149 réponses à ce sujet

[Amirit]

In DAO, they had the race choice from the very beginning. During the game, there were less reactions than in DAI. As much as you criticize my hypotheticals, you haven't actually provided any justification why you feel they would have had more impact if they were there from the beginning. Again, to repeat myself, my view is based on the fact of limited development resources.

 

And I am not arguing with resources limitation - it sure is a big factor in general and in DAI particular. What I am saying is DAO - the story, the writing, the script - was designed with races in mind. Thus we had Orzammar, Dailish forest and Alienage. Places designed not only for origins parts but responsive - NATURALLY responsive to your race. The fact that Worden title kind was racially neutral did not negate your origin and special attitude towards you in the place of your origin. It was specifically mentioned that Wardens are different that way and a multi-racing organization. All and all it was a good implementation of multi-races.

 

Now, DAI is an example where the story, the writing, the script was originally designed for humans only. It was written first for Hawke, adapted for different - yet, still human - protagonist and only at the last year of development given other races to play with. They could not change the story completely, only to add here and there some racial remarks. Thus, Iquisititor is treated as a human. Sometimes, as a human with pointy ears or horns, but still human. That was done because of limited resources (already spent for the bigger part of the game) and time constrains. As a result we DO have multi-races but a very bad implementation of it.

 

I can not tell you how to make Inquisitor story truly work with multi-races. Guess, the story would be very different to begin with. All I am saying, the way they did it in DAI is a wrong way. Afterthoughts are bad no matter where you apply it.

Some people are so devoted to non-human protagonist that they agree for anything, any awkwardness in dialogs and cutscenes just for possibility to play a non-human. Like people who are using those romance mods are agree for their character to be silent and called by the wrong names - all for the ability to romance whoever they want. I do not understand it but I it's their game.

But if I am to answer the OP's question - for me (only me) it is better to have one race, if resources preventing developers from writing the story from multi-race perspective. I would give a standing ovation for the multi-race story as it was done in DAO (and preorder the game the day it will be announced) but if races will be at best a decoration like in DAI - I would rather have human-only protagonist.

 

All that said, I am 100% sure if we see DA4 at all it will be a multi-race game (just because the feature is already here (CC, anymation and all). And though the question of quality remains there is a hope that this time the game will be written with races in mind from the start.

[Heimdall]

In DAO, they had the race choice from the very beginning. During the game, there were less reactions than in DAI. As much as you criticize my hypotheticals, you haven't actually provided any justification why you feel they would have had more impact if they were there from the beginning. Again, to repeat myself, my view is based on the fact of limited development resources.

Gaider said that the reason race specific content was scant after the Origins was because they front loaded so many resources in the origins themselves, thus leaving them with a limited content/word budget for race specific content in the rest of the game.  In DAI, they added all the race content starting a year before release after they had spent several years already developing a human only game.

 

In a new game, ideally there would be some background specific origin but in a less resource intensive way.  I imagine experiencing the same event from different perspectives personally (Shared locations, some shared dialogue), thus not consuming too much development time and resources.

[Mr.House]

And I am not arguing with resources limitation - it sure is a big factor in general and in DAI particular. What I am saying is DAO - the story, the writing, the script - was designed with races in mind. Thus we had Orzammar, Dailish forest and Alienage. Places designed not only for origins parts but responsive - NATURALLY responsive to your race. The fact that Worden title kind was racially neutral did not negate your origin and special attitude towards you in the place of your origin. It was specifically mentioned that Wardens are different that way and a multi-racing organization. All and all it was a good implementation of multi-races.

 

Now, DAI is an example where the story, the writing, the script was originally designed for humans only. It was written first for Hawke, adapted for different - yet, still human - protagonist and only at the last year of development given other races to play with. They could not change the story completely, only to add here and there some racial remarks. Thus, Iquisititor is treated as a human. Sometimes, as a human with pointy ears or horns, but still human. That was done because of limited resources (already spent for the bigger part of the game) and time constrains. As a result we DO have multi-races but a very bad implementation of it.

 

I can not tell you how to make Inquisitor story truly work with multi-races. Guess, the story would be very different to begin with. All I am saying, the way they did it in DAI is a wrong way. Afterthoughts are bad no matter where you apply it.

