454 réponses à ce sujet

[Vindicare175]

Oh well they're still modded then I though you meant completely vanilla. *shudders*

 

XD nothing wrong with that.

 

Vanilla..Skyrim? *Shivers* I don't think its possible for me to play it without my 60+ Mods. They Are Required!

 

I really wish people would stop bringing that game up.Open world is all Skyrim had. Other than that ,it was trash.

 

Okay it's fine if you didn't care for Skyrim (Or TES in general) but Skyrim and the TES series are some of the best RPG Games and not even close to being *Trash*

[In Exile]

 

Yeah, I thought that was weird - and it did get mentions, sounded like about as many as you get post-origin in DA:O for 5 hours. I think the whole "bummer, you don't get an origin story" is a little overblown. I hope some race-specific stuff is in there, but I don't need it front-loaded. I thought the origins were really fun, and it was good they were front-loaded so I could see some without playing them really. But I didn't think it made the overall story a lot better. It was a cool concept, but I don't need to see it again in every game. I'm hoping for reactivity, of course, and it sounds like it may be on-par with DA:O there so that's a shame (I hoped for more) but it also sounds like he didn't get very far into the game, really. 

 

The other stories failed on two levels. First, they were totally divorced from the main plot. Not only that, but they gave you a reason not to want to be a Warden a lot of the time. The best example, of course, being the HN storyline where murdering the hell out of Howe would be far greater on your list of priorities. Even if you wanted to save Ferelden, the fact that you were supposed to identify as a GW (kind of how Shepard has to identify as an Alliance Marine, more or less) didn't work at all because you basically got kidnapped by Duncan, initiated and then abandoned. 

 

Second, they wasted a lot of resources in unique content all in one early instance. There could have been a lot more reactive content to being an elf for the same resource investment if DA:O started at Ostagar and the zots that went into the CE origin were instead put into the reactions of NPCs to a CE. 

 

Dragon Age? Skyrim? Witcher?

I still think Dark Souls is one of the best rpgs of the last decade. Yes, it's more of an action-rpg, but no recent game has managed to even compare when it comes to atmosphere, scenery, design, music and especially combat. And people who say Souls games don't have a story, just haven't payed attention enough. One of the beauties of the games is how the story and lore is experienced in reverse and has to be pieced together through item descriptions, symbolism, allegories and cryptic dialogue.

/rant

 

It doesn't have a story. It has a phenomenal setting. It has an OK-ish B-movie plot, and it uses a very novel technique to tell that OK-ish B-movie plot, i.e., background chatter, exploration, item descriptions. 

 

A beautiful setting and the most brilliant world-building in a video-game ever aren't the same thing as an actual story. 

 

? I think you are confusing what I'm talking about. What is actually happening in Skyrim, the People involved in the civil war, Dovakin, alduin, aldmeri dominion, removing the worship of Talos, and ect all have very significant hiding meanings in the plot, where what you are fighting against and what not is not as obvious as killing a dragon. It isnt like finding what the dwarven people are like, it is figuring out that the Dominion wants to erase all memory of Talos(Lohkran) so they can go back to before the great deceit. 

 

I understand exactly what you're talking about in your last post. All of this information isn't ever presented in the story, you don't have to interact or engage with it at all, and most of it you don't even stumble into during the plot. The fact that there are a lot of codex entries on this is like the Enigma of Kirkwall codex entries in DA2 and the Legacy codex about Corypheus driving Kirkwall mad. 

[Paul E Dangerously]

As soon as I got out of the first mission, ya know, where you are escaping from being executed?  The guy just runs off, "lol see ya!"  And leaves you standing there?  ALT-F4.   I don't wanna play this game anymore.

 

Extreme hand holding is offensive.  Almost as bad no hand holding what so ever.  I've played Bethesda games before.  Morrowind, etc.  They're extremely difficult to get into.  Once you're into them that's great.  You're in like flynn.  Once you're out of them for a little while?  You don't really feel like going back.  At least I didn't.

 

I..

 

Skyrim is way more handholdy than any other game in the TES series. Even Oblivion was more open than that.

[Bayonet Hipshot]

I hope DAI is not Dragon Age: Skyrim for the simple reason that DAI will most definitely lack one of the essential elements that made Skyrim such a huge success :- MODDING.

