skyrim's is somehow better.

But DAO's combat blows both of them away.

[Spectre Impersonator]

There are giants with beards and clubs.

[Elhanan]

People say that Skyrim's gameplay is boring, and by gameplay they probably mean combat, but I actually prefer Skyrim's combat to DA2's - despite the fact that I don't like action combat.

But DA2's was so repetitive and tedious that the simplistic absurdity of Skyrim's is somehow better.

But DAO's combat blows both of them away.

I liked DAO combat, but was somewhat disappointed with the speed of it. What I would like is the speed of the 2H Sunder feats as standard attacks, believable animations, plus the reactive mechanics of DA2. From what I have seen of DAI, it is close, but still too fast on the animations.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I liked DAO combat, but was somewhat disappointed with the speed of it. What I would like is the speed of the 2H Sunder feats as standard attacks, believable animations, plus the reactive mechanics of DA2. From what I have seen of DAI, it is close, but still too fast on the animations.

What do you mean by "reactive mechanics"?

[Elhanan]

What do you mean by "reactive mechanics"?

Rather than a delay and wait to see an ability work, the ability works when activated; more responsive and visceral. This ties to believable animations; nothing so fast than is possible, but also should not be so slow that the bear, spider, etc speeds by before than animation occurs.

[sangy]

There are similarities, but the games are very different.  Both are awesome (from what I've seen in the videos for DA:I thus far).  I'm glad they won't be too much alike.  I think the open world concept is one thing they might have brought onto DA:I.  The crafting too.  Though, being able to mix up items to get a truly unique piece of weaponry or armor is something I never thought possible in a DA game.  I'm very excited about that.  The mounts as well, right?  Don't know if I'll use one often.  Especially if my companions don't use them.  Hmmm...I can't think of anything else.

[dekarserverbot]

The quote is from a very old article back in 2011 when Skyrim had just reached 10 million sales.

http://www.wired.com...2/dragon-age-3/

 

Obviously a lot has changed in 3 years, including the retirement of Muzyka from BW who quoted the above, but did any elements of Skyrim reach DA:I?

 

Aside from both being labelled RPGs in a dark fantasy setting, I don't see much influence. Certanly not when considering combat mechanics, modding tools, levelling up, NPC development, storylines, continuity and dialogue.

 

Despite being plagued by horrible gameplay elements like bad AI (move out of the doorway damnit!), and really dire flirtation lines ("Is that an Amulet of Mara?"), Skyrim went on to sell more than 20 million copies.

 

The only thing I can see is the inclusion of mounts and a more open world, but these weren't things that Skyrim invented, they just implemented the concept very well.

 

you forgot the worst physics ever...

[Elhanan]

you forgot the worst physics ever...

Based on the various RPG's I have experienced, I disagree; still love watching foes get bounced by Shouts, spells, and weapons.

[nightscrawl]

Skyrim dungeons are built out of the same rooms and pieces just rearranged into different orders each time. They're "unique" in that the specific order of rooms might not have been used elsewhere.

 

I actually didn't mind this type of construction. You can see the same thing with the maps in Diablo III. The same thing existed in Neverwinter Nights with all of the buildings and dungeons. As a user of the NWN Aurora Toolset I can tell you that that is exactly how things were constructed. That very fact meant that while everything was composed of the same parts you could have areas that were designed differently and had a different flow. This was completely absent in DA2 with its reuse of coastal and mountain dungeon layouts that never changed, aside from one door being closed/opened from Act to Act. Granted, it made a modicum of sense if you consider that bandits or whathaveyou might move into a cave in the intervening three years, but that didn't reduce the tedium created by it.

 

A large part of DA2's problem, especially from a person who has played it over a dozen times, is Kirkwall (and environs) itself. I am so sick to death of that place and I feel claustrophobic and trapped there. I don't have this same feeling with DAO however. The two DA2 DLC were truly refreshing, and I try to space them out when I play DA2 so I get a break from Kirkwall.

