229 réponses à ce sujet

[Xx Serissia xX]

It was set for right after my birthday, I'm still trying to get over the delay. Genuine ****** nerd tears right now.

 

Aww.  Happy early birthday though. ^.^

[OHB MajorV]

Aww. Happy early birthday though. ^.^

It's cool, now I'll just get expensive alcohol and maybe a new tattoo. Nothing dalish though because that's for slaves I hear...

[AWTEW]

I think head canon is a must. You need to get into it, not just expect the game to carry you through.

 

It's role-playing. Your character should reflect your own personality, or at least a personality you really want to convey, instead of just going through the motions - do this quest, kill, loot, repeat -   it would make your experience a lot better.

 

When there are different characters each game, you have to do this, because all the development only spans one game.

 

It's different than say, Mass Effect, where you develop feelings for these characters, because you've taken them in all your journeys. They mean something, rather than just a brand new roster. This is why recurring characters are important, because by the end, if you don't care much for the people involved in a certain plot, it would make it hard for you to care about their motivations and their actions, and overall, the plot itself.

 

I really don't think head cannon is a must for everyone, nor is there something inherintly wrong with going through the motions. I can't self-insert to save my life, nor do I have the creativity to  keep headcanoning for an entire 60+ hours. Some people need more guidance than others. There are also people who need more substance to work with, than what the inquisitor offers.

[KaiserShep]

I really don't think head cannon is a must for everyone, nor is there something inherintly wrong with going through the motions. I can't self-insert to save my life, nor do I have the creativity to  keep headcanoning for an entire 60+ hours. Some people need more guidance than others. There are also people who need more substance to work with, than what the inquisitor offers.

 

I think it's really hard to find that happy medium among so many players. Provide too much fixed material, and some will balk at their lack of player agency in determining the type of character they want their PC to be, and then you have the opposite and people feel like the character is like a digital mannequin. Me, I have an affinity for writing/creating my own characters and imagining the types of people they're like, which is partly why RPG's are my absolute favorite genre other than the occasional racing sim.

[Mr.House]

I'm with the OP.

At least in Origin we had some back story.

In Inquisition you're a total nobody who happen to be a witness of crime and then become the savior of "light" because plot.

Also there aren't a lot of dialog to devellop the backstoty of our character.

My Inquisitor was sent to the conclave on orders from the first Enchanter. So her being there is already established and fits perfectly. She also is very close to her familly and was allowed to visit them,, she also had no issues with the templars at the circle and the first enchanter was her personal mentor. All from the game, and that's not even headcanon territory yet. That is simply all from dialog you can pick and say. So yeah I had no problems with her background and then adding from that. Would it have been better if it was playable? Yes, and that is something Bioware should have did, but I can understand they didn't have the time to do that but you can still build a background just fine without headcanon, at least from my pov.

 

I will agree that a origin type opening would have been better then the explosion happening right off the bat, instead of just jumping to the explosion(show the mage talking to the first Enchanter and leaving the circle, show the qunari and her band going to the conclave ect) All of this would have been better. Of course don't show what happens at the conclave(because that is something that has to be kept until Lies in the abyss) It was a missed opportunity.

[NedPepper]

You can have all the head canon you want, but if the game doesn't respond to it, then what's the point?  It's the biggest problem with TES.  It's why I never enjoy those games.  The PC is so bland and soulless.

And that goes for The Inquisitor too.  I hate to say it.  There's very little variation in how the character acts and reacts.  In a weird way, you are playing a SET character, in a way I've never felt in a Bioware game. And that character is really vanilla. There's very little personal touches.  There's no character arc for you to use as a spring board to create the character. Shepard, the Warden, Hawke...they all had character arcs.  It was still very much your character.  You filled in the blanks within the narrative to how your PC would react.  

