207 replies to this topic

[princesspurpleblob]

This is my personal train of thought. Writing story for the game, and yet you don't want combat/gameplay to be in a way, especially in game settings like DA series. So you are saying we can skip killing Archdemon? We are playing someone's "role" here. What kind of hero skips killing Archdemon? There's this great thing that does just that it's called a film! Yes, the whole "interactive" thing is interesting, but only when story is breath-takinly interesting like PS:T + when the story is more personal -- PS:T worked because it's mostly about "yourself -- finding your memory/identity back" not saving the whole world.

Also, since some other people put it better than I did, I'm going to borrow their comments:

"idunno but i think a rpg stops being a rpg when it doesn't have combat, i think they call those adventure games. Shes free to go work for whoever made Blade Runner. Oh wait."

"That is as retarded a comment from a "video game" writer as I have ever heard one. Gameplay and narrative have a symbiotic relationship; you cannot develop one in isolation from the other; and if you are not emotionally invested in playing the game it is more difficult to discern whether your writing actually meshes well with the gameplay elements."

Yes, the interview was few years back, but only reason I'm bringing this up is because it is happening for real -- ME3. So Bioware is allowing you to skip combat/story - so without combat or dialogue, why do you play game? Like DA series, the "role" of Shepard is a "hero". What do heros do? Smack enemies in face and save Earth/universe. As I said before, you don't have a pleasant conversation over a cup of tea with your enemy and achieve world peace. In M3, you play role of Shepard. How can Shepard "skip" combat? The same goes for story -- I'm a real sucker for story. I love good story, and personally I judge RPG on story more than a combat -- but that doesn't mean I want combat completely excluded. I just make adjustment -- I play on easiest difficulty. The combat itself is a way of telling story as well -- espeically in setting like DA or ME unverise where "combat" is important to character you play. In saying that, I'm not just critisizing Helpler -- but also Bioware. It just happened to be Helpler who came up with those comments and when I've read it, I thought it was one of the most retarded thing I've ever heard.

And in terms of her writing -- I don't know which NPCs she wrote in both DA1&2, but I don't think writing was strong in both games. DA1 was extremely cliched story -- although I did like companions quite a lot (even non-joinable characters like Ser Gilmore and Cullen). DA2 story was utter disaster in my opinion and even companions weren't that great. I'd say yes to BG2 companions anyway, I'd say maybe to DA1 companions and I'd say no to DA2 companions.

[Kulyok]

I guess new rules is a good thing, as long as they allow us to bash characters and details of the game we don't like.
(I mean, if saying "Evangeline from Asunder is an awful character and must die" is still OK, then OK).

As for Hepler's idea, I think it's relatively easy to end "skip" buttons to the combat sequences(there are debug sequences for that, after all, and I use to do CTRL-Y's a lot when testing BG games, myself). So, why not assign an extra option for that, and perhaps for some other things? When DA2 came out with four romance options for both genders, a very vocal percentage of people complained when Anders flirted with their Male Hawkes(for example) - so why not add a button "no same sex romance options" at your game import? Or, for example, make Merrill, Aveline and even perhaps Varric and Anders optional companions? I'm not saying "add seventeen extra quests worth hundreds of man-hours", but sometimes a little customization goes a long way towards a better roleplaying experience. We're not adding things - we're asking to hide/skip some things that are already there, after all.

[Eleima]

I don't know if you've actually read the article (Archmage Silver posted a link to it a few posts up), but she doesn't say all combats should be removed from a game (and certainly not the Archdaemon fight, now that's just silly, it's an integral part of the story), but that you should be given the option to skip them. Most games nowadays give you the option to skip dialog, now why shouldn't you be able to do the same with combat? We're not asking to take anything away, just to give you the possibility to choose. Heck, even you make that choice when decreasing the difficulty to "easy"; some "hardcore" players would accuse you of dumbing it down, and not playing it the way it was meant to be played!

I agree that combat and dialog are part of roleplaying, they're both part of the RPG genre. But as Helper states, sometimes you just don't have the time to spend on the millionth wave of hirelings when all you want to do is just get to the next part of the story. She understands that when you get to a certain stage in life, you can't really spend 8 hours a day on a game which just throws wave after wave after wave of nameless, meaningless attackers which add nothing neither to the story, neither to the gameplay.