[Dutchess]

My, I guess hating on Skyrim's hundreds of handcrafted dungeons on the forum of the company that managed to put two caves in their game and never even cut the map when passages were blocked by a nice square block of concrete never gets old. I have to wonder to what higher standard Skyrim is being compared here, because I'm sure I would love to play that game. It obviously isn't DA2, while the two games came out in the same year. DAO can't be it either, because while they did have more than two caves, they didn't have that many, all were tied to main quests (dungeons for Skyrim main/faction quests tend to be unique too, like the Twilight Sepulcher), and they also showed the exact same architecture as a basis. 

 

Did Skyrim reuse architectural components for its dungeons? Of course they did. More unique and less recycled stuff is always better, but I do realize a game has to be released at some point and I think they did a terrific job with what they had. Again, despite reusing assets, no two dungeons were identical. They were still handcrafted and highly likely to have their own story. I also find it perfectly believable that the original architects would not bother to make every part of their burial mount unique and special. The Nordic ruins were meant to provide a place where their dead could be put to rest (and resurrected by necromancers ). A lot of them are huge, so it would have required a lot of time, effort and gold to build them. Few families would have the resources to make the burials even shinier and prettier than the rest. One Nordic ruin and you've seen them all? Pffft. One pyramid and you've seen them all. One ancient Roman amphitheater and you've seen them all! One skyscraper and you've seen them all. Look, here's the same elevator section again! I wouldn't hold my breath for DAI not to recycle parts of their environments, and they're right to do that. As long as the result is more than two caves, that is. And hopefully even a regular dungeon can sometimes surprise you with a unique sight:

 

Shriekwind Bastion.

 

While the basic premise of Skyrim's combat is hardly complicated, the freedom you have in building your character is still incredible and a lot of fun. You're not restricted to the three classical classes of DA. Dual wielding warrior? No problem. Mage with a mace? Knock yourself out. Want to sneak past everything and kill no-one? Might depend a little on the dungeon but is often possible. Pickpocket the weapon of your opponent and laugh while he swings his fists at you? You can certainly try. I just did with a Master Vampire. Unfortunately he caught me.

If you tend to get stuck in the classical archetypes, I suggest having a look at builds others have come up with: http://theskyrimblog...r-build-archive

Lots of fun suggestions can be found.

 

Then the last point: Skyrim's (or should I say Bethesda's) writing. I did not find it bad at all. It's not only present in lots of great stories that can be read in books or the rich lore and history of the world, but also in the quests you can do. A random cave or dungeon is pretty likely to have a history or a story going on, which you can find out by overhearing conversations and reading journals, and it felt like a lot more thought had been put into those random little stories than "find X corpse galls and bring back to the Chanter at the board" and "looks like you found Derp's lost trousers. He'll surely be happy to get those back". 

There's no denying that a main story in DA (okay, I'm going with just DAO here, no such thing as a main story in DA2) receives more attention in the game and is accompanied by more dialogue and also choices. However, I'd say this is simply where Skyrim and DAO differ due to other priorities and a different focus. It does NOT diminish the writing quality present in Skyrim. NPCs with a more prominent role in the world of Skryim do have their own personalities and backstories. You just don't get to ask them lots of questions about their childhood and that one true love they so tragically lost because, again, different focus and different priorities in the game. What you prefer is then up to personal preference. I enjoy companions, so in that aspect I do prefer DA. That doesn't mean Elisif, Cicero, Ulfric, Irileth, Delvin, Vex, Brynjolf, Mercer, Astrid, Aela, Maven, jarl Sidgeir, jarl Igmund, J'zargo, etc. etc. do not have a personality. 