I just don't feel it with the Inquisitor.  I can't help but to blame the sandbox aspect, because this is a common problem in sandbox games.   I hope Bioware is reading this thread.  They made a beautiful game.  I'm really enjoying all the characters around the Inquisitor, but I never feel like he's actually bonding with them.  It just feels....off.  I just don't feel connected to my Inquisitor.  And as I sit and plan my next character, I feel like it will be the exact same character with just different cosmetic changes.  

Again, I love a lot of things about DA:I.  But the role playing experience is kinda empty.

[Mr.House]

You can have all the head canon you want, but if the game doesn't respond to it, then what's the point?  It's the biggest problem with TES.  It's why I never enjoy those games.  The PC is so bland and soulless.

And that goes for The Inquisitor too.  I hate to say it.  There's very little variation in how the character acts and reacts.  In a weird way, you are playing a SET character, in a way I've never felt in a Bioware game. And that character is really vanilla. There's very little personal touches.  There's no character arc for you to use as a spring board to create the character. Shepard, the Warden, Hawke...they all had character arcs.  It was still very much your character.  You filled in the blanks within the narrative to how your PC would react.  

I just don't feel it with the Inquisitor.  I can't help but to blame the sandbox aspect, because this is a common problem in sandbox games.   I hope Bioware is reading this thread.  They made a beautiful game.  I'm really enjoying all the characters around the Inquisitor, but I never feel like he's actually bonding with them.  It just feels....off.  I just don't feel connected to my Inquisitor.  And as I sit and plan my next character, I feel like it will be the exact same character with just different cosmetic changes.  

Again, I love a lot of things about DA:I.  But the role playing experience is kinda empty.

That is pretty much how I felt with Shepard and Hawke personally. I guess we just had different experiences

[NedPepper]

That is pretty much how I felt with Shepard and Hawke personally. I guess we just had different experiences

I'm not saying they were perfect role playing experiences.  I got about three Shepards that felt unique.  After that, I admit, I started to feel like I was playing the same character.

I got around 6 Hawkes that all felt very different.  With Hawke,playing as a mage probably gives you the most variety and emergence into the story.  I had my Adrastrian mage who believed in the circle.  My female freedom fighter. My hateful blood mage.  (My buddy had a self hating mage...man, he loves that character.  It's his favorite character he's ever played in any RPG.)  I had a rogue who just loved making money and didn't care about anything but moving up in the world.  My original Hawke was a sword and shield with a testy attitude, a love for his family, and ruthlessness to anyone who got in in his way.  With Hawke, it was all about how you interacted with both your real family and your new dysfunctional family.  You were taking care of a bunch of misfits, and Varric would sit and just talk LIFE with you.  You fed off the friendships. It was more personal, and by adding a family for your character to roleplay off of, it made it very personal.  (There's a reason Varric just wants to get back to Kirkwall throughout DA;I and seems vaguely bored.)

Every one of my Wardens felt unique.  Why?  Because you went back to the places you were from.  Orzamaar.  The Dalish.  The Alienage.  The Circle Tower.  If you were human, you could even roleplay the character to use the Wardens as a stepping stone to actually rule Ferelden.  They gave your PC a connection to the world and characters to interact with that reflected your origin and the roleplaying decisions you made..

My Inquisitor is just a confused Qunari who is suddenly running an organization that Cassandra, Cullen, Leliana, and Josephine started.  And he walks around killing a lot of beasts, mages and bandits.  And has a cool glowy thing on his hand.  That's...about it.  I got the Varric card game the other night and I'm watching all these great characters interact with each other.  And my Inquisitor sitting there like he didn't belong.  It's hard to explain, but I just don't feel as connected to this character.

It's like my Inquisitor is Sebastian.  The horror...

[KaiserShep]

Sebast....Seb....

 

I...no.

 

[Arisugawa]

Every one of my Wardens felt unique.  Why?  Because you went back to the places you were from.  Orzamaar.  The Dalish.  The Alienage.  The Circle Tower.  If you were human, you could even roleplay the character to use the Wardens as a stepping stone to actually rule Ferelden.  They gave your PC a connection to the world and characters to interact with that reflected your origin and the roleplaying decisions you made..

