15847 réponses à ce sujet

[Spectre Impersonator]

- The horse is useful. Of course, there's no banter to lose when riding, but it goes at three different speeds, and each speed has its use, whether you trot through a village to avoid riding someone down, canter to cover some ground without overly straining your horse, or gallop for maximum speed but depleting its stamina.

Don't mean to nitpick, but I've found that the horse does in fact go FIVE different speeds.  There's the full gallop, then slightly slower but stamina-conserving canter, then the bouncy trot, and depending on hard far you push the joystick on your controller (provided you're using one), the horse can even walk at two different speeds. One's a super slow, leisurely walk and the others more of a determined-to-finish-this-long-journey march.

 

I really appreciate this range of mobility because all of them can be used depending on the mood of the sequence or the player and the depth that went into the animations is respectable.

[Fast Jimmy]

Sure but at the end of the day i'd rather see them take those risks and learn from them than have them respond to criticism with super safe material.

There's a difference between "copying the same formula with minor tweaks" and "create brand new systems our team has no experience with and which fans may or may not expect or even want."

It's not just that the DA team wants to try something new... they want to pursue something radical and untested and then don't properly give themselves the time or resources to bring it to the level they envisioned it in their minds. With DA2, it was a dev cycle that, if it were a human baby, wouldn't even be out of diapers. With DA:I, it was tackling a new engine never before used for conversations to create a game with more lines of dialogue than ten novels, producing said game across five platforms with wildly different hardware mechanics with full gameplay parity, allowing for more character customization in terms of race, voice and romance options than any game since BG2 (but with a fully voiced main character), implementing an open world with no experience in doing so before and creating a combat system that utilizes an overhead cam that can leverage party-based control and tactics while also making it a system that can feel like a visceral single-character action game.

That's a lot of things to do and reconcile in one game. Especially when none of those things were even attempted in the previous game.

[KBomb]

 

(9), awesome cutscenes indeed, but I think TW3 sacrificed a lot for this amount of cutscenes to exist. Say, facial expressions, lip syncing, lightings etc. I think DA does cutscenes better in quality but they should definitely find a balance between quality and quantity.

 

I have to disagree with this. I haven't had any issue with lip syncing and there are a lot of facial expressions--or at least in my opinion. Take the herbalist and the "merchant" that sends you into the swamp for his cart. Both have really good facial expressions. As far as cutscenes having poor quality, I disagree again. Even the smallest of cutscenes are well put together and I feel like nothing has been sacrificed. They did an amazing job with side-quests and the cutscenes that ensue. 

 

 

 

 

 

Really? I never even got this far because my instructor kept talking down to me and saying I needed to find more and more pointless herbs in the wilderness if I ever wanted to be a true warrior. Another example of the mindless padding that were the majority of Inquisition quests.

 

Yep. It's in the personal quest of the trainer after you acquired your specialization for Champion. All I can do is paraphrase, but it was something along the lines of "People want to be you and bed you." 

[Bayonet Hipshot]

After all that is said and done, I think Bioware should look at The Witcher 3 and take a leaf out of its books. 

 

Here are the things I think they can copy The Witcher on.

