414 réponses à ce sujet

[BansheeOwnage]

 

TL;DR: Why would I bother to explain complex things if I assumed you were too lazy or dull to read them, and provide you with a condescending TL;DR? That would be an insult to your intelligence.

 

Spoiler

[In Exile]

I'm the last person who would ever suggest that book experience is 'inferior' to game experience. I love books. I read at least 3 every month, and good ones too.

But all stories are NOT equal. A novel is not a movie. A tv series is not a comic book. Every medium demands different narrative techniques. A movie is not experienced in the same way as a novel, which is why the adaptation of a story from a book to a movie is not a copy, but a unique work in its own right, based on the original material. People who say that they haven't read X book, 'but they've seen the movie' are simply being ignorant. It's like saying that you've never been to Paris, but you've seen it on TV and you think it's the same thing.

When did I say that one was 'inferior'? There are very good movies based on very bad books, and vice-versa, and so too for plays, tv series, comic-books, games, etc. Each is a different art form, experienced differently. They have different relationships of time and space, different approaches to structure and theme, and different connections to the reader / audience.

That's why some works are said to be 'unfilmable', like the stories of Jorge Luis Borges, for example. On the other hand, 'Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead' would be a pretty bad novel. It's a play about the nature of reality within a play, it wouldn't work outside of that context. It was adapted into a fantastic movie, and yet the movie is not the play. The movie 'Watchmen' is practically a frame-for-frame reproduction of the comic-book 'Watchmen', and yet it manages to completely miss the point of it. Why? Because Scott Snyder doesn't understand this. Charlie Kaufman does understand it, and that's what 'Adaptation' and 'Being John Malkovich' are all about.

What I'm saying is that 'watching John Malkovich' isn't the same as 'being John Malkovich' or 'reading about John Malkovich'. Or in this case, 'being David Anderson'.

TL;DR: Why would I bother to explain complex things if I assumed you were too lazy or dull to read them, and provide you with a condescending TL;DR? That would be an insult to your intelligence.

You're not quite grasping my point, but I think this discussion helps. My point is that when people say it's a "bad" story choice etc. to not make the Inquisitor the protagonist they are instead saying something very different and novel: that in a game (or RPG) you cannot switch perspective mid story and still tell a compelling or satisfying or "good" one.

And I think that's a very radical position to take. Sure, the medium is different. That's not a particular controversial point. But what you don't say is why the medium being different results or leads to your conclusion.

[In Exile]

How is it a good thing to have the main character make big impactful choices about things they have no reason to care about, whilst relying on the player to care about it? That's just trying to make the player stop role-playing as the character they have. Thats the opposite of what a roleplaying game should try to achieve.

That doesn't follow. The Inquisitor has every reason to to care about the "big" choices. You're just confused as to what the "big" choices are in the game and from an RP perspective, and actually imposing the very meta game view you are saying should not feature. Hawke vs. Stroud is not a big choice. It's a somewhat meaningful choice. It's the equivalent of Virmire, with an equally contrived set up and less build up for the characters. If you're a "true" role player, then you're looking at this from the point of view of the Inquisitor. And it's not very different from the POV of Shepard.

The scene is bad and the choice is not impactful because the build up is SO limited. But that has nothing to do with meta gaming - it's just bad set up.

[Dorrieb]

You're not quite grasping my point, but I think this discussion helps. My point is that when people say it's a "bad" story choice etc. to not make the Inquisitor the protagonist they are instead saying something very different and novel: that in a game (or RPG) you cannot switch perspective mid story and still tell a compelling or satisfying or "good" one.

And I think that's a very radical position to take. Sure, the medium is different. That's not a particular controversial point. But what you don't say is why the medium being different results or leads to your conclusion.

 

It's actually a rule taught in all writing workshops. Lack of consistency in narrative viewpoint will make your work look amateurish and inferior, unless done deliberately and for effect, being aware that this is writing acrobatics and that if you don't pull it off you'll fall flat on your face.

 

One of my first stories was a horror tale written in the Third Person Limited ('he saw this', 'he felt that', etc.) about the last descendant of a once wealthy family who was tormented by a family curse in the form of a demon named Kalakas. A 'paranormal scientist' arrives and easily exorcises the demon, and that night the hero kills himself in despair. I don't remember exactly how it went, but it was something like this:

 

He sat by the pointless amber light of an old lamp that yielded in resignation to the hirsute darkness that surrounded him, watching the minute hand fail to crawl across the face of the clock, ticking out the same second of a night that would never end, staring at the gun on the desk, the gun in his hand. Mother was right, Doctor Herrera, I should never have called you. Oh, Kalakas, my Kalakas! Where are you? I miss you terribly!

