55 réponses à ce sujet

[Rahelron]

This is a provocatory title of course, but i really do think that the party mechanic poses some real problems to the development of good stories in bioware RPGs. That is because it requires the existence of the so called "companion characters", meaning the NPCs that can be recuited to join your fighting party. I can summarize those problems in three bullet points:

 

• Quantity problems: in order to let the player build a party you need to have at least two NPCs for every class in the game, that is to say 6 characters. That is the bare minimum since, as we have seen in the past, people have complained when presented with only 6 companions to choose from (ME3 without the "From Ashes" DLC). This means that every game Bioware has to write a lot of new characters and, as we know, quantity is the greatest enemy of quality.
• Fans grow attached to companions: when a companion is well written fans grow attached to him, want to see him appear in every game. This forces developers to shoe-horn characters into plots that have nothing to do with them, creating convoluted side quests and having to take into account all the different possible branching paths that players could have chosen to take in the past games. This transforms development into an effort to check all the boxes in order to satisfy everyone. We can see how this goes against creating compelling and coherent stories.
• Companions steal the spotlight: we have seen this happen in Dragon Age 2. Sometimes well-written companions are so compelling that start driving the plot by themselves, while the supposed main character becomes just a follower that kills monsters in order to keep the story progressing. Since the player indentifies with the main character and not with his companions, we can see how this goes against creating good games.

[vertigomez]

Nah.

[duckley]

Hmmm - not sure I agree. Here are some of my thoughts....

 

Quantity -  Bioware is not compelled to respond to fans complaints about the number of companions- heck fans complain about a lot of things and Bioware does not respond to them all. Having said that, I don't think quality suffered in the least with the number of companions and advisors in Inquisition. They were all well crafted IMO. Quantity and quality!

 

Fans growing attached - great!!!- Bioware has achieved its outcome if fans grow attached to companions. Wonderful and interesting companions is what Bioware is known for! Love them or hate them - they add so much to the game. For the most part, fans are not compelled to do companion quests if I recall. Not sure what you mean by "transforming development into checkboxes to satisfy everyone". As not all companions return, the only companions that need to be taken into consideration are those that are returning . Varric's story actually fit into the game quite well...I thought.

 

Companions steal the spotlight...... so? Firstly, not sure I agree. I love Dorian and my Quizzy too. I love Alistair and my warden. I love Varric and Hawke... so ??? I identified with both the "hero" and his companions, Makes the story rich and interesting - makes me want to root for more than one person, Makes me care about the outcome... and that's what makes a great story and a great game IMO.

[Serza]

That **** you're smoking - must be some pretty dank stuff. Mind hooking me up?

[vertigomez]

I'm pretty sure "companion" characters are Bioware's bread and butter.

[NKnight7]

Not really, in fact the companion characters are one of the appeals of Bioware's games to me. Like I said in another thread, they and all of the other characters really make the story.

[nightscrawl]

The fact that they are fully realized characters has nothing to do with party mechanics. They can serve that function just as well and be the same type of limited henchmen as in party games of yore. They fact that they are fully realized characters is something that Bioware wants to do, and I would argue that that is one of the core features of the games that the company creates.

 

You second and third points are both highly subjective.

[YourFunnyUncle]

Ahahahahaha! Very funny! Yes BioWare should definitely stop doing the very thing that differentiates them from every other developer. That would be a brilliant idea.

[Riot Inducer]

I don't follow your logic at all, BioWare writes really great companion characters that fans grow attached to...and this is a bad thing? The well written companion characters are literally a very large selling point of BioWare titles for a lot of people. What good is an adventure without companions to share in the journey?

[vertigomez]

This is a provocatory title of course, but i really do think that the party mechanic poses some real problems to the development of good stories in bioware RPGs. That is because it requires the existence of the so called "companion characters", meaning the NPCs that can be recuited to join your fighting party. I can summarize those problems in three bullet points:

• Quantity problems: in order to let the player build a party you need to have at least two NPCs for every class in the game, that is to say 6 characters. That is the bare minimum since, as we have seen in the past, people have complained when presented with only 6 companions to choose from (ME3 without the "From Ashes" DLC). This means that every game Bioware has to write a lot of new characters and, as we know, quantity is the greatest enemy of quality.
• Fans grow attached to companions: when a companion is well written fans grow attached to him, want to see him appear in every game. This forces developers to shoe-horn characters into plots that have nothing to do with them, creating convoluted side quests and having to take into account all the different possible branching paths that players could have chosen to take in the past games. This transforms development into an effort to check all the boxes in order to satisfy everyone. We can see how this goes against creating compelling and coherent stories.
• Companions steal the spotlight: we have seen this happen in Dragon Age 2. Sometimes well-written companions are so compelling that start driving the plot by themselves, while the supposed main character becomes just a follower that kills monsters in order to keep the story progressing. Since the player indentifies with the main character and not with his companions, we can see how this goes against creating good games.

