295 réponses à ce sujet

[Hanako Ikezawa]

Mass Effect 2 has more of a slice of life than an epic world shattering adventure, make MEA more like that.

Now I definitely don't want them to follow your ideas. Mass Effect 2 is easily my least favorite of the Mass Effect games. 

[Hiemoth]

One thing that annoyed me is Aaryn Flynn accepting an award for DAI and calling it Bioware's "return to form". I don't know if it's just marketing speak getting caught up in the moment.. but it's a lame thing to say. They tried too hard to distance themselves from DA2. And for anyone who liked DA2, that's disappointing. That's why I even stuck around in the first place. I didn't buy DAI because I hated DA2. I don't understand that.

 

It'd probably be OK if they had the mass numbers of Bethesda to make up for it. But I don't think that's the case. CoD developers could also probably alienate half of their fans and still wear money hats. Bioware, not so much.

 

I so hated that comment from Flynn, as much Laidlaw commenting that DA2 was a misstep in an interview without actually having even been asked about the game. I realize that DA2 is polarizing game and I had no difficulties with the DA team not focusing on DA2 when marketing DAI. But to kind of start proactively putting down DA2 felt really dismissive and almost insulting towards people who liked DA2, especially since it was completely unnecessary.

 

Don't count me in as a DA2 is a super special snowflake person, but I did notice it was in fact pretty fun but even more importantly it seemed like the game Bioware really wanted to make and represented a kind of synthesis of many different ideas..

 

I don't think DA2 is perfect in anyway, I could list several flaws in the game, some due to the insanely short dev time, some due to them playing with a lot of new concepts and mechanics. Just, for me, what it got right made the great a truly experience for me and its blatant ambition in trying something new was just awesome. The problem in the discussion came not with the fact that everyone should have loved it, but rather that people decided nobody should like it. You couldn't make a positive thread here about the game or have any kind of honest discussion of its merits and flaws without the thread suddenly becoming filled with people bashing game to make certain Bioware didn't think anyone liked the game. The situation was so bizarre, but then ME3 happened.

[LinksOcarina]

I so hated that comment from Flynn, as much Laidlaw commenting that DA2 was a misstep in an interview without actually having even been asked about the game. I realize that DA2 is polarizing game and I had no difficulties with the DA team not focusing on DA2 when marketing DAI. But to kind of start proactively putting down DA2 felt really dismissive and almost insulting towards people who liked DA2, especially since it was completely unnecessary.

 

 

I don't think DA2 is perfect in anyway, I could list several flaws in the game, some due to the insanely short dev time, some due to them playing with a lot of new concepts and mechanics. Just, for me, what it got right made the great a truly experience for me and its blatant ambition in trying something new was just awesome. The problem in the discussion came not with the fact that everyone should have loved it, but rather that people decided nobody should like it. You couldn't make a positive thread here about the game or have any kind of honest discussion of its merits and flaws without the thread suddenly becoming filled with people bashing game to make certain Bioware didn't think anyone liked the game. The situation was so bizarre, but then ME3 happened.

 

 

Which made things even more bizarre...

[straykat]

I didn't come here around DA2's launch. I didn't see too much drama. But I found a bunch of discussions when I finally did. And I stuck here.. people had fun debating the different sides of the mage/temp war especially. And everyone definitely looked forward to seeing that explored (and DAI did not deliver). For Bioware to think that it didn't have it's fans is stupid. I invested myself in it. Now I feel like I might have made a mistake caring about their world. Or at least, I'm more detached. Why should I bother if they don't have much pride themselves.

[Lucca_de_Neon]

I love you people. Seriously; I wish you were there when the DA2 fans tried to gang up on me and failed becuase I simply didn't care enough. (No Cat; you weren't involved. It was me and AnimalBoy and he got all the likes and eventualily ended up telling me to go away XD It wasn't my fault he choice to agrue with me....)

I really can't stand disrespectful people like that so i'm sorry you had to endure all that. But it's over!! Let's buy some ice cream!

[Puddi III]

Now I definitely don't want them to follow your ideas. Mass Effect 2 is easily my least favorite of the Mass Effect games.

On the other hand, I finally agree with Kefka.

Make ME:A a slice of life anime.

