58 réponses à ce sujet

[tmp7704]

Zeluron wrote...

I compare these factors with Baldur's Gate and it all felt so much more free. In Baldur's  Gate 1n2 you start out with a little liniarity and then the world opens up! You can go adventure around freely, though there's still the plot  peering over your shoulder of course, but you're free to go and do miniquests or randomly explore the country side  ect. This part of the game let's you have a UNIQUE experiance and this part is lacking in  Dragon Age.

Dragon Age  sticks me on a path and keeps me on it. The game is basicly a set of areas collected into groups. There's the intro areas, Dalish Elf areas, Mage Tower areas..ect.. and I'm expected to go through them all in sucession, find every single item and kill every monster, turn over every stone and go through every dialogue.You may not experiance this, but.. this kind of level design brings out the perfectionist in me, I've got to do everything no matter how boring it is.. the perfect example of this is the dream sequence and collecting all those stat bonuses.. Bloody boring but I had to do it. In Baldur's Gate I feel so much more free to do what I want and then when I'm ready I'll move onto the main plot, but it never feels like a streight path or a set of tick boxes.

This feels like a strange complaint because DA also allows you to run around all over the place doing the miniquests and exploring the areas you visit. The main plot is there but it will wait for you to pick it up whenever you feel like it. Even weirder is you would experience urge to complete one game fully but not the other -- why no urge to kill every monster in Baldur's Gate, to smash every barrel, to visit every place and to complete every miniquest?

A modern game that's really impressed me is Fallout3, now I've played Oblivion, a game with.. other problems.. most of which have been fixed in Fallout. Now Fallout kept me interested for so much longer than Dragon Age and Mass Effect have. The reason for this is because Fallout3 is different every time, it's a big open world full of random encounters, and I don't mean random monsters. In Fallout one playthrough you'll find three people  fighting over a fridge in a specific point on the map, while the next play through you'll find an alien crash site there.

The "random encounters" in Fallout are basically identical to "random encounters" in DA -- there's a set of them made by designers and the game pulls one from the hat whenever you enter a new area (while DA pulls one from the hat every time you travel between the game zones. Perhaps Fallout 3 was more successful in fooling you with the sense of "different every time" but honestly, you'll see exactly the same things, quests, events and encounters there on every playthrough just like you will see them in DA.

Modifié par tmp7704, 11 mars 2010 - 01:58 .

[hexaligned]

There are lots of companys that put out more free roaming/sand box games. Bioware has never been one of them. If you prefer those types of games buy them, and stop givign Bioware your money. I like both kinds, but I don't excpect my Bioware games to have exploring, and I don't expect my Morrowind to be on the same level in terms of story and character interaction.

[Vaike]

I'd agree with that, to an extent. Bioware has always been more of a directed RPG maker. I think that for the most part the balance they struck was better than anything achieved by either the full linear genre or the open world (Oblivion) style genre. I don't think there is any other single company now or in the past that has produced so many games that I'd consider great.



That being said, I think a great deal of what was done in the name of "openness" in DA was pretty ham fisted and not terribly well executed. Personally I look toward EA's influence as a cause of this, but... who knows.

[Murphys_Law]

Zeluron wrote...

By the way, I know how fourm members can be but try and keep to constructive comments, trolling is a waste of pixel space.

And, yea, you could say Dragon Age is supposed to be linear and is supposed to be played once over but that doesn't make it a better game, does it? Or maybe it does? Perhaps there's nothing broken here? I dissagree.

Everything comes at a cost.  The more open your game is, the less focused the story will be.  The more linear your game is, the less the player feels like he is in the driver seat.  BG1 and 2 were linear games to be honest and only give illusions of freedom.  I am sorry, but the "exploration" is nothing more than one little area and is limited in that you still have to go to the world map.  Yes, it was more open than Dragon Age but I think BG1/2's story suffered because of that (pauses for the shouting).  Frankly, the build up for the BG stories were lacking and the characters did not have the depth of Dragon Age characters.  For it's time it was great, but looking back I can see a lot of problems with just opening the world up.  Of course this can easily be demonstrated by looking at true open world recent RPGs....Obvilion and Fallout 3.  Both of those games were severly lacking in story because of the open nature of the game.  I prefer great stories mixed with player "railroads" to medicore stories mixed with player "freedom".  I think gamers too often hold on to the player freedom banner without realizing the cost it entails.