Your third point in particular confuses me. What's wrong with well-written, compelling characters that drive the plot? I don't want to feel like my PC is the center of the universe. I want to feel like they're a person in the universe.

Are you serious, or just trolling? I'm baffled.

[Abyss108]

The only one that seems like any kind of problem to me is the first point... Having the characters fit into specific classes for gameplay reasons, and even then Bioware isn't forced to have a character for every class/spec. 

 

Getting attached to characters is a good thing, and just because a character is well liked doesn't mean Bioware has to shoehorn them into future games at all.

 

The fact that recently Bioware has been writing character that drive the plot more is probably my favourite improvement Bioware has made to their games. I don't want a story that is just about my own protagonist, I want a story about a group of protagonists I get to interact with. 

[robertmarilyn]

Great characters make the game for me. 

[Rahelron]

The very thing that differentiate Bioware from the competition is the fact that they deliver story driven western RPGs. There is only an handful of companies capable of delivering such games, and most of them aren't quite at bioware's level (for now). I agree with you on the fact that story and characters are at the hart of what Bioware does, but I disagree about companions being the only way to deliver great story and characters.

1. Companions are not unique to Bioware, Many Final Fantasy games for example have a cast of supporting characters that are very similar to companions. South Park The Stick of Truth has companions, Divinity Original Sin 2 will have companions, not to mention all the games inspired by the Infinity Engine era that are coming out right now.
2. Many games, like The Last of Us and The Witcher saga, have proven that it is possible to deliver a great story with great characters even without using companions.

 

Let's not stray from the point though. Title of the thread aside, I didn't want to prove that using a party based combat mechanic (that leads to companions) is intrinsicly bad from a storytelling perspective, what I wanted to argue is that it comes with a cost. Forces to write new characters, even when they aren't needed for the plot. Forces to make some characters a constant presence in the protagonist's group, even when that presence is difficult to justify, even when those characters would have worked better as loners or as a standalone encounter. Forces to make old fan favorites appear in games where they aren't needed. 

[ComedicSociopathy]

[Rahelron]

I don't follow your logic at all, BioWare writes really great companion characters that fans grow attached to...and this is a bad thing? The well written companion characters are literally a very large selling point of BioWare titles for a lot of people. What good is an adventure without companions to share in the journey?

 

I'll try to explain my point better: there's nothing wrong with great characters, in fact, those are the first driver of Bioware Games' sales in my opinion. Problems arise when great characters become shitty characters because they get shoe-horned in plots they have nothing to do with.

 

I'll try to explain this point with an example: Morrigan. We all wanted Morrigan to appear once again in DAI, didn't we? Bioware took our request to heart and made her an integral part of DAI, but tell me: do you think that the plot needed her? I don't think so. Yeah, she is present in many crucial moments of the story, even in the final fight if you choose a certain path, but she doesn't add anything to the story itself. Every plot point could have been handled perfectly by the authors without using her, in fact you as a player can choose to ignore her requests and nothing happens. In your fortress she is just a living exposition dump to give you the news about the Hero of Ferelden and his son (if he exists). Another question: does Morrigan go through any character development during DAI? My answer is no. Even if you give in to her request and she ends up bound to her mother forever that doesn't add anything to her character apart from what we already knew (she hates her mother and she can't get rid of her). The result is that the appearence of Morrigan in DAI doesn't add anything to the game and is a disappointment for those (like me) that wanted her back. I would also argue that she becomes a less-interesting character because of that.

[Riot Inducer]

The very thing that differentiate Bioware from the competition is the fact that they deliver story driven western RPGs. There is only an handful of companies capable of delivering such games, and most of them aren't quite at bioware's level (for now). I agree with you on the fact that story and characters are at the hart of what Bioware does, but I disagree about companions being the only way to deliver great story and characters.

1. Companions are not unique to Bioware, Many Final Fantasy games for example have a cast of supporting characters that are very similar to companions. South Park The Stick of Truth has companions, Divinity Original Sin 2 will have companions, not to mention all the games inspired by the Infinity Engine era that are coming out right now.
2. Many games, like The Last of Us and The Witcher saga, have proven that it is possible to deliver a great story with great characters even without using companions.