[Laughing_Man]

I so hated that comment from Flynn, as much Laidlaw commenting that DA2 was a misstep...

 

Cynical marketing tactics are cynical, I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that this was Bioware marketing department trying to leverage the controversy of DA2 into more interest in DA:I. (somewhat ironic, but marketing always is)

 

In my personal opinion, a DA game with graphics and world from DA:I, a story that takes cues from DA2 (but improved, you still have influence on the world, but the world does not revolve around you, perhaps more like TW3 than DA2), and gameplay similar to DA:O (more spells / abilities, no 8 ability restriction, enemies armed with spells of similar effectiveness to your own), would be the best DA so far.

[Hiemoth]

Which made things even more bizarre...

 

Which in turn was another reason I hated Flynn's comment so much about DAI being Bioware's return to form. At that point, the previous game published by Bioware was ME3 that had received that insane reaction and a level of personal insults towards the dev team which was just staggering to witness. So Flynn, who at no point belonged to that ME team that had to have withstood all of that, deciding to comment how their recent game was a return to form was just distasteful for me.

[straykat]

 So Flynn, who at no point belonged to that ME team that had to have withstood all of that, deciding to comment how their recent game was a return to form was just distasteful for me.

 

See, I didn't even know that. That makes him more of a douche.

[Seraphim24]

Which in turn was another reason I hated Flynn's comment so much about DAI being Bioware's return to form.

 

 

They did that with SWTOR and KOTFE also, saying it's a return to Bioware cinematic storytelling.

 

I was like wha, did I not just do like a bajillion quests across a bunch of different planets and have like dozens of conversations with multitudes of companions and all that.

 

Also as a side note I found the graphics and style of DA2 to be superior anyway, all the weird shifting clouds with parted sun rays, occasional fog and such, very unique and kind of absorbing atmosphere.

[GoldenGail3]

I really can't stand disrespectful people like that so i'm sorry you had to endure all that. But it's over!! Let's buy some ice cream!

Can i PM you it? 

[Joseph Warrick]

Don't pay too much attention to commercials (dev interviews are commercials). When they were promoting DA2 they dissed DAO's combat.

[Lucca_de_Neon]

Can i PM you it? 

Of course! feel free to write to me whenever you want!

[KaiserShep]

Don't pay too much attention to commercials (dev interviews are commercials). When they were promoting DA2 they dissed DAO's combat.

 

Marketing for BioWare's games were mostly terrible all around.

[In Exile]

What they need is sarcastic Hawke. Or aggresive Hawke, who sometimes had the more hilarious lines. Basically, some more personality. The Inquisitor was a blit flat in that regard, and while Renegade Shep was hilarious at times, Paragon could often fall flat. 

[Hiemoth]

Don't pay too much attention to commercials (dev interviews are commercials). When they were promoting DA2 they dissed DAO's combat.

 

But that was a specific mechanistic element that they wanted to change. If they had similarly dissed DA2's combat mechanics, I wouldn't have had a problem with it, even though I vastly preferred the DA2 mechanics to DAI's. The problem with those comment was that they completely dismiss the game a mistep, which they never did with DAO.

 

 

What they need is sarcastic Hawke. Or aggresive Hawke, who sometimes had the more hilarious lines. Basically, some more personality. The Inquisitor was a blit flat in that regard, and while Renegade Shep was hilarious at times, Paragon could often fall flat. 

 

I would actually expand on this. What I would to see taken from DA2 is the separation of tone and action, even though I can easily see how that would be difficult to implement in the Paragon/Renegade system. In DA2, the tone Hawke takes in dialogue is completely independent of the actions Hawke takes in the game. This allowed for a seemingly utterly kind and charming Hawke who wouldn't hesitate for a second to sell someone to slavery for personal benefit. I thought it was a really awesome mechanic that allowed for a lot of character types.

 

Actually, even more so, I hope that they have a good idea what mechanistic function P/R serves in the game as I feel they've changed that in each of the ME games.

[KaiserShep]

What they need is sarcastic Hawke. Or aggresive Hawke, who sometimes had the more hilarious lines. Basically, some more personality. The Inquisitor was a blit flat in that regard, and while Renegade Shep was hilarious at times, Paragon could often fall flat. 