1. Giving loyal fans of the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchise discounts on future games or DLCs or other content like comics and paraphernalia. It gives more incentives to keep fans invested.
2. Not making a game with a specific political view in mind and keeping the morality of the game grey. 
3. Release modding kit for PC players.
4. Delaying the game until it is as good as it can get. Hopefully EA will let them do this now they can see how good it is to delay a game until it is finished. Arkham Night and Witcher 3 both proves this to be true. 
5. Really well fleshed out side quests. Just do not have anymore "fetch 10 of said things" in your games anymore. After Witcher 3, I doubt most RPG gamers are willing to put up with that crap. 
6. Make stories that make coherent sense and have its feels derived from coherent storytelling instead of making stories for the purposes of having more raw drama and irrational-emotional shenanigans at the expense of story cohesion and basic sense. Take the Baron quesline in Witcher 3. 
7. Make the world more immersive. If there is a war going on, show that. Compare the Orlesian Civil War to the Nilfgaard-North War and you can see that the latter is more nuanced, more detailed.
8. Don't just use children as storytelling props. Make them an actual part and a believable part of the world. Compare the children in DAI or in Mass Effect to the children in Witcher 3.
9. Have the main character feel like they are part of their profession. Witcher 3 did a stunning job to portray Geralt as a monster hunter with his sense and everything. 
10. Make the world a lot more uniform. Make the spells, the combat, the gameplay a lot more uniform. Before DAI, there was little to no green magic in the game. Now there are tons of it. Before DAI, mages are powerful and even from a gameplay stance you can see why you need Templars. In DAI, it appears mages a puny weaklings compared to their DAO & DA2 counterparts and instead we should have Anti-Archers. This is going to be fascinating if we take things North where magic is supposedly more prevalent and more developed. Wonder how being a Tevinter mage would feel like with such a puny system ? I guess a lot like Dorian where you will have low mana regeneration and forget most of the spells you learn except 8 of them.

That's all I got for now. 

[VelvetV]

People keep using this as if it's some sort of terrible aspect of the game.

 

How can you possibly read in my statement that flirting is terrible? I'm puzzled. Sure in DA:I you can flirt, but in TW3 you can only flirt with those the game assumes you to want to flirt with, provided that you're a part of target audience. I am not, obviously, yet I want to play an open-world RPG game.

 

I really wish people stopped objecting to my posts and trying to prove me that I am wrong not to enjoy things that they enjoy. It's personal experience. And I can't enjoy things biology hasn't wired me to feel excited about anyway, even if I wanted to. There were other people in this thread who expressed similar sentiments.

 

I'm not sure what broader scope you wish for in The Witcher. For Geralt to be bi/gay? For women (except the ugly ones) to not find Geralt attractive? To have no woman flirt with him because some people find him unattractive?

 

DA:I and many other RPGs solve the issue of broader scope perfectly by allowing a player to create their character.

 

I suspect my valid points will be dismissed by saying something along the lines of "but they follow the books", so I will say in advance. It was their choice to insert a book protagonist into the games, the author didn't force them to do it, so at any point in time and with any game in the series they could instead use the lore but allow us to create our own character. It is a choice made by CDPR that our protagonist is Geralt and it just happens that some people do not like him personally and\or do not like predefined characters in general. Especially in a thread that makes a comparison to DA:I that allows character creation freedom this was bound to be brought up. I'm just saying that character creation is one of things CDPR could learn from Bioware in order to make their games a lot more enjoyable to people. And if you already enjoy it as it is, please do not tell me that I should enjoy it, because I'm not you. I personally perceive it as a flaw, and it especially makes me sad that the game is so long and open-world and could be much better for me as an experience.

[TheRaccoon]

I have to disagree with this. I haven't had any issue with lip syncing and there are a lot of facial expressions--or at least in my opinion. Take the herbalist and the "merchant" that sends you into the swamp for his cart. Both have really good facial expressions. As far as cutscenes having poor quality, I disagree again. Even the smallest of cutscenes are well put together and I feel like nothing has been sacrificed. They did an amazing job with side-quests and the cutscenes that ensue. 

 

 

I am not sayingthe lip syncing, facial expressions in TW3 suck or anything. I am just saying that the qualities of these are better in DAI. I would say the cutscene animations are really well done in DAI. What I am trying to say is that DA should increase the amount of cutscenes (say during side quests, zooming in during convos etc.) without sacrificing much of its quality.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

Speakng of character creator, that is one thing I'm genuinely curious about how well they can do since Cyberpunk 2077 supposedly will have one.

