I'm not sure I'd say that of Inquisition, but in any case silent protagonists can also feel like cardboard cutouts at times. They don't AUTOMATICALLY have more substance.
Of course not, but silent protagonists put opportunities for RP and character-building into the player's hands rather than the developer's. I don't imagine this is impossible for a VP to achieve, but I haven't seen it done yet.
A voiced character can only have as much substance as the developer creates.
You can use your imagination to make it work as well. Obviously you have to work around what's given, but in the end of the day it's all the same.
People go out of their way to create a character for a blank slate Warden. I find it odd that they don't reciprocate that effort for voiced protagonists.
I figure it's because they're not used to it and would rather keep it traditional. Fair enough, but don't say that you can't make it work.
I'm not really a big fan of silent protagonists in general but in DA's case its different:
The Warden had no voice but a lot of interesting RP possibilities and thats why I never really minded that he/she had no voice because there was so much freedom on how to play the character
I liked Hawke too he/she had the most depth but even though you could determine Hawke's personality there was not much room for RP, Hawke was more of a pre defined protagonist
With the Inquisitor it seems that they tried to combine them both (voice + creating your own character) and sadly they failed
There are no interesting RP possibilities and even though the Inquisitor is voiced he has no personality or depth but is rather bland like I mentioned in another thread (but lets focus on voice or no voice here)
With a possible DA4 I think its clear that races will return and the approach will be similiar to DA:I where you can make your own character instead of someone like Hawke
Thats why I vote for no voice! Anyone agree?
I think they failed to offer enough choice with the voice along with being inaccurate with your word selection not matching what your inquisitor says. You pick "No damn way!" with the red fist listed as your emotion and your inquisitor says " gosh mister we shouldn't do that".
If you are going pay someone to do voice acting, and give us choices in what is said - be accurate and increase the amount of options to give the character more depth. Also stop writing for people unfamiliar with the series. At this point, we're going into game 4 - does my character really need to ask what the Chantry's purpose is? What do the wardens do? Why is the sky blue? Does Leliana sleep with anyone and everyone? We sure like to assume apparently.
People may need to go read a wiki if they want some background or maybe you can build it right into the game - Hey if you are new to the series please read this!
It need a lot more tuning but I prefer the voiced much more.
What I would love however is a protagonist that have good acting skills. The more I play the more I realize that I'm having a bigger problem with the facial and bodily animation and think that it contributes to how the voice itself comes across.
You can use your imagination to make it work as well. Obviously you have to work around what's given, but in the end of the day it's all the same.
People go out of their way to create a character for a blank slate Warden. I find it odd that they don't reciprocate that effort for voiced protagonists.
I want DA:O full text dialog on screen and RP possibility's and voiced protagonist, nothing less nothing more. And you know you want same think as me, if you not you lying to yourself.
They are still limited by the lines the developer creates. Those limitations aren't as hard and fast, because they can put their own imagined spin on the delivery of each line, but they are still limited by the developer.They can have exactly as much substance as the player's imagination allows.
A voiced character can only have as much substance as the developer creates.
That's the difference. I'm sorry you don't feel the same.
This [erroneously] assumes that a silent protagonist automatically has more substance than one that is voiced.
It is far more useful and versatile. Since this is a Role Playing Game, or at least still pretends to be one, versatility is good.
1) Silent protagonists cost less.
2) Silent protagonists allows more lines for the protagonists. Compare the Hero of Ferelden's options of things they can say versus the Champion's and the Inquisitor's.
3) Ties in with my second point and that is it allows for more roleplaying options. You as a player will not be forced to restrict yourself to merely three options which are one extreme, the other extreme and the middle ground.
4) Relates to my third point. Voiced protagonists make perfect sense for a game where a character is already fixed and has a fixed set of personalities. For example it makes sense for Geralt, Adam Jensen or Lara Crof to be voice acted. They are fixed, that is to say, Geralt will still be a male witcher no matter what happens and Lara will still be a female human. When you are making a game where the protagonist can be one of 4 four races with 2 sex variations,it makes little sense to voice them.
5) Voiced protagonists drive a game to be more cinematic oriented as opposed to gameplay oriented. I prefer gameplay oriented games.
6) The positives of a voiced protagonist is minimal in that it boils down to things like emotions and feelings. Things which can be replicated using facial expressions or gameplay.
On the other hand, you can never be 100% certain what each paraphrased dialogue choice will say or mean, nor the full implication of the inflection, emotion or tone the character will deliver until the choice is already made and the character you created is breaking itself.
This I concede to be true, but I think this is more of a result of paraphrasing the dialogue options rather than the protagonist being voiced.
I know some game testers made a conclusion that reading the full lines then hearing it may be tedious, so I suppose there's some relationship.
I honestly believe a compromise of sorts can be to include only the first line of spoken dialogue every time there's a dialogue choice prompt.
Most dialogue choices are rather obvious in their intent, but it would be great to include the tone wheel more generally to include regular conversations with broader speech patterns like "Condescending", "Helpful", "Inquisitive", etc...
They are still limited by the lines the developer creates. Those limitations aren't as hard and fast, because they can put their own imagined spin on the delivery of each line, but they are still limited by the developer.
