David Gaider wrote…
Morroian wrote…
Yep, I agree with the above and personally think Bioware don't fully understand the ramifications of limiting conversations insofar as it effects our (the players) sympathetic identification with the characters.
I would object to the idea that "sympathetic identification" requires being able to talk to a character anytime, anywhere, about anything. I understand that some people liked the way the dialogue worked in DAO, but just because you liked the characters does not mean that the way it worked didn't have its down side or that altering one aspect of it (the list of questions when you clicked on a character) suddenly means only the extreme opposite is possible and all characters are rendered personality-less automatons.
Could you click on party members in BG2 and ask them questions? No? Were they without personality or the possibility of "sympathetic identification"?
My observation is that the most effective means of connecting with party members is through banter and dialogues that actually have import — they relate to something that is actually going on, either in the plot or in their lives. Being able to ask them all sorts of background questions, while pleasant enough, never really added very much — and while I get that some people automatically imagine that this means they won't get to talk to their favorite characters at all, it just isn't so. Just because something has been changed does not always result in a net negative.
Again, I'd suggest actually trying it out. You can always return here afterwards and complain bitterly about it, along with the lack of [insert favorite character here], the travesty of [insert plot element here] or the injustice of [insert failure to carry forward plot element here]. {smilie}
From BG1 to DAO I saw Bioware make evolve companions management in a way i didn't like:
- First the Approval point system, it's a design I dislike a lot because for me it pollute a lot relations with companions, and it pushes players to boring try/reload. DAO put even more the focus on this and add gifts system with an even poorest design almost forcing you to very tedious try/reload.
- From companions living during your adventures it evolved more and more to deeper dialogs with companions but that are dead puppets during your adventures.
But where it ends with DAO, this system I don't like clearly shows good points:
- Very developed dialogs in camp with each companion, the quantity is large enough to have an effect on players quite increased.
- A lot of intimate camp dialogs, they allow develop a deeper background for each character.
- Better and deeper developing of romances.
- Ton of camp dialogs that are optional allowing player not enjoy them skip them, or allowing choose investigate them when the player is in a better mood to do so.
- Camp dialogs very developed and with only few weak links with all other elements of the game including other companions. That approach clearly save a lot of effort in managing links to put focus on much more developed camp dialogs with each companion separately.
But this DAO approach means also a lot of simplification:
- Their design make them like a parallel game with only weak links with the global main game.
- Relationships between companions get reduced to series of jokes exchange, very well written and fun, but rather superficial and quite artificial because often not well merged to the gameplay.
- During adventuring, explorations, important events, dungeons, and more, companions become almost puppets. No more living companions during your adventures. There's few companions comments but that's often superficial and the lack of links with the deep camp dialogs make those very few and very small act of living rather dull and no efficient.
- It's fine to allow any player forget most camp dialogs but the result is that a significant number of players don't dig it much, then get rather puppet like companions and lost an important part of the game and for most it's enough to drop down a lot their final feeling about the game.
But if you want compare companions dialogs in Awakening and companion dialogs in DAO, DAO has so much material and effort put in it (easily 5 times more, and probably much more) that DAO wins easily in a comparison match.
Bu that doesn't mean that the DAO system is the best. And about merging both and have them both, in DAO there's already a lot of time put in dialogs but add the complexity of Awakening approach with much more links to manage and Im' not sure that any AAA budget can support this.
My vote is a pure bet, not sure it's better but I think Awakening approach worth a try in a full game with an AAA budget.
Few quotes about this hypothetical future game:
Dialogs that pause the game and interrupt the player. Modern game designers gave up try this probably because they want be multiplayer compatible and because it breaks the feeling for playing a RT game. But for managing companions living during the adventuring it offer a ton of positive points:
- No more bad dialogs & actions interaction causing many little bugs.
- No more dialogs unnoticed by the player (some didn't quote there was the companions exchange jokes during adventuring).
- Much more possible place of companion dialogs triggers because not have to manage bugs related to dialog interruption.
- If companion dialogs starting by clicking on an object is a good design trick, abuse of it make it often very unnatural, unlike a companions interrupting with a dialog.
Few other quotes:
- Short dialog is better dialog when wrote with accuracy.
- Adventure events could build the strongest player sympathy for a companion. Among many tricks, companion that left and come back later, companion you met multiple time before he joins, gandalf trick ie companion that sacrifice to save the party but come back anyway later, companion that really sacrifice his life for the party then met later for some events as a ghost or memories, and many more.
- Systematic happy ending or happy evolution is bad but systematic dark ending or dark evolution is bad too. One unexpected happy evolution highlighted by few darker evolution can build the strongest companion link with the player.
- It's a very difficult subject, but relationship between companions can be a huge tool to build a non puppet living party.
- Weird companions are the best tool to make the more interesting companions, but if there's no less weird companion to highlight them then this lost a lot of its effect strength on players.
Companions in CRPG, a difficult work, and then not much have been done in past CRPG and there's most probably a lot to invent.
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