225 réponses à ce sujet

[Giantdeathrobot]

Mass Effect's dialog wheel is often a mess, but Inquisition's was fine. It told you which options advanced the conversation, what tone the options would have, which options are just probing for information, and gave you details when you were about to take an important decision. All things FO4's dialog wheel did not do so you were stuck with 1)yes 2) noncommital yes 3) rude no 4) ''sarcastic'' options that meant everything from a light joke to insults.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Or it highlights how useless the full line was. Your conclusion does not necessarily follow from the evidence. All you can actually conclude is that the sample did not like the two in conjunction. I know how much you like voiceless, but really.

If we isolate full-line vs. paraphrase, with no other differences to confound things, does anyone prefer having less information? Is anyone arguing that Bethesda should have stuck with the keyword dialogue system from Morrowind (rather than Skyrim's full text)? The two are both silent, so it's an apples to apples comparison.

But with the voice, when we isolate it by including the full line (like with the silent games), enough people complain that it's boring that BioWare killed the idea.

That's a big difference. The evidence points clearly in one direction, and not the other.

[Sylvius the Mad]

That's a separate matter though. Characters reacting the same way to multiple lines is different from two separate options written differently leading to the exact same dialogue, as is the case in ME1.

That's exactly my point.

Choice shouldn't be an illusion.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I would prefer auto-dialogue in that case since the conversation can at least be written to have decent flow and not feel stilted.

They could also look at streamlining some of the investigate options that amount to choosing which order you receive the expo-dump in.

Auto-dialogue is never acceptable.

[AlanC9]

If we isolate full-line vs. paraphrase, with no other differences to confound things, does anyone prefer having less information? Is anyone arguing that Bethesda should have stuck with the keyword dialogue system from Morrowind (rather than Skyrim's full text)? The two are both silent, so it's an apples to apples comparison.
But with the voice, when we isolate it by including the full line (like with the silent games), enough people complain that it's boring that BioWare killed the idea.
That's a big difference. The evidence points clearly in one direction, and not the other.

Um.... yeah, without a voiced protagonist we wouldn't be having this conversation; the point of the paraphrases is to make a voiced protagonist work better.

But we are going to have a voiced protagonist.

[RoboticWater]

If we isolate full-line vs. paraphrase, with no other differences to confound things, does anyone prefer having less information? Is anyone arguing that Bethesda should have stuck with the keyword dialogue system from Morrowind (rather than Skyrim's full text)? The two are both silent, so it's an apples to apples comparison.

But with the voice, when we isolate it by including the full line (like with the silent games), enough people complain that it's boring that BioWare killed the idea.

That's a big difference. The evidence points clearly in one direction, and not the other.

Convenient how the evidence supports your opinion.

 

The fact is that this particular test doesn't doesn't prove anything about the merits of a voiced protagonist; you're mixing up your variables.  What we've proven is that people don't like repetition; they don't like to read a full line of text and have that text read back at them. It's redundant and boring. There is a very good reason BioWare chose and continue to choose voiced protagonists and it isn't simply to spite Sylvius the Mad. Incidentally, it's probably similar to the reasons why CDPR and Bethesda chose to do the same with their games.

 

Somehow I doubt that the general public would be overjoyed to hear BioWare announce that ME:A will go back to a silent protagonist.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Um.... yeah, without a voiced protagonist we wouldn't be having this conversation; the point of the paraphrases is to make a voiced protagonist work better.

But we are going to have a voiced protagonist.

And my point is that the voice is demonstrably bad.

Regardless of whether we're getting the voice, the voice is a negative feature.

Note that when the voice is paired with the full text, the complaints (according to BioWare's own account) were about the voice, not the text.

I don't care if there's a voice. I just want the same control over my character than I had with the silent protagonist and full text. I want to know, with certainty, what my character will not say, and I want to be able to assign tone and intent freely (and independently from the line selection).

Until I get that, I'm going to complain about the voice and paraphrase.

[SNascimento]

I don't care if there's a voice. I just want the same control over my character than I had with the silent protagonist and full text. I want to know, with certainty, what my character will not say, and I want to be able to assign tone and intent freely (and independently from the line selection).

It's worth noting that that "freedom" a silent protagonist gives is totally illusory. The intent and tone is there, even if you don't see it. And the characters will react accordingly. Not to mention games like that tend to have many responses having the same outcome.

