220 réponses à ce sujet

[Lee80]

Ugh, please stop talking about death and darkness being good for games before we wind up with another Mass Effect 3 ending. 

[Ashagar]

Agreed death and darkness does not a deep game make.

[ThreeF]

ask yourself this. If a important side character had a meaningful death scene, would Dragon Age Inquisition be better or worse for it?

 

Also i used death as an example.

 

Depends on a person. For some it would be better, but for others not so much. Some people hate getting attached to a character and see them die and wouldn't touch a game if they knew that something like this would happen.

 

Personally, it would be the worst type of story, especially if it was done to provide "depth". Just because a story is dark and brooding it doesn't makes it better by default and in some way it cheapens it. Emotional depth can be achieved through means other than tragedies and death.

[Dutch]

Wait, you're saying AssCreed IV had more emotional investment than DAI.

Really...?

I'll be back in an hour or two, I need to laugh this off.

Yes...I know I was shocked too after I finished AC4. Bioware needs to get its **** straight.

[Vox Draco]

Imagine if there was no deaths in ME3, optional or mandatory? How would the game feel? Exactly how i currently feel about Dragon Age Inquisition.

 

If in return the story after ME1 would actually make sense ahd stays coherent? I would totally buy the series again and play happily ever after

 

Unicorns and rainbows for me all the way, just to annoy the people that think death is all that matters to make people emotionally invested in a story ...

 

For me, that's only shock-value and does not guarantee the story itselfs benefits from this...George Martin uses deaths a lot, and where dfid it got him? Written in a corner with a lot of interestign chars dead, the story going not really anywhere, and everyone already makes jokes about "hey, who is he going to kill next?"

 

So, death of siginificant characters can be a useful tool, but not, as far as I am concerned, to earn some cheap tears and emotional depth that wears off quickly if the rest of the story does not matter anymore (Behold Mass Effect - Deathscene of Admiral what's his name (?) and Shepard, ruined by the rest...)

[Rahavan]

Not necessarily. It just has to be done well and fit within the story. As said above, Roderick's death wasn't forced and meant well to the story. I felt like there could have been more instances for a "risk", or at least a way to not make my inquisition feel terribly invincible. I also find it odd that you mention emotion is subjective yet tell the OP to change the way he emotes..... Okay.

I don't think the OP wants companions/characters dying left and right, but rather hold the feeling that they can and may.

 

Most people want this but not in great volumes or in places where it's not needed. Mass effect 2 had it pretty good with the suicide mission (though loyalty could have been a deeper mechanic). It's a hard medium to hit, do I pull something as cheap as that kid at the beginning of me3? or do I try to put time and effort into building up a character to have him die and risk backlash? And I'm almost certain bioware is scared to take risks when it comes to story for the next year or so.

[Aren]

Mandatory death =/= emotional depth.

I felt a lot of emotion in the Denerim gates scene, and no one died. That's not to say that no one should ever die, but the whole who-to-sacrifice among companions doesn't really have much of an effect on me, at least nothing positive.

What you ungretful... have you already forgotten Riordan?

[King Cousland]

I agree with this. It isn't so much that a game needs to be all death and darkness, but a franchise like Dragon Age does need to have a dark undercurrent which the player is often reminded of. 

 

There are still genuinely emotionally satisfying and memorable moments in Dragon Age, such as the conclusion to Josephine's romance, but this satisfaction generally only occurs with the cheerier elements of the story. Attempts to explore the less merry aspects of life, death and the world have more often than not been rather forced, even sloppy, in my opinion.  

 

Not to come off like a nostalgic fanboy, but Origins absolutely nailed the atmosphere for me, and this is something which doesn't diminish no matter how many times I play it. When I played its successors however, I have to say I never really got a sense of darkness or, in some cases, even maturity. There were certainly attempts to convey this, but for several reasons, from a flawed concept, to lack of attachment to characters and, for me, the art style, moments which were intended to be (and indeed had the potential to be) gritty and emotionally nourishing often came across as shallow at best (such as the Warden questline in DA:I) and juvenile at worst ( such as Leandra's death in DA II). 

 

I'd definitely like to see BioWare move back to the approach they took with Origins and, to some extent, the Mass Effect games. To be honest, I do wish they'd cease to indulge the desire for the now ubiquitous "snark" in their games. This leads to things like sitting in judgement over a wooden box and seducing an octogenarian aristocrat with a Superman pose, and really does give the impression that Dragon Age is a series that doesn't even take itself seriously anymore. 

[Emu8207]

I have to agree, the lack of a Mass Effect 2 Collector Station type mission at the end is a huge missed opportunity. Even Origins at least had some choices that were life and death in nature at the end.

[Ashagar]

What you ungretful... have you already forgotten Riordan?