[HiroVoid]

I agree CDPR could look at Bioware when it comes to character creation when they do it themselves in Cyberpunk 2066(I believe)......but not having a character creator for the protagonist isn't an objective negative as much as it's a design choice.  Same for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  Next thing you know, people will say voiced protagonists like Hawke are objectively better than non-voiced protagonists like the warden.

[AresKeith]

I agree CDPR could look at Bioware when it comes to character creation when they do it themselves in Cyberpunk 2066(I believe)......but not having a character creator for the protagonist isn't an objective negative as much as it's a design choice.  Same for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  Next thing you know, people will say voiced protagonists like Hawke are objectively better than non-voiced protagonists like the warden.

 

Well.......

 

[TheRaccoon]

8. Don't just use children as storytelling props. Make them an actual part and a believable part of the world. Compare the children in DAI or in Mass Effect to the children in Witcher 3

 

Agreed. But making children enjoyable is delicate subject lol. They can be as annoying like the ones in Skyrim; dwarf-looking like the ones in TW3 or outright weird like the one in DAI

[TheOgre]

I agree CDPR could look at Bioware when it comes to character creation when they do it themselves in Cyberpunk 2066(I believe)......but not having a character creator for the protagonist isn't an objective negative as much as it's a design choice.  Same for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  Next thing you know, people will say voiced protagonists like Hawke are objectively better than non-voiced protagonists like the warden.

 

I like my silent protagonist.. I hope the souls/bb series never gets rid of the silent protagonist.

[Grieving Natashina]

Agreed. But making children enjoyable is delicate subject lol. They can be as annoying like the ones in Skyrim; dwarf-looking like the ones in TW3 or outright weird like the one in DAI

Let's not forget that voice acting can be tricky too.  Conner was fine in Origins, but then you have Cricket's voice in DA2, which I thought was too deep to be taken seriously.

[KaiserShep]

Let's not forget that voice acting can be tricky too.  Conner was fine in Origins, but then you have Cricket's voice in DA2, which I thought was too deep to be taken seriously.

 

Cricket is Baby-faced Finster.

 

 

I thought Kieran was pretty alright in Inquisition, and I usually am very wary of children in any story because they're often really badly done or just straight up annoying as hell, but he was fine, as was Conner. Thinking back, Bevin kind of had a deep voice too, but not as bad as Cricket.

[TheOgre]

Kieran's voice drove me up the wall :/

[wolfhowwl]

Banter is actually a great example of terrible resource investment. DA:I apparently has 5 hours. Banter triggers get screwed by save/loading, but ignoring that part, they generally are meant to trigger every 10-15 minutes. You need something between 50-75 hours of non-interrupted (by saving) gameplay time to hear all of the banter. That's an absurdly terrible design choice. 
 
Frankly, I would cut 90% of companion banter and re-invest it into either dialogue at the main base or dialogue for quest-giving NPCs.

Given how barebones so much of the content in the rest of the game was it's pretty easy to argue that a significant malinvestment occurred.

You could still slide in one liners from your companions while interacting with quest givers to have some adventuring with a party feel without going all out and spending so much on banter conversations that most won't ever hear.

[KBomb]

VelvetV, on 21 May 2015 - 11:34 PM, said:
How can you possibly read in my statement that flirting is terrible? I'm puzzled. Sure in DA:I you can flirt, but in TW3 you can only flirt with those the game assumes you to want to flirt with, provided that you're a part of target audience. I am not, obviously, yet I want to play an open-world RPG game.

 

Isn't this the case for DAI? You flirt with who the writers want you to flirt with. For instance, you can only flirt with Solace if you're a female elf. I wanted to talk with Barris and flirt with him--yet couldn't. I wanted to flirt with Krem, yet couldn't.

 

I really wish people stopped objecting to my posts and trying to prove me that I am wrong not to enjoy things that they enjoy. It's personal experience. And I can't enjoy things biology hasn't wired me to feel excited about anyway, even if I wanted to. There were other people in this thread who expressed similar sentiments.

