375 réponses à ce sujet

[Al Foley]

You don't remember talking to Filda the widow and finding her son Ruck in the deep roads insane and corrupted and being able to choose whether to kill him or not and whether to lie to his mother about it? You don't remember the crime wave quests for Slim Couldry the elf-blooded human in Denerim? Zerlinda having to abandon her baby in the deep roads, reconcile with her father, or be taken in by the chantry? Finding Bevin hiding in the closet of his home in Redcliffe and possibly taking his family sword and then helping him and his sister (or not)? What about finding that lyrium smuggling mage Godwin hiding in a cupboard that you can choose to smuggle lyrium for? Getting permission for Dagna to join the circle? Finding Danayla the wife of a Dalish man who had turned into a werewolf? Clearing a demon out of the abandoned orphanage in the Alienage alongside the blind Templar Ser Otto? None of these things ring a bell at all?
 

I know we have very different tastes when it comes to quests but what are some sidequests (aside from the companion ones) in DA:I that you found good or memorable?

Pretty much every single zone in DA I had at least one memorable quest.  The Tomb of Fairiel for Hissing Wastes, Western Approach had the Frozen in Time Quest, Emerald Graves had finding out Fairbanks's nobility, or not, Emprise with the taking of Suledin Keep and some of the resulting stuff with their...town leader person, Crestwood had its thing with the mayor +the taking of the Keep there +the whole bit with the underwater + the Spirit of Command, Pretty much all the Exalted Plains, and Fallow Mire had the battle with the Avarr. 

[Abyss108]

 

 
 

 

 

Again, I'll have to disagree. Nefla and I have both pointed out many memorable side characters and quests. The fact that you don't remember them doesn't make them forgettable, just that you focus on different things in your game playing experience.

 

 

I can say exactly the same thing back at you. The fact that you remember them doesn't mean they were memerable, it just means you focused more on them.

[CronoDragoon]

Exalted Plains and Storm Coast could have easily been cut with almost nothing of value lost. The few interesting quests and dungeons that were there could easily be relocated to another zone.

[Al Foley]

Its kinda silly to base something's quality on how memorable it is in the first place.  I mean there was that one quest that you had in the mage tower in DA O which then if you completed it ran into a random encounter with a random mage...who was very difficult to defeat.  Argh. 

[Elhanan]

Exalted Plains and Storm Coast could have easily been cut with almost nothing of value lost. The few interesting quests and dungeons that were there could easily be relocated to another zone.

I so disagree. The Exalted Plains did a great job of depicting the current state of the war with Freemen, Orlais, and demonic opponents. Add the Dalish culture and plight, and the swamplands, and this area was quite memorable for me.

And the Storm Coast is my fave depiction of introducing a Dragon; allowing one to show it's power against another foe besides the Inquisition. And the choice of whether to ally or take revenge on the local militia, and the eventual task of removing Red Lyrium makes it another winner, IMO.

If there was an area that required trimming, it should be the Emerald Graves. Not in size or content, but in actual trimming of all those ankle grabbing tree roots and other interfering plant growth....

[Addictress]

Pretty much every single zone in DA I had at least one memorable quest.  The Tomb of Fairiel for Hissing Wastes, Western Approach had the Frozen in Time Quest, Emerald Graves had finding out Fairbanks's nobility, or not, Emprise with the taking of Suledin Keep and some of the resulting stuff with their...town leader person, Crestwood had its thing with the mayor +the taking of the Keep there +the whole bit with the underwater + the Spirit of Command, Pretty much all the Exalted Plains, and Fallow Mire had the battle with the Avarr. 

I think you guys are simply saying they're memorable because they looked kinda cool.

 

I think the people defending DAI are just appreciating the aesthetics and not really paying attention to 

 

1. character direction

2. camera positioning

3. party involvement

4. um..story? pacing? writing? anything to do with storytelling beyond "putting scattered objects and various loot items around a region can also artistically emerge as a story" which isn't what Bioware has ever intended in the first place, even though I understand that kind of art, believe me.

[correctamundo]

I think you guys are simply saying they're memorable because they looked kinda cool.