 

You see what I did there. I wrote the story in Third Person Limited and then suddenly changed to the First Person at the end. I did that to startle you, to disorient you, to make you feel sick (it's a horror story, after all). Did I pull it off? Some people thought that I did, and some didn't. Everyone thought it was 'interesting', but maybe I should learn how to do straight jumps before attempting pirouettes. They were right.

 

(On the other hand, if you never attempt the pirouettes, you'll never get good. You learn by falling flat on your face.)

 

I don't think that Dragon Age is exploring the experimental complexities of narrative, or that the writers are deliberately trying to disorient us. I don't see them as post-modernists. I think that they are just being inconsistent in narrative viewpoint because they haven't given these matters very much thought. Do you think I'm wrong?

[holdenagincourt]

I just think the design choice should be a contingent and flexible one rather than a doctrinaire one when it comes to PC carryover. Unfortunately Gaider's post quoted on the first page demonstrates that it is in fact the latter (or at least has been historically).

 

Some protagonists and stories make sense to continue on with, others are more neatly squared away in a single game + DLC. Relatedly, some PCs may not merit an entire new entry in the series, but need a longer DLC cycle to reach their ultimate resolution. Here again I argue for flexibility rather than BioWare's "one year of support and 2-3 DLC and then it's over" doctrinaire approach.

 

By the way, I think Mass Effect could have been even better if it had been expanded to a tetralogy somewhere during the post-release of ME2. The pacing between ME2 and ME3 is pretty bad, with some very controversial choices made to make it all come together in time, and I don't think an ME player has ever uttered the words "we need less Shepard and should move on to a new protagonist." A storytelling device (e.g. the trilogy structure) should be a trellis over which a narrative grows organically, not a cage which constrains it, limits it, forces it to take its shape.

[Abyss108]

That doesn't follow. The Inquisitor has every reason to to care about the "big" choices. You're just confused as to what the "big" choices are in the game and from an RP perspective, and actually imposing the very meta game view you are saying should not feature. Hawke vs. Stroud is not a big choice. It's a somewhat meaningful choice. It's the equivalent of Virmire, with an equally contrived set up and less build up for the characters. If you're a "true" role player, then you're looking at this from the point of view of the Inquisitor. And it's not very different from the POV of Shepard.

The scene is bad and the choice is not impactful because the build up is SO limited. But that has nothing to do with meta gaming - it's just bad set up.

 

It's impactful for the player, not for the plot, unless you think the death of your own character or a character you romanced isn't supposed to make you feel anything. And I agree it was contrived and badly written, but that's not really relevant to the point.

[Andraste_Reborn]

It's actually a rule taught in all writing workshops. Lack of consistency in narrative viewpoint will make your work look amateurish and inferior, unless done deliberately and for effect, being aware that this is writing acrobatics and that if you don't pull it off you'll fall flat on your face.

 

That rule only applies if you go around switching POV characters willy-nilly between sentences or paragraphs, though. There's nothing wrong with doing it with clearly defined sections/chapters within the same story, and certainly nothing unusual about switching POVs between stories even if they're set in the same universe. Each Dragon Age game has a separate story (as do the novels, comics, etc.) and different point of view characters.

[Nefla]

You're not quite grasping my point, but I think this discussion helps. My point is that when people say it's a "bad" story choice etc. to not make the Inquisitor the protagonist they are instead saying something very different and novel: that in a game (or RPG) you cannot switch perspective mid story and still tell a compelling or satisfying or "good" one.

And I think that's a very radical position to take. Sure, the medium is different. That's not a particular controversial point. But what you don't say is why the medium being different results or leads to your conclusion.

I've never seen a book or a movie that follows one protagonist for half the story and then randomly switches. I can't imagine it would be satisfying or well done there either. I've seen books, etc...switch back and forth between different character perspectives from the start and that's fine (and not pointless and abrupt) it was also done well in TW3 which is a game.

[RoseLawliet]

I think part of the problem here is that some of us are treating each game as a story, but some of us are treating an arc as a story (eg. Corypheus wakes up, Corypheus causes problems, Corypheus is defeated). I find it very difficult to argue that DA hasn't split arcs between games and therefore between protagonists. I don't think all the problems with new protagonists would go away if each game were its own self-contained arc (which is why TES succeeds at having the land as the ultimate protagonist when DA does not), but I do think the situation would improve. If the Warden could deal with Anders, Hawke with Corypheus, and the Inquisitor with Solas, I do think there would be fewer complaints.

