209 réponses à ce sujet

[Bayonet Hipshot]

If Silent Protagonists truly suck, then why is the Elder Scrolls franchise so successful ? All their games feature silent protagonists...

[AlanC9]

The voiced MC just steals away SO much roleplaying. The main problem I see is in the interpretation of the lines. You can pick something and get your companions response. If there is no voice you can imagine your MC was being funny and the companions response would work for that. But with the voiced protaganist you say it all mean or something. Just takes our control of how your character should be away from you.

I don't follow your example. If the writer wrote a mean line for the PC, that's what the companions would be written to respond to, not the funny line you pretend the PC was saying. How would the companions' responses "work" for that? Their responses surely would be different in the two cases. I know Sylvius gets around this by pretending that the companions are misunderstanding the PC, but I'm not sure what you're doing.

Edit: well, except for what Taleroth mentions. Yeah, if there's no real reaction, then you can pretend anything you like.

[pdusen]

The voiced MC just steals away SO much roleplaying. The main problem I see is in the interpretation of the lines. You can pick something and get your companions response. If there is no voice you can imagine your MC was being funny and the companions response would work for that. But with the voiced protaganist you say it all mean or something. Just takes our control of how your character should be away from you.

 

You never had that control. Either your character was written to say it in a funny way, and the companions' responses were written accordingly, or they weren't and they didn't. All that a voiced protagonist does is take that ambiguity away.

[AlanC9]

If Silent Protagonists truly suck, then why is the Elder Scrolls franchise so successful ? All their games feature silent protagonists...

Because TES games aren't really about plot and dialogue?

[ME_Fan]

I don't.

[Rawgrim]

That´s because there is almost no market for a mute protagonist. And the reasons for DA: Origins selling better than the rest don´t have anything to do with the protagonist being mute or voiced, but with the game being entirely different and better. After the debacle of the awful **** that was DA 2 a lot of people rightfully lost trust on Bioware/EA.

 

Fallout 3 + Las Vegas, Skyrim, Pillars of Eternity, Dragon's Dogma.....No market for games with a silent protagonist?

[Vit246]

I just miss the full-text dialogue that seem to come with it.

[Ebony Drake]

While I don't have much of a problem with voiced protagonists, you essentially have to play roulette with determining what their exact response will be with the dialogue wheel present, which for me, atleast, lead to a lot of reloads because a phrase interprited as comforting comes off as arrogant and condescending rather than what I thought it meant. Instead of having things paraphrased for your character, I think it would help a considerable deal to have the actual dialogue your character is meant to say present amongst the options. While indeed, it is ambiguous even with silent dialogue, further description helps alleviate the need for guessing a response most of the time.

 

I think there is a way to appease both parties here by ditching the dialogue wheel and having the dialogue displayed more concise and on point as opposed to hanging onto an ambiguous phrase that could be interprited any amount of ways. It worked for Origins(albeit without the added voice) and The Witcher.

[Rawgrim]

A voiced protagonist isn't a huge problem. All the auto-dialogue is, though. Why even let the player create his own character if the game just takes control over him all the time, anyway?

[JasonPogo]

Ok you want an example. There is one line when talking to Sera where the wheel says "just fallow orders crazy." And Sera's response is just like a "yeah yeah whatever you say boss". But if you click it your Inquisitor is a total dick to her and says something really mean. But if it had stayed with that an her response it could have been playfull.

[Quaddis]

Well if while playing paintball you're re-enacting battles from WWII or Vietnam then it's not and you're strange. If you're just shooting at your friends for fun and bragging rights it's "sport"

 

Actually we are playing in forest, dressed up in full camo, with tactical gear. Afterwards we get to drink beer, barbecue some meat, and mock the losing side, and i do see appeal of kicking someone with prop sword while wearing armor.

[OHB MajorV]

Actually we are playing in forest, dressed up in full camo, with tactical gear. Afterwards we get to drink beer, barbecue some meat, and mock the losing side, and i do see appeal of kicking someone with prop sword while wearing armor.

None of that is for immersion though. It's all tactical advantage. LARPing is more than beating your buddy with a nerf sword. It's full on fantasy play with hierarchy and such. Much more ridiculous.

[Vox Draco]

No ... and please just make a remake of DAO with Jennifer Hale voicing my Cousland Warrior Queen ...I'd buy the game again! Now if THAT isn't controversial?

 

Dragon Age now is my franchise for action/emotional/epic-cinematic-RPGs. The old unvoiced-text-box-only-heroes will be covered by Pillars of Eternity or Tides of Numeria.

[robertthebard]

Ok so I know this poor horse has been dead a long time now. But I am still going to beat on it.