[Siegdrifa]

(in advance, sorry for my bad english)



In my opinion, i prefer linear rpg with a lot of contant and a wonderfull storyline than multi-choice rpg that can make you play the game three time with lot of diversity but for a moderate contant and time of story.



I love the game experience in Dragon Age Origine, but the way the story is constructed is OLD and COMMUN:



You have to gather allies in different place, solve the problems of people living there.

Do it 4 or 5 time then defeat the last boss ... It's working well but come on, lot of the Bioware rpg use the same strings. I hope they won't do that for awakening and dragon age2, i mean, have 4/5 place to explor on the map (illusion of liberty), solve the problem, go to the last boss. (it was nice for kotor but it's been years now!)



And the second point i would like to speak of is the main story it self.

It really needed to be called "Dragon Age" to allow the most basic and beaten to death story "defeat the dragon". And i'm not talking about "in video game industry", i'm talking about "the hero slaying the dragon" it's mean storys that exist since many centuries, far before the lord of the rings and stuff ( i'm refering to nordic history, mythology and culture; the story about darwf, elve, troll, giant, dragon and werewolf existed before the middle age ).

What do you know at the begining of Dragon Age? you have to build an army to defeat the Dragon.

What do you do for the whole story line? nothing more than what you had to do at the very beginning.

The places you visit (to gather an army) and the "you must solve my problem before i assist you in your quest" is a cheap excuse to place a "any other kind of story that serves as quest".



So, to be honest, when i finished the game, i was missing something, and i think it's because the main quest had no surprise at all:

No matter who live / die / enter / leave the party, the point of view of the main quest remain all the same from the beginning until the end.



I'm not saying that the game shouldn't kill the dragon but imagine a book about a girl who want to become a star dancer.... when she graduate, to she goes to a dancer school then she learn and become a star dancer... no surprise.

So you could ask "is that all your story has to offer? go to a dancer school, succeed and that's all?"

I could answer "yes, because in order to be a dancer she had to learn in a proper school, so she learned and accomplished what she wanted to do, end of the story".

I could tell you "while she had to go to school, a lot of thing happenned such as: her cat was sick, she missed the bus to go to school, she had to do some baby sitting to make some cash" and any other kind of sub quest, i mean sub story to fill the 250 remaining pages

Still, having an "end" expected from the beginning is not good.



Well since it is aslo called "Origin" and i usualy trust Bioware in video games dev, i'm expecting a more exiting purpuse of the archeamond leading drakspawn on human lands.

If not, i would be really desapointed... if it was a "no no, when all the remaining archedeamon will be dead then nothing else will threat the peace of the people"... it would be cheap and lame, espacialy when you look at the strong background story built for the Dragon Age series.



So please Bioware, i hope you will make a more kicking main story with intresting plot that give the player a different point of view at the end of the main quest than the beginning.

Plot around the characters / pnj is different from plot around the main story.

[Silensfurtim]

this is a waste of thread. he obviously prefers open ended/sanbox games.



next.

[MelodicCure]

Dragon Age is still fairly an open ended RPG rather than linear. Specially if you look at the linear games these days. Take for example God of War 3 coming out now. Yea it will be cool looking but the game play I will bet is start at point A kill **** by smashing X as much as you can...enter point B..watch some crap...Start at point A...repeat process...to me that is the kind of linear I hate.

[Vaeliorin]

Zeluron wrote...
I guess you're right, and you all think linear is best? Because I can't play through this game more than once. Have you played through it more than once and found it's still fun? Is it worth the money?

I'm on playthrough 7, and I plan to do at least one more (I still haven't done a caster-type mage, only an arcane warrior.)

Honestly, DA is, to me, Bioware's best game by far, for the simple reason that it actually has gameplay that I find enjoyable.  The most important thing for replayability to me is gameplay.  If the combat isn't fun, I'm not going to be able to play through the game multiple times regardless of how good the story is (witness me never being able to complete The Witcher with its boring as watching paint dry combat.)