Playing DA:O I never felt limits I always have proper response my character would say. Sometimes I even get better line than myself would say. In DA:2 and DA:I is not just worse it horrible I don't know what i am picking and what I pick is not even same character say. Hawke at least have personality. Inquisitor is just Arishok don't get me wrong I love Arishok but it's not personality for main character.
That being said, I do wish the dialogue wheel represented the actual dialogue a bit better instead of stuff like "I don't know what to say" turning into "Well... sh*t." That was horrible.
I thought the worst offender was "they are wrong" that became "i'm not the Herald, especially not of Andraste" I was like, "hey, Inky, I was not aware you had any problems with Andraste, get off the hate wagon!"
The "i'm happy I could help" that became "I'm happy you are better" was also bad but in reversed, because implications for the personality of my character are very different and I did not sign up to play a self-centered tart, thankfully what IQ actually said was different.
It need a lot more tuning but I prefer the voiced much more.
What I would love however is a protagonist that have good acting skills. The more I play the more I realize that I'm having a bigger problem with the facial and bodily animation and think that it contributes to how the voice itself comes across.
That's Bioware's dilemma - they took flak for making Hawke too animated, too emotional, too defined. So they scaled back the amount of body language and tone inflection to be more moderate to allow different types of characters - such as one who would never lose their cool and shout, or someone who wished to never betray their emotions - to not come in conflict.
It's the problem with voicing a character while also giving the player the ability to create and role play their own creation. There is a thread on this same front page that complains of the Inquisitor being too bland - just like with a lot of the complaints about DA:I, Bioware is trying to be all things to all people. There isn't a magic middle ground that can do both without far more investment than Bioware is willing to spend.
The future will be, in my opinion, the path of least resistance. More defined protagonists, more scripted responses, less role-playing options. It is more palpable, easier to control, easier to implement. Otherwise Bioware would have to include a dozen different voices and an insane amount of control over everything, from body language to volume of voice to the overt nature of their emotions. Easier to just make Hawke 2.0 for the next game.
Yep. Too many cooks spoiled the soup. Trying to be everything to everyone is never ever going to work out unless one has unlimited funding.
I prefer voiced protagonists to be honest, they have a life to them that my Warden didn't.
I prefer voiced.
That being said, I also very much doubt BioWare would go back to the silent.
blandness aside.
Why are we conflating neutrality with blandness though.
Dialogue options in Inquisition aren't split into 3 personality archetypes as they were in DAO and DA2.
Several times, the three dialogue options were simply three approaches you can take to enhance the conversation and is independent of the personality archetypes.
Is that blandness? Does the character have to stick to an extreme personality type to remain interesting?
If anything the Inquisitor is very much like the Warden, except for the vocal part.
Let's not kid ourselves and make the implication that a silent protagonist can sound "in many different ways".
If you're generally polite, you're going to always sound "polite" and picking aggressive options when necessary will be "aggressive", much like the Inquisitor. Will a douche Warden always be biting people's heads off?
It's all theoretical dramatization really. I don't see the discrepency. There's an issue with paraphrasing not properly conveying the intended reply, but that same argument can be applied to the Warden.
"Why are you telling me this?" when speaking to Alistair can be misconstrued as a polite, mocking, or aggressive response.
So you don't know how your character is talking either. You only figure it out after it's spoken.
Basically, the reaction of the people you're talking to can contradict your intended tone or will ignore it altogether.
This can make the conversation rather one-sided. The companions are therefore more neutral to your character. So there's a loss there.
It's not as simple as you make it out to be...
Modifié par Lebanese Dude, 13 février 2015 - 03:16 .
That's Bioware's dilemma - they took flak for making Hawke too animated, too emotional, too defined. So they scaled back the amount of body language and tone inflection to be more moderate to allow different types of characters - such as one who would never lose their cool and shout, or someone who wished to never betray their emotions - to not come in conflict.
There is a middle ground for everything and frankly Inquisitor is also very defined macho guy even when it's a she in which cases it becomes comical, so they definitely didn't nailed neutrality and moderation here, even if this was potentially their intend. But my bigger issue is the rigid posture and lack of interaction and gestures, i don't remember Hawke having much of it either. Plus the animation in itself is robotic.
On the other hand the facial animation suffers not from neutrality but from being just plain bad, partially because it's poorly tuned to the face skeleton and partially because it is too simplistic. It's like watching a school play. It doesn't work for the kind of realism they went, it lacks micro-expressions and general nuances. It's not convincing and the mechanics that makes one expression stuck to the face for very long makes it even worse
What's funny to me is that Skyrim, one of the best selling RPGs of all time, has a silent protagonist.
Somebody cares about their character in ES games? News to me.
On the other hand, you can never be 100% certain what each paraphrased dialogue choice will say or mean, nor the full implication of the inflection, emotion or tone the character will deliver until the choice is already made and the character you created is breaking itself.
20 years ago Wing Commander was doing voiced dialogue with choices and you got to hear what the selection would sound like when you howered over the option. Things have come a long way since then - seems like this could be an option, although I'm not sure if it would really help or hinder. It does lead to some amusement as you continuosly hover back and forth between the options making your character sound like he's being mixed by a DJ.
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