39 réponses à ce sujet

[Nefla]

I like to have a lot of small, character defining choices put forth by side quests. The outcome of these choices would usually not be felt beyond those involved or maybe in that small area but to me it adds a lot. The ability to be evil, ruthless, self serving, greedy, racist, etc...or even completely self sacrificing, noble, and standing up for the little guy is also something I sorely missed. For bigger choices I don't expect or even want them to carry on to the next game (beyond a mention or something perhaps) I feel trying to force consequences of a big choice into a new game with a new setting and new characters is just so limiting. It really restricts what you can do in the current game. I do however want to see some result of them in my current game and I want some to turn out better than others. I don't want everything to be equivalent all the time. I also expect more than one ending (and no, epilogue text/slides does not count).

[LinksOcarina]

The Witcher 2 converges again in Act 3 though, as Link noted. They also made irrelevant or outright ignored anything that happened in the Witcher 1, so in terms of a continuing series narrative The Witcher isn't even trying to do what Dragon Age did. Oh, forgive me, when they made Triss the canon romance for Witcher 2, they later patched a codex entry for Shani romance imports explaining why she and Geralt broke up. How well would that fly in the BioWare fanbase, I wonder.

 

If we want a genuine example, the best I can think of is Tactics Ogre LUCT. And it's pretty obvious why a game with no voice-acting and sprites might be able to pull off a true branching narrative whereas doing the same for a Dragon Age game would take ten years and 500 million bucks.

 

Tactics Ogre is a very good example, but it also has limitations because the divergence narrative points come from specific actions you choose. They are telegraphed basically and while they change what happens in game regarding which point you see, much like The Witcher it is ignored between episodes.

 

Rare someone brings it up though, good pull.

[Iakus]

As long as there are save imports or something like the Keep, I would not count on there being any large divergent choices coming about.   Heck even small divergences will make successive games that much harder to handle.

 

What I would like are reactive personal choices.  Things that define the standing of the protagonist at the end.

[CronoDragoon]

As long as there are save imports or something like the Keep, I would not count on there being any large divergent choices coming about.   Heck even small divergences will make successive games that much harder to handle.

 

What I would like are reactive personal choices.  Things that define the standing of the protagonist at the end.

 

I agree.

 

Perhaps this is influenced by my background in the console RPG realm, where player choice is all but nonexistent in most RPGs. I never had nor felt the need for complete freedom, and actually prefer the sort of in-between realm wherein you can make a bunch of small changes to a playthrough that is largely predefined. To me, the Dragon Age series fulfilled its promise of a "personalized world" when I was implicitly presented with the choice to either make Leliana or Cassandra Divine. To the player, as it did for me, this has the potential to be an agonizing choice, especially since I romanced Leliana in Origins and Cassandra in Inquisition. Which relationship is sacrificed, the Warden/Leliana or the Inquisitor/Cassandra? This conundrum has the potential - hell, even the likelihood - to never present itself in someone else's playthrough. The feeling that this complex situation was creating such tension within the player because of choices I had made over the series made me appreciate the value in having imported worlds. It's something that could never have been created in games that value high-consequence choices that won't be carried over to future games.

[Iakus]

I agree.

 

Perhaps this is influenced by my background in the console RPG realm, where player choice is all but nonexistent in most RPGs. I never had nor felt the need for complete freedom, and actually prefer the sort of in-between realm wherein you can make a bunch of small changes to a playthrough that is largely predefined. To me, the Dragon Age series fulfilled its promise of a "personalized world" when I was implicitly presented with the choice to either make Leliana or Cassandra Divine. To the player, as it did for me, this has the potential to be an agonizing choice, especially since I romanced Leliana in Origins and Cassandra in Inquisition. Which relationship is sacrificed, the Warden/Leliana or the Inquisitor/Cassandra? This conundrum has the potential - hell, even the likelihood - to never present itself in someone else's playthrough. The feeling that this complex situation was creating such tension within the player because of choices I had made over the series made me appreciate the value in having imported worlds. It's something that could never have been created in games that value high-consequence choices that won't be carried over to future games.

Yeah, that created a bit of tension in me in my first playthrough which had an Inquisitor romancing Cassandra and a Warden who romanced Leliana.

 

And interestingly, the choice of the new Divine itself is likely to have minimal impact on future games, despite all three having different views on what the Chantry should be.

 

Note they all take the name "Victoria"

[Gothfather]

There are other consequences of 'choice.' The community has been demanding more choice for companions since day one. There are now 12 companions/advisors in DA:I and what is the result? People are complaining that the interaction with companions is shallow. The reason it is shallow is because the total 'dialogue budget' is now divided among 12 companions/advisors and 4 inquisitors. That is 16 actors, 16 different people that need to be paid and that eats up the budget. This is why you never really see Iron bull wondering about his station in life before or after he makes the choice of supporting the chargers or the Qun. Cullen's story of addiction has no weight because its just a few short cut scenes. Cassandra has a crisis of conscience about the seekers but it is resolved in a snap because is has to be truncated.