 

I did forget him after seeing Cassandra pull off the same trick at the attack on the ten year gathering and not die, must a be a dragon hunter clan, how to kill dragons in midair and survive.

[Serza]

Yes...I know I was shocked too after I finished AC4. Bioware needs to get its **** straight.

 

There seems to be the old problem with picking out whether or not a sentence is of sarcastic meaning.

You know, the problem that never happens in spoken language.

 

Really. I can remember genuinely TRYING to GIVE A FLYING F when a character died.

Nope. I couldn't.

"Oh, that lady just died. Too bad for her. Wait, maybe I should feel bad?"

[Elsariel]

Death of major characters is not my thing.  (Minor characters can die all they like.  Minor characters like Riordan or Stroud or Isolde) I do like lots of drama and hardships and hard choices but I'm not a fan of character deaths.  Pass.

[nightscrawl]

I disagree completely, especially coming off the heels of DA2 that forced deaths on the player as an emotional hook. I found a lot of emotional depth in DAI. In addition to the individual follower quests, most of which were pretty emotional and character building, I did find some of the choices to be extremely difficult on an emotional level.

 

From a person who greatly enjoyed DA2 and her many Hawkes, the single most difficult choice in the entire game was in choosing Hawke to stay behind. I even only did it to see this version, as I had already played once when choosing Stroud. I hovered over the button for a good couple of minuets before finally pressing it. In my next play with a Warden Alistair import I expect the decision to be agonizing (although I already know what it will be.)

[TheJiveDJ]

Because the only emotion worth having in a game is sadness and the only way to have that is to kill everyone. Alright then.

Nice straw man. A good story has an arc; a sort of progression and change over time. There should be lessons learned, and yes, there should be losses and setbacks. Loss connects us more emotionally to the protagonist, gives us a reason to hate the antagonist, and adds a sense of importance and urgency to the story. The only "loss" in this game, and unsurprisingly, the most lauded portion of the story by far is the loss of Haven and the acquisition of Skyhold.

 

Why does this part of the story seem so popular? Because it made the threat personal. It made the threat "real". The losses of personnel you may incur are not really that weighty because you barely know the the NPC's at that point. However, you are run out of your base of operations, and you feel isolated and vulnerable for a period of time. The storytelling was great up to and slightly after this point. Everything after this point had basically no emotional connection for me at all, I barely cared about what was happening, and felt no sense of urgency sitting within my seemingly impregnable fortress that is never in any danger.

 

Let's look back at some previous BW games that employed these narrative tactics to great effect:

 

ME1: Saren hijacks the conduit and launches a surprise attack on the heart of the galactic government.

 

 

ME2: The Collectors--following the orders of Harbinger--board your ship and kidnap your crew.

 

 

 

DAII: One of your companions commits an act of terrorism, and single-handedly starts a war.

 

 

 

KotOR: Malak kidnaps Bastilla and turns her to the dark side.

 

Need I go on? The important thing about all of these is that they usually occur toward the end of the story, and segue to the climax.

[o Ventus]

Anders was dead in DA:A too. The timeline got screwed a bit too, so he actually dies in Awakening after he runs into Hawke in DA2.

... What? 

 

Is this some weird cipher that I need to decode? This doesn't make any sense.

[JeffZero]

It's not the lack of death that's the problem here, although I do miss that angle. (I've always openly stated that I enjoy tough calls like the Virmire scenario; hell, I off people at the Suicide Mission because I find it more enjoyable narratively.)

Yeah, I miss it. But I would have still felt good about the endgame even without it. What's missing here -- and indeed, the reason I haven't booted up the game at all since finishing it -- is a sense of urgency, and earned victory. Corypheus started out so threatening but he was defanged faster than you can say "Benezia." By the time I got to DAI's version of Noveria length-wise I felt like I had already as much as won... and absolutely nothing in the finale changed that. It was really awkward, watching a great epilogue but feeling disconnected from it. Certainly it was the first time I've ever experienced this strange sensation from a BioWare game. It's rough.

Inquisition really, really needed an extra mission. And it really needed some better pacing, too. I loathe how shortwinded certain cutscenes feel relative to other BioWare games, and especially relative to all the open-world content that didn't engage me because that's just not the type of player I am.

End of the day, I think I still like the game. Weirdly, it possesses most of my favorite moments in a Dragon Age title. They're just... so... stretched-out, and none of them have anything to do with the conclusion. Makes for an awkward limbo that compelled me to eject the disc in emotional confusion and boot up Mass Effect for another trilogy run. I'll buy the DLC for DAI so long as it isn't advertised as, like, "introducing a new region to explore!" or something similarly catastrophic, and I think it's a better chapter than DA2, but yeah, it has issues.

[Yokokorama]

Forced deaths don't define a good game or emotional depth.  The possibility of a death occurring based on bad judgment calls is all well, but when a game force-feeds you the extermination of squad-mates and companions no matter what you do, it kind of takes away from the 'your choices matter' idea. 

