69 réponses à ce sujet

[Dabrikishaw]

I don't have a problem with a small scale story(though it's not to my taste), I just dislike Dragon Age ][.

[Queen Skadi]

There were plenty of complaints about how Dragon Age II didn't feel "epic" enough.  They weren't the majority of the complaints about the game, but they were definitely common enough.  It might not have sucked to you because of this decision, but there are plenty of people that took an issue with it just like any decision BioWare makes there will be people complaining about what they tried to do and claim they speak for everyone who ever played or might play the game.

 

Yes and there were people complaining about Mass Effect 2 not having as many weapons as Mass Effect 1 despite the fact that all the weapons in Mass Effect 1 handle exactly the same.

 

There may have been people complaining about Dragon Age II not feeling "epic" enough (I never really noticed any of them though), but even if they were I would assume it is because they noticed something was wrong with the game (while being oblivious to the obvious stuff) yet could not quite put their finger on why, all they knew that for some reason that they weren't feeling engaged with the story and weren't enjoying the game for some reason and decided to pin it on the fact that the story was of a smaller scale instead of the glaringly obvious things like the lack of effort put into the game.

 

Fact of the matter is Dragon Age 2 did not really do anything different, apart from the smaller scale story it was still the same old Bioware formula only with far less effort put into every aspect of it's production, I am not talking about copying Dragon Age 2 at all, what I am saying is how about instead of putting as much of the games content in one playthrough making it as long as possible you split it up between playthroughs focusing on more on branching plot points and making consequences more relevant, each individual playthrough would be shorter but it would make each playthrough more unique. Does anyone actually read the thread before posting or do they just read the title and decide they know all they need to know?

[KaiserShep]

I'd love something in the spirit of DA2. I loved the narrative and the capers through Kirkwall. With more polish and proper environments it would've been much better. In a Mass Effect game, I'd dig traversing the cluster and dealing with the various factions both malevolent and otherwise slipping selfish scoundrelisms in between.

[Mcfly616]

More interesting than being a galactic messiah that's compelled to save the galaxy.

[RandomSyhn]

I actually really enjoy being the big damn hero.

 

That being said, it's been done. A more intimate story could be a lot of fun if it's well written. I enjoyed DAII's narrative, not it's production quality but I really identified with Hawke and their horrible luck. It'd be nice to have a story that isn't some giant enemy or someone else forcing our hand. I'd personally like to see our character trying to fix something they've screwed up. Something that is more a direct consequence to our actions and less being swept up by cosmic events. Make whatever arc we have in Andromeda personal.

[KaiserShep]

Well, you kind of can be a big damn hero without saving the galaxy. Heck, the character that used the phase only helped to weaken the foundation of a tyrannical regime.

[ComedicSociopathy]

I don't think Dragon Age 2 is a good example of a story that decided to go smaller scale, because when comes right down to it Hawke's goal ultimately comes back to save the world narrative except instead of saving a nation or a galaxy your saving a city. After the first act our hero is no longer focused on making a living, but is instead drawn into much larger conflicts (the Qunari and Mages vs Templars) which distract from a more personal story of an immigrant trying to take care of their family. In fact, the game actively tries to remove that personal plot element by taking your sibling as a companion in Act 1 and then killing off your mother in Act 2. After those events Hawke is just the Champion of Kirkwall trying to save a cesspool of a city from destruction. 

 

If Bioware wants to do a real smaller scale, personal story I'd think they'd want to look at Witcher's 3 hunt  for Ciri or Fallout 4's possible main plot quest of being a sole survivor looking for your family in the wasteland. 

 

Making your companions and their interaction and history with the PC the main focus of your story, is to me, the best way for Bioware to achieve a more personal game that's emotionally riveting. Stuff like an Qunari invasion, mage-templar war or Blight should all be background noise to a more personal narrative. 

[SlottsMachine]

I could go for some smaller scale stories, saving the world/galaxy is getting old. 

[Queen Skadi]

I actually really enjoy being the big damn hero.

 

That being said, it's been done. A more intimate story could be a lot of fun if it's well written. I enjoyed DAII's narrative, not it's production quality but I really identified with Hawke and their horrible luck. It'd be nice to have a story that isn't some giant enemy or someone else forcing our hand. I'd personally like to see our character trying to fix something they've screwed up. Something that is more a direct consequence to our actions and less being swept up by cosmic events. Make whatever arc we have in Andromeda personal.

