129 réponses à ce sujet

[Commander Rpg]

Gaider elaborated a bit more on his blog, but since he shut it down I lack the means of recovering it.

 

Cue CSI-BSN. 

 

3 - You shall not take the name of LORD GAIDER in vain.

 

Or else he will find your lack of faith disturbing, more than his scenes.

[Burnouts3s3]

Again, if you want to find something David Gaider made on a Tumblr, you can find it here.

 

http://the-gaider-ar...blr.com/archive

[Gwydden]

Well, obviously you're a cis-gendered member of the established patriarchy. You can only think of raping others.

/sarcasm

Frankly, I find it completely nonsensical. And, no offense meant to the writing team, more than a little hypocritical.

 

If the issue is the PC having sex with someone pretending to be someone other than they are, just take a look at Blackwall and potentially Solas (I understand that whether sex occurred or not is left up in the air).

 

If the issue is the PC raping someone else, they already did that. If you're a mage you can literally blackmail a desire demon into having sex with you under threat of death during the Redcliffe quest. I guess desire demons are fair game, the sluts.

 

PS: Since I know some people have a hard time detecting sarcasm, well... that last thing I said before the PS? Sarcasm.

[wolfhowwl]

I thought this thread might have been about gameplay or other design issues but instead it is filled with inane culture war drivel.

 

Given where we are I probably should have expected that all along.

[KotorEffect3]

This online culture war is downright hilarious to watch.  I can't  stand Sarkeesian (don't like feminists in general) but she has gotten what she has wanted, all the controversy surrounding her has allowed her to play the martyr.  People like her love the negative attention it allows them to martyr themselves.  Of course some of these ranting idiots from Gamergate don't exactly help either, they see an "SJW" (hate that term) conspiracy under every rock.   These people are beyond paranoid and delusional.  I'd rather just play my games and slay demons, darkspawn, husks, dragons, and reapers.  I just want to be the hero of thedas and the savior of the galaxy in peace and I don't want either side shoving their respective politics down my throat and I mean both sides.  Commander Shepard has no patience for political agendas and neither do I.

[Linkenski]

To me it comes back to the development culture as being part of EA that has overtaken a lot of Bioware's internal culture. Bear in mind that since their EA aquisition there has also been a lot of new developers on board who came directly from other EA-owned studios. I think a lot of the montreal devs are directly from previous EA subgroups, but also note that the EA-founded studio behind Dead Space was actually very good to their first two games. Some of the most memorable last gen games IMO.

 

It was obvious they started aiming for popularity when they, again, obviously ripped off Gears of War for Mass Effect 2 and then even to a further extent with Mass Effect 3 (press V to look at setpiece, up their...!) and then with Dragon Age it there was at least some original attempts at aiming for a more general audience with Dragon Age 2 and its "Button = Awesome, Awesome = Button, Connect it "Awesome Button!"" - David Silverman but for DA:I they were obviously ripping off Skyrim (Emphasis on dragons roaming the land, horseback riding and open-world-ish game-design) and literally the first thing I noticed when I played it was, "Huh, left-stick to ping-search for herbs and loot... The Witcher 2, anyone?".

 

It's just become a joke at this point. I would love to see Bioware going back to making their original risky ideas happen but I think the reality is, they're a bigger company now, owned by a notorious publisher that only sees games as products for business and profit and nothing more (means they can be hard to bargain with) and taking risks and having original ideas head-first is just harder to have with so many cooks in the kitchen.

 

I also think Marty O'Donnel whom was fired at Bungie last year (famous for all the Halo-Bungie music scores) had an interview in which he uses his usual golden-egg analogy. Check it out. I think it's a good description of what could be happening to some of the EA-Bioware relationship or simply Bioware-creative-leads.

 

http://www.xboxachie...ve-People”.html

[wolfhowwl]

"It was obvious they started aiming for popularity when they, again, obviously ripped off Gears of War for Mass Effect 2 and then even to a further extent with Mass Effect 3"

 

Thank goodness too. ME1's combat was absolute horseshit and ME2 and ME3 demolish it in the gameplay department.

[The Love Runner]

I didn't mind the combat mechanics in the first Mass Effect, it was the range of the weapons that would give me a little trouble.

[KotorEffect3]

To me it comes back to the development culture as being part of EA that has overtaken a lot of Bioware's internal culture. Bear in mind that since their EA aquisition there has also been a lot of new developers on board who came directly from other EA-owned studios. I think a lot of the montreal devs are directly from previous EA subgroups, but also note that the EA-founded studio behind Dead Space was actually very good to their first two games. Some of the most memorable last gen games IMO.