Of course, in your mind you can imagine whatever you want, even if the game doesn't acknowledge that. I totally thing that works in older games like Baldur's Gate or retro games. But in a game like Mass Effect that tries to pushes the genre foward, I expect more. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Convenient how the evidence supports your opinion.

The fact is that this particular test doesn't doesn't prove anything about the merits of a voiced protagonist; you're mixing up your variables. What we've proven is that people don't like repetition; they don't like to read a full line of text and have that text read back at them. It's redundant and boring. There is a very good reason BioWare chose and continue to choose voiced protagonists and it isn't simply to spite Sylvius the Mad. Incidentally, it's probably similar to the reasons why CDPR and Bethesda chose to do the same with their games.

Somehow I doubt that the general public would be overjoyed to hear BioWare announce that ME:A will go back to a silent protagonist.

The redundance may well be a problem, but the obfuscatory nature of the paraphrases is also a problem (a much larger one, I would argue).

Mass Effect has, so far, made no effort to address this problem. The developers won't even acknowledge that it is a problem, going so far as to explictly assert that the surprise players experienced as a result of the interrupt system was a good thing.

I'm forced to wonder whether any of the ME dev team have ever done any actual roleplaying.

[Sylvius the Mad]

It's worth noting that that "freedom" a silent protagonist gives is totally illusory.

You can do it. That's not an illusion. The game doesn't contradict you. That's not an illusion, either.

Unless you're going to argue that one or both of those statements is false. Because that freedom can only be an illusion of it isn't really happening.

The intent and tone is there, even if you don't see it.

If you can't see it, why do you think it's there.

I find your standard of evidence far too loose.

And the characters will react accordingly. Not to mention games like that tend to have many responses having the same outcome.

That only reinforces my point. Since having multiple options lead to the same outcome shows how there's no meaningful connection between the dialogue option and the result. Having the player assign tone produces the same effect.

Of course, in your mind you can imagine whatever you want, even if the game doesn't acknowledge that. I totally thing that works in older games like Baldur's Gate or retro games. But in a game like Mass Effect that tries to pushes the genre foward, I expect more.

Mass Effect abandons the genre entirely.

[RoboticWater]

And my point is that the voice is demonstrably bad.

Regardless of whether we're getting the voice, the voice is a negative feature.

Note that when the voice is paired with the full text, the complaints (according to BioWare's own account) were about the voice, not the text.

I don't care if there's a voice. I just want the same control over my character than I had with the silent protagonist and full text. I want to know, with certainty, what my character will not say, and I want to be able to assign tone and intent freely (and independently from the line selection).

Until I get that, I'm going to complain about the voice and paraphrase.

And your point is quite empirically untrue.

 

You should take note of Telltale. Their games haven't gotten so popular based on their stellar point and click mechanics and branching narratives; they sell because they're well presented. The characters are voiced emphatically and that resonates with the player.

 

This shouldn't come as a surprise. Film and TV eclipsed books in popularity for the exact same reason: most people find 

more engaging.

 

 

The redundance may well be a problem, but the obfuscatory nature of the paraphrases is also a problem (a much larger one, I would argue).

Mass Effect has, so far, made no effort to address this problem. The developers won't even acknowledge that it is a problem, going so far as to explictly assert that the surprise players experienced as a result of the interrupt system was a good thing.

I'm forced to wonder whether any of the ME dev team have ever done any actual roleplaying.

But they have acknowledged the problem: they ran the tests for one, but  they've also added in emotional icons in DA. This is an ongoing process, and unfortunately for you, BioWare consider the enhanced presentation to be a greater boon than potentially more dialog options.

 

The surprise from interrupts is a good thing in some regards. It isn't the most ideal system and it has room for improvement, but the surprise certainly enhances the badassery of certain moments. It doesn't matter how much roleplaying the ME team has done; BioWare's end goal is to make a great game, not necessarily a great RPG (certainly not an RPG based strictly to your standards). The devs are perfectly willing to sacrifice perfect roleplaying for vocal performance, and I think that's a perfectly acceptable direction to pursue, because that seems to make most of the consumers happy myself included.

 

There's room for improvement, but it should be forward, not back. Eventually, there will be a way to accommodate everyone, but until then I think it's clear which side of the mountain BioWare have decided to start climbing from.

[SNascimento]

If you can't see it, why do you think it's there.

