39 réponses à ce sujet

[boodica]

I don't mind not knowing the exact dialogue, or even some suprises, but Bioware could do a better job of making the dialogue circle "blurbs" more accurately reflect what your character actually says.

[Kantr]

Sarcastic Hawke is best Hawke

[Koneko Koji]

I must admit that Origins is my favourite of the games for many reasons - and this dialogue issue is one of them; I like to make an informed choice about how I'm going to react to the people I'm conversing with, and like others here - I find myself very frustrated and thrown out of the story when weird dialogue happens.

[Noelemahc]

Exhibit A: The Secret of Monkey Island.

 

As a SCUMM game, and therefore the pinnacle of game design, it and its ilk employed a straightforward dialogue system - your options were the lines your character would say (and NOBODY minded the repetition back then), except the ONE time where it didn't and it was done for comedic purpose and it was funny as heck.

It worked precisely because of the repetition, and because it was straightforward and comprehensible.

 

Exhibit B: Alpha Protocol.

 

As a Fallout-derivative with obvious Mass Effect influences, it, too, has a dialogue wheel. Except for the most part you're choosing a 'mood' of your response, AND you're on a timer, if you don't pick an option quickly, a random one gets chosen or you don't say anything at all, which is a response in and of itself, and since the game was delayed a bajillion times, it got overengineered to the point where the outcome of each option or non-option affect the plot flow differently.

 

And it works. It works because it gives you a sense of tension, it works because some dialogues leave you more time to decide than others, and in some the not-answer is fixed rather than random (i.e. instead of a quick-witted lie you choke on the answer), and so on.

It also works because Mike isn't YOUR character, he has a fixed full name and appearance and sexual preference, and therefore he's not fully yours to customize. It's justified, in a way, that you can't fully control what he says.

 

But the big problem? The big problem is that BioWare has been listening to us complain about this since the first Mass Effect (which had a few cases of "all the options LOOK different, but produce the same line, but its context is altered by our choice", which was BRILLIANT, as it was close to KotOR's "[Lie] I want to be a Jedi Knight") and still haven't done anything to change the system other than introduce the emoticons in DA2 and then take even that away.

 

It's closely related to the "Paragon is Lawful Good and Renegade is Chaotic Evil even though we promised that that would not be how the system would work when we promoted the game" problem - it's like we're speaking a different language than BioWare's writers and editors are.

[FOE]

It'd be very hard to implement, if you want complete verbal recognition. The game isn't sentient as you'd think.  It's usually written by programmers with a certain set of variables to choose from - a closed loop of choices.  I'd welcome a way for you to type what you mean, or more of a dialogue choice.  Play Dragon Age Origins....that was good.  It at least allowed you to choose a few variables.  DA:2 and DA:I is what?  A circle of two choices?

[Noelemahc]

This reminds me of Fallout's "ask about" button which was merely a shout-out to Wasteland with a bunch of easter eggs thrown in.

There's a reason it was removed in subsequent installments.

[goofydoofy]

I disagree with this request. I like not knowing exactly what will be said. It forces me to pay attention and enjoy the play out of conversation. Otherwise I'd skip through and miss out.

[Innsmouth Dweller]

i swear, dialogue wheel is a troll

 

1 "of course i'll help you"

2 "what's in it for me?"

3 "there is no time"

 

so i pick 3, cuz yeah, i like being cruel to pixelated people. that's not very cruel option, but it'll have to do (paragon/renegade crap). and what happens?

"no time to loose, let's do this asap!"

[atlantico]

i swear, dialogue wheel is a troll

 

1 "of course i'll help you"

2 "what's in it for me?"

3 "there is no time"

 

so i pick 3, cuz yeah, i like being cruel to pixelated people. that's not very cruel option, but it'll have to do (paragon/renegade crap). and what happens?

"no time to loose, let's do this asap!"

 

Wow, that's like early Sierra quality, where you had to be able to guess how the developer's mind worked. 