 

It was obvious they started aiming for popularity when they, again, obviously ripped off Gears of War for Mass Effect 2 and then even to a further extent with Mass Effect 3 (press V to look at setpiece, up their...!) and then with Dragon Age it there was at least some original attempts at aiming for a more general audience with Dragon Age 2 and its "Button = Awesome, Awesome = Button, Connect it "Awesome Button!"" - David Silverman but for DA:I they were obviously ripping off Skyrim (Emphasis on dragons roaming the land, horseback riding and open-world-ish game-design) and literally the first thing I noticed when I played it was, "Huh, left-stick to ping-search for herbs and loot... The Witcher 2, anyone?".

 

It's just become a joke at this point. I would love to see Bioware going back to making their original risky ideas happen but I think the reality is, they're a bigger company now, owned by a notorious publisher that only sees games as products for business and profit and nothing more (means they can be hard to bargain with) and taking risks and having original ideas head-first is just harder to have with so many cooks in the kitchen.

 

I also think Marty O'Donnel whom was fired at Bungie last year (famous for all the Halo-Bungie music scores) had an interview in which he uses his usual golden-egg analogy. Check it out. I think it's a good description of what could be happening to some of the EA-Bioware relationship or simply Bioware-creative-leads.

 

http://www.xboxachie...ve-People”.html

Because a franchise with the name "Dragon Age" wouldn't have dragons in it am I right?    Skyrim does nothing that hasn't been done before.  I love Skyrim but people need to stop pretending that it is so original.  Next you are going to say that dragon age ripped swords and magic from TES as well.   And the trees, don't forget about the trees.  Besides DAI is not truly open world.  Just very big level design.  BTW why aren't you accusing TW3 of ripping off skyrim?   If anything TW3 feels like it is trying to be both Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption.

[Linkenski]

"It was obvious they started aiming for popularity when they, again, obviously ripped off Gears of War for Mass Effect 2 and then even to a further extent with Mass Effect 3"

 

Thank goodness too. ME1's combat was absolute horseshit and ME2 and ME3 demolish it in the gameplay department.

I think there were other ways to improve the combat than to mimic Gears of War, and I also think there were other ways to improve upon stuff like the Mako rather than the "it doesn't work, let's remove it" approach or the "it doesn't work, let's just copy what's successful" approach.

 

I was playing some Metal Gear the other day and I was taken aback once again by how different and fresh it feels, since it has shooter mechanics but they don't feel traditional especially since you're not supposed to play it like a shooting gallery.

 

I know that's kind of irrelevant, but I'm just saying I think Bioware has been segregating what Mass Effect is as a franchise and story from how it reflects on that with its gameplay, more and more with the sequels, and I wish they could just try out their own ideas a little more. I didn't mind the hokie mechanics of Mass Effect 1. I really missed the freedom of being able to crouch in 2, or the "oomph" feeling the sniper has when you finally nail the shot, or the RPG abilities and how much their attributes affected the finnicky balances of gameplay.

 

When Mass Effect 3 came out I was happy to see it was a bit more free in terms of RPG mechanics (except for the dialogue being automatic half of the time) but I was bummed that a lot of variety in missions had been changed so it was more just shooting gallery after shooting gallery, whereas Mass Effect 1 had some rewarding class-talents like hacking and stuff. The "streamlining" has to end. I'm just really tired of it.

[giveamanafish...]

To me it comes back to the development culture as being part of EA that has overtaken a lot of Bioware's internal culture. 

 

It's just become a joke at this point. I would love to see Bioware going back to making their original risky ideas happen but I think the reality is, they're a bigger company now, owned by a notorious publisher that only sees games as products for business and profit and nothing more (means they can be hard to bargain with) and taking risks and having original ideas head-first is just harder to have with so many cooks in the kitchen.

 

I also think Marty O'Donnel whom was fired at Bungie last year (famous for all the Halo-Bungie music scores) had an interview in which he uses his usual golden-egg analogy. Check it out. I think it's a good description of what could be happening to some of the EA-Bioware relationship or simply Bioware-creative-leads.

 

http://www.xboxachie...ve-People”.html

The reference you make to Marty O'Donnell seems kind of strange. I don't know of any other game development companies that have in-house composers. Usually they bring these in on a game by game basis, with the idea that the music required will depend on the game and story-line. The reason he might have been dismisssed may have just as much due to creative as opposed to business decisions -- they may have seen the need for new ideas. The application to Bioware would make sense if EA had forced them to hire a particular composer for DAI, possibly because he was already on contract and available for cheap, which as far as I know isn't true. Sounds like sour grapes.

