167 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

I wouldn't underestimate pacing. That is a major weakness in a lot of BioWare games; it takes a long damn time to get things going as it is, and the pacing of the story is uneven most of the time at best.

I don’t see how. If you've chosen to do something, you must think it's important.

If the alternative is to be carefully led from plot point to plot point, then I see considerable benefit to BioWare's traditional structure.

Hell, one of the issues with Inquisition is pacing; the open world gets in the way at times with what you can and cant do, and especially the main story because it would be hours before you go through a main story mission.

I loathe this distinction.

They're all just missions. From the point of view of the characters involved, they all matter. And their relevance (or lack thereof) to some overarching story wouldn't be visible except in hindsight.

The missions are things you can do. You approach them in the order you think is best. Arbitrarily (and from the characters' perspective, it is arbitrary) labeling some as "story" adds nothing.

[Wolfman]

Yeah. I like open world but DAI proved that it drastically cuts into the story and the characters' stories. I was so disappointed. I can't just grind around a giant area. That's so freaking boring.

They need to find a good balance. Use the next Gen engines to make the world big(ish) but GET RID of fetch quests and litter the world with vital stories and situations that feel more intimate, not lifeless.

[Pasquale1234]

I wouldn't underestimate pacing. That is a major weakness in a lot of BioWare games; it takes a long damn time to get things going as it is, and the pacing of the story is uneven most of the time at best.

One of the best-paced game I've ever played (at least, in recent memory) was DAO.

It opens with a cutscene of Duncan explaining the darkspawn threat and the fact that his warnings have gone unheeded. This tells the player the entire premise of the plotline for the game.

Then you get to the CC, and play through your character's origin story. The most pertinent information wrt who your character is, the essence of their background, has been set.

On to Ostagar, and finding the warden treaties - and at that point, my character knew how to proceed. She really didn't need that post-battle chat with Flemeth to tell her to raise an army. On to Lothering, which presents a variety of sidequests and a couple more companions to recruit - and beyond that, you're on your own to play your character and explore the content the game offers.
 

Hell, one of the issues with Inquisition is pacing; the open world gets in the way at times with what you can and cant do, and especially the main story because it would be hours before you go through a main story mission.
 
Now it shouldn't be enforced, but it should be maintained. How it was in Mass Effect 1 was kind of uneven as well, very top-heavy but it was hidden well. 
 
In truth, the best paced game I have seen BioWare do was Dragon Age II; it had a decent amount of set-up, but everything you did was tied to something else in the game, and came to a head in the end. The first act was a bit long but it had to be for that set up, and you got payoffs for act 2 and 3 that more or less made sense.

I can't speak to Inquisition, as I've not played it. I've already commented on ME1.

Did DA2 have an overall plot or pacing? I mean, they tossed in 3-year time skips between acts and those meaningless day-night cycles to reduce the number of levels they needed to build. I never could figure out what Hawke was all about; everytime I tried to choose any motives for the character, the game actively denied me. The whole game came across as a series of random events to which Hawke reacted when things got out of control.

Blood Mage bad (unless it's Hawke, apparently). Mages can be dangerous. Abusive templar bad. Duh.

[Kappa Neko]

I'd recommend maybe not starting at the first game like I did. Reason being that the first game is one of the worst games that anyone's ever made.

Ugh. I wish somebody had told me that before I bought Witcher 1. I only started the game two weeks ago. After running around the outskirts of Vizima for 4 hours or something just trying to get into the friggin city, I've already lost all interest in the game...

This sort of running from point A to B over and over is the worst kind of RPG experience. It's basically forced fetch quests as part of the plot. W2 was pretty good, though. W3 I have yet to play.

 

So I started replaying DA2.. man, I'm enjoying it IMMENSELY this time around! Tight narrative. All the side quests are interesting and add a lot to the story. When I first played the game when it came out, I was confused because there was no real main story. But once I realized that all these little stories and obstacles were the main story, I had a lot of fun.

 

Yes, it was the smallest, most claustrophobic, of all Bioware games with heavy map recycling. But who cares! The game probably had the best story apart from ME1. It had a few really great ideas for companion dynamics and the protagonist that I wish Bioware would pick up again.