 

Progress!

[Sylvius the Mad]

Unfortunately, the devs say they've already tested something like this during DA2's development, and it failed. People liked the dialogue system better without the feature than with it. Apparently, lots of players used the feature and then found themselves annoyed with getting the same line twice, once written and once spoken.

But lots of players also dislike not knowing what their characters will say.

There needs to be an option to see more text.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I don't mind not knowing the exact dialogue, or even some suprises, but Bioware could do a better job of making the dialogue circle "blurbs" more accurately reflect what your character actually says.

They did do a better job in DAI than they managed in DA2 or the ME games, but the full text would still be better.

I don't think surprises are ever acceptable. To roleplay effectively, the player needs to inhabit the mind of his character. But if the player is doing that, he'll have perfect knowledge of what the character will say or do. And paraphrase prevents that.

The paraphrase system is directly hostile to roleplaying.

[Panda]

Yep same. When I play red Hawke and chose red option I never know if lighthearted joke or offensive insult is going to come out. I mean there has been very many times I have been suprised what my characters says cause the option I chose sounded so different to me than what the result was.

[Xiomara]

The discrepancy between what it says on the wheel and what the Inquisitor actually says does bother me at times. I remember being irritated by it in Solas' personal quest in particular. I chose the option to tell the mages that we weren't here to help them (because well....we weren't) but Quizzy instead says something rather hostile to Solas. Something like "we were supposed to help your "friend" (and she does say friend like it has quotation marks) any idea how we help a demon?" That made me feel like a dick. It didn't bother me in DA2 with sarcastic Hawke because the dialogue was hilarious and I just knew Hawke would come out with something ridiculous. It was an added bonus tbh.

[xLawGamerx]

For me, one of the biggest problems was that there was frequently very little substantial difference between the various conversation options. At first, I thought this was poor voice acting; I tried both the male inquisitor voices and they both had the same problem - their line readings came across as really bland and unemotional. In short, my Inquisitor didn't have very much of a personality, even as I tried to shape it with the "emotional" choices.

 

However, after giving it some thought, I realized that it wasn't so much the voice acting as it was the way the lines were structured. If you really pay attention, you'll notice that the Inquisitor has very few declaratory responses. Instead, his or her responses are almost always phrased as a question, or if it's phrased as a statement, it's a statement that clearly has a question hanging off the end of it. This has the consequence of making your Inquisitor more of a sounding board for the other characters to develop their own personalities than it is for your Inquisitor to develop one of his or her own.

 

Overall, I think there are a few changes that BioWare needs to make that would improve the system. First, they should adopt the system from Deus Ex. It gave you a radial that included the tone and the entire line, so you knew not only what your character was going to say, but also how that line was going to come out. 

 

Second, for those conversations that involve "emotional" choices, they need to put a timer on the decision, like the one in Alpha Protocol. The problem right now is that although I may have a visceral reaction to a particular situation, the lack of a timer on my choice means that the "gamer" half of my brain takes over and I tend to pick the choice allowing me maximum flexibility, as opposed to actually engaging with the emotion I felt.

 

For example, in my play through, during the quest involving

Spoiler

Sera and the noble, she went off the handle and killed him against my orders

. I was initially pretty pissed off, and if I'd been limited to maybe 5-7 second to make a decision in the moment, I would definitely have kicked her out. However, because I wasn't on a timer I stopped to think throughout he consequences (i.e. if I kick her out, I won't see that content, maybe I miss out on a future reward, etc). That type of thinking isn't conducive to roleplaying. 

 

Finally, and I think this is a big one - your character needs to have more declaratory responses. This isn't a game of Jeopardy. I should have some control over my Inquisitor's personality. If I want to have an opinion on a particular topic, I should declare that opinion, not approach it obliquely with a question directed at someone else.

[Frond]

But if they make us able to see what we're going to actually say we'll all notice that 2/3s of the dialogue is not any different.