 

I will preface by saying that I am a huge Skyrim fan but the reason is because Skyrim is Skyrim. Skyrim is a sandbox RPG where, thanks to modding kit, literally anything goes. 

 

I liked Dragon Age for being Dragon Age. I am quite sure I will not like Dragon Age trying to be a Skyrim wannabe but failing because it does not come with a modding kit or huge expansion DLCs. 

[dlux]

Dragon Age: Skyrim

 

Oh god.... here it comes again...

 

[In Exile]

I loved the origin stories because they provided excellent, EXCELLENT ways to define a character before the game really "started." My male City Elf for example, who, as a result of his wife-to-be very nearly getting assaulted and then being estranged from him, didn't get into anymore romantic relationships, and was standoffish in general because of it.

Of course, all of this stuff could be imagined, but my personal theory on role-playing is that it has to be present in the game, and these stories provide excellent opportunities for your character to experience diverse situations to give them different characteristics (for the city elf, for example--I thought about making him anti-human, because of Vaughen and because Duncan, as In Exile says "kidnapped" him, but the elder's good words for Duncan persuaded him to merely be cautious towards them. he remained so for the journey but eventually developed a friendship with Morrigan, bonding with her distaste of society).

 

I agree with you in theory. My problem is when the origin story actively undercuts the main story. A good (non-DA) example of this is the insane injustice of the wall of the faithless in NWN2. The game trolls you the entire time about being able to do something about this, and then it ends with lolnope as an ending to that plotline. Which, depending on your values, could very well have seemed to be the main plot. 

 

Bringing this back to DA:O, the CE story is very much about the racial oppression in Thedas... which just gets almost entirely dropped post Ostagar. You sort of marginally see it again with the Tevinter slavers, but really the whole game shifts tone entirely.

 

The only origin story that really fits with the main story is the Dalish one. 

[Amaror]

You guys are hilarious, just keep on skyrim-bashing. 

But i hope that you do realise that Dragon Age Inquisition would most likely have never happened without skyrims-success.

Publishers don't put massive amounts of money on a product just for nothing, they want to see some kind of promise that they will get their money back.

With the huge success of Skyrim, developers can point towards skyrim and say "See, huge singleplayer-focused Role-playing-games can make lots of money. We can make our game a bit more like skyrim with enough ressources and it will sell great, too."

Or do you guys think the publishers thought to themselves: "Dragon Age 2 barely made any money, let's spent three times as much time and even more money on the successor."

[Fredward]

Or do you guys think the publishers thought to themselves: "Dragon Age 2 barely made any money, let's spent three times as much time and even more money on the successor."

 

Source? About DA2 barely making any money I mean? I mean I know it didn't sell as well as DAO but presumably it cost much less too, so do we know that it barely made any money in contrast to how much it cost?

[Bayonet Hipshot]

That is the single most important thing about Skyrim. Anyone who claims their game was influenced by Skyrim but doesn't have mod support didn't understand Skyrim.

 

Precisely. 

[Ieldra]

To everyone who is concerned DAI may be too much like Skyrim:

 

Watch the video where the Inquisitor and Cullen end up playing chess. Have you ever seen such a lifelike scene in any TES game? For DAI, Bioware has taken inspiration from Skyrim no doubt - how could they not, seeing how Skyrim sold 20+ million copies - but that doesn't prevent them from telling a good story. I have the impression they're going back to the roots in all the best ways, namely to the BG series, which had a similar balance of free exploration and story content as DAI appears to have. 

 

Also, an open-world game with an underpresent story like Skyrim (the story isn't bad, it's just not present for most of the game) won't appeal if it can't be modded like Skyrim. Bioware has to know that, and it was their stated intention to tell a really big story in DAI.

 

I don't think there is any reason to worry. Personally, I'm so very glad that we aren't on rails any more and can explore the world more freely than in any other game since the IE games (don't know NWN, it may qualify).

 

Edit:

BTW, I have sunk 200+ hours into Skyrim. It has a fantastic world, but without mods I wouldn't have stayed nearly as long, and it doesn't hold up to the best TES game, which was Morrowind (apart from the bugs, but that's Bethesda for you).