 

I also take issue with your claim that the DA franchise has moved away from risk-taking in their story-telling. To me, yeah I enjoyed DAO but story wise it was a generic big hero, big enemy, medieval fairy tale solidly based on the cliches and conventions of the genre. (Awakening: "A dwarf who smells like a brewery, you hardly ever see that").. DA2 was to me much more an adult-oriented story, taking greater risks within the genre (a lot of BSNers hated Hawke because they considered him a loser), and introducing some memorable and unique characters. DAI maybe was a more conventional but also dealt with issues of faith and religion in ways that you don't expect in conventional story-telling besides the whole Krem, Dorian,, Iron Bull, Sera thingis).

 

 

Just like music and movies. Games are now big name enough to be a part of the problem of a lack in creativity. Because creativity is too risky to sell. Safe and proven formulas are better.

Yeah. two movies were recently released that made the top 2 in box office receipts "Mad Max" and "Pitch Perfect 2". Both were sequels or long awaited continuations of existing franchises. However, both of these franchises started out as runaway, come from nowhere hits that were made on minuscle budgets compared to most movies and probably compared to their sequels. That's kind of the basic dynamic in the entertainment industry: you milk profitable IPs for all that they're worth, but you also have to find ways to create the next big thing (google "economic profits" and compare to "economic rent").

 

It's not like people in charge of big corporations don't have MBAs and have studied these kind of issues to death, possibly wrote theses on them.

 

Interesting nuance about the Mad Max vs Pitch Perfect thing. Of the two Mad Max took the most risks, introducing a strong female character played by Academy Award winner Charlize Theron, and also received the greater critical aclaim. However, although both were highly profitable, the more conventional Pitch Perfect outperformed Mad Max . I don't know.

[God]

To an extent.

 

My issue is that they're more concerned with being PC, feminist, and liberal, even for my tastes. 

 

Like all the (to be blunt) pandering to the LGBT crowd, pushing of female player characters, and overt attempts at inclusivity to the detriment of narrative.

[wolfhowwl]

Agree with you on the Mako. Mass Effect's combat? Nah. There's no other direction they could've gone in that wouldn't have come off as different for the sake of different and there's no guarantee whatever they did would have worked. Gears of War set the bar for third-person cover shooters. Mass Effect was a poor, third-person cover shooter. It needed to be better and they had obvious inspiration to pull from.

 

Huh, I just described the very lack of creativity I was talking about.

 

Yeah, ME1 was already heavily shooter-based, the cover mechanic was just busted and the shooting part controlled like **** and was tied to horrible stat-based aiming. The game was a discordant mess that felt like they had wanted to pander to the RPG crowd by shoving in (shallow and often poor) RPG elements while making it play sort of like a shooter to bring in the masses. The actual combat was miserable.

 

Sure they could have gone off in a different direction but the obvious evolution was to fix the cover mechanic, drop the stats for aiming, and deliver something actually playable which they did with ME2. ME2 was light years better in the feel and responsiveness of the combat.

 

ME1 was not a deep complex RPG anyways, the series was always a simple console action-RPG to begin with, at least with ME2 and ME3 the action part was fun.

[wolfhowwl]

I think there were other ways to improve the combat than to mimic Gears of War, and I also think there were other ways to improve upon stuff like the Mako rather than the "it doesn't work, let's remove it" approach or the "it doesn't work, let's just copy what's successful" approach.

ME1 already put a huge emphasis on shooting and clearly wanted to be played like a TPS, the combat system was just absolutely terrible at it and needed to be completely overhauled. Looking at the game that set the genre standard is an obvious and sensible move when designing the action base for your action role-playing game. If anything it would be foolish to ignore the well-designed mechanics that have already been developed and fit your game and instead flail around trying to create your own system when your designers were clearly out of their depth as ME1 indicated.

In an ideal world the Mako would be completely overhauled. However we live in the world with limited time and resources and it couldn't be vastly improved it should be cut because it was complete **** in ME1. Many things in ME1 were done so poorly that they brought down the entire game so ME2 was a better experience just for their absence.

If we're talking about adding RPG mechanics I would love to see more reactivity in scenarios with things like class checks and party checks in a future Mass Effect game but the changes to the combat system in this series is one of the things they did right.

[Bayonet Hipshot]

To an extent.

 

My issue is that they're more concerned with being PC, feminist, and liberal, even for my tastes. 

 

Like all the (to be blunt) pandering to the LGBT crowd, pushing of female player characters, and overt attempts at inclusivity to the detriment of narrative.

