114 réponses à ce sujet

[JeffZero]

Also, #Hype is most likely a reference to people literally saying "Hype" out loud as a state of being. It is common parlance at my college and on other internet message boards I have frequented.

[WildOrchid]

I hope at least it's large and has meaningful missions and not pointless fetch quests.

A large game isn't going to be bad if there are nice quests and some sidequests that are tied to the plot.

[Ahglock]

ME1 suffered from this as well - how can you justify going to visit the unexplored worlds when you always have concrete leads on what Saren is up to, and the (story) consequences for not stopping him are so severe (i.e. the galaxy is ****ed)? And yet, if you do explore those worlds, why isn't Saren any closer to achieving his goals than if you'd gone straight after him?.

All ME games suffered from that. ME3 unless it was target:x or the crucible the quest was at best somewhat related to stopping the reapers. How many stalker quests are there? I heard you were looking for a toaster so I bought you this one!

ME 1-3 all did this. 2-3 had more main story content but were longer games overall as well. My optional quest log is usually as long if not longer than my main quest log in all ME games. Some of those are done with a mission but many aren't.

[Hiemoth]

Inquisition's problem wasn't mainly that the world was empty, but that you were forced to go off the story path in order to progress with the story path. In short, the narrative was forcibly gated so that the player had to gather power in order to proceed. Not a bad idea in theory, but given that gate was through side missions and not actual missions that lead you to the next part of the main story, well-

I like your example of the 'filler' episodes. While some filler episodes are good and do, in a small way, carry on a small sub-story or shed light on something old or new, many tend to be the equivalent of holiday specials at best and generic 'walk here and encounter the monster/villain/pokemon/side character of the week' type episodes at the worst.

 

I agree with this, but would also expand that the freedom of gathering that power really hurt the story as they couldn't have the individual maps build to a specific narrative point.

 

Take for example the WEWH and the Orlesian ball, since having just played it through I am still aghast, aghast I say, how badly built up for the mission is. However, the problem is that there are so many paths the player can take to accumulate the required power that it is impossible for the devs to have any path to build for that mission. Thus they can't insert the content to truly built up the people involved in it and truly convey the scale of the situation in any of those paths since they could easily be missed due to their insistence on the order of maps be completely free. And inserting all that content to one map would be bad game design as it would essentially establish that you can choose your path freely, but this path is what you really should choose.

 

If you look at the narrative structures in DAO and DA2, they always built to the story relevant those maps. The Dwarven path told of their fallen empire and lost glory. The Circle map told the story of the events there, what led to the situation and true horror of what had been unleashed. And so on. Because of the freedom in DAI, each map basically tells the story of that map, and they do actually do at times a really good job of that, but those stories are almost completely divorced from the main narrative beats, which ends up weakening the main story to a deep degree.

[Ahglock]

Also, #Hype is most likely a reference to people literally saying "Hype" out loud as a state of being. It is common parlance at my college and on other internet message boards I have frequented.

The youngins are dropping the d. It is hyped as in I'm hyped for this game for my generation.

[Scofield]

All DA:I needed was for the main quest to be integrated into the coexisting areas you open an to have the "filler" content feed to unlock the "final" push so to speak, it really aint that hard to do, BioWare just decided to, imho, go the easy route

 

Regardless still a no bad game to play, but yeah could have should have been better but it happens, certainly wasnt to big though tbh

[PhroXenGold]

That's pretty much it.  Good open world games don't start you on the main quest.  Good open world games suggest to you where to go to start along the main quest, but afford you the opportunity to ignore it for the time being without fear of breaking immersion.

 

In Skyrim, a dragon attack frees you.  The game hints that you should go down to Whiterun to warn the lord, but even then, you can do about two or three quests along the main quest line before the game even tells you that you're the Dragonborn and starts the urgency.  Plenty of opportunities to run off and do whatever the heck you want before that.

 

DAI, on the other hand, starts with a giant hole in the sky that's going to doom the world.  Bringing flowers to a grave for a widower seems a pointless waste of time when you've prematurely jammed the player into an "end of the world' narrative.