[In Exile]

You guys are hilarious, just keep on skyrim-bashing. 

But i hope that you do realise that Dragon Age Inquisition would most likely have never happened without skyrims-success.

Publishers don't put massive amounts of money on a product just for nothing, they want to see some kind of promise that they will get their money back.

With the huge success of Skyrim, developers can point towards skyrim and say "See, huge singleplayer-focused Role-playing-games can make lots of money. We can make our game a bit more like skyrim with enough ressources and it will sell great, too."

Or do you guys think the publishers thought to themselves: "Dragon Age 2 barely made any money, let's spent three times as much time and even more money on the successor."

 

Before Skyrim, games like Oblivion, Fable and Fallout 3/NV all outsold DA:O. So did ME2 and ME3, and ME1 outsold DA:O on PC/360 which is all it was released on. A DA3 would likely have been greenlight. 

 

Skyrim was a massive success, but it didn't somehow save single player RPGs. This putting aside the question of whether you consider what Skyrim does even conducive to an SP RPG, which is a big YMMV. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Watch the video where the Inquisitor and Cullen end up playing chess. Have you ever seen such a lifelike scene in any TES game?

Cinematic scenes like that are, I think, a detriment to RPGs, not an asset.

They could be assets, but not typically the way BioWare does them.

[Heimdall]

I agree with you in theory. My problem is when the origin story actively undercuts the main story. A good (non-DA) example of this is the insane injustice of the wall of the faithless in NWN2. The game trolls you the entire time about being able to do something about this, and then it ends with lolnope as an ending to that plotline. Which, depending on your values, could very well have seemed to be the main plot.

Bringing this back to DA:O, the CE story is very much about the racial oppression in Thedas... which just gets almost entirely dropped post Ostagar. You sort of marginally see it again with the Tevinter slavers, but really the whole game shifts tone entirely.

The only origin story that really fits with the main story is the Dalish one.

I'd argue that human noble also fits. The dwarves too, atleast as far as the Orzammar story is concerned.

[Sidney]

Skyrim didn't do anything to help RPG's. It helped a lot of people who want to worry about character progression and equipment but as far as role playing and creating a character as opposed to a shambling mound of stats it was utter bunk and a waste of time.

[Sidney]

I agree with you in theory. My problem is when the origin story actively undercuts the main story. A good (non-DA) example of this is the insane injustice of the wall of the faithless in NWN2. The game trolls you the entire time about being able to do something about this, and then it ends with lolnope as an ending to that plotline. Which, depending on your values, could very well have seemed to be the main plot. 
 
Bringing this back to DA:O, the CE story is very much about the racial oppression in Thedas... which just gets almost entirely dropped post Ostagar. You sort of marginally see it again with the Tevinter slavers, but really the whole game shifts tone entirely.
 
The only origin story that really fits with the main story is the Dalish one.

Frankly this is why I don't care about origins, don't care about race selection or much of any of the obsessions of so many...it doesn't matter. If choosing the city elf origin meant anything in 99.99% of the rest of the game it would have been great -- and the CE origin was the best of the lot as an standalone vignette -- but the fact of the matter is other than what one encounter in Denerim it didn't. Being an elf mattered in like 3 conversations where someone called you knife ears and you could get indignant. Breadth that origins opened up turned into a 3cm deep pool as all of that variation got rammed into the same plot.

[Applepie_Svk]

short story ? 

 

Yes they are ...

 

Long story ? 

 

Indeed, in last few years is the gameplay, graphics and fandom more important than storytelling, in the end it´s all about the crowd, and what crowd ask that wil gets, but then they should stop complaining that there was so little of other un-important things. They should simply stop buying or start supporting companies which are not going to appeal wider crowd but just trying to tell own story.

[Ieldra]

short story ? 

 

Yes they are ...

 

Long story ? 

 

Indeed, in last few years is the gameplay, graphics and fandom more important than storytelling, in the end it´s all about the crowd, and what crowd ask that wil gets, but then they should stop complaining that there was so little of other un-important things. They should simply stop buying or start supporting companies which are not going to appeal wider crowd but just trying to tell own story.