 

I think the people defending DAI are just appreciating the aesthetics and not really paying attention to 

 

1. character direction

2. camera positioning

3. party involvement

4. um..story? pacing? writing? anything to do with storytelling beyond "putting scattered objects and various loot items around a region can also artistically emerge as a story" which isn't what Bioware has ever intended in the first place, even though I understand that kind of art, believe me.

 

Oh we're paying attention and you're

 

[Addictress]

I can say exactly the same thing back at you. The fact that you remember them doesn't mean they were memerable, it just means you focused more on them.

 

 

They are memorable for solid reasons. We could look at each and every quest and analyze in detail the way those quests were actually constructed. For instance, the very fact they have a simple shot-countershot camera technique AT ALL, the fact they introduce the characters. The very content of the sidequest story itself. A son becoming a dung-flinging lunatic in the deep roads and you have to make a choice on whether you want the mother to hear this?  Can you find me a comparably dark and concerning sidequest in Inquisition? The only one I can think of is Cassandra's apprentice in the seeker fortress, who Cassandra euthenizes no matter what, but this is a main companion sidequest, not a random NPC sidequest. I don't know of any random NPC sidequest that is comparably emotionally engaging.

 

And people are like "ohhh well I don't think shot-counter-shot cinematic techniques really contribute to making a scene more engaging."  That's basically just discrediting broadly accepted visual formula used in motion pictures. We have to establish the assumptions we're working with here. As of now, Ubisoft, CD Projekt Red, etc all still rely on basic principles of drawing viewer attention to scenes as established in the motion picture industry. If you want to say that we should veer from this, and go off into adopting the techniques of Bethesda, or other indie games, in which viewer attention is not supposed to be controlled by things like 1.camera movement 2. traditional theatrical direction then that is something else, and if so, they need to adjust the entire intention of the way the game is made. Because so far, Bioware has relied heavily on directing viewer attention through traditional motion picture methods, and successfully, at that. So if you want to argue Bioware wants to veer away from traditional motion picture approaches, then do that. You don't want old Bioware, you want Bethesda. But I don't think this was their intention. If this was not their intention, then we have to maintain the assumption they ARE keeping with these visual traditions. If they ARE supposed to be keeping with these visual traditions, then clearly they didn't utilize them as much as they did previously and hence failed to impact me emotionally, because my expectation was that they would utilize them and that's what works for people like me.

[Addictress]

Oh we're paying attention and you're

 

So you want more Bethesda and less old Bioware, is this what you're saying? You don't like Origins, you don't like DA2, and you don't like the Mass Effect Series. You want to move away from that. That's what you're saying.

 

I'm disappointed that the success of previous games no longer holds water and that a bunch of people willfully want to disregard them.

[Al Foley]

I think you guys are simply saying they're memorable because they looked kinda cool.

 

I think the people defending DAI are just appreciating the aesthetics and not really paying attention to 

 

1. character direction

2. camera positioning

3. party involvement

4. um..story? pacing? writing? anything to do with storytelling beyond "putting scattered objects and various loot items around a region can also artistically emerge as a story" which isn't what Bioware has ever intended in the first place, even though I understand that kind of art, believe me.

Oh you were quoting me...I'm honoroed.  But what an unbelievably arrogant statement and honestly given some of our interactions in the past I am surprised at you.  Different things effect different people in different ways.  Because to me DA I had a lot of those very four things you mentioned.  And they were well executed.  Was it perfect? No.  Do I have a laundry list of things-I-would-do-different?  Yes.  But as far as the last point is concerned to me that just shows how much I love the game because I was invested enough I cared enough to want to see them different and imagine the possibilities. When I finished Uncharted or Tomb Raider I did not go 'oh woldn't it be awesome if they had done THIS instead' I went 'oh yey Ibeat the game, it was good...I guess."  

 

And then with Origins depending on which quest you chose and look at and pick apart you could say, 'well gee Origins needed to work on X' as well, any number of those four things.  Origins had filler quests and pointless quests and wasted quests and even quests like some of the above were just slightly more fleshed out then Inquisition's.  Granted Origins had a few stellar side quests, to me it has the best side quests in gaming, but I don't gussy it up either.  