 

This is only partially correct.

 

The human noble cannot go back to Highever. Once you leave for Ostagar, it is never seen again (and has not been seen again) in Dragon Age.

 

The same for the Dalish Warden. You never return to your clan. The clan you visit is Zathrian's, not Marethari's. It is a completely different tribe of elves. Saying it is comparable is like saying going to Denerim for the Human Noble is the same as going back to Highever.

 

Only 4 of the 6 Warden backgrounds actually return to you the location and the cast of your origin story.

[Maverick827]

This is only partially correct.

 

The human noble cannot go back to Highever. Once you leave for Ostagar, it is never seen again (and has not been seen again) in Dragon Age.

 

The same for the Dalish Warden. You never return to your clan. The clan you visit is Zathrian's, not Marethari's. It is a completely different tribe of elves. Saying it is comparable is like saying going to Denerim for the Human Noble is the same as going back to Highever.

 

Only 4 of the 6 Warden backgrounds actually return to you the location and the cast of your origin story.

 

But all of the origins go to places where they are referenced and influence the story and your character in some way.  It is fun when  you, as a Dalish elf, go to visit the Dalish clan.  Something different happens in the story because of who your character is.  That's like, the defining aspect of modern BioWare games.

[bEVEsthda]

...

I did not feel I truly was able to do something like that as there were really only a few scenes I felt engaged by the character or truly feeling her to actually be someone, which for me was largely the choices made in directing voice acting or having really those Hell Yeah moments where the character themselves truly stands out. It is that simple to me and, as far as I can understand, to the most people being critical of the current choices in this thread.

 

(My bolding)

 

See, this is where the division goes. You want to experience the character as an observer. It's maybe an interactive movie, but you're still watching a movie. You engage in the protagonist as you engage in a movie protagonist. You are a consumer to the reactions, instead of generating them, i.e. thinking about 'what does my character feel now' 'what does my character think now'

 

I think a great deal of the problem comes from the dialogue wheel and voiced protagonist. Bioware have made this choice, probably because they - the new EA/Bioware - really did want to make "jrpgs", but let's call it "Cinematic Game" instead, since apparently a lot of people here identify "jrpg" as indicating different attributes (artistical? country of origin?) than the essential, i.e. how you play it. So they made ME2, ME3, and DA2, and consequently also acquired  a lot of customers with other expectations.

 

I see two personal problems here: One is that the dialogue wheel and voice directly invites this relationship with the game, and thus will likely expand the portion of players who play the game that way, and thus will make it easier to slip further down along that road. I appreciated that DA:I took a step back, from DA2. But I confess I also nurtured hopes that DA would now continue to take even further steps back.

 

ME has been dead to me since ME2, What I think about DA2 should be wellknown, and it's not the re-used environments, since I defend that decision whenever I get the chance. I couldn't be bothered to continue The Witcher 2, despite that I appreciate that the developers take themselves and their game so seriously, and so obviously don't target 14y old console players with their game.

So my problem is, that if you get your way, DA may also be another dead franchise for me.

In fact, it now seems inevitable to me, unless we can convince Bioware to offer a third 'voice', the silent one.

[bEVEsthda]

You can have all the head canon you want, but if the game doesn't respond to it, then what's the point?  It's the biggest problem with TES.  It's why I never enjoy those games.  The PC is so bland and soulless.

And that goes for The Inquisitor too.  I hate to say it.  There's very little variation in how the character acts and reacts.  In a weird way, you are playing a SET character, in a way I've never felt in a Bioware game. And that character is really vanilla. There's very little personal touches.  There's no character arc for you to use as a spring board to create the character. Shepard, the Warden, Hawke...they all had character arcs.  It was still very much your character.  You filled in the blanks within the narrative to how your PC would react.  

I just don't feel it with the Inquisitor.  I can't help but to blame the sandbox aspect, because this is a common problem in sandbox games.   I hope Bioware is reading this thread.  They made a beautiful game.  I'm really enjoying all the characters around the Inquisitor, but I never feel like he's actually bonding with them.  It just feels....off.  I just don't feel connected to my Inquisitor.  And as I sit and plan my next character, I feel like it will be the exact same character with just different cosmetic changes.  