 

Full paragon Shep was a sap at times and could get tiresome. I did like that the paragon interrupt in Overlord actually involved pistol whipping someone in the face though. But yes, my vote would go for sarcastic Hawke. Hawke is easily the one that amused me the most. 

 

"What's a Mekel?" 

[NKnight7]

Full paragon Shep was a sap at times and could get tiresome. I did like that the paragon interrupt in Overlord actually involved pistol whipping someone in the face though. But yes, my vote would go for sarcastic Hawke. Hawke is easily the one that amused me the most. 

 

"What's a Mekel?" 

 

Sarcastic Hawke is awesome, just watch the video below.

 

[Neverwinter_Knight77]

Respectfully... Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Dragon Age II is my least favorite Bioware game so far. Thankfully, the very little I've played of Inquisition so far (got it a few days ago) appears to be an improvement.

[GoldenGail3]

Respectfully... Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Dragon Age II is my least favorite Bioware game so far. Thankfully, the very little I've played of Inquisition so far (got it a few days ago) appears to be an improvement.

I played DA2 three times and yet I don't find myself liking the idea of MEA being like DA2.....

[Sylvius the Mad]

You forget, most CRPG's started as dungeon crawls with no plot

Oubliette - 1977.  I have it installed on my phone right now.

 

The earliest CRPGs, like Oubliette and Avatar and Rogue, were the very first attempts to produce a roleplaying experience inside a computer.  As one would expect of the earliest attempts to do anything, they were only partially successful.

 

But the crowd of developers gradually got better.

, it was only the mid 90s when Fallout and Baldur's Gate began to change that and borrow elements from console RPGs and adventure titles to mix them with modern production values to fit a more complex Ultima-style game, which was always the exception to the rule.

Except it wasn't.  Questron.  Wizard's Crown.  The Bard's Tale (especially Bard's Tale II).  Might & Magic.  There were lots of quality CRPGs in the 1980s.  Even the games that remained linear dungeon crawls (like The Dark Heart of Uukrul) added a bunch of extra lore and puzzle solving.

 

There was significant progression going on after early dungeon crawlers like Wizardry and Telengard but before more modern games like Fallout and Baldur's Gate (Ultima IV and Ultima VII being the obvious high points).

 

But it was the addition of those elements from console RPGs where things started to go wrong.  Console RPGs started in much the same place as the earliest CRPGs did (with Atari's Adventure in 1979), but after that they developed in a different direction (because the guys writing games for Nintendo weren't trying to emulate tabletop RPGs - they were trying to tell stories).

The SSI Goldbox titles were early attempts at combining dungeon crawlers and story-driven content, but they were uneven at best as well.

Their strength was in their translation of a tabletop ruleset to a computer game.  They showed it could be done, and done at least adequately.

Fallout, Baldur's Gate, and to a lesser extent Diablo changed that.

I don't see how Diablo belongs in this discussion at all.  It's as shallow a dungeon crawl as the games from the early '80s were, but with a clumsier interface.

 

The game that really took the quality CRPG design (of setting you loose in the world to do what you want) and made it more modern was Arena in 1994.  Like the best Ultima games, or the later Elder Scrolls games, there's a story there, but the story doesn't matter unless you decide it does.

 

Incidentally, the Ultima game that did the most to push the player in the direction of solving the main quest is, I think, Ultima V, because the nature of the quest is such that the world is fairly unwelcoming to you until you start trying to do something about that.  But there's no rails, and the game never forces you to do anything.

 

Modern CRPGs should do that.  If the developers want us to experience their story, they need to provide adequate incentives for our characters to follow that path (rather than simply giving us nothing else to do).  Building fences around the path is not the appropriate solution.

The definition of CRPG is certainly a role-playing game, but when so many role-playing games, many of them revered as such, are story over mechanics focused in general, it's a mistake to not call them an RPG in that aspect as well since it has become a major focal point to their evolution. Dungeon Crawlers are niche sub-genres now compared to narrative-driven RPGs, it's simply a fact of the matter at this point which is more or less academic to the growth of role-playing video games. 

 

I would then argue by that definition you give, Baldur's Gate is not a role-playing game, or at least not a good role-playing game because of t's story focus. From the get-go you are thrusted into a narrative to continue exploring the world. You, your character, may not reach the same conclusion as the game wants you to, but you are also head-cannoning that as a result of your characters thoughts or desires. 