Some people are so devoted to non-human protagonist that they agree for anything, any awkwardness in dialogs and cutscenes just for possibility to play a non-human. Like people who are using those romance mods are agree for their character to be silent and called by the wrong names - all for the ability to romance whoever they want. I do not understand it but I it's their game.

But if I am to answer the OP's question - for me (only me) it is better to have one race, if resources preventing developers from writing the story from multi-race perspective. I would give a standing ovation for the multi-race story as it was done in DAO (and preorder the game the day it will be announced) but if races will be at best a decoration like in DAI - I would rather have human-only protagonist.

 

All that said, I am 100% sure if we see DA4 at all it will be a multi-race game (just because the feature is already here (CC, anymation and all). And though the question of quality remains there is a hope that this time the game will be written with races in mind from the start.

Elves have alot of unique dialog in Trespasser, their clan gets talked about, female elfs can take dalish vows when they marry Cullen, visual changes and the confrontation with Solas is the best romanced.

[sandalisthemaker]

There are only two races that I could imagine them doing this with:  Humans and Elves.

 

I would be fine with Human only.

 

I would not be fine with Elf only. 

 

That being said, I like having multiple race options. 

[Homeboundcrib]

Multi-race all the way I'm a big fan of playing the elf so be a little sad if it was just human only, plus multi-race allows more playthroughs and different perspectives from each race.

[Hiemoth]

Gaider said that the reason race specific content was scant after the Origins was because they front loaded so many resources in the origins themselves, thus leaving them with a limited content/word budget for race specific content in the rest of the game.  In DAI, they added all the race content starting a year before release after they had spent several years already developing a human only game.

 

In a new game, ideally there would be some background specific origin but in a less resource intensive way.  I imagine experiencing the same event from different perspectives personally (Shared locations, some shared dialogue), thus not consuming too much development time and resources.

 

I recall the same interview from Gaider, but I recall them actually stating the fact that they didn't go with the origins for DAI in order to be able to use more resources to have it recognized during the game. Something that needs to be repeated is that the backgrounds were already there, that was the original approach, and even there they weren't planning to incorporate those backgrounds to the game events. So I am not certain where the conviction they would have it differently when race selection is available compared to the background selection. Especially since those two things are essentially the same. What is being argued by most here is not the inclusion of unique races, but the inclusion of unique backgrounds because of those races.

 

Besides, I am not completely certain I understand your ideal, as they were not going to do the origins and the game story specifically would not have worked if we had been shown the characters before the event. Again, that was something they weren't going to do with human backgrounds either, why would they have done wtih the races?

[Vaseldwa]

Race options are a must!  I mean imagine a Vashoth leading an armor of tevinter mages against the qunari! (if we indeed have that option and the next game is partly about the Qunari vs tevinter conflict). Also I must be a dwarf, to see her standing up to a 7ft tall qunari lol tis too awesome to pass up!  Also on the rare times I do play as an elf, if city elf (really dont like being a dalish elf) is an option then yea would no doubt do an elf PT. Human is well meh.....

 

(Love sarcastic hawk though) 

Modifié par DwarvaVashoth, 02 octobre 2015 - 12:56 .

[Hiemoth]

And I am not arguing with resources limitation - it sure is a big factor in general and in DAI particular. What I am saying is DAO - the story, the writing, the script - was designed with races in mind. Thus we had Orzammar, Dailish forest and Alienage. Places designed not only for origins parts but responsive - NATURALLY responsive to your race. The fact that Worden title kind was racially neutral did not negate your origin and special attitude towards you in the place of your origin. It was specifically mentioned that Wardens are different that way and a multi-racing organization. All and all it was a good implementation of multi-races.

 

Now, DAI is an example where the story, the writing, the script was originally designed for humans only. It was written first for Hawke, adapted for different - yet, still human - protagonist and only at the last year of development given other races to play with. They could not change the story completely, only to add here and there some racial remarks. Thus, Iquisititor is treated as a human. Sometimes, as a human with pointy ears or horns, but still human. That was done because of limited resources (already spent for the bigger part of the game) and time constrains. As a result we DO have multi-races but a very bad implementation of it.

 

I can not tell you how to make Inquisitor story truly work with multi-races. Guess, the story would be very different to begin with. All I am saying, the way they did it in DAI is a wrong way. Afterthoughts are bad no matter where you apply it.