[Mistic]

I'm the last person who would ever suggest that book experience is 'inferior' to game experience. I love books. I read at least 3 every month, and good ones too.

 

But all stories are NOT equal. A novel is not a movie. A tv series is not a comic book. Every medium demands different narrative techniques. A movie is not experienced in the same way as a novel, which is why the adaptation of a story from a book to a movie is not a copy, but a unique work in its own right, based on the original material. People who say that they haven't read X book, 'but they've seen the movie' are simply being ignorant. It's like saying that you've never been to Paris, but you've seen it on TV and you think it's the same thing.

 

When did I say that one was 'inferior'? There are very good movies based on very bad books, and vice-versa, and so too for plays, tv series, comic-books, games, etc. Each is a different art form, experienced differently. They have different relationships of time and space, different approaches to structure and theme, and different connections to the reader / audience.

 

That's why some works are said to be 'unfilmable', like the stories of Jorge Luis Borges, for example. On the other hand, 'Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead' would be a pretty bad novel. It's a play about the nature of reality within a play, it wouldn't work outside of that context. It was adapted into a fantastic movie, and yet the movie is not the play. The movie 'Watchmen' is practically a frame-for-frame reproduction of the comic-book 'Watchmen', and yet it manages to completely miss the point of it. Why? Because Scott Snyder doesn't understand this. Charlie Kaufman does understand it, and that's what 'Adaptation' and 'Being John Malkovich' are all about.

 

What I'm saying is that 'watching John Malkovich' isn't the same as 'being John Malkovich' or 'reading about John Malkovich'. Or in this case, 'being David Anderson'.

 

My bad, I chose my words poorly. My mistake comes from a previous answer of yours ("If you had experienced that history in a previous game playing as Anderson, it might be") to In Exile ("And now we're back to the point about how Shepard being the protagonist of ME is unsatisfying because Anderson had more of a history with Saren"). I thought it suggested that only if that experience was had in a game could someone consider it unsatisfying. Sorry if I understood it incorrectly, because I pretty much agree with everything you've posted.

 

Well, almost everything. I do think that all stories are equal. In being stories, that is. Novels, comic books, movies, tv series, etc. aren't stories, but media. The adaptations you mention are the best example of that: they translate the same story from its original medium to a different one... with mixed results ("the medium is the message", after all).

 

The books and games of the ME universe aren't different versions of the same source material (in which case we could argue about the merits and drawbacks of each medium), but different parts of the same overarching plot. One who had their first contact with Anderson in the book may then argue that he has more connection to Saren, and thus that he should have been the protagonist in the games. They are not choosing between media, but following the same story line. If we think that having different protagonists is a bad move for Dragon Age, then having two different protagonists for the first book and the first game of ME should have been equally bad from a purely narrative point of view.

 

TL;DR: Why would I bother to explain complex things if I assumed you were too lazy or dull to read them, and provide you with a condescending TL;DR? That would be an insult to your intelligence.

 

My bad again. I didn't mean to offend. As a reader, I tend to welcome them, the same I welcome headlines in the news or in an article. I also consider it helps other readers who are less interested in following the entire conversation. Never thought it may offend someone. I'm sorry 

 

Lack of consistency in narrative viewpoint will make your work look amateurish and inferior, unless done deliberately and for effect, being aware that this is writing acrobatics and that if you don't pull it off you'll fall flat on your face.

 

But we know it's deliberate. 3 games so far, and the next one which will probably follow the same trend, prove that it's not just Bioware being whimsical, but a conscious development choice. Some have suggested that it helps to experience the Thedosian setting as a whole ("Thedas is the true protagonist of DA") instead of being limited to a narrower point of view. Whether the intended effect has been achieved or not (or if it is a good goal to begin with) is a matter of debate.

[Dorrieb]

My bad again. I didn't mean to offend. .. 

 

Fair enough, I take offence easily

 

 

But we know it's deliberate...

 

Not really. When you deliberately make a choice, but that choice has negative consequences you did not intend or want, we don't say that you deliberately chose those consequences, we say that you made a mistake.

[BansheeOwnage]

 

I just think the design choice should be a contingent and flexible one rather than a doctrinaire one when it comes to PC carryover. Unfortunately Gaider's post quoted on the first page demonstrates that it is in fact the latter (or at least has been historically).