 

So you want more Bethesda and less old Bioware, is this what you're saying? You don't like Origins, you don't like DA2, and you don't like the Mass Effect Series. You want to move away from that. That's what you're saying.

 

I'm disappointed that the success of previous games no longer holds water and that a bunch of people willfully want to disregard them.

No, that is not what they are saying.  DA I represented a, somewhat, successful fusion of the two types of game and pushed the boundry of gaming ever forward even more.  Its limitations were mostly because it was being developed for old and new hardware simultaneously, giving us...in bits...a somewhat watered down product.  But if you want to look to see if such systems can be successful and have great narrative and characters then look no farther then the development of the Witcher 3, which is a terrific game in its own right, it has a wide open world composed of like four different zones, cinematic conversations, meaningful quests, an engaging story, and amongst the best casts of NPCs in video gaming.  Even Fallout 4, a game developed by Bethesda who made Skyrim, from the limited Lets Plays I have seen of it seems to take a lot of cues from BioWare games in general with more cinematics, voiced protags, better companions who serve more of a functon in the story then to say 'oh look a cave', etc.  

 

The future of gaming is very bright.  'Linear' or 'Open World'.  'RPG' or 'Shooter.' One just has to seize the day. 

[vbibbi]

Oh we're paying attention and you're

 

Wait, so you're providing an objective opinion here, not subjective? Glad that you practice what you preach.

 

And that your arguments usually boil down to mocking the other person and not providing any supporting evidence.

[correctamundo]

So you want more Bethesda and less old Bioware, is this what you're saying? You don't like Origins, you don't like DA2, and you don't like the Mass Effect Series. You want to move away from that. That's what you're saying.

 

I'm disappointed that the success of previous games no longer holds water and that a bunch of people willfully want to disregard them.

 

Nope, I like DAO, DA2, DAI, ME1-2-3. I like TES as well. I even like The Witcher. And more Even though I am not all to keen on predetermined protagonists.

[correctamundo]

Wait, so you're providing an objective opinion here, not subjective? Glad that you practice what you preach.

 

And that your arguments usually boil down to mocking the other person and not providing any supporting evidence.

 

Yes I can objectively say that I pay attention to the game whilst playing it.

[Al Foley]

Wait, so you're providing an objective opinion here, not subjective? Glad that you practice what you preach.

 

And that your arguments usually boil down to mocking the other person and not providing any supporting evidence.

Given that the argument Correct quoted was illogical and arrogant to boot, naturally they followed course.  I clarified in my 2000 page brief.

[vbibbi]

Yes I can objectively say that I pay attention to the game whilst playing it.

Again, you're just saying that what you "paid attention to" in the game was the correct interpretation.

[vbibbi]

Given that the argument Correct quoted was illogical and arrogant to boot, naturally they followed course.  I clarified in my 2000 page brief.

Fight arrogance with arrogance, eh?

[Abyss108]

They are memorable for solid reasons. We could look at each and every quest and analyze in detail the way those quests were actually constructed. For instance, the very fact they have a simple shot-countershot camera technique AT ALL, the fact they introduce the characters. The very content of the sidequest story itself. A son becoming a dung-flinging lunatic in the deep roads and you have to make a choice on whether you want the mother to hear this?  Can you find me a comparably dark and concerning sidequest in Inquisition? The only one I can think of is Cassandra's apprentice in the seeker fortress, who Cassandra euthenizes no matter what, but this is a main companion sidequest, not a random NPC sidequest. I don't know of any random NPC sidequest that is comparably emotionally engaging.