 

I never said you were wrong for not liking TW3 nor would I ever say such. I understand people have different expectations and preferences.

DA:I and many other RPGs solve the issue of broader scope perfectly by allowing a player to create their character.

Geralt is a set character with a set look. Would it have been nice to create your own character? Absolutely. It isn't the way CDPR wanted to go and they chose to use resources other ways--to which I am grateful. Their side-quests and ambiance are fantastic and I love the vision they have for The Witcher franchise.

 

I suspect my valid points will be dismissed by saying something along the lines of "but they follow the books", so I will say in advance. It was their choice to insert a book protagonist into the games, the author didn't force them to do it, so at any point in time and with any game in the series they could instead use the lore but allow us to create our own character. It is a choice made by CDPR that our protagonist is Geralt and it just happens that some people do not like him personally and\or do not like predefined characters in general. Especially in a thread that makes a comparison to DA:I that allows character creation freedom this was bound to be brought up. I'm just saying that character creation is one of things CDPR could learn from Bioware in order to make their games a lot more enjoyable to people. And if you already enjoy it as it is, please do not tell me that I should enjoy it, because I'm not you. I personally perceive it as a flaw, and it especially makes me sad that the game is so long and open-world and could be much better for me as an experience.

 

It's the game they wanted to create. Saying, "But they could have made another game that wasn't based on the book and a set protaganist" is a bit of an odd argument. This game is about Geralt of Rivia and they shouldn't change their vision of a story because some people don't like the fact that you can't change his features or because they want to play a female or someone "likeable". If you dislike Geralt, perhaps this game isn't for you and that's okay. Not everyone has to like a game. There are plenty of games I dislike. As for the bolded, why do you keep saying this? I don't expect you to like anything. AFAIK, no one does. If TW3 isn't up to your standards and lacks the things that make a game enjoyable for you, then don't play it. And I am not being condescending when I say that. You don't have to defend your dislike of something and you shouldn't have to. Not every game is going to appeal to you and I think companies who implement things in their games to reach a wider audience is sometimes a great thing, but I also believe they shouldn't have to if it doesn't fit the vision and style of what they want.

[Han Shot First]

The side quests in The Witcher 3 are so much better than those in Dragon Age: Inquisition. There are none that feel like they'd be at home in an MMO, they are all packed with story or atmosphere, and all of the dialogue with NPCs involved in those quests is cinematic. That's at least one area DA4 would be better off emulating TW3 than DA:I.

 

I haven't finished the game yet, but so far it seems like CD Projekt Red was more successful than Bioware in transitioning to an open world format without sacrificing story or atmosphere.

[KaiserShep]

Kieran's voice drove me up the wall :/

 

The pacing of his dialogue is weird.

 

Mo-ther. lol

[Hazegurl]

That's the thing. Dragon Age doesn't have an identity. Bioware changes it on a whim. Take for instance, the dilution of the Qun and Qunari from DAO to DAI. Take the combat, which is now some hybrid cesspool with a bad tactical camera view on top of it and a half-arsed friendly fire setting. Or take the art style, which is so different from each game you might be forgiven that they come from different IPs. Look at the evolution of Darkspawn for instance. Or the Elves. 

 

I don't think Bioware can actually make a game that is equal to the Witcher 3, much less rival it or surpass it. That's like expecting Proton to make cars as good or better than Porsche. Witcher 3 Wild Hunt makes Dragon Age Inquisition look like the work of a bunch of rank novice amateurs. 

 

Bioware these days are too focused on petty things with their game such as towing a specific socially approved politically correct line, pointless romance representations. That's how their stories and games go these days. Its more about "Does this cater to this particular social group's whim ?" rather than "Is this a good story ?"

 

CDProjektRed on the other hand does not give a flying f**k about politically correct socially approved opinions. They don't give a f**k about what Fox News or Social Justice Weasles or special interests groups think about their game. Their main concern is making a good game with a good story, good combat and good atmosphere. 