Because you can tell by how characters react to it. Say there is an option that reads "You do that, I'll kill you!". You can imagine your character saying that as a joke, in a very light tone. Yet if it's written as a threat, that's how the character who is spoken to will perceive it. That happened to me multiple times playing Baldur's Gate 2 a few weeks ago... I picked a choice imaging the way the protagonist would say it, but clearly the characters reacted to another tone entirely.
 

That only reinforces my point. Since having multiple options lead to the same outcome shows how there's no meaningful connection between the dialogue option and the result. Having the player assign tone produces the same effect.

In other words, the game doesn't acknowledge your choice in tone. The difference only exist in your imagination. It's a valid thing mind you, and I can totally enjoy that in the proper context, but it doesn't change the fact it's something imaginary.
 

Mass Effect abandons the genre entirely. 

 

What is exactly that Mass Effect abandons? It has a different take on dialogue, one that many people, myself included, will call an evolution. It has some drawbacks... for people that really like to roleplay the story in their head it can lead to some frustration, as they will believe freedom has been taken away. But the advantages is that conversation tend to become more organic, difference choices in dialogue leading to different answers more often, your character feels more alive and the game acknowledges your choices more, even if they might not be your perfect choice.

I understand what you're saying, but I must say you should realize that Bioware consider that something of ages past. You may not like it, but many people do. And it's certainly not a lesser way of creating dialogue than the one present in older RPGs.

[RoboticWater]

You can do it. That's not an illusion. The game doesn't contradict you. That's not an illusion, either.

But the game will eventually contradict you. I can say the phrase "yeah, I agree," in completely different tones that clearly contradict each other. Either it's sarcasm or not, and the game is only programmed to read it one particular way. Unless the NPC I'm talking to is severely autistic and literally can't comprehend rhetoric, there's no way to inject my own tone into dialog choices.
 

Unless you're going to argue that one or both of those statements is false. Because that freedom can only be an illusion of it isn't really happening.
If you can't see it, why do you think it's there.

I find your standard of evidence far too loose.

Because when my friend says "bite me," I can tell he's not trying to convert me to cannibalism. When a writer inserts a line into a game, he or she must assume a particular intent behind it in order to formulate a response.
 

That only reinforces my point. Since having multiple options lead to the same outcome shows how there's no meaningful connection between the dialogue option and the result. Having the player assign tone produces the same effect.

But then we have the same problem as auto-dialog: the game assumes we mean something that we might not. If that's the case, then the problem is purely cosmetic, and BioWare chose to eschew the illusion of tone for presentation value. You don't have to like it, but it's a valid decision on BioWare's part.
 

Mass Effect abandons the genre entirely.

According to who? You? I'm so glad you're able to lay down the law for us. I don't know how much longer we could've lasted in doubt. (You might notice a smidge of sarcasm there, and may respond accordingly.)

[Sylvius the Mad]

And your point is quite empirically untrue.

You should take note of Telltale. Their games haven't gotten so popular based on their stellar point and click mechanics and branching narratives; they sell because they're well presented. The characters are voiced emphatically and that resonates with the player.

This shouldn't come as a surprise. Film and TV eclipsed books in popularity for the exact same reason: most people find
more engaging.

Books and movies are comparable becausr they're trying to do the same thing. They're both telling stories.

Telltale games, similarly, tell stories.

That isn't what roleplaying games do. If BioWare wants to make story games, fine, but stip calling them roleplaying games. Stop saying they contain RPG elements. Because the only RPG element is roleplaying, and games that allow roleplaying are bad at telling stories, and gamesthat tell stories tend not to allow roleplaying.

Historically, western RPGs would drop the player's character and the world and keave hom to do what he wanted. No one disputes that this is a terrible way to tell a story. But that's not what those games were trying to do.

I want roleplaying games.

But they have acknowledged the problem: they ran the tests for one, but they've also added in emotional icons in DA.

The icons make the problem worse, not better.

I ignore them.

This is an ongoing process, and unfortunately for you, BioWare consider the enhanced presentation to be a greater boon than potentially more dialog options.

We don't need more. We just need to know what they are.

There's no way the voice can give us that without letting hear a preview before we make the selection.

The surprise from interrupts is a good thing in some regards. It isn't the most ideal system and it has room for improvement, but the surprise certainly enhances the badassery of certain moments.

It's badassery the player didn't choose. It has nothing to do with the player at all. The interrupts render the game's content non-interactive.

There's room for improvement, but it should be forward, not back.

The terms forward and back make no sense in this discussion.

Is any change forward? Is forward good? What are you trying to say?