 

Even the Skyrim way, though better, doesn't completely work IMO - because if you run off and do your thing before you can trigger the main plot, the main plot simply doesn't happen. And frankly, thats silly. If the setting is under threat from whatever the big threat of the day is, that threat should be there whether or not I happened to click on a particular quest giver. It makes the same mistake as DA:I, though in a different manner - it doesn't integrate the story and the world.

 

When it comes to Bioware games, I don't want a total "sandbox" where I can do whatever I like - other companies do that and better. I want a heavily story driven game. And while I'd have no problem at all if they kept making the same type of games they've made in the past, I'm also happy for them to try to tell those stories in styles of games a little different from their traditionally pretty linear ones. But if they do incoporate an "open world", then need to blend the story and that world into a coherent whole, instead of keeping them seperate. I want a setting where the story will happen regardless of your actions, but that story should, at the very least, have sections where it makes sense for you to not be rushing to advance it all the time. Conversely, I want sections where you do have to rush to deal with something, and there are consequences for not doing it.

[Hiemoth]

With DAI it just seems too much was sacrificed for open world. Cinematic dialogue being one of biggest, I absolute hated how there was lack of that in DAI. Then side quest were watered down from quest that made you actually feel something and made you make choices to: go there and kill these people, go there and search for this etc.

 

I don't actually think the issue was that much cinematic dialogue but rather the lack of reactive dialogue.

 

To give an example, in DA2 almost all side quests involved at least some opportunities at the beginning and the end to have Hawke comment on the situation or react in some manner, even if that choice was cosmetic. In DAI, almost all sidequests are that you read something or talk to someone, learn of a problem without really reacting to the information at all and then usually kill everyone or take something there and as a reward get shining text telling you got some experience, power and influence. End of story, no character reaction. This really made the Inquisitor feel like a non-entity in those situations and just in general caused almost everything feel somewhat detached with no real opportunities to build the character through those interactions.

[Panda]

I don't actually think the issue was that much cinematic dialogue but rather the lack of reactive dialogue.

 

To give an example, in DA2 almost all side quests involved at least some opportunities at the beginning and the end to have Hawke comment on the situation or react in some manner, even if that choice was cosmetic. In DAI, almost all sidequests are that you read something or talk to someone, learn of a problem without really reacting to the information at all and then usually kill everyone or take something there and as a reward get shining text telling you got some experience, power and influence. End of story, no character reaction. This really made the Inquisitor feel like a non-entity in those situations and just in general caused almost everything feel somewhat detached with no real opportunities to build the character through those interactions.

 

I'd say that both are problem. Lack of cinematic dialogue makes you further away from people, they won't usually have noticeable expressions from either you and the other guy and you aren't drawn into discussion. I found myself trying to get camera as close as characters faces I could during conversations in DAI, which resulted me trying to spin camera closer half of the conversation ^^; I just felt too disconnected otherwise. Non-verbal communication just is as important as verbal one.

[PhroXenGold]

All ME games suffered from that. ME3 unless it was target:x or the crucible the quest was at best somewhat related to stopping the reapers. How many stalker quests are there? I heard you were looking for a toaster so I bought you this one!

ME 1-3 all did this. 2-3 had more main story content but were longer games overall as well. My optional quest log is usually as long if not longer than my main quest log in all ME games. Some of those are done with a mission but many aren't.

 

To be fair, ME2 did it reasonably well - when there was an immediate issue needing resolving (e.g the Collectors are attacking a colony), you had to deal with it now. When there isn't any direct information of what your next move to stop the Collectors needs to be, you've the freedom to strengthen your forces how you wish - whether that's recruiting people, helping those people out with their problems, gathering resources and so on. It's not perfect, but it does do reasonably well at addressing the problem of side content not making sense when you've an immediate threat by not always giving you an immediate problem that needs resovling.