 

So YES, I'm really worried about ME:A.

 

It's going to be some sort of HALO/Destiny clone with heavy focus on the multiplayer because that's where the money is. EA/ Bioware always run after the success of other games like a starved dog, desperate for a piece of the cake. Too bad their attempts at copying others always fall short.

 

I enjoy Bioware games for their characters and the cinematic narrative. I liked the exploration in DAI a lot but I'd rather have another DA2 tbh. And ME1 with ME3 combat.

 

I thought DAI was the best in the series and what DA4 should build on until I started replaying DA2 and realized that what I really want is a protagonist I care about and good narrative focus. DAI had major issues with that! If I want amazing exploration I can play Bethesda games. They know how to do that right. Why emulate others and fail rather than stick to what you're good at?

 

Exploration in ME1 sucked.

Exploration was decent at best in DAI.

 

What do I like most?

Characters. Character quests. Friendships and romances. And turns out Bioware can satisfy in that respect even when they are given little development time (DA2). So save yourself all the money, Bioware, spent on creating beautiful but empty maps. Write a strong protagonist and great companions, get combat right, and you're good.

 

But hey, there's a slim chance Bioware stops being lazy and actually delivers a game that has a good story/characters AND interesting exploration.

 

One can dream, right?

 

 

[AtreiyaN7]

Not really, no - and I'm enjoying MGS5 and its story, thanks (have heard about the incompleteness of the ending, etc., but I expect that that's probably Konami's fault). Considering the crap manuscripts I deal with, I'd say that the MGS5 story still makes more sense than most of the stuff I'm condemned to read. Even an incomplete ending from Kojima is probably still better than that horrendous manuscript I had to format a few days ago.

 

I will actually give a plot summary of the novel that I just mentioned: The world's dumbest woman somehow becomes a lawyer and passes the bar, and she commits four murders with her equally dumb friend (technically, the friend was the stabby one on at least three of the murders). The protagonist ALSO has a dad who's a king/emperor in Africa, except that dad bailed on his baby mama pretty early on. This dimbulb lawyer eventually goes to Africa at one point to find dad and also saves her (new) boyfriend while they're in Africa by having sex with him/giving him her blood (not sure if he was one of the four victims, but I don't think so). Oh, and then random people start bidding for the protagonist's blood because it's just so darned special that they're willing to spend MILLIONS of dollars for a vial of it. And then it just kind of...ends...with the fourth murder and a particularly stupid conversation between the two women (let me now point out that murder victim #4 is the half-brother of the dumb lawyer's ex-fiance - a guy who turned out to be a rapist and was murder victim #1).

 

But back to MGS: at some point I just learned to stop worrying and ended up loving the crazy bomb - probably because one of my besties successfully nagged me into playing MGS2 and 3 on my Vita, which is when I finally saw the light about MGS (there may have been trumpets and harps and angels and singing at the time I had my epiphany). I'm someone who used to mock the entire MGS series as being bat---- insane and ridiculous whenever that bestie mentioned how awesome it was, lol.

[LinksOcarina]

I don’t see how. If you've chosen to do something, you must think it's important.

If the alternative is to be carefully led from plot point to plot point, then I see considerable benefit to BioWare's traditional structure.
I loathe this distinction.

They're all just missions. From the point of view of the characters involved, they all matter. And their relevance (or lack thereof) to some overarching story wouldn't be visible except in hindsight.

The missions are things you can do. You approach them in the order you think is best. Arbitrarily (and from the characters' perspective, it is arbitrary) labeling some as "story" adds nothing.

 

Such labels concern not the character, but the player in this case.

[Kabraxal]

Considering DA:I was an awesome narrative experience, one can only hope!  

 

Also, ME1 had a similar feel to DA:I when you get down to it, with the mako and all that.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Such labels concern not the character, but the player in this case.

I don’t see why they would concern the player, given that they don't concern the character.

The story should be something we can only see in hindsight. We should not be able to tell whether any given quest will advance a plot, let alone which plot.

[LinksOcarina]

I don’t see why they would concern the player, given that they don't concern the character.