 

Let's not stray from the point though. Title of the thread aside, I didn't want to prove that using a party based combat mechanic (that leads to companions) is intrinsicly bad from a storytelling perspective, what I wanted to argue is that it comes with a cost. Forces to write new characters, even when they aren't needed for the plot. Forces to make some characters a constant presence in the protagonist's group, even when that presence is difficult to justify, even when those characters would have worked better as loners or as a standalone encounter. Forces to make old fan favorites appear in games where they aren't needed. 

Ok, I can see some of what you mean then insofar that game developers feel urged to include a character of x,y, & Z class or type in order to have a functional adventuring party within the mechanics of the game. But at the same time I don't think it has nearly as much impact as you seem to be arguing. 

 

Your first two arguments are somewhat at odds with each other. Either you write more characters that can fill mechanically similar roles (i.e. have two or more "mage" characters) so players have choice in who they use or you write fewer characters and force a particular character as a constant presence within the party to fill that mechanical role. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

 

As for forcing old characters to appear I don't think that applies at least in DA:I, especially with the actual companion characters of which only Varric is a reoccurrence, Cole and Cassandra were encountered before but not as companions. Likewise if this was actualy an issue then we would have had Leliana and Morrigan as full companions instead of an advisor and temporary ally respectively. Any other characters that appear are text-only mentions or require specific circumstances to appear (King Alistair only appears onscreen for 30seconds if you chose one of two main quest options and who serves as the Warden ally varies radically based on worldstate). 

[YourFunnyUncle]

Of course building companions comes with a cost. The cost is that BioWare don't have the resources to devote to other aspects of the game that other developers do. That's obvious. What is equally obvious is that it makes their games different. It makes them repayable in different ways. You can take different groups with you each time you play the game and get a different experience. 

 

There's no "perfect way" to make a western RPG. With limited budget and development time, different aspects get given priority. CD Projekt Red with the Witcher have their way with the fixed protagonist, more constrained supporting characters but more involved sidequests, Bethesda have theirs with their more sandbox approach and great environments telling stories more than the characters. and BioWare have theirs with an interchangeable group of companions that make you really feel that you're interacting with a real group of people. They all have strengths and weaknesses. I prefer BioWare's way, Others prefer CD Projekt Red or Bethesda. That's fine. They're all different and diversity is good.

 

Your point about Morrigan is entirely subjective. I loved having her back. I loved the moment of her arrival on the scene at the Winter Palace. I loved her stories about her life with my canon Warden who romanced her. I loved the scene with Flemeth when she gets her child back from her. I loved how it all plays out differently depending on the world state you import or whether you drink from the well. I found having her back to be one of the highlights of the game, actually.

[duckley]

As for the Last of us and The Witcher - true they don't have companions that come along in combat, but I do have to say they have great characters that at least in the Witcher grow, mature, and develop across the series. Dandylion, Triss, Zoltan etc etc. And who can forget how compelling Ellie is ....And although different - who cant help but love Nathan, Elena, Chloe, and Sully...

 

Great games have great characters - lead or otherwise.  Games like Skyrim IMO, lack soul because they lack meaningful companions and characters...

[Serza]

Yeah! I actually completely agree with you!

 

 

 

And no, I am not a sarcastic person. We have dismissed that particular claim.

[Abyss108]

I'll try to explain my point better: there's nothing wrong with great characters, in fact, those are the first driver of Bioware Games' sales in my opinion. Problems arise when great characters become shitty characters because they get shoe-horned in plots they have nothing to do with.

 

I'll try to explain this point with an example: Morrigan. We all wanted Morrigan to appear once again in DAI, didn't we? Bioware took our request to heart and made her an integral part of DAI, but tell me: do you think that the plot needed her? I don't think so. Yeah, she is present in many crucial moments of the story, even in the final fight if you choose a certain path, but she doesn't add anything to the story itself. Every plot point could have been handled perfectly by the authors without using her, in fact you as a player can choose to ignore her requests and nothing happens. In your fortress she is just a living exposition dump to give you the news about the Hero of Ferelden and his son (if he exists). Another question: does Morrigan go through any character development during DAI? My answer is no. Even if you give in to her request and she ends up bound to her mother forever that doesn't add anything to her character apart from what we already knew (she hates her mother and she can't get rid of her). The result is that the appearence of Morrigan in DAI doesn't add anything to the game and is a disappointment for those (like me) that wanted her back. I would also argue that she becomes a less-interesting character because of that.