 

The easy and juvenile response is just increase the budget but this isn't realistic. Games have a finite budget and you can't just increase the budget simply because you as a fan/gamer want the budget to be larger. We as gamers have to accept that if we want large choice of Companions then each individual companion's story and interaction must be decreased for each companion. If we are willing to have fewer companions we can have deeper and richer interactions.  There is no "right" answer but there are consequences to what we 'demand' from bioware's future games.

[Sylvius the Mad]

No need to tell me how the world works, I understand it perfectly, I just don't give a damn, I care about myself and I think anyone who is not in this world for themselves, and ONLY for themselves is stupid.

I'm going to accept this statement at face value.

But if it's true, either your objective here is merely to irritate people, or you're doing a remarkably poor job of advancing your own interests.

[Firky]

I broke up with my love interest. Weird. (Because I've never wanted to do that before.)

 

I was really grumpy and I wanted to have some full on narky dialogue between the two of us for the rest of the game, but he just went back to being himself, without romance.

 

I totally get that the percentage of players breaking it off from any one love interest would be small. There's obviously conditions set for gender, race, romance etc. It'd be cool to just get some unique dialogue, even a line or two, after dumping someone.

 

(Maybe it's just me. )

 

Still, I just had to pretend he was passively aggressively pretending not to care that I dumped him.

[Farangbaa]

The bigger the choices you make, the more you're going to whine in future installments that they didn't matter, or that your particular choice was ignored.

You just have to realize that if the decision has 'too much' effect, you're going to end up with 2 different sequels, based on your decision in the past.

Take Mass Effect 3. The only ways to move forward are:

-Ignore the final decision, act like it never happened.
-Canonize the final decision into one.
-Make 4 different Mass Effect 4s.

We all know the latter ain't gonna happen.

In DA, they could've made the Dark Ritual/OGB a really big thing, but that would've left us with 2 DA:I games or it would render that decision in DA:O pointless.

[LinksOcarina]

The bigger the choices you make, the more you're going to whine in future installments that they didn't matter, or that your particular choice was ignored.

You just have to realize that if the decision has 'too much' effect, you're going to end up with 2 different sequels, based on your decision in the past.

Take Mass Effect 3. The only ways to move forward are:

-Ignore the final decision, act like it never happened.
-Canonize the final decision into one.
-Make 4 different Mass Effect 4s.

We all know the latter ain't gonna happen.

In DA, they could've made the Dark Ritual/OGB a really big thing, but that would've left us with 2 DA:I games or it would render that decision in DA:O pointless.

 

There is an easy fix for the next Mass Effect, assuming it's not a prequel of any kind,and that is selecting the control option because of all the choices, it does the least amount of damage to the known universe. 

 

Of course that will upset myself, who went with Synthesis since I feel it's the true ending, and Destroy of course. Still, thats what I foresee, making a decsion canonical. Wouldn't be the first time...for example Shepard dying at the end of Mass Effect 2 is considered Non-Canonical. 

[AlanC9]

I broke up with my love interest. Weird. (Because I've never wanted to do that before.)
 
I was really grumpy and I wanted to have some full on narky dialogue between the two of us for the rest of the game, but he just went back to being himself, without romance.
 
I totally get that the percentage of players breaking it off from any one love interest would be small. There's obviously conditions set for gender, race, romance etc. It'd be cool to just get some unique dialogue, even a line or two, after dumping someone.
 
(Maybe it's just me. )
 
Still, I just had to pretend he was passively aggressively pretending not to care that I dumped him.

This sounds like a really good feature, but I can see how it would be unlikely to get out of the "nice to have" category.

[Firky]

Funnily enough, I'm just heading to the final bit of the game and there was only one new conversation with my dumpee after I had reason to dump him. I'm sure it's the same as any person who didn't romance him got, just a general conversation.

 

They totally could have put a condition on me dumping him and made one line of, "I will fight for this cause for as long as I must but I will not speak with you again." I would have been like, "OH MAN."

 

This particular romance ended for a reason they'd probably have expected, though. (I wont say why because this is the no spoiler forum.) I guess, if you broke it off early in the game, for various characters, it might ruin their further role in the game where they refuse to talk to you, then happily interject banter during quests and such. But, seriously. One line of "Get stuffed Inquisitor" would have been brill.

[sim-ran]

Well that seems a realistic expectation, since that's something they have done in ME and DAO, and they did it quite well.

Shame they didn't do anything this time round.