Know what all Skyrim NPCs also have? A daily rhythm. They sell wares during the day, go to the mine, work the land. They eat and drink, go to the inn in the evening for a chat. And then they go home and go to sleep. This can also provide information on what kind of life they lead. For instance, one of the small Thieves Guild jobs ordered me to pickpocket Madesi's, the Argonian who sells jewelry in the Riften market, sapphire necklace. My odds were too low during the day when he was behind his stall, so I had to wait till he was asleep. When I found him at night it turned out he slept in a sewer-like tunnel with other homeless. I felt so guilty about stealing from him afterwards that I'm still trying to find that second flawless sapphire he needs to complete his quest.

[Elhanan]

Some good points.

However, DA2 does have a Main story: Varric explaining what caused the Civil War. Skyrim and the DA series both have written lore that add details to the games. All have optional Fetch quests.

I enjoy all these games; no need to hate on any of them. And it is my hope that DAI will contain and be the best of all them.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Rather than a delay and wait to see an ability work, the ability works when activated; more responsive and visceral. This ties to believable animations; nothing so fast than is possible, but also should not be so slow that the bear, spider, etc speeds by before than animation occurs.

Okay, I understand.

And I hated it. It made the characters much less responsive to player input, because they always had to finish their ongoing animations before they could start doing the thing you wanted them to do.

In DAO, those animations were interruptable.

It's a bit like the difference between being a dancer and being a drummer. In overly simplistic terms, a dancer moves with the beat, but a drummer moves before the beat.

[Elhanan]

Overall, my friends and I prefer the reactive mechanics. However, if the game was Turn Based like XCOM, I would not mind delayed animations at all, though my friends might disagree.

[wicked cool]

Good point on npcs. Other than main party 90% of da/da2 have 1 line of dialogue/dont move/cant be attacked . Major cities have 1-2 vendors and 1 dwarven vendor had 2 of the most useful items in game (dao)

You had to power game and bring a strong army to succeed. Or maybe it was me but i wa always swapping out for best gear for me and companions

Dungeons- we have yet to see the fade in da3 but clearly fans did not like the gameplay. Now making the deal with demon was rewarding but nobody cared about you being a bloodmage.

Puzzles and locks- had to have skill 3 to open locked chests and only if rogue. I can think of a handful of puzzles with the invisible bridge being the most challenging.

Enemies-no respawning and no random.

Buts not why i loved it at tge time

I loved party banter, flirty morrigan, demons and darkspawn but dao has its time in the sun. Visuals are 2 outdated and combat 2 clunky. Da2 loved snarky hawke, varric, and dlc but hate the act system/enemy para troopers/ same boring dungeons/ boring townsfolk/ incomplete ending

[Ianamus]

I'd say that Skyrims storytelling was far superior to Dragon Age 2's. While the plot wasn't as good the ambient storytelling in Skyrim was fantastic. Every cave had a set of journals from lost travelers, every burnt down house in the middle of the wilderness had a story behind it. We see the commoners being attacked by dragons and prisoners being marched around by the Thalmor. We walk into the reach and find ourselves swarmed by the forsworn and fighting for our lives just to get to Markarth, and we understand how the local commoners feel.

 

It's the complete opposite of Dragon age 2, which told us that the mages were being so poorly treated but never showed us. Told us that tensions were high between the mages and templars but never showed us. Told us that Kirkwall was a large, bustling city that was worth saving but showed us a low-poly, ugly, stagnant place that changed in no way over six years.

 

I actually found it impossible to sympathise with the mages, the whole emotional crux of the majority of the game, because despite being beaten over the head with how horrible their lives were never once did we actually see it.

 

Thats where Skyrim did so much better than Dragon Age 2. You feel immersed in the world because you learn by experiencing and seeing, not by having people explain everything to you with no visuals or experiences to actually back it up.

 

If Inquisition can bring some of that in, show us what's happening in the world rather than just telling us, letting us experience what the people are and making us care then it will be a much better game for it.