[JeffZero]

Nice straw man. A good story has an arc; a sort of progression and change over time. There should be lessons learned, and yes, there should be losses and setbacks. Loss connects us more emotionally to the protagonist, gives us a reason to hate the antagonist, and adds a sense of importance and urgency to the story. The only "loss" in this game, and unsurprisingly, the most lauded portion of the story by far is the loss of Haven and the acquisition of Skyhold.

Why does this part of the story seem so popular? Because it made the threat personal. It made the threat "real". The losses of personnel you may incur are not really that weighty because you barely know the the NPC's at that point. However, you are run out of your base of operations, and you feel isolated and vulnerable for a period of time. The storytelling was great up to and slightly after this point. Everything after this point had basically no emotional connection for me at all, I barely cared about what was happening, and felt no sense of urgency sitting within my seemingly impregnable fortress that is never in any danger.

Let's look back at some previous BW games that employed these narrative tactics to great effect:

ME1: Saren hijacks the conduit and launches a surprise attack on the heart of the galactic government.




ME2: The Collectors--following the orders of Harbinger--board your ship and kidnap your crew.




DAII: One of your companions commits an act of terrorism, and single-handedly starts a war.




KotOR: Malak kidnaps Bastilla and turns her to the dark side.



Need I go on? The important thing about all of these is that they usually occur toward the end of the story, and segue to the climax.

Amen.

DAI gave us that sense you described much earlier on, which is cool, but an emotional follow-up is necessary if you're going to write things in such a fashion. The ante needs upping, or at least matching, later on. Instead, we just hunted him down like the batarian Zaeed has with him in his ME2 intro scene and went home.

[Farangbaa]

It's not the lack of death that's the problem here, although I do miss that angle. (I've always openly stated that I enjoy tough calls like the Virmire scenario; hell, I off people at the Suicide Mission because I find it more enjoyable narratively.)

Ah the suicide mission. My second biggest gripe about ME2, right after being space dr Phil. (and then people complain about being an errand boy in DA:I.. lol)

All game long they tell it's gonna be harrrddddd, deaths are very likely blablabla. And then you do the thing and even a deaf, blindfolded monkey can finish it with zero casualties.

Talk about anti climax.

[tipper111]

I'm all for a good death scene but a death isn't also necessary in every game tho . why kill a character just for the sake of getting a reaction over story ? I actually liked the card playing scene a lot and thought that was a great way to show the bonds and emotions on a different level .

also if u wanted a death there was a very important one at the end anyway

[tipper111]

tho choosing different options for their person quests or not doing them should result in possibly a death because of it

[Eelectrica]

I have a feeling that if Hawke is left in the fade, he'll/she'll be back anyway.
But yeah I wouldn't have complained if there was a betrayal or a sudden, unexpected death somewhere along the line.

[Joseph Warrick]

Ugh, please stop talking about death and darkness being good for games before we wind up with another Mass Effect 3 ending. 

 

It was bad because it made no sense, not because it was sad. Mordin's death was sad and good.

 

Sad is not a problem. Nonsense is. Nonsensical sadness is, of course, a problem. Case in point: Leandra's death.

[Nyaore]

It was bad because it made no sense, not because it was sad. Mordin's death was sad and good.

 

Sad is not a problem. Nonsense is.

Pretty much this. That ending was horrid from the standpoint that it took an extended cut and several DLC entries to actually have it make any sort of sense. When it was purely straight out of the vanilla packaging it came out of bloody nowhere and was such a tonal shift that I nearly got whiplash trying to deal with it. Just a SMALL amount of back writing would have saved that ending. Perhaps even giving the Catalyst a different motivation that wasn't circular and didn't fly completely in the face of the Rannoch mission we completed hours before where it's possible to make the Geth and Quarians allies to AMAZING effect. Even just removing that choice would have helped. Instead it felt like the writers for the ending didn't get the memo for the rest of the script and you had no choice but to go along with it. Because you cannot tell me that synthetics and organics will never get along when your primary example of such an argument can be made to work together, and with very little lingering animosity at that.

 

I don't mind sad. My headcanon for ME3, as I refused to buy the DLC after that ending, is a lot sadder than what we were given. If I didn't enjoy tragedy I wouldn't be as much of a fan of Berserk as I am today either, and even that breaks my rules about deaths on occasion. But it needs to make sense and not be there simply to manipulate your emotions. That's why I hate the idea of mandatory death in anything unless there is a damn good reason for it. I've long since grown numb to the ploys of writers who feel that throwing a couple deaths in will somehow make me care, consequences and sense be damned. It isn't tragic, it's senseless.

[Joseph Warrick]

Jade Empire is a short, linear game. But it had the cojones to have the villain actually kill the player character as part of the plot. Talk about danger!