 

Gotta disagree with this, and I don't even like Morrigan and didn't want to see her again.

 

Does the plot need her? - Yes. There is obviously a greater plot going on with Flemeth and Morrigan, we just haven't seen all of it yet. It's building up to something. If Morrigan gets dropped from the storyline in the next game, I'll take this back, but it's pretty obvious to me that Bioware is leading up to something here.

 

Character development? - Yes, massively! She is completely different from the person she was in Origins and we wouldn't have got to see this if she wasn't in the game. She actually apologised about how she acted in Origins (abandoning my Warden who was "like a sister" to her). Ten years late, and the person she needs to say this to is ten years dead, but it was really nice to see she had changed liked this. 

[Rahelron]

Riot Inducer and YourFunnyUncle: I see your points and I understand them. I'll try to support my opinion once again, but just to keep up the discussion, I don't think I'm the only one entitled to have an opinion of course.

 

Let's take The Last of Us as an example: it has just two character leads and the story focuses entirely on them. All other people that they encounter during their journey are made in complete service of their story. In that game NPCs are instruments, created to allow the authors to tell things about the two protagonists and the world they live in. In comparison, in Bioware RPGs, the simple fact of having at least six companions with their won unique storylines adds entropy to the main plot. But this is not a fault: after all RPGs are about having a lot of stuff to do, a lot of areas to explore and a lot of stories to unveil.

 

Problems come when characters overstay their welcome because they need to be available as part of the fighting group at all times. How much content needs to be created just to prepare for the fact that any of your 6-10 companions can be present at any time in any quest? How much party banter? How many reaction phrases to say during key plot points? How many side quests just to give character development to every single NPC? How many interactions between companions at your base, to let you see that you are leading a real group of people? Not to mention the fact that everyone needs to have an opinion about every choice you make and let you know. Ok, Bioware has great writers, but I'm sure that they would work much better if they weren't forced to write complete story arcs, party banter, reaction phrases and so on for each and everyone of your companions (and Advisors, in DAI).

 

My feeling is that authors that can work without the constraints posed by companions (and advisors, and other permanent followers) are more free to create characters in service to the plot. They can use NPCs when they need them, than make them disappear for a while and perhaps re-appear later. This allows them focus on meaningful content, without being forced to fill up the holes with uninspired stuff.

[vertigomez]

Problems come when characters overstay their welcome because they need to be available as part of the fighting group at all times. How much content needs to be created just to prepare for the fact that any of your 6-10 companions can be present at any time in any quest? How much party banter? How many reaction phrases to say during key plot points? How many side quests just to give character development to every single NPC? How many interactions between companions at your base, to let you see that you are leading a real group of people? Not to mention the fact that everyone needs to have an opinion about every choice you make and let you know. Ok, Bioware has great writers, but I'm sure that they would work much better if they weren't forced to write complete story arcs, party banter, reaction phrases and so on for each and everyone of your companions (and Advisors, in DAI).

But that's... the best part of Bioware games?

[SentinelMacDeath]

[YourFunnyUncle]

I don't take issue with any of what you're saying from a technical point of view, Rahelron, but the fact that BioWare does that is what keeps me replaying their games on multiple occasions. All those different banters and exchanges really add to the replay value. Each time I play through I see new little details and it doesn't feel like I'm simply rehashing the same story. Even years afterwards someone will mention a bit of a game that I never saw because I played it a different way with a different group of companions and made different choices. I don't see that as a weakness but a strength, and it gets back to my point: There's more than one way to make a game, even in terms of a single-player western RPG. Different developers do it different ways and that's a good thing. 

[Carmen_Willow]

I liked Oblivion, and I liked Skyrim even more. You know why? Because, as limited as it was, I could have a companion, and some of them EVEN SAID THINGS.

 

Bioware's strength is in its amazing companions with all their flaws and their banter and the camaraderie.

Spoiler

In ME3, I was devastated when Thane died. I took my Shepard to the bar and got drunk!

 

I just finished a replay of Origins and I still got choked up when I had to walk out the palace doors and end the game! 

Spoiler

When we lost Wynne in one of the books, I was sad to see her go, felt so sorry that she couldn't have more time with her son.

That's darned good writing. When you care about the secondary characters that much, that's great writing, especially for a game. Bioware does that by making me care around my companions! It's what makes their games unique.

 

I hope they don't change that. It may be a limitation on some things, but it is also their greatest strength.