 

Some protagonists and stories make sense to continue on with, others are more neatly squared away in a single game + DLC. Relatedly, some PCs may not merit an entire new entry in the series, but need a longer DLC cycle to reach their ultimate resolution. Here again I argue for flexibility rather than BioWare's "one year of support and 2-3 DLC and then it's over" doctrinaire approach.

 

By the way, I think Mass Effect could have been even better if it had been expanded to a tetralogy somewhere during the post-release of ME2. The pacing between ME2 and ME3 is pretty bad, with some very controversial choices made to make it all come together in time, and I don't think an ME player has ever uttered the words "we need less Shepard and should move on to a new protagonist." A storytelling device (e.g. the trilogy structure) should be a trellis over which a narrative grows organically, not a cage which constrains it, limits it, forces it to take its shape.

I completely agree! And I wish Bioware looked at the ME series after ME2 and thought: "Hey, there's really no way we can show the entire Reaper War in one game without making some really unsatisfying deus ex machinas and making it feel rushed." I mean, the protheans fought the reapers for more than 100 years. That war easily deserved 2 games, and I definitely would have liked more time with Shepard and crew.

 

Anyway, the bottom line is that Bioware is needlessly constraining themselves story-wise. They should never have said (or internally thought) "Each game will have a new protagonist." They should have said "Dragon Age will have multiple protagonists as it goes on" without confining it to one game so they have to do narrative gymnastics to achieve their goal.

 

Even if they planned the overall arc of ME as a trilogy, which is fine, they should have said "Well, if we end up thinking we can't fit all we wanted to in one game/it wouldn't do the plot justice by cutting corners, we're open to changing our plan accordingly."

 

My thoughts.

 

I've never seen a book or a movie that follows one protagonist for half the story and then randomly switches. I can't imagine it would be satisfying or well done there either. I've seen books, etc...switch back and forth between different character perspectives from the start and that's fine (and not pointless and abrupt) it was also done well in TW3 which is a game.

I'll just throw Halo 2 out there as another example of dual protagonists working from the start. It made an interesting story, especially since both characters started on opposite sides. Unfortunately, I don't think Halo 5 handled it well because of the massive gap of spotlight time between teams.

[Smudjygirl]

I completely agree! And I wish Bioware looked at the ME series after ME2 and thought: "Hey, there's really no way we can show the entire Reaper War in one game without making some really unsatisfying deus ex machinas and making it feel rushed." I mean, the protheans fought the reapers for more than 100 years. That war easily deserved 2 games, and I definitely would have liked more time with Shepard and crew.

 

Anyway, the bottom line is that Bioware is needlessly constraining themselves story-wise. They should never have said (or internally thought) "Each game will have a new protagonist." They should have said "Dragon Age will have multiple protagonists as it goes on" without confining it to one game so they have to do narrative gymnastics to achieve their goal.

 

Even if they planned the overall arc of ME as a trilogy, which is fine, they should have said "Well, if we end up thinking we can't fit all we wanted to in one game/it wouldn't do the plot justice by cutting corners, we're open to changing our plan accordingly."

 

I've never actually seen them say "we will only ever have a new PC and that will never change". Not saying they didn't, just that i have never seen such a quote. What i have seen is "Dragon age is a game set in chapters. Each chapter gives new stories, new friends and new fights". So if they did decide that a chapter needs more than one game, as far as i have seen, they wouldn't actually be going back on their word.

 

But even if they have said that, no one should be upset if they changed their mind. Just as them keeping with that decision should not make people too upset. It is, after all, their decision to make.

[sassyJacen]

As long as we get to choose race, gender and appearence, I am all for a new protagonist in every game.                                                   

[Shechinah]

I completely agree! And I wish Bioware looked at the ME series after ME2 and thought: "Hey, there's really no way we can show the entire Reaper War in one game without making some really unsatisfying deus ex machinas and making it feel rushed." I mean, the protheans fought the reapers for more than 100 years. That war easily deserved 2 games, and I definitely would have liked more time with Shepard and crew.

 

As much as I like Mass Effect 2, I've been of the opinion for some time that it feels very much like unnecessary filler when considering its part in the trilogy. It did not help that it introduced some heavy things such as Shepard dying and being resurrected yet did not treat them with the weight that I consider they should have had since they bothered to introduce them and because of that, some of them became unnecessary like some of the other points.

 

Like I said; I like Mass Effect 2 but I feel it and its plot should have tied itself better to Mass Effect 3 at the very least.