 

Why does it always come back to DAII? I am not talking about DAII or copying DAII, I don't remember DAII focusing on shorter but wider branching playthroughs with more profound consequences, something where certain events happen at certain times and you need to prioritize which events to follow up on and which to ignore, it has nothing to do with Dragon Age 2.

 

Does anyone on these forums actually read threads before posting?

[Sanunes]

 

Yes and there were people complaining about Mass Effect 2 not having as many weapons as Mass Effect 1 despite the fact that all the weapons in Mass Effect 1 handle exactly the same.

 

There may have been people complaining about Dragon Age II not feeling "epic" enough (I never really noticed any of them though), but even if they were I would assume it is because they noticed something was wrong with the game (while being oblivious to the obvious stuff) yet could not quite put their finger on why, all they knew that for some reason that they weren't feeling engaged with the story and weren't enjoying the game for some reason and decided to pin it on the fact that the story was of a smaller scale instead of the glaringly obvious things like the lack of effort put into the game.

 

Fact of the matter is Dragon Age 2 did not really do anything different, apart from the smaller scale story it was still the same old Bioware formula only with far less effort put into every aspect of it's production, I am not talking about copying Dragon Age 2 at all, what I am saying is how about instead of putting as much of the games content in one playthrough making it as long as possible you split it up between playthroughs focusing on more on branching plot points and making consequences more relevant, each individual playthrough would be shorter but it would make each playthrough more unique. Does anyone actually read the thread before posting or do they just read the title and decide they know all they need to know?

 

Dragon Age II keeps getting mentioned because it was BioWare's first attempt at a smaller scale for their story even if it follows a similar formula and yes I did read this entire thread, but I was giving my opinion on what I quoted and nothing more.  

 

My experiences with branching storylines hasn't been very good, so I rather have a focus on a story that isn't based on the chance a person might go back and replay the game and have a good story that lasts four to five times longer.  The Telltale games which is all about being a choose your own adventure story, aside from the first game I played I have never gone back to replay for the game seems to always nullify choices at some point because it would get too complicated to keep active.

[Queen Skadi]

Dragon Age II keeps getting mentioned because it was BioWare's first attempt at a smaller scale for their story even if it follows a similar formula

 

Using Dragon Age II as an example of why smaller scale stories are bad is like using Mass Effect 3 as an example of why multiple endings are bad.

 

My experiences with branching storylines hasn't been very good, so I rather have a focus on a story that isn't based on the chance a person might go back and replay the game and have a good story that lasts four to five times longer.  The Telltale games which is all about being a choose your own adventure story, aside from the first game I played I have never gone back to replay for the game seems to always nullify choices at some point because it would get too complicated to keep active.

 

 

Telltale games are a poor example of branching narrative, they essentially have about the same reactivity as your standard Bioware game and all follow what is basically a linear path with a few minor variations depending on choice, episodic content is simply a bad choice for branching narratives.

[Felya87]

DA2 had good ideas but really badly implemented. But I don't agree about not feeling "epic". I think it was the contrary. There was too much emphasy on how Hawke was this great hero, how she was called for everything (with no real visible reason) and all, but we as players saw only her failings. Usually after choices that didn't changed anything at all from failures (hi mom) or because of dumbness seizure that didn't let hawke and companions do anything. (hi elven girl transformed in a blood funtain after we have swear to protect her from her crazy mage husband. Or qunari killed while we are talking with the fanatic who have the blade at their throats.)

[PhroXenGold]

Well, I'll try to take this somewhat away from the DA2 discussions (for the record, I think it's an excellent game, marred only by a rushed development cycle) and point at another Bioware game to use as inspiration for an at least partially "smaller scale" story: the finest game this company has ever made, Baldur's Gate 2.