[Elhanan]

I'd say that Skyrims storytelling was far superior to Dragon Age 2's. While the plot wasn't as good the ambient storytelling in Skyrim was fantastic. Every cave had a set of journals from lost travelers, every burnt down house in the middle of the wilderness had a story behind it. We see the commoners being attacked by dragons and prisoners being marched around by the Thalmor. We walk into the reach and find ourselves swarmed by the forsworn and fighting for our lives just to get to Markarth, and we understand how the local commoners feel.
 
It's the complete opposite of Dragon age 2, which told us that the mages were being so poorly treated but never showed us. Told us that tensions were high between the mages and templars but never showed us. Told us that Kirkwall was a large, bustling city that was worth saving but showed us a low-poly, ugly, stagnant place that changed in no way over six years.
 
I actually found it impossible to sympathise with the mages, the whole emotional crux of the majority of the game, because despite being beaten over the head with how horrible their lives were never once did we actually see it.
 
Thats where Skyrim did so much better than Dragon Age 2. You feel immersed in the world because you learn by experiencing and seeing, not by having people explain everything to you with no visuals or experiences to actually back it up.
 
If Inquisition can bring some of that in, show us what's happening in the world rather than just telling us, letting us experience what the people are and making us care then it will be a much better game for it.

Perhaps the Codex entries were skipped, or the increased number of Tranquils, Blood Mages, and Abominations were missed while in combat. Or that the Circle was housed in a prison, which ongoing in game descriptions mentioned the abuse by their guardians. One did not have to see the abuse to empathize with it.

[hexaligned]

Skyrim was insanely successful, this is a business we are talking about here, they wouldn't hold the jobs they do if they were so arrogant and irresponsible as not to take notice of that success and ask themselves why.  How that translates into gameplay remains to be seen, but Bio has some really smart and creative people on their team(s), I doubt we will end up with anything resembling a "Skyrim Clone", although there will be (and already are)  parallels that can be made.

[Heimdall]

The highest success of Skyrim's storytelling was ambient. NPCs had lives and daily routines. Evidence of the civil war could be encountered randomly during travel. Dragon encounters (Though they became far too easy and numerous) made Alduin's threat more present. The myriad ruins and caves, most with their own unique story and questline, gave the world a sense of depth and history. It was more than a backdrop for the main plot. Sadly the main plot, while "fine", remained rather anemic and basic.

I think Bioware has shown, in what we've seen of the game, that it is the ambient quality they look to improve in Inquisition. They want a world that lives up to the one we read about in the codex and hear about from NPCs. DA:O had this problem. We'd hear all about the Civil War and the ravages of the Blight from other characters, but neither really confronts us directly as we make our merry way across Ferelden, give or take the odd Darkspawn random encounter. We don't even see many (any?) refugees after Lothering. DA2 may have had painfully static NPCs and environments, but I actually think it's sidequests did a better job of elaborating on the central issues. We're told about templars abusing Mages and we do witness it occasionally, and I think it's often overlooked that the Act 3 street gangs consisted of A: Blood Mages and a small army of thralls, B: A desire demon cult, and C: Slavers led by a Tevinter mage. So it was quite clear that Meredith wasn't just imagining more maleficar and apostates in Kirkwall at the time. Ultimately though, Kirkwall still lacked a sense of history and depth, perhaps because everything appeared so sterile and assets were recycled so much (and I'm not just talking about the cave).

But Bioware's main storyline has usually been strong enough to pull things together. I don't think they've lost sight of that, even if DA2 barely had a central plot. The lack of ultimate driving conflict was perhaps why the other issues stood out so much. That doesn't appear to be a problem in Inquisition.

[Ianamus]

Perhaps the Codex entries were skipped, or the increased number of Tranquils, Blood Mages, and Abominations were missed while in combat. Or that the Circle was housed in a prison, which ongoing in game descriptions mentioned the abuse by their guardians. One did not have to see the abuse to empathize with it.

 

You're doing nothing but proving my point. Codex entries, mentions of abuse, being told that the circle used to be a prison... none of those actually showed us what made the Kirwall circle so awful. 

 

The issues in the circle felt as distant to the protagonist as a disaster on the other side of the world.