Story is obviously important (even the best gameplay isn't going to make a terrible story enjoyable) but story is only enough to get me through 1 (maybe 2) playthroughs if the gameplay is awful.

[Maria Caliban]

Kimarous wrote...

I'm also the type with an overactive imagination who likes to "purge out the cannon"...

Another Lady of the Forest fan, amirite? Heh. Heh. Say no more, say no more.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 11 mars 2010 - 07:07 .

[Phantom_1]

As ppl say i agree on that , i will always prefer linear but games with great storyline than open sandbox games which will never get me deeply connected to game world.



And no DAO is not linear at all if you compare it to most other rpgs on market, maybe its linear in paths you take throught the game but you got several options to make lots of decisiouns in different way so the story can always end up different.



Heck my favourite rpg games i played are Witcher and DAO , yeh they might be linear in exploring part of the game but they got all deep immersive story which i enjoyed and which attach you to the characters and game world and for me the story of the game its magic itself , i played many games in past but got bored of em very fast due lack of story.

[Kimarous]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Kimarous wrote...

I'm also the type with an overactive imagination who likes to "purge out the cannon"...

Another Lady of the Forest fan, amirite? Heh. Heh. Say no more, say no more.

I meant "canon"! As in "what is fact"! I like to think up my own background for stuff, and such! Not... gah!

EDIT: *checks back* Ooh... I see what you did there... <_<

Modifié par Kimarous, 11 mars 2010 - 07:56 .

[Korva]

Zeluron wrote...

I don't know if it's because I'm getting old or something but lately I've been getting disillusioned with these modern Bioware rpgs.

I feel the same -- though not for entirely the same reasons. Now I did enjoy Dragon Age quite a bit while I played it, it had some very very well-done emotional moments: human noble origin climax, battle of Ostagar, the good/peaceful Nature of the Beast resolution, the charge on Denerim, the farewell at the city gates, the ultimate sacrifice and its epilogues. Definitely a game worth playing. But it has some severe flaws as well, and for me no replay value (despite my pre-release plans to make four characters).

This is mainly because of the near-complete lack of meaningful consequences for the player's choices or conduct. What does it matter if there are x origins and y companions and z ways to solve a quest if none of these have any impact on anything? A game simply should not develop in the same manner regardless of whether you play a shiny do-gooder, a murderous sociopath, or someone who makes each choice completely at random. Dragon Age does. The Landsmeet is the "perfect" example here, and one I got really pissed off with. Just about the only meaningful choice you can make is the ultimate sacrifice -- and that gets hand-waved and reconned out of existence in the expansion. Way to go. I'm just dying for a game in which choices and conduct actually matter and you have to reap true consequences, good and bad.

Also, while the DA setting and premise is very interesting, the actual execution is very lacking in my book. There is no sense of any actual danger from the Blight until the final march on Denerim, and neither does the civil war have much of an impact. Nothing happens if you don't count the completely off-camera destruction of Lothering. Seeing the black blotches spread across the world map is ominous, but it doesn't actually do anything. Plus, the various "gather your allies" sideplots have nothing to do with the Blight, save it playing a tangential role in Paragon of Her Kind. Instead of uniting in the face of an all-consuming menace, you have to sort out everyone's private messes which IMO makes for a rather disjointed experience, despite the side plots being of undeniable quality. It just irritates me if I feel I have to wipe everyone's arses because they cannot do anything on their own.

Finally, I felt let down by the party members. The influence system is a ridiculous, easily broken mess. Dog is far from the full-fledged party member they said he would be. And of all the companions, only Wynne (whom I adore) actually seems to care for the Warden, for what she thinks and feels. Everyone else is just me-me-me almost all the time. That is especially jarring if you're supposed to "romance" someone who never shows any real interest in your character.

I too would favor a more open, non-linear game, and preferably a "living, breathing world". It is somewhat baffling that with all the technological advances, the game worlds don't progress accordingly in many games. We get pretty graphics, orchestral music, full voice acting and all of that is sweet, but I'm annoyed at tiny hose-like levels, invisible walls, and other limitations to movement.