 

And people are like "ohhh well I don't think shot-counter-shot cinematic techniques really contribute to making a scene more engaging."  That's basically just discrediting broadly accepted visual formula used in motion pictures. We have to establish the assumptions we're working with here. As of now, Ubisoft, CD Projekt Red, etc all still rely on basic principles of drawing viewer attention to scenes as established in the motion picture industry. If you want to say that we should veer from this, and go off into adopting the techniques of Bethesda, or other indie games, in which viewer attention is not supposed to be controlled by things like 1.camera movement 2. traditional theatrical direction then that is something else, and if so, they need to adjust the entire intention of the way the game is made. Because so far, Bioware has relied heavily on directing viewer attention through traditional motion picture methods, and successfully, at that. So if you want to argue Bioware wants to veer away from traditional motion picture approaches, then do that. You don't want old Bioware, you want Bethesda. But I don't think this was their intention. If this was not their intention, then we have to maintain the assumption they ARE keeping with these visual traditions. If they ARE supposed to be keeping with these visual traditions, then clearly they didn't utilize them as much as they did previously and hence failed to impact me emotionally, because my expectation was that they would utilize them and that's what works for people like me.

 

OK, not sure why you've gone off on a tangent about the contents of the quest when we were discussing whether camera angles work or not. Back on the subject of whether close up cameras work, I agree that they work in cinema - where the camera is showing a real person who is actually emoting. The close up works because it allows us to see their emotions and subtle body language which we would miss otherwise. This is why the actual cutscenes that feature these things do use the close up camera. Origins doesn't have this. We don't see a person act, we see a stock animation playing that we've seen a hundred times before with bad lip syncing.

[Al Foley]

Fight arrogance with arrogance, eh?

I don't personally approve but then I am kinda Jedi like in my outlook.  The one mistake though that Correct made, if they'll pardon me, with the gif is it is very vague in what part they are saying Adictress is wrong on.  I knew exactly which part they were zoning in on, others might miss the point.  Confusion leads to anger, etc etc, 'valued discussion'.

[correctamundo]

Again, you're just saying that what you "paid attention to" in the game was the correct interpretation.

 

No, I meant addictress was wrong about "us" not paying attention. I could have been clearer, but I was itching to get to use one of my saved wrong gifs.

 

And Al ninjad me .

[AlanC9]

I think the people defending DAI are just appreciating the aesthetics and not really paying attention to

1. character direction
2. camera positioning
3. party involvement
4. um..story? pacing? writing? anything to do with storytelling beyond "putting scattered objects and various loot items around a region can also artistically emerge as a story" which isn't what Bioware has ever intended in the first place, even though I understand that kind of art, believe me.

It's not about paying attention, except maybe point 1 since I'm not sure what you even mean by point 1. I'm pretty much indifferent to camera positioning, don't think party involvement in SQs is all that important -- they comment and react to the SQs, which is all I expect -- and pacing, in a game with DAI's structure, is managed by the player.

[Addictress]

OK, not sure why you've gone off on a tangent about the contents of the quest when we were discussing whether camera angles work or not. Back on the subject of whether close up cameras work, I agree that they work in cinema - where the camera is showing a real person who is actually emoting. The close up works because it allows us to see their emotions and subtle body language which we would miss otherwise. This is why the actual cutscenes that feature these things do use the close up camera. Origins doesn't have this. We don't see a person act, we see a stock animation playing that we've seen a hundred times before with bad lip syncing.

Inquisition side quests lacked both the emotional depth and content of something like the sidequest with Ruck in the Deep Roads in Origins, and also the emotional attention achieved by using things like close-up shots.

 

The stock animation or quality thereof should be evaluated separately from the technique of making a closeup at all. The closeup itself - the existence of the closeup by itself will edge nearer to achieving emotional impact regardless of the contents of the frame. This is where you can disagree, you might say that the stock animation then throws you back and acts to completely cancel out the shot itself in achieving emotional attention. But I don't think people have been arguing this. I think that having that shot in existence by itself, regardless of the animation within the frame, in Origins, still edged the viewer nearer to emotional attention.

[Al Foley]

Inquisition side quests lacked both the emotional depth and content of something like the sidequest with Ruck in the Deep Roads in Origins, and also the emotional attention achieved by using things like close-up shots.

 

The stock animation or quality thereof should be evaluated separately from the technique of making a closeup at all. The closeup itself - the existence of the closeup by itself will edge nearer to achieving emotional impact regardless of the contents of the frame. This is where you can disagree, you might say that the stock animation then throws you back and acts to completely cancel out the shot itself in achieving emotional attention. But I don't think people have been arguing this. I think that having that shot in existence by itself, regardless of the animation within the frame, in Origins, still edged the viewer nearer to emotional attention.