 

This is the kind of thing I'd like to move towards. It's not having no side content, it's having times in the game when doing side content makes sense. Instead of always knowing where to go next, there are times when you don't know what to do to advance the main story, and thus have the freedom to go out into the galaxy and do your thing, yet when there is something happening now, you don't have that freedom and instead have to deal with it now.

[Ahglock]

To be fair, ME2 did it reasonably well - when there was an immediate issue needing resolving (e.g the Collectors are attacking a colony), you had to deal with it now. When there isn't any direct information of what your next move to stop the Collectors needs to be, you've the freedom to strengthen your forces how you wish - whether that's recruiting people, helping those people out with their problems, gathering resources and so on. It's not perfect, but it does do reasonably well at addressing the problem of side content not making sense when you've an immediate threat by not always giving you an immediate problem that needs resovling.

This is the kind of thing I'd like to move towards. It's not having no side content, it's having times in the game when doing side content makes sense. Instead of always knowing where to go next, there are times when you don't know what to do to advance the main story, and thus have the freedom to go out into the galaxy and do your thing, yet when there is something happening now, you don't have that freedom and instead have to deal with it now.

Out of the 3 I do think 2 it did it best. ME1 did it well for the first half , but once virmire pops up it falls apart. Before virmire you have very little to go on, so I'm okay with the side quests. You had a vision but that ain't much. He's got the geth so sure bad news but it doesn't have enough urgency to drop everything. ME3 the galaxy is getting lit up and you do side quests. The story itself is focused enough and does not require them(unless you need a certain ending)where I can ignore it.

None of the ME games require it to advance which I think is the big issue.

[PhroXenGold]

I wouldn't say ME1 even did it well in the first half. From the moment you leave the Citadel to hunt Saren, you have several leads on him. They might not be completely certain to lead to him, but going somewhere you have some evidence that he is has to be better than randomly picking a system and heading out there. And even before you know exactly what Saren is up to (from Virmire), you still know a: he's looking for something connected to the Protheans and b: he's bad news. So why ignore him to go to some unexplored planet you have no evidence he might be on? It's not a matter of not being certain about your vision and looking into other potential leads, it's ignoring your vision and doing some utterly unrelated stuff for which there isn't even the sightest hint it might be connected to Saren. Given what Shep's job is (you know, to hunt down Saren...), there simply isn't any reason to visit the side planets until you've gone to the main ones, and once you have, there isn't (or shouldn't be) any time to.

 

Possibly a couple of the side quests you pick up on the mission worlds - e.g. Geth in Armstrong - can make sense to do, as they could be interpreted as being connected to Saren, but the vast majority of them make absolutely no sense in the context of the story. 

[JeffZero]

I'd say that both are problem. Lack of cinematic dialogue makes you further away from people, they won't usually have noticeable expressions from either you and the other guy and you aren't drawn into discussion. I found myself trying to get camera as close as characters faces I could during conversations in DAI, which resulted me trying to spin camera closer half of the conversation ^^; I just felt too disconnected otherwise. Non-verbal communication just is as important as verbal one.

 

I do the same thing, heh.

[Hiemoth]

I'd say that both are problem. Lack of cinematic dialogue makes you further away from people, they won't usually have noticeable expressions from either you and the other guy and you aren't drawn into discussion. I found myself trying to get camera as close as characters faces I could during conversations in DAI, which resulted me trying to spin camera closer half of the conversation ^^; I just felt too disconnected otherwise. Non-verbal communication just is as important as verbal one.

 

I partially agree. From what I understand, creating cinematic scenes requires a lot of resources and testing, and thus I can understand why they don't want to do that with every conversation as a lot of the dialogues in the areas are pretty much filler.

 

However, there were a lot of moments where I felt they were going for more emotion in the dialogue scenes which was hampered by the me twirling the camera around and trying to get that good angle. Cinematics, in general, were really underutilized as almost none of the optional quests had cinematics attached to them, making them seem almost irrelevant. The Crestwood saga was just so anticlimatic as the game basically seemed to tell you that you really didn't do anything special with this regard.