The story should be something we can only see in hindsight. We should not be able to tell whether any given quest will advance a plot, let alone which plot.

 

This is filed into what the player knows as metagame knowledge vs what the character knows in-game. The character doesn't know whats consequential, but they player does. It helps the player be organized in what they can do, and their overall importance for the player is by categorizing them as mission types. Your character can make their own plot, the player can use those labels to branch the plot if they wish. Two different functions basically. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

This is filed into what the player knows as metagame knowledge vs what the character knows in-game. The character doesn't know whats consequential, but they player does. It helps the player be organized in what they can do, and their overall importance for the player is by categorizing them as mission types. Your character can make their own plot, the player can use those labels to branch the plot if they wish. Two different functions basically.

I'd rather not know.

More importantly, I'd rather the developers not expect me to know.

In DA2, I actually refused to open the journal, because the metagame information was so pervasive. But because the developers had seemingly never considered the possibility that a player would do this, many quests were written such that there was no way to know what to do without reading the journal. And some quests - even main story quests - would appear in the journal unbidden, so I had no idea they were there.

This is much like my request that we be able to disable quest markers on the map. Yes, I can ignore them, but as long as the devs expect me to use them they're less likely to provide detailed directions by some other means. I recall in DAO there was one quest (and only one - Crosscut Drifters) where they failed to provide sufficient information in the quest itself, thus making the quest marker necessary. But there was only one because they'd designed the game around that option.

DA2 failed constantly because of how the journal worked.

So I don't mind if those quest categories exist, but I'd like to be able to hide the category labels and just see the whole list of quests.

And if quests just magically appear in the journal, I just won't use the journal.

[slimgrin]

I don't think they said they were going full open world, just bigger areas. Which sounds fine to me. Mass Effect stands to benefit greatly from better exploration. 

[Rasputin]

Sylvius hit the nail on the head. People who are arguing the railroading = better story also likely don't think quest markers are bad. If I am told where to go by a marker, I did no critical thinking on my own to solve a quest/problem or was robbed of the ability to decide what my character would do.

Its the MW vs Skyrim play all over again. RP games are turning into movies you play with very little RP & consequences in them that change. Also, the younger generation who have not played games like Morrowind or before don't know what they are missing.

I guess I should just stick to tabletop in my old age ;-).

[Navasha]

The Frostbite engine is really good at large landscapes.   They would be really remiss if they didn't utilize it in this way.    The one thing Frostbite is not good at is conversational lip-synching and facial expressions (based on what I saw with DA:I).   

 

Just remember with DA:I, there is far more dialogue in it than in the past games, it just happens to spaced out over a much longer game because there is so much more stuff to do out in the world.    That isn't a bad thing at all.  

[Catastrophy]

I'm OK with the narrative in the back seat when I get to mount the ...

 

[Sartoz]

Considering DA:I was an awesome narrative experience, one can only hope!  

 

Also, ME1 had a similar feel to DA:I when you get down to it, with the mako and all that.

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You mean the hard to maneuver Mako exploring rocky planets that gave pitiful "treasures"?.. yes, DAI is very much like it with their grinding fetch quests.

 

Other than that, ME1 is OK.

[Addictress]

So, so afraid.

Oh my god

Hold my hand. I'm serious.

[Silvair]

I loved how open world ME1 was and hope we go back to a version of that

[LinksOcarina]

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You mean the hard to maneuver Mako exploring rocky planets that gave pitiful "treasures"?.. yes, DAI is very much like it with their grinding fetch quests.

 

Other than that, ME1 is OK.

 

I think Inquisition gets a bad rap for their quest design, because it is focused on exploration quests vs interactive quests. The goal of a lot of the quests in Inquisition is to find stuff, either hidden or otherwise, versus interaction with people.

 

Stumbling across a dead body or some elven ruin, a few runes and veil fire out in the middle of nowhere, or a locked house with a key missing; all of that leads to minor rewards, but the fun part is the scavenger hunt or the fact that you just simply do something while you look around. I thought it worked ok, for what its worth.

 

The shards and mosaics and the collectable stuff I get why people hated it, but it served that same purpose and is thankfully optional anyway.