I don't know I didn't get that much emotionally invested in Ruck tbh.  Now that Red Templar that you found at the end of the attack on Suledin keep, now that was ******* devestating.  As was the Werewolf quest in Origins. 

[Abyss108]

Inquisition side quests lacked both the emotional depth and content of something like the sidequest with Ruck in the Deep Roads in Origins, and also the emotional attention achieved by using things like close-up shots.

 

The stock animation or quality thereof should be evaluated separately from the technique of making a closeup at all. The closeup itself - the existence of the closeup by itself will edge nearer to achieving emotional impact regardless of the contents of the frame. This is where you can disagree, you might say that the stock animation then throws you back and acts to completely cancel out the shot itself in achieving emotional attention. But I don't think people have been arguing this. I think that having that shot in existence by itself, regardless of the animation within the frame, in Origins, still edged the viewer nearer to emotional attention.

 

I do disagree that a close shot is better no matter the content. If it's giving me a badly done animation that doesn't look right, or a facial expression that doesn't quite match the tone of voice, that's actively taking me out of the narrative. A further out shot doesn't have that issue, because I'm using my imagination to fill in the blanks like I do in a book.

[Addictress]

Oh you were quoting me...I'm honoroed.  But what an unbelievably arrogant statement and honestly given some of our interactions in the past I am surprised at you.  Different things effect different people in different ways.  Because to me DA I had a lot of those very four things you mentioned.  And they were well executed.  Was it perfect? No.  Do I have a laundry list of things-I-would-do-different?  Yes.  But as far as the last point is concerned to me that just shows how much I love the game because I was invested enough I cared enough to want to see them different and imagine the possibilities. When I finished Uncharted or Tomb Raider I did not go 'oh woldn't it be awesome if they had done THIS instead' I went 'oh yey Ibeat the game, it was good...I guess."  

 

And then with Origins depending on which quest you chose and look at and pick apart you could say, 'well gee Origins needed to work on X' as well, any number of those four things.  Origins had filler quests and pointless quests and wasted quests and even quests like some of the above were just slightly more fleshed out then Inquisition's.  Granted Origins had a few stellar side quests, to me it has the best side quests in gaming, but I don't gussy it up either.  

 

No, that is not what they are saying.  DA I represented a, somewhat, successful fusion of the two types of game and pushed the boundry of gaming ever forward even more.  Its limitations were mostly because it was being developed for old and new hardware simultaneously, giving us...in bits...a somewhat watered down product.  But if you want to look to see if such systems can be successful and have great narrative and characters then look no farther then the development of the Witcher 3, which is a terrific game in its own right, it has a wide open world composed of like four different zones, cinematic conversations, meaningful quests, an engaging story, and amongst the best casts of NPCs in video gaming.  Even Fallout 4, a game developed by Bethesda who made Skyrim, from the limited Lets Plays I have seen of it seems to take a lot of cues from BioWare games in general with more cinematics, voiced protags, better companions who serve more of a functon in the story then to say 'oh look a cave', etc.  

 

The future of gaming is very bright.  'Linear' or 'Open World'.  'RPG' or 'Shooter.' One just has to seize the day. 

Indeed Bioware was the champion of character development and cinematics, and Fallout 4 and other games like that seem to follow Bioware's lead there. So that's why I don't understand why people are so excited to depart from that. A "successful fusion" of reduced-cinematic-style and cinematic-style is the same as "edging close to non-cinematic-style."  As I said, this is edging nearer to Bethesda which relies on ambient environment and exploration and setting to achieve an emergence of emotion and understanding of the narrative. Bethesda AKA reduced-cinematic-approach.

[Addictress]

I don't know I didn't get that much emotionally invested in Ruck tbh.  Now that Red Templar that you found at the end of the attack on Suledin keep, now that was ******* devestating.  As was the Werewolf quest in Origins. 

You can't do anything for that red templar in Suledin Keep though - literally no choice can be made there. And that's what people always complain about - "player agency." With Ruck, I felt immense player agency in deciding how to break it to the mom.