Still, I have no real issue with with linear games. The flaws above though (no consequences, disjointed story, uncaring companions) are a real annoyance to me regardless of how open or railroaded a game is.

[nikki191]

one thing that did hit me hard in not a good way with dragon age was the progression of the blight. you watch it slowly fill the map, yet there isnt really any differences wander you wander around you never got to see what blighted land looked like, you never got to see those burned out farms, etc and having the blight progress depending entirely on  you chosing when to complete a faction recruitment really stood out badly.

I understand why bioware did it like that, but i wonder if putting a time limit on the mission would of worked better.. will i be able to recruit enough factions for my army in time? should i do that sidequest knowing its going to cut off 2 days of the time i have left?

Modifié par nikki191, 11 mars 2010 - 12:04 .

[Valmy]

Elithranduil wrote...
Very eloquent and cohesive argument. Couldn't have put it better myself. This is exactly how I feel sometimes. I still end up playing all Bioware games however - but they have certainly dropped in terms of quality since Baldur's Gate 2.

Although I cannot agree with you on Fallout 3. That was fun but terrible compared to anything Bioware produces.

I guess I missed all the massive exploration of BG2.  Did I play the same BG2 you guys did?  I mean you had the city and a few hotspots with side quests in Chapter 2 and besides that it was completely linear.  I mean far more linear than their later games.  You cannot even pick the order you are going to do the main quest in you are railroaded along.

Now I loved BG2 but I always wonder what sort of bizarre nostalgia you are indulging in to sing its praises as some sort of sandboxy open world game.  That is simply not true in any sense.  it was a big main quest with side quests...in fact the BG2 model is what we have been going with ever since more or less.

BG1 had sandboxy qualities, not BG2.

[Valmy]

Korva wrote...

Zeluron wrote...

I don't know if it's because I'm getting old or something but lately I've been getting disillusioned with these modern Bioware rpgs.

This is mainly because of the near-complete lack of meaningful consequences for the player's choices or conduct. What does it matter if there are x origins and y companions and z ways to solve a quest if none of these have any impact on anything? A game simply should not develop in the same manner regardless of whether you play a shiny do-gooder, a murderous sociopath, or someone who makes each choice completely at random. Dragon Age does. The Landsmeet is the "perfect" example here, and one I got really pissed off with. Just about the only meaningful choice you can make is the ultimate sacrifice -- and that gets hand-waved and reconned out of existence in the expansion. Way to go. I'm just dying for a game in which choices and conduct actually matter and you have to reap true consequences, good and bad.

I can see this...but what does this have to do with "modern" Bioware RPGs being disillusioning?  Every CRPG ever made has been like this.

 I mean it is hardly like games in the 90s gave you more meaningful choices.  I mean pretty much there were zero meaningful choices in BG1 to BG2 and so forth.  You always ended up at the same place either way. 

Modifié par Valmy, 11 mars 2010 - 02:02 .

[elearon1]

>>I compare these factors with Baldur's Gate and it all felt so much more free. In Baldur's Gate 1n2 you start out with a little liniarity and then the world opens up! You can go adventure around freely, though there's still the plot peering over your shoulder of course, but you're free to go and do miniquests or randomly explore the country side ect. This part of the game let's you have a UNIQUE experiance and this part is lacking in Dragon Age.<<



I entirely agree with this statement ... it is the one thing that has left me a little disappointed with Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Both are great stories, but they are so linear that replaying them can feel like a waste of time. At least in Dragon Age you can play through all the origins and get some more variation, but once you leave the origin story your game will be almost identical to your first playthrough ... or at least your first two, assuming you play as a nice guy once and an ass the second time.



I do not like completely open ended games, though, because if there is no real direction I get bored. Buldur's Gate 1&2 did a good job with this because - as the original poster states - the main story is still hanging over you, but you have a great deal of freedom over what you do in the meantime. You wouldn't even run into or get to adventure with the same npcs in those games dependent upon your alignment and such. This meant that in the many times I played that game it was only the same during specific portions of the story. In DA and ME I feel as though the majority of my choices boil down to what order I do the same old missions in.

[Sabriana]

Oh man, that was a killer for me, Melkathi. So was the ending, the most senseless ending I ever encountered. It even beat the po'd DM ending of 'rocks fall, all die' in NWN2. I really hate that in games.