Again, I love a lot of things about DA:I.  But the role playing experience is kinda empty.

 

Yet, what you seem to say is that the role watching experience is kinda empty.

 

The biggest greatness of TES is precisely the role playing. Great games! There is no such thing  as a "bland and soulless" PC if you're role playing.

 

These two audiences are very difficult to cater to, both, in the same game.

[Sully13]

Headcannon?

[berrieh]

But all of the origins go to places where they are referenced and influence the story and your character in some way.  It is fun when  you, as a Dalish elf, go to visit the Dalish clan.  Something different happens in the story because of who your character is.  That's like, the defining aspect of modern BioWare games.

 

In my experience, more different things happen in the story because of who I am in DAI. My race feels like it comes up more throughout. That was what they said they would do, and they definitely delivered. 

 

It seems like what it came down to is - Some people just really like the origins. I liked the concept at the time, and they're all fun to play once, but they always made replaying as the same origin a little bit tedious (for me). I don't feel the concept of a playable origin needs to be in every game or that it truly added as much to the game as some did. 

 

If they do origin stories again, I hope they do fewer ones with more variation in them so it doesn't feel so repetitive when you replay them. Maybe a series of short scenes (kind of like Fallout 3 but playable little choices, and not from being a baby, just over a snippet of time) would be a better way. But, really, personally, I was happy to move on from it. The text-based origin to start me off after the first scene in DAI was perfect for my taste if I'm not going to play a pre-named character like a Hawke/Shepard. 

[cindercatz]

They've gotta bring the origins back. That's the number one thing that made roleplaying the Warden so great, especially when we did get to build relationships and then go back and reengage with those characters. Even Shepard had unique personal story divergences, depending on the background, along with the dialogue and extra options to reflect who you were throughout the games. 

 

I think the second thing is more emotional delivery. Your character shouldn't be set into an auto-personality like DA2 (requiring triplicate audio recording, dialogue writing etc. for one character), but dialogue in general should carry with more flow and.. Freedom is what it feels like. The best example of what they should feel like is Mass Effect 3's. I don't want to just 'watch a game', but it needs to support an emotional connection. A neutral tone doesn't mean stilted, or expressively restricted. I think they massively overreacted to some of the complaints about Mass Effect, which really boil down more to not having enough options and the too-restrictive Paragon/Renegade systems.

 

I also am just gonna beg them, if anybody reads this, to just set up 'investigate' dialogue options as a far more natural conversation tree with natural back and forth rather than a stilted, wooden list form Q&A. It'd breathe a lot more life into our general interaction with other characters throughout the game. It works so much better with voiced player characters.

 

I love creating characters and roleplaying those characters, but it doesn't mean much if the game doesn't do much to support that roleplay or deliver it in an emotionally effective manor. I think this game does a great job with reflecting our character choices in dialogue, but does so in a mostly stilted, less than ideal way (caveat to the much improved romances and the occasional reaction wheel scene). There is some significant story branching thankfully, but they need to invest more of that into the opening scenes (origins, basically), and carry that over to improving the presentation of the dialogue and character building systems. Mass Effect 2 is their only game to really nail the 'start with a bang' thing, and that only worked because we had preexisting player characters and relationships. So don't do it with a game like this. It fundamentally doesn't work.

 

So it needs:

1. Origins/Personalizing Opening Scenes (with race/background selection)

2. More Emotional, Impactful Delivery

3. More Natural Dialogue Flow (while maintaining all our characterizing options)

 

 

 

Asking too much? No. Cut the fluff. This game is stuffed to bursting with largely disjointed fluff. DA2 had the same problem. A relatively shorter playtime, tighter narrative focus, more significant branching/rooting are good for a story driven game and make the choices feel more relevant and impactful, while benefiting narrative flow. I love the new environments and all, but the game would be 100x better with a lot more focus on story, character building, and improved presentation there, rather than pushing the open world expansion. I hope they get the balance right next time. Don't try to be Elder Scrolls.