 

This is what many mainstream media in the West are doing so yes, Bioware is going too mainstream. 

[Linkenski]

ME1 already put a huge emphasis on shooting and clearly wanted to be played like a TPS, the combat system was just absolutely terrible at it and needed to be completely overhauled. Looking at the game that set the genre standard is an obvious and sensible move when designing the action base for your action role-playing game. If anything it would be foolish to ignore the well-designed mechanics that have already been developed and fit your game and instead flail around trying to create your own system when your designers were clearly out of their depth as ME1 indicated.

In an ideal world the Mako would be completely overhauled. However we live in the world with limited time and resources and it couldn't be vastly improved it should be cut because it was complete **** in ME1. Many things in ME1 were done so poorly that they brought down the entire game so ME2 was a better experience just for their absence.

If we're talking about adding RPG mechanics I would love to see more reactivity in scenarios with things like class checks and party checks in a future Mass Effect game but the changes to the combat system in this series is one of the things they did right.

But for example, they could've kept the emphasis on charge-weaponry. I was happy to see some more heat-based weapons in Mass Effect 3 but I hope in Mass Effect 4 we'd get a 50/50 arsenal of reload equipment and charge weaponry just because it feels more futuristic IMO.

 

 

The reference you make to Marty O'Donnell seems kind of strange. I don't know of any other game development companies that have in-house composers. Usually they bring these in on a game by game basis, with the idea that the music required will depend on the game and story-line. The reason he might have been dismisssed may have just as much due to creative as opposed to business decisions -- they may have seen the need for new ideas. The application to Bioware would make sense if EA had forced them to hire a particular composer for DAI, possibly because he was already on contract and available for cheap, which as far as I know isn't true. Sounds like sour grapes.

The Marty O'Donnell reference was not meant to highlight a composer problem at Bioware, lol. Replace "composer" with "talent" and that's what I meant. I think the main writers have been running out of steam and it's just starting to show, especially in DA:I. The amount of padded dialogue and conversations that go nowhere is worse than ever, and those extremely brief companion quests were also insubstantial. I can't help but feel they've used up most of their ideas.

[Jester]

Romance in these games add an extra layer of complexity to interactions and such. But they often feel forced and unnatural; it's like they exist solely now so players don't start raging about their absence. I remember when I started talking to Cassandra and saw the heart shape icon pop up and I remember then thinking how artificial it felt and how out of place it felt compared to literally every other dialogue choice that was available.

The main problem I have with BioWare romances now, is that they follow this artifical and unrealistic scheme of "be nice and give compliments until sex falls out". 

Seriously, every romance goes like this:

1. Be nice (before Dragon Age II at least there weren't heart shaped options...).

2. Give compliments.

3. Solve their personal issue.

4. You get sex. 

5. Some further mentions among party members about your "relationship".

6. Final scene and discussion with a "love interest" at the end of the game.

 

Literally every romance goes like that - it completely lacks believabilty (seriously, despite what all those "friendzoned" guys on 9gag and similar sites complain about, real relationships don't work like that) and is shallow as hell. 

It basically establishes sex as a reward for some long quest, which is absurd and nonsensical. 

 

It's funny, how the most enjoyable and believable romance BioWare has ever written and designed was Viconia romance in Baldur's Gate II, which was like 15 freaking years ago and in a game that uses tech which is now ancient.

This romance mostly didn't even have voice acting! Or facial animations (barely even character models...)! And yet it was well written, emotional and believable (because of how damaged a person Viconia was).

 

And those were completely optional interactions in the game... Now it seems like 10% of all resources go into designing romances, and yet they're so poorly written it's unbelievable. 

 

Short one-night stands that Geralt has with Ves in The Witcher 2 or Keira in The Witcher 3 have more emotion and believability than anything I have encountered romance-wise in BioWare games since year 2000. 

And people say that The Witcher is objectifying women... I think that encouraging people to think that women pay in sex for compliments and good deeds is far more objectifying and insulting. 

Of course Witcher 1 actually DID objectify women - the problem is, that they learned from their mistakes - while BioWare is doing the exact same thing since the original KotOR. 

[Jester]

I'm all for improvements, but at the same time, I wouldn't want to spend too much time with it. It's just silly fun anyways. I don't want to simulate actual romance.

There's far too much emphasis placed on it already for my taste. I can hardly speak to anyone in Inqusition without hearts popping out near dialogue options. But if they want to do it in such abundance, let it be natural and well written, instead of artificial - because in current form it's really detracting me from having meaningful relationships with characters.