 

The thing about BG2's story (well, SoA at least) is that, while there are certainly some major events going on - the core plot revolves around the children of a dead god after all - it is, at it's core, a much more personal story than pretty much all of BW's other work. You, the player character, are definitely something special, but you're not the messiah from the word go. You're not the last hope to save the world. It's only very close to the end of the game where the big bad is revealed to be a threat to anyone other than you and your close companions - instead the conflict is a personal one between you and him. You aren't hunting down Irenicus because he's about to unleash hell upon the world, you're hunting him down beacuse either he hurt you and you want revenge and/or he abducted one of your friends and you want to resuce her (and later on, you're hunting him becuase he took something very important from you).  And where the story delves into you being special, it's about the nature of your specialness, not how you being special can save the world (again).

 

If I were to have any basic story type for ME:A, it would be one like this - a personal conflict between the PC and the antagonist. No saving the world, no "you're the last hope" 10 minutes into the game*. No world/galaxy ending threat. Just me and my adversary fighting it out on the frontiers of a unclaimed galaxy.

 

 

* (if I absolutely have to be the last hope to save the galaxy, at least make it something that I become over the course of the game. Make the game about how I became special. Recent BW games have tended to make you the saviour way way too soon. From Shep being the only one who can stop Saren as soon as you leave the Citadel, to the Warden being the only one who can stop the Blight straight after Ostagar, to the Herald getting her glowy hand in the opening cutscene, there's no build up, there's no discovery, there's no development. Just straight up: "you're the hero, go save the day". It's getting really boring.)

[DarthLaxian]

DA2 was fine, even with all its flaws. Hella better than Inquisition, imo.

 

At first I wanted to ask what you have been smoking - but then again: Both are equal IMHO (and worse than DA:O, which is one of the greatest games ever for me!)...they have just different flaws

 

On topic:

 

Nah, I am not a friend of being a small time anybody/nobody in games (that's what I and most others have in RL, so why would we want that in a game?)...and I don't like having to replay to get the whole story (replaying to see other endings or branching paths is fine!)

 

greetings LAX

ps: MEA is hopefully a great game (as IMHO they've messed up their last 3 releases -.- (DA2, ME3 and DA:I) which aren't that bad, but nowhere near what I expect from BIOWARE!)

[dreamgazer]

What if Bioware focused on smaller scale stories?

Sure, so long as the bulk of the game isn't focused on daddy issues and color-coded merc conflicts.

[General TSAR]

They tried it with Hawke and then predictably screwed up. 

[straykat]

I just complained about this in the DA forums... I wish they honed on it more. Their epic stories are tiring. DA2 wasn't perfect, but I still appreciated it. It can only get better by trying -- and there's plenty of ideas and inspiration for more of it in other fiction and the real world. It wouldn't hurt to rip some of them off. Heh. The majority of plots and character arcs aren't epic or delve into the Creation of the universe or some bullshit.

[Friera]

Of course not! They always flip-flop from one extreme to the other.

 

But I did enjoy DAI a great deal. It just had the opposite issues of DA2. Until a few weeks ago I would even have considered DAI the best in the series so far, but now that I'm replaying DA2 I actually want something with a tight narrative again...

 

My ideal Bioware game would have a tight cinematic narrative with MODERATE exploration tied to interesting side quests. The sidequests in DA2 were good because they all served the purpose to further illustrate why Krirkwall was going batshit crazy. I want something similar for a Mas Effect game. A limited number of sidequests that are all thematically connected to the main story.

Sort of like ME2 but not as recruitment missions. Both DA2 and ME2 had the problem of feeling claustrophobic. Very small areas. Make them larger, add exploration. But don't overdo it like in DAI.

 

It's really not that difficult... the problem is that Bioware always chases what's most popular without knowing how to actually recreate any of it properly. This "strategy" is always going to fail. They should stick to what they are actually good at, and it's neither exploration nor combat. Hell, not even an interesting main story (except ME1). They shine at character interactions, party banter is always the best part of their games (to me).

If they want to make a game like Witcher 3 (that I haven't played yet, mind you), then they need to step up their game in all those areas they suck at. And chances of success are better when they focus on improving things on a reasonable scale, not go all out like in DAI, trying to do everything at once. Bigger is not always better.

 

Wow, you basically summarize what I am thinking. I too enjoyed DA2 the most in the DA series. And I found it refreshing that it was on a much smaller scale, and not "saving the world".

 

You should work in BW, hehe!