Words have meaning.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Because you can tell by how characters react to it.

You cannot read other people's minds.  You never know why anyone else ever does anything.

 

There's always possibly a confounding factor that makes the behaviour unpredictable.

In other words, the game doesn't acknowledge your choice in tone. The difference only exist in your imagination.

Just like every other detail of my character's mental state and personality.  How is this a downside?

 

Moreover, as you yourself have claimed, the game also sometimes doesn't acknowledge your choice in dialogue option, as multiple options will produce identical NPC reactions.  So the game ignoring your choices is already happening.

 

And I don't think it matters.  Because when you're playing your character, there is no game.  Your character doesn't know he's in a game.  Your character doesn't know how the NPC would have reacted had your character said something differently (or a different thing entirely).  So whatever the NPC reaction is, it's a reaction to the thing you decide that your character did.  There's no reason ever to think otherwise unless you break character and metagame it.

What is exactly that Mass Effect abandons? It has a different take on dialogue, one that many people, myself included, will call an evolution. It has some drawbacks... for people that really like to roleplay the story in their head it can lead to some frustration, as they will believe freedom has been taken away. But the advantages is that conversation tend to become more organic, difference choices in dialogue leading to different answers more often, your character feels more alive and the game acknowledges your choices more, even if they might not be your perfect choice.

I'm not choosing at all.  I'm throwing darts at a board while wearing a blindfold.  That I happen to hit a bullseye ever isn't because I was aiming at it; it's always just random chance.

 

We don't get to choose anything about the dialogue in Mass Effect.  We get to look behind door #3 to see what's there, but there's no way we could reasonably be described as having chosen that item.  We chose door #3, but we did so in near total ignorance of what was behind it.

I understand what you're saying, but I must say you should realize that Bioware consider that something of ages past. You may not like it, but many people do. And it's certainly not a lesser way of creating dialogue than the one present in older RPGs.

If we don't know what our character's behaviour will be, we are not choosing that behaviour.

 

So what are we doing?  What is the player's role?  What is the point of even having a player?

[theflyingzamboni]

Maybe they should just offer more than two choices then?

 

It gets really annoying to try and roleplay someone who's only dialogue options are "I am sad" or "I am p*ssed"

That would certainly be preferable. I was just noting that ME1 wasn't the paragon (har har) of choice some people seem to remember it being.

[Sylvius the Mad]

But the game will eventually contradict you. I can say the phrase "yeah, I agree," in completely different tones that clearly contradict each other. Either it's sarcasm or not, and the game is only programmed to read it one particular way. Unless the NPC I'm talking to is severely autistic and literally can't comprehend rhetoric, there's no way to inject my own tone into dialog choices.

Tone conveys no information.

Whenever I see people appeal to tone as an explanation for their misinterpretation of someone's remarks, they're just rationalizing to cover their own error. I have never seen tone used in a way that provided better information than the text alone.

Because when my friend says "bite me," I can tell he's not trying to convert me to cannibalism.

But not because of tone. Because in your friendly lexicon, "bite me" always means the same thing.

Your friend is never trying to convince you to eat him. And if he were, the change in context would be noticeable. Tone tells you nothing.

When a writer inserts a line into a game, he or she must assume a particular intent behind it in order to formulate a response.

That's not true at all. He could write a response that would work with a variety of tones. Or he could assume a specific interpretation by the NPC, regardless of tone.

But then we have the same problem as auto-dialog: the game assumes we mean something that we might not.

The game never needs to assume our intent or meaning. As soon as it does, it breaks roleplaying.

The game needs only to assume the NPC's interpretation. The NPC's interpretation doesn't need to have been accurate. But that's okay. My character then can draw conclusions about the NPC based on the NPC's reaction. It creates a roleplaying feedback loop where future decisions are informed by my character's interpretation of NPC reactions.

If that's the case, then the problem is purely cosmetic, and BioWare chose to eschew the illusion of tone for presentation value. You don't have to like it, but it's a valid decision on BioWare's part.

And my point is it isn't cosmetic.

I mostly complain about this now because BioWare has moved to that unmoddable monstrosity they call an engine, so we can't even customise the game to our own preference.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I think BioWare's silent protagonist games mimicked real-world conversation just about perfectly.

 

But with the voiced games, I can't tell whose perspective I'm supposed to inhabit.  I can't inhabit my character's perspective, because I don't know what he's going to say.  So I just become an observer.  I'm reduced to being the audience.