 

The companion dialogue and use/non-use of cinematics there is a little bit more complicated an issue, with the non-cinematic approach a result from Bioware returning to the infodump approach, which was in turn a result from the player base decrying about not being able to have in-depth discussion with the companions whenever they wanted.

[Pee Jae]

It's a bit like Metal Gear Solid 5. Or MGS5 is a bit like DAI. It's like two separate games at times. You have the main story, but to progress in the story, you go off and do side missions in large areas. If it's good, you have so much fun doing the side missions, you lose track of the next story part. Which can also be a bad thing.

 

I do sympathize with Bioware trying to do both. That is, interesting side missions for the huge open world and trying to keep the game from becoming too linear. That's gonna be rough to balance.

[Jaquio]

I'd say that both are problem. Lack of cinematic dialogue makes you further away from people, they won't usually have noticeable expressions from either you and the other guy and you aren't drawn into discussion. I found myself trying to get camera as close as characters faces I could during conversations in DAI, which resulted me trying to spin camera closer half of the conversation ^^; I just felt too disconnected otherwise. Non-verbal communication just is as important as verbal one.

 

I was watching MATN's "No Guns" run of Mass Effect 1, and I just watched the mission with Sha'ira the asari consort.  And it strikes me how story-driven that mission felt because of the cinematics.  And after reading what you just wrote, I realized that if they did that entire quest line in the DAI style of in-game dialogue rather than cinematics, it would have felt like a stale "talk to X and come back to get reward" quest, because that's essentially what it is.  But all of the cinematics - the receptionist putting you on the four month waiting list, Sha'ira coming out and seeing you telling the receptionist to let you in, the conversation with the turian general in the bar, etc. - all of it felt like a story because of the cinematic experience.

 

Without that, it might as well be cardboard cutouts with exclamation points over their head.

[Ria Kon]

I think it was SO big, SO devoid of narrative cut scenes that fleshed out the story that it often played more like an open world mmo rather than a more intense and focused rpg like origins or previous mass effect games.

 

 

My words. Fortunately, the Golden Nug helps a lot, because you're not so pressed to do every little nonsense-quest to get the best (even crafting's now more fun). So, you can focus on story based quests (the main story line or side quests like helping refugees at Crossroad ect.) and it feels much more like BioWare style.

I just hope they handle ME: Andromeda better or do something like the Golden Nug.

[Andrew Waples]

I think the word "largest" needs to be put into context. With frostbite they could probably make it easily larger then any mass effect. I don't think we need to worry about it being bigger. I would be concerned if they claimed that it was bigger then Inquisition, because there were some filler quests, like burn the corpses X amount of times. I hope BioWare realizes that bigger isn't always better.

[georg2357]

I think one elephant in the room is the side quests and how to ACTUALLY improve them. Saying "no fetch quests" is fine and I do it myself ("No fetch quests! Or else I will still buy the game and then complain!") but what alternatives are there? Tieing them into the main plot line would also be nice but consider what most fetch quests center on: ram meat or krogan testicles (although the latter would probably make a good story).

So I have 2 questions:

 

1) why actually have side quests? What do they bring the player? If they are there to explore more of the lore, why not make them compulsory? That doesn't mean, you have to be restricted to a specific sequence. See ME1 or DAO. 4 compulsory missions but you can do them in your own sequence. But look at ME2s loyalty missions; these weren't really optional, just the sequence was up to you. Does the ability to get a worse ending because you ignore some loyaltiy missions provide so much cherished freedom? Moreover, doesn't doing side quests to lvl actually create problems in balancing. The Devs have to take into account completionists and core game players alike and for what?

 

I'm an older player coming from games where if you didn't grind and lvl up, you would be trounced a third into the main plot because you were underpowered. But we want to get rid of the grinding anyway, so what other reasons are there to have side quests. And another thing is: should the willingness to grind and slug through chores be rewarded with easier gameplay later on because of the PC's higher lvl (counterproductive?)or weapons that players that are not willing to do boring stuff will not get? Should the open world activities be a second job?