[Pasquale1234]

I don't think Dragon Age 2 is a good example of a story that decided to go smaller scale, because when comes right down to it Hawke's goal ultimately comes back to save the world narrative except instead of saving a nation or a galaxy your saving a city. After the first act our hero is no longer focused on making a living, but is instead drawn into much larger conflicts (the Qunari and Mages vs Templars) which distract from a more personal story of an immigrant trying to take care of their family. In fact, the game actively tries to remove that personal plot element by taking your sibling as a companion in Act 1 and then killing off your mother in Act 2. After those events Hawke is just the Champion of Kirkwall trying to save a cesspool of a city from destruction.

That's a lot of the problem I had with DA2.

Beyond scraping up the gold for the Deep Roads expedition - which was completed by the end of Act 1 - Hawke had no personal goals / motivations, but was strung along by the actions of other characters, and became everyone else's problem solver.

If a game doesn't give my character some sort of primary goal, then I need a lot more freedom to act than DA2 afforded me. When I first met the templar investigating the missing women in Act 1, I fully expected something would come of it - yet the game gave me no way to pursue any of that.

With the whole family gone by the middle of Act 2, there just wasn't any valid reason for Hawke to stay in Kirkwall.

[Ashii6]

At first I wanted to ask what you have been smoking - but then again: Both are equal IMHO (and worse than DA:O, which is one of the greatest games ever for me!)...they have just different flaws

 

Must to disappoint you, because I don't smoke anything. In my opinion DA2 was just better. Is it really that hard to understand?
I prefer DA2, because it was different. It wasn't about saving the world yet again. Oh, boo hoo, big evil happened, must stop it, hurr durr. God, how many times are we gonna go through this in BioWare games?
Story was personal for our character and I loved it. I loved Hawke. At least she had some personality, unlike Inquisitor. Even Warden had more punch than Inky.
Recycled locations sucked, I agree. Big time skips sucked. One city sucked, too. But at least there was something to do, instead of walking through empty location just to find 20 shards and then kill 10 animals for meat, because some guy asked us to do it.

I swear, some people hate DA2 just for sake of hating it. Not saying that you do, but there are people like this.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Honestly, my big problems with DA2 were:

 

(1) It essentially ended because Cassandra told Varric, "OK, you can stop now." My Hawke was pro-mage, and the ending left me confused as to whether fighting for the mages had actually made any difference if more Templars showed up to take control anyway. It also wasn't clear what happened to Hawke's companions who stayed on-side during the fight and why they all went their separate ways. Varric just tells us that they did and that's that.

 

(2) Some of the quests didn't supply adequate motivation for Hawke to get involved, unless you just assume that Hawke is kind of greedy or just extremely nosy.

 

I suppose you could argue that issue #2 arose from the smaller scale - if nothing else, stories about "saving the universe" don't lack for direction - but I think that could have been fixed with some relatively minor tweaks. For example, have something happen to leave Hawke's family even more destitute towards the end of Act I so there's a clearer motivation for the Deep Roads expedition.

 

In some ways, I think Bioware's strengths - good writing of companions, opportunities to shape your character's personality, the details behind the various fictional societies - are actually better-suited to smaller-scale stories. Something like Feros, for example, would have been pretty interesting even it had just been about the machinations of ExoGeni and the thorian without Saren's involvement, and it feels more natural to go at a slower pace when the stakes are lower. Mass Effect ended up creating this fantastic set of characters, alien societies, and ideas about humanity's future, but then told us a couple hours in that billion-year-old superbeings were about to destroy all of it.

[NKnight7]

I would be open to it, but in regards to DA2 I'm hoping there wouldn't be as many reused environments. That was one of my criticisms of the second game, I liked the variety of locations in Inquisition.

[themikefest]

I like DA2. Meredith is my favorite character in the game. I wouldn't mind having a character like her in Andromeda

[trevelyan_shep]

If they go down the same path as they did DA2, they better makes it far more entertaining than that boring ass game.

[Gwydden]

Sure, so long as the bulk of the game isn't focused on daddy issues and color-coded merc conflicts.

I'll take that over "the kingdom/world/galaxy is threatened by an evil overlord and/or ancient evil and only YOU can save it!" any and every time.

 

It's sad, really.