[theflyingzamboni]

If we isolate full-line vs. paraphrase, with no other differences to confound things, does anyone prefer having less information? Is anyone arguing that Bethesda should have stuck with the keyword dialogue system from Morrowind (rather than Skyrim's full text)? The two are both silent, so it's an apples to apples comparison.

But with the voice, when we isolate it by including the full line (like with the silent games), enough people complain that it's boring that BioWare killed the idea.

That's a big difference. The evidence points clearly in one direction, and not the other.

No, it really doesn't. Silent and voiced are two totally different contexts. Strangely, like so many other things in the world, some things don't work as well in some contexts as others, and yet that doesn't make one context inherently bad. Full text works in silent because that is your only exposure to the line. You read it, you pick it, and the NPC responds. In voiced, you read it, then hear the same thing again. It's repetitive. That's a problem for some people, myself included. I don't like my character saying something I didn't expect, but I can just reload. What comes out is almost always what I expect in theme, so I'm afraid your feeling that it's random chance is not universal. In the end, I find it less grating of an issue than constant repetition. I also like the engagement of a voiced protagonist, and I'm willing to sacrifice occasional clarity to have that. Almost as if the whole issue is entirely... subjective. Like there is no objective or demonstrable measure by which repetition is less of an issue than paraphrasing, or voiced is worse than silent.

Your "demonstration" only implies that voicing is the problem if you start with the assumption that voicing is the problem. Your reasoning remains an Ouroboros of discontent wrapping around this forum.

[Sylvius the Mad]

No, it really doesn't. Silent and voiced are two totally different contexts. Strangely, like so many other things in the world, some things don't work as well in some contexts as others, and yet that doesn't make one context inherently bad. Full text works in silent because that is your only exposure to the line. You read it, you pick it, and the NPC responds. In voiced, you read it, then hear the same thing again. It's repetitive. That's a problem for some people, myself included. I don't like my character saying something I didn't expect, but I can just reload. What comes out is almost always what I expect in theme, so I'm afraid your feeling that it's random chance is not universal. In the end, I find it less grating of an issue than constant repetition. I also like the engagement of a voiced protagonist, and I'm willing to sacrifice occasional clarity to have that. Almost as if the whole issue is entirely... subjective. Like there is no objective or demonstrable measure by which repetition is less of an issue than paraphrasing, or voiced is worse than silent.

Your "demonstration" only implies that voicing is the problem if you start with the assumption that voicing is the problem. Your reasoning remains an Ouroboros of discontent wrapping around this forum.

The potential for disagreement between the line and the paraphrase is the problem here.

 

If I could play ME or DA2 by turning off the voice and the subtitles (so I never knew what the full line was), I would enjoy the game more.  Then the paraphrase would effectively become the full line.

 

I don't watch the scenes anyway.  I tend to skip voiced dialogue (because I'd rather read than listen), so the tone doesn't really matter (except insofar as the writers' expectations that we will hear it and know what it means - which is ludicrous - would influence how they write it); my primary concern here is that the line ever says anything I couldn't have predicted in advance.

[BioWareM0d13]

Mass Effect's dialog wheel is often a mess, but Inquisition's was fine. It told you which options advanced the conversation, what tone the options would have, which options are just probing for information, and gave you details when you were about to take an important decision. All things FO4's dialog wheel did not do so you were stuck with 1)yes 2) noncommital yes 3) rude no 4) ''sarcastic'' options that meant everything from a light joke to insults.

 

The dialogue wheel was one of the few things in DA:I that I had no complaints about. It was probably the best version of the wheel that we've seen in Bioware games so far. I wouldn't mind a similar approach in Andromeda.

[Enigmatick]

Auto-dialogue is never acceptable.

Always wanted to ask this: In a crpg, when you only have one dialogue option is it not the same thing as auto dialogue?

[Para9on So1dier]

They should (as an option, that can be turned on/off in options) add a timer like Telltale The Walking Dead games.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Always wanted to ask this: In a crpg, when you only have one dialogue option is it not the same thing as auto dialogue?

Not at all.

 

If there's only one option, we get to see it in advance.  That allows us to adopt a mental state for our character that is compatible with that one statement, and thus be ready to interpret the consequences from an in-character perspective.

 

It's the surprise that's bad, not the lack of control.

[KaiserShep]

That's still autodialogue though. Whether or not you see it coming doesn't change the fact that it's unavoidable.