Here is my PC in *the* room. She has an ally that's immune, and ally that's also immune, and a machine with her, yet, she has to be the one dying (or the other girl). Weird. Too, too weird. I know they fixed it in the first xpansion, but I never bought it. I lost all interest, and I uninstalled it immediately, never to play it again.

I actually like both, the open world, and the more structured game a la DA:O. Although I don't really think of games such as Oblivion as RPGs. To me they are hybrids.

[kennyme2]

I think that the games that you like (Fallout and such) all share the fact that they are open ended, as you said. If you take a look at recent rpg's though, you may find a trend in linear stories. The most recent game to be linear would be Final Fantasy 13. A franchise known for being insanely huge on content and length, FF13 chose to be linear in order to put emphasis and unrgency on the story.



I also really like the games you mentioned that you like. The only thing I didn't like about those games is that it seemed odd to me that even with a great threat looming in the distance, I could still choose to wander the land doing random tasks for random people. It is refreshing to me to play these linear games such as ME2 and FF13 that treat the threat in the story as something real and immediate.

[DJ0000]

I actually find sandbox games to have terrible replayability.



Take Oblivion for example, I loved it, played over 200 hours, but it was so much that when I had finished all the quests I was just wiped. After all of that, I just couldn't go back and start again right away, I will need a long break before playing it again.



However, with Dragon Age I can just pick it up and play over and over because it's not covered in filler material, almost all of it is story related and there's so many customisation options. In fact, I have played almost 10 times and still find it fun being able to try out different story options and charecter builds.



In fact, I have actually got a lot more hours out of Dragon Age than Oblivion or Fallout because after going through them once I've seen all of the story and don't feel like I can build another charecter with a different feel.



Then there's the fact that Dragon Age is much better at creating world of it's own and has a much better story...

[MelodicCure]

Oblivion is a poor example of sandbox because they sacrificed a lot to kill all linear feeling. Games that are in between are best. Baldur's Gate games nailed the best combo of linear and open end gameplay.

[AlanC9]

How is BG2 different from DA:O in linearity? The only difference I can see is that you're free to skip some major quests altogether in BG2 but not in DA:O

[Vaike]

Korva wrote...

Zeluron wrote...

I don't know if it's because I'm getting old or something but lately I've been getting disillusioned with these modern Bioware rpgs.

I feel the same -- though not for entirely the same reasons. Now I did enjoy Dragon Age quite a bit while I played it, it had some very very well-done emotional moments: human noble origin climax, battle of Ostagar, the good/peaceful Nature of the Beast resolution, the charge on Denerim, the farewell at the city gates, the ultimate sacrifice and its epilogues. Definitely a game worth playing. But it has some severe flaws as well, and for me no replay value (despite my pre-release plans to make four characters).

This is mainly because of the near-complete lack of meaningful consequences for the player's choices or conduct. What does it matter if there are x origins and y companions and z ways to solve a quest if none of these have any impact on anything? A game simply should not develop in the same manner regardless of whether you play a shiny do-gooder, a murderous sociopath, or someone who makes each choice completely at random. Dragon Age does. The Landsmeet is the "perfect" example here, and one I got really pissed off with. Just about the only meaningful choice you can make is the ultimate sacrifice -- and that gets hand-waved and reconned out of existence in the expansion. Way to go. I'm just dying for a game in which choices and conduct actually matter and you have to reap true consequences, good and bad.

Also, while the DA setting and premise is very interesting, the actual execution is very lacking in my book. There is no sense of any actual danger from the Blight until the final march on Denerim, and neither does the civil war have much of an impact. Nothing happens if you don't count the completely off-camera destruction of Lothering. Seeing the black blotches spread across the world map is ominous, but it doesn't actually do anything. Plus, the various "gather your allies" sideplots have nothing to do with the Blight, save it playing a tangential role in Paragon of Her Kind. Instead of uniting in the face of an all-consuming menace, you have to sort out everyone's private messes which IMO makes for a rather disjointed experience, despite the side plots being of undeniable quality. It just irritates me if I feel I have to wipe everyone's arses because they cannot do anything on their own.