Some people are so devoted to non-human protagonist that they agree for anything, any awkwardness in dialogs and cutscenes just for possibility to play a non-human. Like people who are using those romance mods are agree for their character to be silent and called by the wrong names - all for the ability to romance whoever they want. I do not understand it but I it's their game.

But if I am to answer the OP's question - for me (only me) it is better to have one race, if resources preventing developers from writing the story from multi-race perspective. I would give a standing ovation for the multi-race story as it was done in DAO (and preorder the game the day it will be announced) but if races will be at best a decoration like in DAI - I would rather have human-only protagonist.

 

All that said, I am 100% sure if we see DA4 at all it will be a multi-race game (just because the feature is already here (CC, anymation and all). And though the question of quality remains there is a hope that this time the game will be written with races in mind from the start.

 

Okay, so I am having genuine difficulties following your base for argumentation here, and I do not mean that in a hostile manner. My argument about the initial human backgrounds being incorporated for the different races was not acceptable because we do not know exactly how they were going to be initially implemented, but you felt completely fine arguing the difficulty is because DAI was originally written to be about Hawke, despite the fact that there is literally no evidence of that outside fan conjuncture and the devs have spefically denied that claim. That seems somewhat like a double standard for arguments.

 

As for the rest, for me, what you are proposing sounds like extremely limiting game design. Just for DAI, we would have needed a dwarven criminial organization, a Vastoth mercenary company, a Free Marches noble family, a specifc mage circle and a specific Dalish clan all to have an important role in the story so that you could cram in those origins there, yet they can't be too different based on the choice in order to preserve dev resources. It can be done, it was done to a degree in DAO, but it just forces to cram things in. As for DAO, I deeply disagree that the story was designed to allow race selection, but rather they just found places where to reuse the resources and do some lipservice to the race selection.

[Heimdall]

I recall the same interview from Gaider, but I recall them actually stating the fact that they didn't go with the origins for DAI in order to be able to use more resources to have it recognized during the game. Something that needs to be repeated is that the backgrounds were already there, that was the original approach, and even there they weren't planning to incorporate those backgrounds to the game events. So I am not certain where the conviction they would have it differently when race selection is available compared to the background selection. Especially since those two things are essentially the same. What is being argued by most here is not the inclusion of unique races, but the inclusion of unique backgrounds because of those races.

 

Besides, I am not completely certain I understand your ideal, as they were not going to do the origins and the game story specifically would not have worked if we had been shown the characters before the event. Again, that was something they weren't going to do with human backgrounds either, why would they have done wtih the races?

Race was recognized more frequently in DAI than in DAO as a result, but they were still held back.  I wouldn't say backgrounds and race selection are essentially the same.  One is a physical appearance that can be seen and responded to by NPCs, the other would only come up if the NPC knew your background, like that scene where Josephine questions the Inquisitor about it.  Backgrounds weren't integrated into game events because they don't really matter much in the context of a human Inqusitor once they ascend to the position.  Bluntly, backgrounds were designed to be a flavor choice for roleplaying and nothing more.

 

Race, on the other hand, demands more reaction and becomes relevant at times that a background wouldn't.  They also had more exotic and diverse backgrounds than four shades of human from the Ferelden/Orlais/FreeMarch area could have.  They couldn't just replace the dialogue where background was relevant.  So yes, implementing all that race specific content (And this includes reworking all existing cutscenes so all race body types work, another issue that doesn't exist with backgrounds) in the last year of development was limiting.  We even see some of this in the romance options.  Cullen and Solas weren't originally slated to be race restricted when they decided to make them romance options, but they restricted it in part because making all the cutscenes work costs a lot of development time.

 

Truth be told, I don't know for sure that Bioware would do better if race options were in from the beginning, but its clear they could without these limitations.

 

I was speculating a way to do it in a future game without running into the issue Origins had.  I think that jumping straight into the action was a big mistake on Bioware's part.  Playing the character before the crisis point gives the player the chance to get a sense for who their character is and then how they would be affected by being thrown into a disastrous and unexpected situation.  It's why the Origins worked so well, not just that they provided variety, but that they happened before we were thrust into the plot proper.  I'm not saying Bioware will do this at all, but I'd like them to.

[Nefla]

The Shepard thing has more to do with the fact that adding those background references wasn't as big of a priority in Mass Effect as it was in the Dragon Age games.  Just because I believe that a set background allows for a character to feel more connected to the narrative doesn't mean that I think that all games with a set background are going to capitalize on that potential.