The voiced MC just steals away SO much roleplaying. The main problem I see is in the interpretation of the lines. You can pick something and get your companions response. If there is no voice you can imagine your MC was being funny and the companions response would work for that. But with the voiced protaganist you say it all mean or something. Just takes our control of how your character should be away from you.

So yes while all the voice acting for te Inquisitor was very well done. I still hate it and hate that Bioware feels there is no market for it anymore even though the last game they did with a silent protaganist sold better then all the ones with voiced...

Actually, given the same lines, with the same scripted responses, you'll end up with lots of threads like we had for Origins, where people were ballistic about how NPCs reacted to "something they didn't say" (see what I did there?), just like we do now, for things they do say. Despite all the claims, dialog options were always restricted. Tone didn't matter much with a silent protag, but given the same material, all that will change is that you'll be here going "But I chose line B as a joke, and everyone went hostile on me". You see, your intent with a line doesn't matter. What matters is how the NPCs are scripted to respond to a selected line, and it doesn't matter if the protag is voiced or not.

[Vyndral]

I quit the game 90 seconds in. I went with the stay silent option, my inner child squealing with glee. I would finally be able to play the mute Qunari i had always envisioned. She was abused as a child and had run away from home. Raised by bandits she had had a smart mouth, so they cut out her tongue.

I was surprised to hear her speak mere moments after choosing stay silent, and i still havent worked out a plausible reason how she healed. Perhaps the divine did it when she booted her out of the breech.

Anyway ive been so distraught i havent played further.

[Aisynia]

DA:O is still my favorite DA game and I have to say.. no, I don't miss it at all. It was my main gripe with that game. I'm a major roleplayer.. and I have to work much harder for a connection to an unvoiced character.

[Kinsz]

No tx to the silent protagonist , you can just mute your TV and have subtitles on then everyone in the game would be silent :-).

[Ayleid]

I partially agree with you OP because they come to mind some lines from origins which would never be voiced simply cause there would be too much content to voice to make that happen ... and by that i mean DA:O had more options and i was more immersed to the character i was playing because those lines fit much better the character i was trying to build ... for a voiced MC lines must be streamlined and limited up to a point 

Also i care for a voiced character only if the voice acting is actually good ... for example i heard that femshep had better voice acting and my first trilogy playthrough was with her ... now i can't play as a male shepard ... i hate him cause half his lines sound to me so lifeless like a voice emulation program 

[Rawgrim]

No tx to the silent protagonist , you can just mute your TV and have subtitles on then everyone in the game would be silent :-).

 

Won't solve the auto-dialogue issue

[Kinsz]

Won't solve the auto-dialogue issue

mmm true , well this is kind of like the middle ground :-)

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

TW and TW2 were full of autodialogue, but the character was pre-defined, so no problem, right? You just got to see the first line of the dialogue, not the entire dialogue sequence in those games. Auto-dialogue is here to stay.

 

I wish the paraphrases of the first lines were better, but I don't have a problem with the voiced protagonist. I prefer it over the silent protagonist.

[WildOrchid]

Muted protagonists are so so so sO boring.

 

 

Prefer them alive.

[sylvanaerie]

Ok so I know this poor horse has been dead a long time now. But I am still going to beat on it.

The voiced MC just steals away SO much roleplaying. The main problem I see is in the interpretation of the lines. You can pick something and get your companions response. If there is no voice you can imagine your MC was being funny and the companions response would work for that. But with the voiced protaganist you say it all mean or something. Just takes our control of how your character should be away from you.

So yes while all the voice acting for te Inquisitor was very well done. I still hate it and hate that Bioware feels there is no market for it anymore even though the last game they did with a silent protaganist sold better then all the ones with voiced...

 

Actually, I am unsure how much you delved into the toolset, but seeing how lines were delivered opened up an entirely new perspective of the game for me and made me much aware of how little actual awareness a silent protagonist allowed the player.  
 

For example, during the Alistair romance scene, Alistair makes a comment about the Maker striking him down with lightning after having sex.  The warden can respond "Not after that performance" which could be interpreted as a teasing jibe praising his prowess.  The dialogue notes of his response indicate that instead, it was her criticizing his performance.  But there is no indication from tone or facial expression from the bland, doll-like warden what is the line's intention.

 

 

Tone and emphasis change the way something is written to give it new nuance when spoken aloud, so something intended one way was supposed to be taken another, regardless of what the player thinks the writer originally intended.  Companions will respond appropriately.  They get awkward expressions, or respond negatively (or positively) to what's said, even if the player ignores what happened, it doesn't change it, no matter what you head canon the response was.

[Xiltas]

Actually I felt more connected with my protagonist because of the voice. Or rather, because I could choose his voice (excellent feature, Bioware).

Hell, it feels a bit like I had an actor being my character, one male option was the german voice actor of Sean Bean and one female option was the voice actor of Natalie Portman^^