 

edits: clarifying

[KaiserShep]

I wouldn't consider ME3 the best example as far as any kind of dialogue is concerned. Revisiting it now, and it definitely feels very confining by comparison.

[Ashevajak]

Fridge Logic moment:

The Inquisitor seems quite bland because what they mostly ask are questions.  What is the job of an Inquisitor?  To ask questions.

 

BioWare's genius truly knows no bounds (and neither, apparently, do my rationalisation skills).

[vometia]

The Inquisitor seems quite bland because what they mostly ask are questions.  What is the job of an Inquisitor?

Custodian of the comfy chair.

[berrieh]

I wouldn't consider ME3 the best example as far as any kind of dialogue is concerned. Revisiting it now, and it definitely feels very confining by comparison.

 

ME3 is a great end to the trilogy. But when I first saw it, I didn't even know the series was RPG. I thought it was a 3rd person shooter with a great story (I love ME3, and saw it before I played the other games - played it with my boyfriend, and then we replayed the series together, and then I played it). I agree it's restrictive. More so than DA2, so not the way I imagine DA will go. I can see why it had to be restrictive, though, to end the trilogy. No one else has done a ME style trilogy where you imported choices, so I can't blame them for needing to narrow it down for the ending, personally. But having a new protagonist each time generally protects DA from similar issues.

[Shadow_Claw]

Well the game isn't for everyone, this game maybe isn't for you. With a username like that, perhaps you would have preferred an over the top anime character? I would have found that horrendous myself. People in real life are somewhat boring as you say. I feel my Inquisitor has depth of insight, and had some great moments. It helps if you actually roleplay this and know a lot about Thedas, and the game requires you to care about Thedas and it's issues. It sounds to me like you just don't care, and just want to play an action RPG to get on with the next game in your backlog.

[Cheech 2.0]

OMG, now we are using people's user names to say their opinion is invalid? Lovely, and god bless BSN.

[AWTEW]

Well the game isn't for everyone, this game maybe isn't for you. With a username like that, perhaps you would have preferred an over the top anime character? I would have found that horrendous myself. People in real life are somewhat boring as you say. I feel my Inquisitor has depth of insight, and had some great moments. It helps if you actually roleplay this and know a lot about Thedas, and the game requires you to care about Thedas and it's issues. It sounds to me like you just don't care, and just want to play an action RPG to get on with the next game in your backlog.

Urrgh, if I only wanted to just play an over the top anime character; than I wouldn't have beaten Origns 18 times. I care about thedas, but not an almost bare bones character(that I have to endure for 60+ hours). Players have different Rping capacities, some need more guidance than others, and some can think things up with their imagination really well. Both playstyles are fine, but just dissmissing people who want a slightly more fleshed out protagonist, as people who just want to rush through DA like an action game, is really unfair.

[LostInReverie19]

Yeah, it's pretty sad when a voiceless Warden has more personality than the Inquisitor. It's just so hard for me to get attached to my Inquisitors, when it was super easy for me to do with both my Wardens and my Hawkes. I think it's the lack of any origin stories or background setup before you're just thrown into the main story basically.

[JamieCOTC]

I think the main problem is that DA:I is the story of the Inquisition, not the Inquisitor. Also the Inquisitor is a bit of a one trick pony.  Is she or isn't she the Herald. sent by the maker? It's interesting, but beyond that there's not much depth. The answer is not making the protagonist more set (Shepard in ME3, hated the autodialgue), but focusing more on the Inquisitor as a person and tell their story. I like my Inquisitor, but I'm not as connected to her as my Warden or Hawke (or Shepard). I recall one of the devs saying there would be origins sprinkled in the game instead of all at the beginning like DA:O. There was some color sprinkled in, but it wasn't enough and outside the war table I don't recall a single story that really focused on my Quiz being a mage.