We can speculate all we want that Hawke's background wasn't well developed because of X and Shepard's background wasn't well developed because of Y but in reality we don't know if they would flesh out a human-only protagonist more because they haven't done it before. When BioWare announced their initial idea for "human only protagonists with selectable, non-playable backgrounds" how could we not think of Mass Effect? It's exactly the same concept.

 

No thank you, I only play elves so if we were forced to play a human I wouldn't buy it.

I wouldn't either. I only bought DA2 because of the extreme amount of love I had for DA:O and at the time I was like "I don't like this human only thing but I'm sure they'll do a great job just like the first game!" That innocent faith wore off a long time ago. If DA:I had been human only like it was originally supposed to be, I wouldn't have bought it.

[Hiemoth]

Race was recognized more frequently in DAI than in DAO as a result, but they were still held back.  I wouldn't say backgrounds and race selection are essentially the same.  One is a physical appearance that can be seen and responded to by NPCs, the other would only come up if the NPC knew your background, like that scene where Josephine questions the Inquisitor about it.  Backgrounds weren't integrated into game events because they don't really matter much in the context of a human Inqusitor once they ascend to the position.  Bluntly, backgrounds were designed to be a flavor choice for roleplaying and nothing more.

 

Race, on the other hand, demands more reaction and becomes relevant at times that a background wouldn't.  They also had more exotic and diverse backgrounds than four shades of human from the Ferelden/Orlais/FreeMarch area could have.  They couldn't just replace the dialogue where background was relevant.  So yes, implementing all that race specific content (And this includes reworking all existing cutscenes so all race body types work, another issue that doesn't exist with backgrounds) in the last year of development was limiting.  We even see some of this in the romance options.  Cullen and Solas weren't originally slated to be race restricted when they decided to make them romance options, but they restricted it in part because making all the cutscenes work costs a lot of development time.

 

Truth be told, I don't know for sure that Bioware would do better if race options were in from the beginning, but its clear they could without these limitations.

 

I was speculating a way to do it in a future game without running into the issue Origins had.  I think that jumping straight into the action was a big mistake on Bioware's part.  Playing the character before the crisis point gives the player the chance to get a sense for who their character is and then how they would be affected by being thrown into a disastrous and unexpected situation.  It's why the Origins worked so well, not just that they provided variety, but that they happened before we were thrust into the plot proper.  I'm not saying Bioware will do this at all, but I'd like them to.

 

Small point before going to the main response, Cullen and Solas weren't originally supposed to be romance-options, which is the main reason for them being race-gated. They were added in due to the extended devellopment time, but that also required a lesser amount of resources spent on their romances, which led to them avoiding having to cinematics for the Qunari and dwarf female characters.

 

I have some disagreements based on taste with your comment, but they are purely on opinions. For example I can easily understand why they didn't want to the origin at the Conclave before the meeting, as I just feel it would have been a narrative disaster, especially if one of the central points was the uncertainty of what happened. Still, that is a question of taste.

 

However, what I do actually argue against is dismissing backgrounds as secondary to race, as the argument makes huge assumptions of the race and the cultural. Why would a surfacer dwarf from a criminal family in Free Marches be that different culturally than a human from a crminal family there? In Fereldan, Rivaini would be culturally as different as a Dalish, who in turn have huge cultural differences between different clans. As for Vastoth mercenary, there is differences there, but their culture is that of an outsider, not of a Qunari, and thus it would still be remarkably similar to a Chasind or Anderfelds mercenary. It all boils down to the argument being really about different backgrounds instead of races, with the assumption that those different races really provide that feeling of a different background.

 

It becomes even more complicated as we don't really know that background, requiring the game to still tell us that. So if you are playing for example a Dalish elf, the game still has to constantly tell you about the Dalish to the same degree that if you aren't playing a Dalish elf. Thus all decisions made as them isn't really done knowing they're culture, but based on what the player assumes of their culture.

[Amirit]

...
Truth be told, I don't know for sure that Bioware would do better if race options were in from the beginning, but its clear they could without these limitations.
...

I love you! And wish you all the luck with explaining of an obvious to someone, refusing to listen and even try to understand. I, personally, give up. Will just keep link on your post for future references as an example of detailed and patient explanation.

