The races in DA both move and sound like humans, in ME it would be a lot more expensive with the voices and varied movements
Well Asari wise I don't think moving and sounding different than human female is necessarily required. I guess other species, likely Turian would be harder in that case, but if they have female/male voices for Turian and human and use female human voice for Asari it shouldn't cost more than DAI's 4 voices for PC.
Well Asari wise I don't think moving and sounding different than human female is necessarily required. I guess other species, likely Turian would be harder in that case, but if they have female/male voices for Turian and human and use female human voice for Asari it shouldn't cost more than DAI's 4 voices for PC.
They would have to use filters for voices like Turians, Quarians, Batarians
Only Asari would get a pass on that front
They would have to use filters for voices like Turians, Quarians, Batarians
Only Asari would get a pass on that front
If the voice can be filtered later on more voice actors isn't needed. And I doubt Bioware would do many species especially in first game with alien species so most likely Quarians and Batarians are out of question.
I still find it impressive that Brandon Keener can seemingly do the Garrus Vakarian voice without modulation.
Dat voice...
If the voice can be filtered later on more voice actors isn't needed. And I doubt Bioware would do many species especially in first game with alien species so most likely Quarians and Batarians are out of question.
I know they would, I'm just saying that unlike DA doing multiple races in ME would be lot more expensive to do
You're not even giving a reason why they shouldn't, though.
I gave the reason, you just disagreed with it.
Dragon Age is a perfect example, and I did not in fact limit my example to DAI. It is largely the same in Dragon Age Origins, except you get a unique prologue. This isn't so different from ME1 in which your backgrounds gave you different minor sidequests and some small changes to dialogue. DAO is basically the same game, same story, played as any race. This is the biggest example of racial and background differences in ME or DA and it is pretty minor.
"Not all of the game happens in the game" - actually yes, all of the game does in fact occur in the game.
I disagree that Bioware should waste effort in the development of allowing multiple playable races. It is unlikely that each race would actually play differently in any meaningful manner. It does not make sense to ask them to spend time developing race specific dialogue when they had a history of dumbing down the dialogue wheel over the course of the ME series.
I actually don't mind if they shoehorn in multiple races just so some random person can play Asari for the sake of playing an Asari. As long as it doesn't steal development time from balancing the core classes and making meaningful differences and tones available in conversations with a given character.
I gave the reason, you just disagreed with it.
Dragon Age is a perfect example, and I did not in fact limit my example to DAI. It is largely the same in Dragon Age Origins, except you get a unique prologue. This isn't so different from ME1 in which your backgrounds gave you different minor sidequests and some small changes to dialogue. DAO is basically the same game, same story, played as any race. This is the biggest example of racial and background differences in ME or DA and it is pretty minor.
"Not all of the game happens in the game" - actually yes, all of the game does in fact occur in the game.
I disagree that Bioware should waste effort in the development of allowing multiple playable races. It is unlikely that each race would actually play differently in any meaningful manner. It does not make sense to ask them to spend time developing race specific dialogue when they had a history of dumbing down the dialogue wheel over the course of the ME series.
I actually don't mind if they shoehorn in multiple races just so some random person can play Asari for the sake of playing an Asari. As long as it doesn't steal development time from balancing the core classes and making meaningful differences and tones available in conversations with a given character.
Adding huge roleplaying element to RPG with species and giving people reason to play game more than once to me sound like great reason to have different playable species in the game.
Adding huge roleplaying element to RPG with species and giving people reason to play game more than once to me sound like great reason to have different playable species in the game.
There are two alternatives, you have to answer questions for the one you support.
A. There are multiple playable races with significant narrative and gameplay differences between races...
B. There are multiple playable races with token differences to dialogue and gameplay...
There are two alternatives, you have to answer questions for the one you support.
A. There are multiple playable races with significant narrative and gameplay differences between races...
- What are you robbing development time and resources from to create these differences? Do you want shoddier dialogue choices within a character, worse balance between classes, less coherent narrative, fewer missions?
- Name an example of a Bioware game that actually did this in the past decade.
B. There are multiple playable races with token differences to dialogue and gameplay...
- How does this increase replayability?
- If the differences are marginal, is there actually a point to this, outside of catering to a very small number of people who want to play a Turian because "Turian," or Asari because "Asari?"
More B, since not that much change is needed that people think. DAO system is fine, DAI suffered from races being added as after thought and so lot of dialogue is designed from human viewpoint and not changed enough. B is more reasonable to do also. Though A would be more ideal, it doesn't matter where the resources are taken since there really isn't more important feature than species selection that could be in the game.
1) Yes. People will want to play the game with every species they can.
2) Did elves, dwarves and qunari cater very small number of people in DAI? Did having option to different races than Nord cater small amount of people in Skyrim? I don't think so. Human will be most picked, since majority of people anyways play game once or not even finish it. But those who play it multiple times benefit highly from species/race choices and also those who are more intrested in aliens than humans.
I'm actually okay with just being allowed to play as a human. Adding other races, depending on how the game works, could double, or even quadruple their work load. What if they have 700 different interchangeable armor pieces? Now you need that for Turians, Krogan, Salarians, etc. Mouth movements, rigging, scene placement, etc.
well thats a reason to not get me4. now if a few more come up (like choices mean crap etc) i would only consider getting it for the mp. (hopefully it improves and wont add pvp)What ME:A "should" have is irrelevant. They have already stated that ME:A will be humans only.
More B, since not that much change is needed that people think. DAO system is fine, DAI suffered from races being added as after thought and so lot of dialogue is designed from human viewpoint and not changed enough. B is more reasonable to do also. Though A would be more ideal, it doesn't matter where the resources are taken since there really isn't more important feature than species selection that could be in the game.
