54 réponses à ce sujet

[JasonPogo]

The whole voiced protagonist dose not work for the Dragon Age franchise.  Being forced to play the main character that the voice actor gives us limits the ability to role play.  Back in Dragon Age Origins players had ALL kinds of Wardens with the same options as the next guy.  But with the silent protagonist we were able to interpret lines and actions how we wanted them.  PLEASE BRING BACK SILENT PROTAGANISTS!  It is the best option for this franchise where you give us the ability to chose who our main character gets to be.

[DeathScepter]

There are virtues in Voiced and Silent Protaganists. Expect member will argue for either.

 

I can't say anything for DA:I but a virtue of Voiced Protagnist is Snarky Hawke. Yes This is coming from a DAO fanboy. I laugh my ass off with Snarky Hawke for DA2. To me, that is the only way I can play DA2 and enjoy myself.

 

As for Silent, within DAO, the dialogue is very well written in many cases.

[dgcatanisiri]

Short response: It's not happening.

 

Long response: The model for producing RPGs has changed. Mass Effect and DA2/Inquisition were big sellers and to the market, that says 'follow them!' They had voiced protagonists. Fallout 4 had a voiced protagonist, a game from an entirely different company. The model of how to build a video game RPG is changing. And players are responding - there are as many voices for as against, and those for it have a solid case, in that it creates a more immersive environment because it's not all these people talking to your character and then hearing nothing come out of their mouths.

 

Even DAO had voices for the character - "Can I get you a ladder, so you can get off my back?" This has been a change in the production model, and I do not think it's likely we're going back, at least outside of games that are marketed as a throwback to older eras of video games. But games that are about advancing the medium (and, for all else that's flawed, that's been something I think BioWare has seriously tried to do) are unlikely at best to go back to it.

[DeathScepter]

Immersive enviroment is different from person to person, for example, with DAO, Kotor, JE, i was very immersed into the characters due to the silent protagonist. Side note: that "background" voice is non consider to be the voice of the pc with dealing a silent protagonist.

 

 

This is just me, I do think that Bioware should cater to both the fans of the Silent protagonist and the Voiced protagonist. Because with the fanbase, it is large enough to have several different types of games. For from what I can see, Bioware has several different types of fans.

 

 

Yes a part of me that it should be for a vote as well.

[nightscrawl]

It's not going to happen and there is no point in asking for it.
 
 

This is just me, I do think that Bioware should cater to both the fans of the Silent protagonist and the Voiced protagonist. Because with the fanbase, it is large enough to have several different types of games. For from what I can see, Bioware has several different types of fans.

This is a subforum for the DA franchise, which now has a voiced protagonist. They aren't going back. So how do you propose that they cater to both types of fans in the DA franchise? They can't provide a toggle in a single game as the games are designed around the use of voice, such as by showing the paraphrase on the dialogue wheel and also showing the full face of our PC during cinematic conversations, something that DAO did NOT do (we got an over-the-shoulder view of our conversational partner).

[JasonPogo]

It's not going to happen and there is no point in asking for it.
 

 

 

Yes what would be the point of giving feedback and suggestions on the franchise in the feedback and suggestions forum for it....  What was I thinking?

 

But saying what you like and want is never a waist.  If you don't say it then how would anyone know? 

[cJohnOne]

What are the benifits of a voiced protaganist?  The older games seemed to have better dialogue trees.  If it means more dialogue for companions and npc's than that would be a good change.

[nightscrawl]

Yes what would be the point of giving feedback and suggestions on the franchise in the feedback and suggestions forum for it....  What was I thinking?

 

But saying what you like and want is never a waist.  If you don't say it then how would anyone know? 

 

Perhaps I should have phrased the statement a bit more tactfully, and if that's the case, then all apologies. But that doesn't alter the accuracy of the statement. Dragon Age is a voiced franchise from DA2 onward; they're not going back.

 

 

What are the benifits of a voiced protaganist?  The older games seemed to have better dialogue trees.  If it means more dialogue for companions and npc's than that would be a good change.

 

I'd argue that it is futile to debate the merits, as it will mostly come down to personal preference. Any statement you could make about "immersion" or the ability to role play I could counter with my own views.

 

As far as dialogue trees, I encourage you to have a look at these dev posts made in the DA2 days when such discussions were quite common on the forums.

[Auztin]

To me,it's more immersive.I am actually playing Fallout 4 right now & the voices helps convey a lot of the dialogue better than pretending my character said a weird sentence 1,2,or 3 like DA;O & KOTOR.Even with no voiced protagonist,dialogue was always very limited.

Fallout 3 example:1."Nice to meet you." 2."pfft,nice hat sheriff cassidy."(something like that)3."I need to go"

DA:O example:every prologue mission.You were pigeon holed by your class & background

KOTOR is the same way.

They are most of time are limited to 2-3 options ranging from good,bad,or neutral/leaving dialogue.At least with a voice you ain't losing out on much & gain a immersive & almost cinematic feel for the game.