This is completely wrong. There haven't been many games where the story was as present as in recent Bioware titles. Compare the old classics: the story of the BG series was good, but you played large parts of the games paying little attention to it. In fact, it's more the other way round: too many other aspects  - free exploration, player agency, sometimes even roleplaying - were sacrificed for the story in more recent games.

 

As I see it, DAI will restore a balance that had been lost for more than ten years.

[Ieldra]

Cinematic scenes like that are, I think, a detriment to RPGs, not an asset.

They could be assets, but not typically the way BioWare does them.

I do agree to a point. Paraphrasing and too little control over what your character actually says are detrimental to roleplaying. However, my point was about storytelling, and Bioware does that reasonably well, epic blunders like in ME3 notwithstanding.

[berrieh]

I do agree to a point. Paraphrasing and too little control over what your character actually says are detrimental to roleplaying. However, my point was about storytelling, and Bioware does that reasonably well, epic blunders like in ME3 notwithstanding.

 

Yes, and ME3 is actually still a great story. I understand the frustration with choices but the first ME game I experienced was 3 (watched my BF play it with his Shep and helped him make the choices in that game) and it was a great, cinematic story. It kept my attention. I have since played the ME series several times and I understand the frustration with much of them coming out the same, no matter your earlier choices, and with the ending (though the patch makes it much more palatable) and definitely with MP affecting SP at all, but it was still a great story and very story-driven. In that, it can't be faulted, objectively. 

 

As to paraphrasing, I'm on the fence about it - on the one-hand, I get the lack of control aspect, but on the other hand, it makes me more interested in the story to have my character continue the conversation rather than just repeat what I already read and selected (there's really no reason to say what I already said). So I get both the reasoning behind it and the frustration with it. 

[Hannador]

As much as I enjoyed the graphics and freedom of Skyrim, every time I talked to a character or completed a quest I couldn't help thinking this game would be so much better with Bioware's writers.

Ding, ding, ding !!!! 

 

In my humble opinion, the perfect "RPG Pie" consists of Bethesda making the crust while Bioware handles the filling. Alas, this will never happen.

[umadcommander]

bioware couldnt do TES well

 

consistancy is not something they do well and its key to a backing lore as huge as TES'

[Zered]

Source? About DA2 barely making any money I mean? I mean I know it didn't sell as well as DAO but presumably it cost much less too, so do we know that it barely made any money in contrast to how much it cost?

 

DA2 sold well but because of Origins. On it's own i doubt DA2 could come anywhere close to Skyrim's or DA:O succes.

[Ieldra]

Yes, and ME3 is actually still a great story. I understand the frustration with choices but the first ME game I experienced was 3 (watched my BF play it with his Shep and helped him make the choices in that game) and it was a great, cinematic story. It kept my attention. I have since played the ME series several times and I understand the frustration with much of them coming out the same, no matter your earlier choices, and with the ending (though the patch makes it much more palatable) and definitely with MP affecting SP at all, but it was still a great story and very story-driven. In that, it can't be faulted, objectively.

It was very story-driven indeed, but as for the great story...no. It sacrificed too much of its worldbuilding in order to hammer its themes home, and sacrificed too much consistency and common sense for drama. They attempted a great story, but it proved to be far beyond their competence. Certain parts play as if the writers of a soap opera attempted to write an SF story. Maybe the limited word budget was partly to blame for that, since I know that at least one of them can write better than his parts in ME3 turned out to be, but a great story it was not. It was a story that could've been great.   
 

As to paraphrasing, I'm on the fence about it - on the one-hand, I get the lack of control aspect, but on the other hand, it makes me more interested in the story to have my character continue the conversation rather than just repeat what I already read and selected (there's really no reason to say what I already said). So I get both the reasoning behind it and the frustration with it.

DXHR had a good compromise. You could see the first sentence of what you would say if you hovered over the selection box. That worked reasonably well, and I don't understand Bioware's adamant refusal to consider it.

[vampressmom]

im going to go hide due to the fact i never added a mod to my skyrim. i finished the game....just never modded.

 

on another note, i feel like rpgs are changing. not exactly dying out. i am excited for a larger map. and i have problems playing games that have no story line/goal to reach at the end. DA:o is what got me into gaming in the first place so my loyalties are all for DA