1) Yes. People will want to play the game with every species they can.
2) Did elves, dwarves and qunari cater very small number of people in DAI? Did having option to different races than Nord cater small amount of people in Skyrim? I don't think so. Human will be most picked, since majority of people anyways play game once or not even finish it. But those who play it multiple times benefit highly from species/race choices and also those who are more intrested in aliens than humans.
Personally I am skeptical that playable aliens in MEA wouldn't be any different from DAI. And such a system doesn't really increase replayability for most players IMO.
But I am not opposed to adding more than one playable race for SP as long as they already have taken care of:
1. Compelling and coherent narrative
2. Well designed and balanced classes that offer distinct gameplay
3. Reduction in autodialogue relative to ME3 and more dialogue choices
4. Three dimensional characters as squadmates and antagonists.
maybe they should optimize playable races in the form of DLC like how DAO dlc was. I think the way DAO dlc was done is right because it won't really add to the story in a great sense becuase we arent going to see a great deal of progression in the story until the next game so why not have dlc that brings the fun aspect of games back to games.
3. Reduction in autodialogue relative to ME3 and more dialogue choices
In my opinion, there has always been auto-dialogue in the Mass Effect series but the previous installments did a much better job at hiding it than Mass Effect 3 did especially since the latter decided to attach tone and morality to the auto-dialogue which could potentially make Shepard come across as very different than how the player themselves played their character.
Honestly I didn't mind the auto dialogue in ME3; I liked the progression of Shep into a more defined character over the course of the series.
I like customizing characters, I like having a (large) degree of control over that character's personality, appearance, that kind of stuff. But at the same time, I hate purely blank slate, neutral mask characters that have no personality at all and exist solely as a cipher.
So if you're going to give me a character to control, I prefer they have some personality to decide on. I don't want everything they say to be this robotic, "exposit to me, please" bland drone. Give them a voice, just let me decide the tone of that voice.
Having multiple playable species is good only so long as it doesn't come at the cost of a reduction in dialogue referring to the main character's background, or results in alien protagonists that are virtually identical to the human version other than appearance.
DA:I is a good example of a game where the main protagonist was less interesting because there was multiple playable races. It resulted in the Inquisitor having the barest of bare bones backgrounds that was barely mentioned throughout the game. As a result he/she felt like much less of a fully fleshed out character than some other Bioware protagonists, like Hawke or Shepard. The Inquisitor was also less interesting as a result.
Bioware should do it only the available resources allow for it to be done without cutting corners with dialogue or the main character's backstory.
If they ever go that route at some point with the Mass Effect series, perhaps it might be best for them to keep the options very limited. Human of course would be the default, but maybe the alien options should be limited to say for example Turian and Asari. Having too many options would almost certainly result in the same problems DA:I ran into.
I think what they did with the Inquisitor was worth doing, if they have the resources to do it well, to make it believable. DAI already suffered from overextended ambitions, and those variations were all relatively human looking. For the Devs to also have to contend with voice modulators and different skeletal structures sounds like a coding nightmare.
If we're going to foreign galaxy, does it really matter if they don't address the differences in playing an alien over human? Far as we know, regardless of what we are, we'll still be alien outsiders to Andromeda anyways. If that's the case, why NOT have race selection?
In a world of limited development budgets, the question "Why should the devs not do X?" is always a red herring.
I'm all for it if they push the game back to Christmas 2017 to incorporate individual origin stories and provide enough variations in dialogue options to reflect the differences in social status and attitudes between the differing races. Baring that, no thanks. I got enough of the watered down experience with DA: Skyrim. I'll just play MEAMP if I feel the urge to play as a Krogan.
Adding huge roleplaying element to RPG with species and giving people reason to play game more than once to me sound like great reason to have different playable species in the game.
What we got with DA:I wasn't any sort of "huge roleplaying element." What we got were some minor variations on dialogue and a handful of unique war table missions. At the end of the day, because they had to service multiple races, the Inquisition as a character suffered greatly and became incredibly bland and uninteresting. As much hate as DA2 gets, at least Hawke had personality and felt like a decently made character.
I know some people make their headcanon regarding the Inquisitor part of who the character is, but what's presented in the game is incredibly lackluster and was a step back from what we got with Hawke in DA2.
Was this completely due to multiple races? I can't say that for certain. The way they portrayed the Inquisitor might have been the plan from the start but I certainly think that the move to multiple races factored into what we got.
What we got with DA:I wasn't any sort of "huge roleplaying element." What we got were some minor variations on dialogue and a handful of unique war table missions. At the end of the day, because they had to service multiple races, the Inquisition as a character suffered greatly and became incredibly bland and uninteresting.
That's very subjective since more than a few people, myself included, felt they had no trouble establishing interesting Inquisitors by using in-game dialogue and reactions. Personally, I also had no trouble having my characters undergo character developments and arcs like my previous characters.
While nice in theory, it's not feasible in practice I'm afraid. They would have to make too many changes in the game, from dialogue, backstory, interactions with other characters, animations etc. Too much effort (not to mention cost and production time) just for one feature.
As much as I wanted this feature, I understand why it was not implemented. They already had a hard time keeping all the possible Shepard stories coherent in 3 games, and adding species, and new voices, and personality, and options to that would have made it even harder for ME:A series to keep things together.
However, if they were to ever do a spin-off game, in the same vein as Halo: Reach, then it would be the perfect opportunity to let the player chose the species of their character. Heck, ME:2 would only have needed some slight tweaking for it to be a perfect gaiden game to the main galaxy saving adventures of the main hero, so I could definitely see something similar with species options coming out eventually.
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