Finally, I felt let down by the party members. The influence system is a ridiculous, easily broken mess. Dog is far from the full-fledged party member they said he would be. And of all the companions, only Wynne (whom I adore) actually seems to care for the Warden, for what she thinks and feels. Everyone else is just me-me-me almost all the time. That is especially jarring if you're supposed to "romance" someone who never shows any real interest in your character.

I too would favor a more open, non-linear game, and preferably a "living, breathing world". It is somewhat baffling that with all the technological advances, the game worlds don't progress accordingly in many games. We get pretty graphics, orchestral music, full voice acting and all of that is sweet, but I'm annoyed at tiny hose-like levels, invisible walls, and other limitations to movement.

Still, I have no real issue with with linear games. The flaws above though (no consequences, disjointed story, uncaring companions) are a real annoyance to me regardless of how open or railroaded a game is.

Very well said.

[darrylzero]

I think the balance between openness and linearity is pretty good in DA, but I do think gathering the armies feels a little instrumental, like checking off a list of things to do. I think it would have worked better for me if the encounter with Loghain's soldiers in Lothering forced you to go into hiding for a while, whether with bandits or barbarians or a sympathetic noble lord or chantry...



I feel like the game would feel more realistic if you had to look after your own survival first, rather than immediately being confident enough to tackle the problems of the world in order to raise an army. Once you had established a home base of some sort and were pretty well equipped, then it might seem more reasonable to help the elves take on a werewolf clan or jump in to rid the tower of abominations. When I start the first couple of quests, I'm always confronted with how unrealistic it feels to imagine my character believing he handle the challenge in front of him.



If I was running the show (and I realize there is a long list of good reasons that I am not), I would have made Lothering feel much more threatening. I might have made the fight with Loghain's men one that Leliana helped you *escape from* rather than win. From there, perhaps you could have Leliana suggest hiding in the chantry for a while. You could later be forced from it when the blight attacks Lothering. Or, the chantry could refuse to hide you, despite Leliana's pleas, and she might alternately suggest taking refuge with a band of smugglers she knows, giving the first hint that she's not so innocent after all. Warden's Keep could serve well in this regard, if it were more integrated into the story (which obviously it can't be, since it's an optional DLC).



I also think it would be nice if, from your hideout in the chantry or with bandits or at Warden's Keep or wherever, you had initial tasks to complete before you could "unlock" the 4 main areas. What if it were Loghain's men who had sealed off the Circle Tower, and you had to find some other way in? What if you had to seek out someone who knew how to find the Dalish in order to track them down? What if a larger, more powerful group of bandits (or perhaps more of Loghain's men) were blocking the road to Redcliffe, and you had to find some way around them?



This would be a different story, and it would take a lot of resources that would then be unavailable for the things they were used for. And this just might be my favorite video game that I've played, so it seems silly to complain. Still, I would have liked a more pervasive sense of danger and desperation, alongside paths available to attempt to mitigate that danger before jumping straight into building an army. I also felt like the Landsmeet was a little too easy to resolve, but any situation in which Loghain brought in enough troops to suppress you and all your supporters (perhaps forcing you to flee and regroup later in order to take him out for good), while more satisfying for me, would obviously compromise parts of the story they wanted to tell. I can hope for more of those kinds of themes in DA 2, though. My $.02, anyway...



For the expansions, I'm still hoping they allow me to pursue a sustained effort to get rid of the taint in my body. It doesn't look likely in Awakenings, but any warden I can imagine would be feeling like (s)he ended a frickin' blight and can be a little selfish. I'm calling up Avernus, wondering if he's figured out anything that might let me live into old age. And if he can't help, I'll ask the architect or the baronness or whoever, if Bioware will let me. Of course, the architect seems singularly uninterested in helping folks with that particular problem, but I don't know that.



I love playing resentful, lower-class characters, but I have a lot of trouble making truly dark choices. That leaves me pretty intrigued by how far I might be willing to go to escape the taint, particularly since I already saved the damn country once. They owe me! (I'll probably wuss out and save everybody again, but I'd like to compromise myself to the point that I need redemption first -- that's a character arc if you ask me).



Thoughts?