[Wolven_Soul]

I used to be the sort that wanted every character in every game to have a voice.  That was until I started seeing how terrible the dialogue can be for a voiced protagonist.  Now I yearn for the days when I had much more variety in the things that my character could say.  Nowadays there is three or four options at most.  And it's usually either nice guy, snarky dude, or a-hole, sometimes with a few questions you can ask, and those questions are never really delivered with the same tone as whichever of those three personality types you decided to go with normally uses. 

 

The dialogue might be well written, such as in DA's case, most of the time, but it still lacks the depth and variety that we used to have with the silent protagonist.  The only game that I really feel did it fairly well was ME, and even those games fall into that same thing with the three personalities and the questions.    

 

The voiced protagonist really hurt FO4.  The voice acting was pretty good, but the dialogue was not well written at all.  And most of the time your options were yes, no, sarcastc, and question.  It was pretty bad and it seriously hurt my enjoyment of the game.  It was one of the reasons why near the end I just started letting additional content fall to the wayside and just going through the main story. 

[vbibbi]

Another thing to consider is that a voiced protagonist means fewer dialogue options, which means less response options from NPCs. This is going to be more cost effective than the more varied responses in DAO. I liked having more than the three set personalities for the Warden, as the dialogue options usually had different viewpoints on the topic rather than the same viewpoint with a different tone, but dialogue seems to be designed now to minimize the amount of voice acting required.

[DeathScepter]

true there are sound arguments for both, I am not solely talking about Dragon Age, when I say, IMO, that Bioware should produce games for both silent protagonist and voiced protagonist.

 

 

For example, one of the strengths of Dragon Age 2 is Snarky Hawke in which I happily play a rogue. ****, my Warden is played similarly to my Snarky rogue Hawke. Yes If there was a chance to have my Warden and my Hawke, it will be a very funny comedic version of Dragon Age you can imagine. Yes I will pay extra for Bioware to do that. btw, I can snark with a straight face, then again I am the type of person will do everything with a straight face and it is funny as hell to see the expression on people faces due to that if I am screwing with them or not.

[In Exile]

What are the benifits of a voiced protaganist?  The older games seemed to have better dialogue trees.  If it means more dialogue for companions and npc's than that would be a good change.

 

Yeah, I played those older games. They don't. PS:T has great dialogue, and so does VT:MB, but that's not a VO issue, that's a writing issue. Bioware games have always had awful, bland dialogue for their protagonists because people want relatively blank slates to project on. Just see how they handled the Inquisitor vs. Hawke. And look at the boring, bland dialogue in DA:O, KoTOR, BG1/2 versus PS:T or VT:MB. 

[Hellion Rex]

Nope, OP.

[Abyss108]

I would have been with you OP before Inquisition came out. I hated having a voice in Mass Effect and DA2, I felt really disconnected from my character. But in Inquisition, I didn't have this problem - I think the "emotional" dialogue wheel fixed this issue for me. With Shepard/Hawke it always felt like I was just picking between 3 predefined personalities instead of roleplaying my character's reaction to things. Being able to have those 5/6 response that were based off how my character felt rather than the action they wanted to take made the game a lot more involving for me, as my Inquisitor felt more like a real person than any other protagonist I've played.

[Lezio]

I don't understand what would cost them to put in DA4 an "unvoiced" option at the very least. I mean, that way who prefers having a voiced protagonsit can have it and whover prefers a silent one can too.

 

The only thing that comes to mind is that they may think it a waste to have an unvoiced option, or possibly that they may have to go back to DA:O format and write down the whole lines of dialogues (which would be a better format even for a voiced protagonist, since half the time i don't know if my character is gonna go crazy if i pick the bottom dialogue option[or worse, all deep voiced aggressive like the british male voice actor does])

[vbibbi]

I don't understand what would cost them to put in DA4 an "unvoiced" option at the very least. I mean, that way who prefers having a voiced protagonsit can have it and whover prefers a silent one can too.
 
The only thing that comes to mind is that they may think it a waste to have an unvoiced option, or possibly that they may have to go back to DA:O format and write down the whole lines of dialogues (which would be a better format even for a voiced protagonist, since half the time i don't know if my character is gonna go crazy if i pick the bottom dialogue option[or worse, all deep voiced aggressive like the british male voice actor does])

Having an unvoiced option would either mean they need to add a different NPC dialogue response for that unvoiced line, or else the NPC would recycle the current line from one of the voiced dialogue options. It's too expensive in the first scenario, and kind of pointless in the second. And that's only if the silent dialogue only has one dialogue option. If they have multiple options, the above issues will multiply.

[Abyss108]

I don't understand what would cost them to put in DA4 an "unvoiced" option at the very least. I mean, that way who prefers having a voiced protagonsit can have it and whover prefers a silent one can too.

 

The only thing that comes to mind is that they may think it a waste to have an unvoiced option, or possibly that they may have to go back to DA:O format and write down the whole lines of dialogues (which would be a better format even for a voiced protagonist, since half the time i don't know if my character is gonna go crazy if i pick the bottom dialogue option[or worse, all deep voiced aggressive like the british male voice actor does])

 

 

They would have to reshoot every cutscene to accommodate this. You can't have your character say anything in any kind of action scene, as the player may not be able to read the dialogue quickly enough. How would your character show any facial expressions? - It would be very strange to have your characters face move to show an emotion but not for the words they were saying, so the scene would have to be redone not to have this (and if players complain about not liking the voice, they will probably complain about not liking the facial expressions that don't look how they imagine the lines to be said). 