 

2) Instead of having 250 side quests (or whatever the number in DA:I was), wouldn't 15 fully voiceacted, story-driven subplot quests (of say 45-60 minutes) be more interesting and easier and more meaningfully tied into the main narrative? Should the base side quests be abandoned altogether in favour of subplots?

[Ahglock]

I wouldn't say ME1 even did it well in the first half. From the moment you leave the Citadel to hunt Saren, you have several leads on him. They might not be completely certain to lead to him, but going somewhere you have some evidence that he is has to be better than randomly picking a system and heading out there. And even before you know exactly what Saren is up to (from Virmire), you still know a: he's looking for something connected to the Protheans and b: he's bad news. So why ignore him to go to some unexplored planet you have no evidence he might be on? It's not a matter of not being certain about your vision and looking into other potential leads, it's ignoring your vision and doing some utterly unrelated stuff for which there isn't even the sightest hint it might be connected to Saren. Given what Shep's job is (you know, to hunt down Saren...), there simply isn't any reason to visit the side planets until you've gone to the main ones, and once you have, there isn't (or shouldn't be) any time to.

Possibly a couple of the side quests you pick up on the mission worlds - e.g. Geth in Armstrong - can make sense to do, as they could be interpreted as being connected to Saren, but the vast majority of them make absolutely no sense in the context of the story.

Randomly going to a planet wouldn't make much sense but I think every side quest can be picked up on one of the quest worlds. And while many of them are not tied to the main story until IMO virmire pops nothing has the urgency or strength to make it your only focus. And most quests can fall under the general specter or alliance goals. The more you learn the more certain and immediate the threat becomes.

To put into a detective theme. First half you are investigating a murderer will you think is going to kill again. While investigating you hear on your police scanner crimes that are occurring near you. That issue seems urgent and your leads aren't going anywhere. As a cop you go to the scene and help. 2nd half you are in a car chase after the person you are now sure is a serial killer. You hear about a robbery in progress 2 blocks away and you break pursuit to stop the robbery.

First half I can buy. Your lead is something like hey her daughter is on this planet you might want to talk to her and not her daughter is on this planet and the geth are currently hunting her down. 2nd half I can't buy ourside known gamist constructs.

[AlanC9]

To put into a detective theme. First half you are investigating a murderer will you think is going to kill again. While investigating you hear on your police scanner crimes that are occurring near you. That issue seems urgent and your leads aren't going anywhere. As a cop you go to the scene and help. 2nd half you are in a car chase after the person you are now sure is a serial killer. You hear about a robbery in progress 2 blocks away and you break pursuit to stop the robbery.
First half I can buy. Your lead is something like hey her daughter is on this planet you might want to talk to her and not her daughter is on this planet and the geth are currently hunting her down. 2nd half I can't buy ourside known gamist constructs.

Note that not many of the ME1 leads are urgent. Sometimes there's an urgent situation when Normandy stumbles on one, but then the question is why Normandy is in that system in the first place. (Once you're stumbled on one you might as well land, since Normandy has to dump drive charge anyway.)

Though the main plot leads are weird in this regard. Feros and Virmire look urgent, but it's not clear why we're looking for Liara. And Noveria. .... a report of geth? How many? Doing what? Who even sent that report? Nobody at Port Hanshan knows anything about geth.

ME2 works better in this regard since Shepard doesn't know the conditions for advancing the main plot, and you really do have a reason for exploring since you need upgrade resources. This gets a bit worse with import bonuses since you don't need to go far to get all the minerals you need

[Lunatic Lace]

I'm honestly not really feeling "hyped" about anything yet. All of the "news" in regard to this game has been so stupidly vague that it's kind of killing my enthusiasm. Anybody tweeting about how awesome the game is looking without actually giving us anything kind of makes me feel like kicking them rather than getting excited. Almost seems like they either aren't progressing well at all or they know what they'll be putting out won't be as awesome as they're trying to make it sound.

Just give us something solid already so we can see what we're supposed to be hyped about.