 

"I won't go to Nashkel mines because my character doesn't care about the iron crisis." you can say. The game can accommodate that to a point, sure, and it can be satisfying, but by the game's own design, it's an unavoidable pit-stop to even get Baldur's Gate itself open, as you begin to unravel the larger plot of the world.

I think you're grossly mischaracterizing Baldur's Gate.  The narrative isn't even visible to a first time player.  You're thrown into the world, yes, and there's nothing else to do but explore, but exploration isn't the narrative.  The narrative has to do with Sarevok and Bhaal, and you (and your character) may have no idea who they are or what they're doing.  There are hints that lead you in that direction, but those hints aren't even forced upon you.  The developers probably expected that the player would either follow Gorion's advice (and go meet Khalid and Jaheira, who advise the PC to go to Nashkel) or quickly meet Xzar and Montaron (who are on the road on the first map, and also want to go to Nashkel).  But neither of these things is forced.

 

My first companion was Kivan.  He wanted to head south to find ogres.  My next companion was Garret; his concerns lay in Beregost.  My next two companions were Edwin and Minsc - they both wanted to head west to the Gnoll Stronghold.  Branwen had no particular objective that I recall.  I accepted some bounties (Brage, Bassilus, Prism), and headed off to deal my companions' interests.  The game didn't send me to Nashkel at all.

 

It's entirely possible for the player to miss BG's main quest for quite some time.  I was collecting bandit scalps for bounties long before I stumbled into Tranzig in the inn where I stored my extra potions and realized that the iron crisis was anything more than a simple side-quest.

Regardless of the choices or desires of the player character, the story, and by proxy, narrative, is a major forefront of the game's own progression. It is forcing the player to do storyline in that regard, the players motivation is insignificant because it will eventually have to accommodate that story to even work as a role-playing video game, and that is including character point of view. The decisions become arbitrary then; you have to come up with valid character motivation to even justify it.

Your reasoning here is circular.  What you say is only true if you define progression as advancement through the story.  And if that's true, well then obviously the story is central to the game's progression.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Which made things even more bizarre...

DA2 didn't do very well.  By talking it down, the devs implicitly acknowledge its general unpopularity as a way to make it sound as if they listen to fan feedback (regardless of whether they are, it benefits them to be perceived as doing it).

 

Note that after DAI's launch (which went quite well), one of the developers admitted that, after DA2's reception, they weren't sure fans would even look at DAI.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I would certainly at least just count a tabletop iteration of D&D.

I was hoping for examples.  You said:

There are many other better hardcore RPGs out there

Would you like to name some?

 

And I'm looking for CRPGs, here.  Tabletop RPGs may well be great RPGs, but they're also multiplayer games, and multiplayer isn't something in which I'm interested.  CRPGs used to provide decent roleplaying experiences without the need for other players.  What CRPGs do that now?

[Sylvius the Mad]

Don't count me in as a DA2 is a super special snowflake person, but I did notice it was in fact pretty fun but even more importantly it seemed like the game Bioware really wanted to make and represented a kind of synthesis of many different ideas..

If it had been the one they wanted to make (incidentally, they say this with every game), it wouldn't have been the one they made when they only had 11 months to do it.

 

Really, if there was a game BioWare really wanted to make, I suggest that was DAO.  They spent years as an independent company developing that game, and so thoroughly did they not kowtow to publishers' expectations that they couldn't sell the game when it was done (thus forcing them to sell the whole studio to recover from funding its development).

 

For people who believe that BioWare died when EA bought them, it must then be true that DAO killed BioWare (much as Wizardry 8 killed Sir-Tech, and Wizardry 8 is similarly excellent).

[Sylvius the Mad]

For me, DA2 and ME3 shared something I don't see on most games: the idea that my amazing, epic character is doomed to fail. Shep was done and I assumed from early in the game that she was going to die. With Hawke they had me going for a bit but on the end my earth-shaking prowess came to little more than a footnote, a bedtime story. I don't always want to fail in video games but if BioWare can keep coming up with reasons for me to want to try even in the face of certain death/doom, I'll keep buying their games.

Hawke doesn't necessarily fail, though.

 

Neither does Shepard.  In fact, Shepard can't fail unless you headcanon it.