[Elhanan]

You're doing nothing but proving my point. Codex entries, mentions of abuse, being told that the circle used to be a prison... none of those actually showed us what made the Kirwall circle so awful. 
 
The issues in the circle felt as distant to the protagonist as a disaster on the other side of the world.

"Every cave had a set of journals....

In DA2, one could collect Codex entries, and if read, could explain a lot of the backstory in the game. Most recently, I have been recommending the 'Enigma of Kirkwall' entries given over the course of the story; four per Act for a total of twelve. Whether book or virtual journal, the lore is there.

Also, various Mages could be interviewed through dialogue to hear of their accounts of the prison. It is left to each Player to discover such witnesses; not simply presented in more cut-scenes, in which there are also like representatives.

[Cyonan]

My, I guess hating on Skyrim's hundreds of handcrafted dungeons on the forum of the company that managed to put two caves in their game and never even cut the map when passages were blocked by a nice square block of concrete never gets old. I have to wonder to what higher standard Skyrim is being compared here, because I'm sure I would love to play that game. It obviously isn't DA2, while the two games came out in the same year. DAO can't be it either, because while they did have more than two caves, they didn't have that many, all were tied to main quests (dungeons for Skyrim main/faction quests tend to be unique too, like the Twilight Sepulcher), and they also showed the exact same architecture as a basis. 

 

Did Skyrim reuse architectural components for its dungeons? Of course they did. More unique and less recycled stuff is always better, but I do realize a game has to be released at some point and I think they did a terrific job with what they had. Again, despite reusing assets, no two dungeons were identical. They were still handcrafted and highly likely to have their own story. I also find it perfectly believable that the original architects would not bother to make every part of their burial mount unique and special. The Nordic ruins were meant to provide a place where their dead could be put to rest (and resurrected by necromancers ). A lot of them are huge, so it would have required a lot of time, effort and gold to build them. Few families would have the resources to make the burials even shinier and prettier than the rest. One Nordic ruin and you've seen them all? Pffft. One pyramid and you've seen them all. One ancient Roman amphitheater and you've seen them all! One skyscraper and you've seen them all. Look, here's the same elevator section again! I wouldn't hold my breath for DAI not to recycle parts of their environments, and they're right to do that. As long as the result is more than two caves, that is. And hopefully even a regular dungeon can sometimes surprise you with a unique sight:

 

Just because Dragon Age 2 was really bad for reuse of environments doesn't suddenly mean that I'm not allowed to criticize Skyrim. Skyrim is a great game that did a lot of things right but it's one that also did a number of things poorly in my opinion.

 

One of those things is that I think Skyrim didn't have enough variety in their dungeons. Reusing stuff is to be expected and while they do throw the odd unique thing at you the vast majority of the dungeons were the same small handful of tilesets which got boring to me.

 

Real life arguments are irrelevant. People don't make skyscrapers so that we can go have fun exploring them.

 

 

I actually didn't mind this type of construction. You can see the same thing with the maps in Diablo III. The same thing existed in Neverwinter Nights with all of the buildings and dungeons. As a user of the NWN Aurora Toolset I can tell you that that is exactly how things were constructed. That very fact meant that while everything was composed of the same parts you could have areas that were designed differently and had a different flow. This was completely absent in DA2 with its reuse of coastal and mountain dungeon layouts that never changed, aside from one door being closed/opened from Act to Act. Granted, it made a modicum of sense if you consider that bandits or whathaveyou might move into a cave in the intervening three years, but that didn't reduce the tedium created by it.

 

A large part of DA2's problem, especially from a person who has played it over a dozen times, is Kirkwall (and environs) itself. I am so sick to death of that place and I feel claustrophobic and trapped there. I don't have this same feeling with DAO however. The two DA2 DLC were truly refreshing, and I try to space them out when I play DA2 so I get a break from Kirkwall.

 

It was more about the lack of variety in the types of dungeons rather than how they put them together.