[Han Shot First]

I don't see large as necessarily being a positive trait either. DA:I was huge, but unfortunately exploration seemed to have been given a priority over interesting story content. I'd much rather the amount of interesting story content the devs can create determine the size of the game world, rather than the size of the game world determining how much content it needs. The latter is much more likely to result in filler and uninteresting side quests. 

[Zekka]

Just follow my tenets to make a good open world game. Also, it seems that ME: Andromeda's main plot doesn't have the huge urgency that ME3 had so it could work better as an open world game.

[Hathur]

I partially agree. From what I understand, creating cinematic scenes requires a lot of resources and testing, and thus I can understand why they don't want to do that with every conversation as a lot of the dialogues in the areas are pretty much filler.

 

However, there were a lot of moments where I felt they were going for more emotion in the dialogue scenes which was hampered by the me twirling the camera around and trying to get that good angle. Cinematics, in general, were really underutilized as almost none of the optional quests had cinematics attached to them, making them seem almost irrelevant. The Crestwood saga was just so anticlimatic as the game basically seemed to tell you that you really didn't do anything special with this regard.

 

The companion dialogue and use/non-use of cinematics there is a little bit more complicated an issue, with the non-cinematic approach a result from Bioware returning to the infodump approach, which was in turn a result from the player base decrying about not being able to have in-depth discussion with the companions whenever they wanted.

 

I personally can't understand the reasoning behind the lack of cinematic camera for side quests or npc dialogue that isn't plot connected. Seeing and playing DAI the lack of this cinematic view, which has existed in Bioware games since Kotor, was immediately missed and very VERY jarring to experience. It's compounded more so considering I played it around the same time I started playing Witcher 3, which uses cinematic camera in every npc discussion, no matter how insignificant the quest is.

 

Also very glaring to me in DAI was the lack of, or rather poor execution of side quests. They almost all felt like a fetch quest out of World of Warcraft, they often had no NPC dialogue or interaction, you were just given written instructions to collect something etc and the quest was done... no conclusion or interaction with npcs, no small story... compared to side quests in DAO, DA2, mass effect, it was just painfully screaming "we ran out / didn't have budget for this".

 

Also the scant few side quests that existed that even bothered to include npc dialogue were exceedingly dull or forgettable. Many side quests in their prior games had at least some memorable experiences, characters or brief story to them.. and having played Witcher 3 now where the overwhelming majority of side quests and witcher contracts (of which there are just countless dozens, all fully realized with cinematic camera and voice acted) are genuinely excellent little side stories unconnected to the plot, it just makes DAI feel all the poorer because of it. There are an absurd amount of small side quests in Witcher and each one has some sort of small (or even large) story or memorable characters or ellicit some emotion out of it... and there's so many of them as well.. experiencing them makes me so frustrated with DAI when I'm not on the critical story path or companion stories because the rest of the game feels dead... whereas with Witcher 3, whether I'm on the critical path or just doing contracts / side quests, I am immersed and emotionally invested in the game because even the side quests feel alive... like I'm doing something in the world... not just fetching some item / resource that concludes like a MMO quest with a pop of experience and no closure or story to it.

 

I'd like to illustrate if I may, here's an edited clip of a mere contract (side quest) in Witcher 3. This has no connection or bearing to the plot or any of its central characters.. it's just a contract quest to find out what monster has been harassing a town... yet this one mere side quest alone is more memorable and emotional than a large amount of the quests in DAI that aren't plot connected... and this is just 1 of countless many in Witcher 3.

 

 

I enjoyed DAI resonably well, when it was telling a story... but there was massive gaps between story because there were no actual proper side quests... exploring was like exploring in a MMO... lifeless, uninvested. Exploring in Witcher 3 you're bound to run into a new contract that leads to some sort of short interesting story every few minutes wherever you wander.. it makes the world feel alive and vibrant.. there are no gaps of having to spend an hour or more "grinding" combat or such before you're given an opprotunity to experience more narrative of some kind the way DAI often forces you to.

 

It's such a shame too because Bioware has typically handled side quests very well in all their other games - they were numerous and had decent to good little side jaunts and stories to experience.. but DAI is utterly devoid of it.