 

Until Bioware can start not giving a shite about or not kowtowing a particular whim of a social group for their games and their stories, they are never going to reach the level that CDPR has reached with Witcher 3. Until then, they will remain a mediocre developer with a history of making great games. 

Catering to social groups isn't Bioware's problem, the problem is that they cater to fans period.  And the reality is that fans shouldn't be the ones writing the freaking game.  Whenever fans cry about anything Bioware is there to make the most extreme choice in hopes of making people happy.  Complain about the tactics equals no tactics.  Complain about a human only PC and you get multiple races with one extra added story and lore be damned, fans complain about the personalities equal tranquil PC.  So it's only natural that if people complain about sexism, then BW is going to respond by eliminating anything and everything deemed sexist.  This is why DA has no identity whereas The Witcher verse has a solid identity.  DA is full of so much insecurity, the writers just can't sit down and tell us a compelling story without checking Forums, Facebook, and Tumblr for all their advice.

 

The results is sadly DAI.

[Torgette]

There's a difference between "copying the same formula with minor tweaks" and "create brand new systems our team has no experience with and which fans may or may not expect or even want."

It's not just that the DA team wants to try something new... they want to pursue something radical and untested and then don't properly give themselves the time or resources to bring it to the level they envisioned it in their minds. With DA2, it was a dev cycle that, if it were a human baby, wouldn't even be out of diapers. With DA:I, it was tackling a new engine never before used for conversations to create a game with more lines of dialogue than ten novels, producing said game across five platforms with wildly different hardware mechanics with full gameplay parity, allowing for more character customization in terms of race, voice and romance options than any game since BG2 (but with a fully voiced main character), implementing an open world with no experience in doing so before and creating a combat system that utilizes an overhead cam that can leverage party-based control and tactics while also making it a system that can feel like a visceral single-character action game.

That's a lot of things to do and reconcile in one game. Especially when none of those things were even attempted in the previous game.

 

I don't know if you're saying any of those things are bad things, I don't think they are. The things that let down DAI were very basic things - not the ambitious elements. Even that isn't a bad thing, going forward they know what to balance for and focus their energy on having cut their teeth on the hard stuff already. In the long run it's best for them to figure this stuff out sooner than later, having Mass Effect also developed on the same engine and the next Dragon Age not being tied down by old hardware will only help.

[Sylvius the Mad]

-snip-

The static NPCs in Skyhold don't bother me in the slightest. If they moved around, they'd be harder to navigate through.

The smaller scope of Val Royeaux I also like, because I don’t enjoy urban adventures, so I'm happy to be able to spend less time there.

The multiple VOs were vital to my enjoyment of the game. The multiple races were similarly vital. I wouldn't even consider giving either of those up.

The Tac Cam issues are grossly overblown.

I'll agree that the loss of environmental reactivity and the multiple keep system is unfortunate, but that doesn't diminish what the game actually is. The game could possibly have been better, yes, but even as it is it is brilliant.

The UI is bad, but BioWare hasn't made a good PC UI since NWN, more than a dozen years ago.

[Spectre Impersonator]

Lmao, are we serious here?

 

Bioware's character design and writing demolishes all of them any time. 

 

Witcher has better hair, I will give him that. 

So it's good writing when someone stiffly asks you to go find their missing bison or their family ring and then responds with a banal one-liner when you return it? Okay then.   I can say you won't be encountering anything so flimsy in The Witcher 3. Even a side quest that involves recovering an old lady's favorite frying pan has more dialogue and depth than the majority of fetch quests in DAI.

 

Also, I wouldn't exactly call the main quest of DAI well-written or dramatic either. The final fight comes down to a showdown with a loser who got trashed by Hawke in a DLC trying to pretend it never happened. Writing between companions is unnecessarily full of melodrama in DAI as well.

 

No, that's the point. This is very objective and very universal. There is nothing subjective here. There are in fact rules about quality. That's why it's not up for debate.