[tesla21]

I have to agree, I was afraid this would happen when they said the game was going to be near Skyrim big. I'd prefer a condensed engaging story a thousand times over a tiny good story with like 80% production value (random estimate) going into beatiful gigantic sceneries with shallow quests to fill the spots, DAI's world feels so lifeless and it feels like you don't truly interact with it, all you can do is click the shiny objects and kill the enemies along the way. 

 

I think DA2 happened all over again, this time I suppose they set the bar too high instead of having too little time, ignoring the ridiculous amount of dull Hinterlands quests the game is actually well paced till we reach "mild spoiler?.............." Skyhold but from there onwards I start having that feel that something is missing, like as if they didn't have enough time to finish whay they started to they have to patch up the blank with more mindless dull quests, the core story was more or less fine but I have to say the world had some life to it pre Skyhold like when you go to Val Royeaux for the first time and you meet several people with a short cutscene that leads to more quets... where did that go? That's the kind of thing I was expecting when reaching a new area, find some struggle, get to decide something menial in the grand scheme but with a satisfying inmediate impact. Say you reach (SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD) Western Approach, you take control of the hold but they are in a troublesome position, if you don't help them soon enough they will end up dying being overrun by darkspawn or something of the sort, help them a little and they will hold their own, complete a chain of quests (yes the typical fetch quest but give it some dialogue and quick backstory, let us speak to the quest giver and him to react in someway pls) also where at some point you have to decide something with no impact on the main plot but one choice ends up with a lost hold, another with a destroyed town, so if you lose the hold your inquistion loses power (not the current resource but I mean actual power as if it mattered) lose the civilians and your companions and other factions might not regard you so highly, see your impact on the current world (crestwood is a really nice example of how it could have been), I don't need a god child 3 sequels later to feel that my choices matter, I'd like to be able to roleplay my character as I want in ways that won't screw up the games to come or massively affect ending, I think Origins did it right but there was alot of room for improvement, imagine after doing part of a mainquest and you return to skyhold and your advisors tell you that Cory attacking the Hinterlands witha significant force (just an concept example not to be taking literally) but at the same time a mercenary group like the freemans (or w/e they were called)  are attacking a small town of which one of your companions has family there, so they give you several choices where you can try to same both, dedicate to one or an offensive route where you take out their main hold while they are gone but letting both to their fates. I am not game writer so my examples are not terribly engaging but I would have loved this kind of concept to be used, so what if you lost denerim? after the game ends it can be rebuilt but it could make interesting interactions with companions and how the word thinks of you... 

 

So I would have liked to have smaller, alive places, alive factions like Orlais empire, the tevinters, the freemans, the templars (the whatevers) that react to you in certain ways that don't mess up with the story line. this would be a bad comparison but I will make it anyway, in tellatales games your choices hardly matter at the end of the day but they do affect how you experience the story, I want that sort of choice, I want to make my soldiers look pretty , I want some npcs to admire/fear me depending on what I do even if that means just a difference between 4 or 5 dialogues because that is what ultimately makes the game feel alive I want to be decieved into thinking that I can decide the fate of entire towns and factions (which at the end of the day makes it real for you, it might not be recorded in the history books to come... but YOU know how it played out) the warden aka heroe of ferelden might have the biggest douchebag but if he killed the archdemon then that's what people will remember, I wanted that for my Inquisitor, I don't want halfassed A or B "relevant in the grand scheme choices" I'd like meaningful roleplaying choices like before you reach skyhold the dialogue wheel before they start singing... where I chose that "the burden felt nothing but my own" or something along those lines... that was a great line and I'd wish there was more like that instead of being handed generic responses that are basically "agree but make a grumpy face, firmly agree  or be like whatever let's do it". I want to be able to defile the ashes and kill those who disagreed... let varric tell the "story" of the inquisitor as he wants but let me play as my own inquisitor instead of forcing me to be The Inquisitor, another interesting matter would have been to choose a title as you are given first the Herald of Andraste and then Inquisitor, maybe you can keep playing Herald of Andraste or you can declare yourself emperor or your very own Skyhold at least lol, you can insist that you are divine sent or you can declare to the world that you have apathy towards the chantry, you can be some typical goodie altruist who would go kill some cows if that's what the town needs even if you are powerfull (like you do now .-.) or you can demand a tribute from a town for a "greater purpose" maybe you can save a town from the typical bandit camp or you can pay or intimidate the camp into leaving or let them be as long as they provide support the your cause, etc, etc

 

Bioware just took too much from all sides instead of choosing what kind of game they want and the quality of said game felt it, the story isn't engaging enough to warrant losing most of the ability to roleplay, the sides quests and exploration have no depth or life to them, DAI is just a bunch of good concepts thrown together but without being properly fleshed out similarly DA2 was one great concept but didn't have the development to show it's greatness, even then I think they are complementary in a sense, DA2 has the heart and DAI had the development time and ambition... if said ambition and development time would have been devoted in a dense and defined idea this would have turned out to be a game to remember.

 

 

IMO