[Aesir26]

As far as I'm concerned I'd really prefer a multi-race approach when it comes to DA4. That's primarily because if there is only one race you know that it will be a human. We already play humans in almost every other fantasy (and sci-fi) game out there so I really find them to be the least interesting of the races. It's very much a "been there, done that" sort of thing while the opportunity to play as an elf or a dwarf doesn't come along nearly as much.

 

In addition to that, I find that having multiple races helps to encourage multiple playthroughs. I played through DA2 a few times but I only ever really had "my Hawke" while in both DAO and DAI I had multiple characters so that I could see what it was like to go through the game's story from their perspective.
 

[Nixou]

Just out of curiosity, would you guys rather have one race option with many customisable parts to the character or varied race options but with less customizability?

 

 

Keep the varied races...

 

Unless the one race option is "Mabari Hound"

[ilikesocks]

I love playing as an elf. So, I would be really sad if we went back to human only especially after the ending of Trespasser! Also I would like to have all races like DAI just for the sake of other people. I've never played as a dwarf or qunari but that doesn't matter because tons of other people have and they love it. That's enough for me.

[VorexRyder]

DA2 was a KOTOR:TSL-level rush job. There were good things, but it never felt like a full game to me.

[nightscrawl]

I think that part of the reason I'm not too attached to race choices is that I never really feel like my character is really familiar with his or her own culture.  My latest playthrough was as a human mage, but even then I felt like there were way too many times when my character had to defer to someone else's knowledge of magic rather than applying his own.  The arcane knowledge perk mitigates that somewhat, but even then I often get to listen to Dorian tell me about how some aspect of magic works.  I know that "mage" isn't a race per se, but I feel the same way about elven topics.  Dwarves and Qunari at least have the excuse of not actually being a part of their races' culture.

 

I felt that my experience as a dwarf or a mage in DAO was richer the second time around when I was able to pick (or skip) dialogue options that showed I was familiar with the culture or magic. It's silly to ask Gorim what a "noble hunter" is because a dwarf noble should know. But that was my very first character in DAO and I was completely ignorant about everything. As much as many of the elf players were annoyed by the dialogue to ask about Mythal in DAI, the devs have to design the game for new players as well as veterans, or even veteran players who are playing an elf for the first time.

[tehturian]

Playing as a Dwarf in DAI did nothing for me. 

 

I'm not in the boat that sees race options as a must, heck I'd rather see greater detail in choices and consequences. 

 

I've always liked the idea that was bandied about by Bioware back when DAI was going to be human locked of your specialization being your origin of sorts. You choose the templar specialization and you'll have a Templar origin, you choose blood magic and you start the game as an apostate. Through this system you'd actually feel part of the world which was something DAI struggled with. 

[TevinterSupremacist]

NO.

[RazorrX]

I prefer racial choices.  The reason we did not have huge impact of race in the story for DA:I was that they were added when the development time was extended.  If the next game is built with that designed in from the beginning, it *could* have more impact to the storyline.  

[vertigomez]

I think if more NPCs had the amount of race reactivity as Sera, we'd be smooth sailing. It's the little things, after all.

Spoiler

[Ieldra]

I think story and setting should determine what kind of options we get for our characters. Being a dwarf or a qunari in DAI doesn't feel very meaningful, so I'd have discarded those options in favor of giving the other two more reactivity.

 

In DA4, we're in Tevinter so human and dwarf may be appropriate. I wouldn't mind a human-only setup all that much if there are different backgrounds, but a fixed background like with Hawke would feel too limiting.

[Ashagar]

I don't know wither one race or several would be more appropriate for DA4 but I think from a RP view it would seem somehow appropriate if you could be a Tevinter Magister and save the world from Solas's plan given the Magisters once almost destroyed the world,

[Sirocco]

You guys supporting that one race thing for the sake of customization. You're aware that chosing the race of your character is already a huge part of "customization", right?

 

And even though race related reactions were added in the extra development time, they are such a great addition to the game that I wouldn't trade them for anything. Feeling that what you are finally matters in a world supposedly full of racist stereotypes that we hadn't experienced before that, was absolutely great. And thay can only make it better from now I guess.

[duckley]

As I and others have said,  race selection should make sense in the context of the story. For me, DA is about the story and companions. 

 

Other rpgs with multiple race selections, to my knowledge, don't seem to have any significant depth in terms of story or companions or both. Race may matter less.

 

So for those who have indicated that they won't play DA4 if there is no race selection, - what comparable game might  you play?