 

Look at the scenes in old games - they were a lot less dynamic, your character does a lot less movement/action. Every scene is pretty much 2 talking heads, because otherwise it simply doesn't work.

 

It might be your preference for this style - but it's not a simple case of "cut the audio" to make it work in a game designed for voiced dialogue. It's a case of "shoot every scene in the game twice".

[Lezio]

Wouldn't they just have to make it so that the game automatically "skips" any dialogue coming from the PC if one picks the unvoiced option? And, obviously, write down the dialogue Origins style

[Abyss108]

Wouldn't they just have to make it so that the game automatically "skips" any dialogue coming from the PC if one picks the unvoiced option? And, obviously, write down the dialogue Origins style

 

 

How are you proposing this would work?

 

1 - Exactly the same animations would be used, just no dialogue. So the character would mouth all the words and it would just look like the sound was cutting out of the game. The character would still be showing facial expressions, so the whole reasoning for having more control over how your character sounds goes out the window as they would still be making the facial expression for whatever tone the writer intended.

 

2 - The same animations would be used without the facial expression. Every scene would need to be programmed twice, once with facial expressions, once without. Any scene where a character reacts to your facial expression would also need to be redone. The way characters respond might not work because they would be reacting to the way the writer intended the players line to be said. The player character is now animated running around these scene, responding to emotional subjects with a completely blank expression while animating their body around.

 

3 - All animation is removed from the player. This would look like the old Origins style games, where cutscenes consisted of 2 talking heads. Would also require every scene in the game to be reshot to work like this. You can't have the NPCs taking actions towards your character, if your character is now not animating around the scene in a way for them to react to. Any scene with major action now has to be somehow removed from the game, or changed to fit a protagonist who can't react to things.  

 

4 - ???

[Lezio]

Same way it works in ME1, ME2, ME3, DA2 and Inquisition if one hits the button to skip dialogue(X for the Xbox controller, for example), only the game automatically skips the dialogue when the dialogue option's chosen

[Abyss108]

Same way it works in ME1, ME2, ME3, DA2 and Inquisition if one hits the button to skip dialogue(X for the Xbox controller, for example), only the game automatically skips the dialogue when the dialogue option's chosen

 

 

So cutscenes would just skip forward. You would miss any animations your character made and any animations other characters would have made in that time you were speaking. So every few seconds when you pick a line to say, every character in the scene jumps to a new location because they were moving whilst you spoke. 

 

(And if that's all you want, you already have that option by pressing the X button...)

[Lezio]

So cutscenes would just skip forward. You would miss any animations your character made and any animations other characters would have made in that time you were speaking. So every few seconds when you pick a line to say, every character in the scene jumps to a new location because they were moving whilst you spoke. 

 

(And if that's all you want, you already have that option by pressing the X button...)

 

I can't remember an instance in Inquisition where the camera wasn't focused on the PC when s/he is talking. It usually went PC says something-NPC reacts to what ahs been said-NPC answers, again if i remember correctly

 

But i do get your point. Guess i'll just have to hope they'll go back to the origins (pun intended)

[Abyss108]

I can't remember an instance in Inquisition where the camera wasn't focused on the PC when s/he is talking. It usually went PC says something-NPC reacts to what ahs been said-NPC answers, again if i remember correctly

 

But i do get your point. Guess i'll just have to hope they'll go back to the origins (pun intended)

 

 

I can't think of an entire scene where this is the case. The scenes in Inquisition are a lot more dynamic than in previous games. Animations are always playing, characters are gesturing at each other, body language, etc. All that would be lost, unless a scene was completely redone somehow.

 

I don't mind a silent PC in general - I love Balder's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Fallout: New Vegas, Tides of Numenera (the beta at least), but it's something the game has to be designed for. If you try to do both at once, everyone loses out - scenes designed for one format will never work as well in the the other, and you can't take advantage of either medium properly. 

 

Personally, I feel Bioware does better at the cinematic voiced style than they ever did with silent protagonists, so I'm happy with how they are now. Of course, that could just be because their newer games were voiced and they have just improved in general over the years. 

[Paragon Aeducan]

Honestly I prefer with voice, given that it's done well. I don't feel like the Inquisitor had great voice actors but Hawke's was decent. If u were to do it, u better do it well!

 

In Inquisition we also had these options on the character's Va, it's not necessary IMO. Rather have 1 good VA for each gender than 4 mediocre ones. Also if u want to add variation to the voice, it could be tuned a bit depending on the race u play or maybe an option to tune the tone at the character customization. No idea how practical that would be to create. Another way to "customize" the sound could be by ur choices in the game, whether the character is funny, aggressive, etc. 

 

The option to have a silent character for those who want it is of course welcome.