 

Hell, this is the basics of any sort of aesthetic criticism. You might enjoy more playing a Witcher game, but that's your personal experience of said game and it's not up for any kind of criticism. But when you are judging two things, you need to set up some rules regarding quality or else the whole thing is gonna be pointless. 

 

I'm not insulting anyone's perception or experience of the Witcher, I'm just stating that Bioware's writing is superior. It's a fact. You can measure these things. 

EDIT: Okay, never mind. I see you're one of those "my opinion is fact" people.

[thats1evildude]

Catering to social groups isn't Bioware's problem, the problem is that they cater to fans period.  And the reality is that fans shouldn't be the ones writing the freaking game.  Whenever fans cry about anything Bioware is there to make the most extreme choice in hopes of making people happy.  Complain about the tactics equals no tactics.  Complain about a human only PC and you get multiple races with one extra added story and lore be damned, fans complain about the personalities equal tranquil PC.  So it's only natural that if people complain about sexism, then BW is going to respond by eliminating anything and everything deemed sexist.

 

I'll buy the argument that Bioware listened a bit too much to the fans pre-DAI. People whined about the mounts, and now that they have them, they whine that they don't like them because the animals make funny noises. People whined about the lack of a qunari PC, and now they threw them in at the last minute, and so players whine that there isn't more unique hair and armour options for qunari PCs.

 

But what did we lose that could be construed as "sexist"? Brothels? They were always a s**t feature. Semi-amusing in the first game, but already worn out by the second. I long argued they should be cut. I don't even care particularly about the unfortunate implications around prostitution; they weren't particularly titillating or really that funny. And anyways, if the scenes of Geralt boning prostitutes is so fantastic in the Witcher, how does Dragon Age "forge its own identity" by aping what they do?

 

What else? Desire demons? They were over-used in DA2 to the point that every second fight involved desire demons, and besides, what were you going to have them DO combat-wise? We already have rage demons for fire damage, despair demons for cold damage, terror demons for spirit, pride demons for electric damage, wraiths for ranged attacks and shades for straight melee fighters.

 

What else? The women being in charge, or fighting? The Chantry was always a matriarchal organization since DAO, and there's never been any restriction on women being in combat. That's not so much "eliminating anything sexist" as adhering to established lore.

[In Exile]

The side quests in The Witcher 3 are so much better than those in Dragon Age: Inquisition. There are none that feel like they'd be at home in an MMO, they are all packed with story or atmosphere, and all of the dialogue with NPCs involved in those quests is cinematic. That's at least one area DA4 would be better of femulating TW3 than DA:I.

I haven't finished the game yet, but so far it seems like CD Projekt Red was more successful than Bioware in transitioning to an open world format without sacrificing story or atmosphere.

I'm very sceptical of this claim. I haven't played the game enough to comment on most zones but there aren't very many true side quests compared to filler content like "treasure hunts" or other random AC2 style map fillers. There are a lot of things TW3 did well but this idea the majority of their content was top-notch side quests is a bit misleading. When they did a quest they did it right but a lot of content isn't even a quest.

[In Exile]

So it's good writing when someone stiffly asks you to go find their missing bison or their family ring and then responds with a banal one-liner when you return it? Okay then. I can say you won't be encountering anything so flimsy in The Witcher 3. Even a side quest that involves recovering an old lady's favorite frying pan has more dialogue and depth than the majority of fetch quests in DAI.

Also, I wouldn't exactly call the main quest of DAI well-written or dramatic either. The final fight comes down to a showdown with a loser who got trashed by Hawke in a DLC trying to pretend it never happened. Writing between companions is unnecessarily full of melodrama in DAI as well.

Instead in TW3 we encounter some random note in a treasure chest that triggers a dialogue less quest to clean out a zone on a map for a schematic. Again, its pretty misleading to say that all content is top side quests even though anything that counts a a true quest is far better done.