As for your view on the "hero", PrincessPurpleBlob, I thoroughly, adamantly disagree. This severely reduced view of the hero of the story comes from these last few years of a society and fans demanding a sense of epicness. This may seem old school, but back in the days of PnP, you didn't necessarily have to save the world. Sometimes, all you did was go on a mission, or escort a third party. It doesn't necessarily have to be a "let's go out to kick ass and chew bubble gum". The vast majority of combats are thrown at you for loot and experience points, and aren't essential, storywise.

Finally, to answer your question on what hand she had in the writing, Hepler wrote most of the dwarven NPCs in Orzammar, as well as the Dwarf Commoner Origin, the Anvil of the Void quest line; she wrote Anders, Bethany, Leandra, Cullen, and Sebastian. Apparently, she also wrote most of the Legacy DLC, which I'm told was absolutely awesome (haven't gotten to verifiying that myself).

Damn, ninja'd by Kulyok!

Edited by Eleima, 01 March 2012 - 09:49 PM.

[Enkida]

Just saying here. The dwarf commoner Origins story was the best damn writing in the entire game. I wouldn't care if she hated gameplay with a passion, because she still made a positive contribution to the game with that alone.

I don't know that Hans Zimmer really gives two figs about the Batman franchise; for that matter I don't know if Christian Bale even likes Batman. I'm still glad both these guys decided make The Dark Knight an epic movie. I don't get where all this angry vitrol towards Hepler is coming from even if you DO disagree with her. And a six year old interview, which apparently most people have not bothered to even read, merely quote completely out of context from the actual issues Hepler was addressing at that time with her answers? Don't we all have better things to do already?

[Daulmakan]

How long until the fight-oriented crowd starts pushing its own preferences and asks for RPGs to offer the chance to skip the roleplaying options and go straight to the combat? Would that be Call of Duty: Sigil, or Medal of Honor: Allied Torment? I'm sure even some would say it's already happening.

This is what happens when you try to make games that appeal to everyone, by removing aspects of the game that partly define the genre it's supposed to be about.

[Vicen]

How long until the fight-oriented crowd starts pushing its own preferences and asks for RPGs to offer the chance to skip the roleplaying options and go straight to the combat? Would that be Call of Duty: Sigil, or Medal of Honor: Allied Torment? I'm sure even some would say it's already happening.

This is what happens when you try to make games that appeal to everyone, by removing aspects of the game that partly define the genre it's supposed to be about.

The day that happens is the day I quit gaming...(well at least rpgs!) But thankfully I doubt will ever see anything like that...or at least not too many of them!

[Enkida]

Well, completely unrelated to Hepler's opinions at all, Ff7: Dirge of Cerebus actually did test drive a best of both worlds scenario. Don't get me wrong, the game pretty much sucked (they had NEITHER game mechanic engineers NOR writers). However I found the game structure to be intriguing.

It was a linear game and story-intensive with very long cutscenes, and on the first playthrough you had to watch every cutscene, and fight every battle, and it was limited to easy or normal difficulty. But after the first playthrough - and it is a very short game - all sorts of intersting things happened. Additional difficulties were unlocked as well as additional options and extras (this is pretty standard by now), and you could choose to fast forward through story scenes (also standard). But - the story was set up in chapters with subchapters, so you could also skip fight scenes if you wanted to. Just pick up the "game book" on the subchapter segment AFTER the particular battle you did not want to re-fight. You could also skip all but the end boss battles this way, but then you would not get the option of seeing the story cutscene, either, since boss battles were tied to story. Also you faced gameplay ramifications for doing it, like not levelling up and therefore having harder boss battles, as well as not picking up new equipment, magic, or restocking on ammo.

It was pretty intriguing and I'm a little sad SqEn dropped that format to pursue their slew of even crappier modern day RPGs. But if I wanted to see Yuffie spin around in her shorts without having to blast my way through 40 grunt soldiers in a clunky battle engine to get there, I could. And I did. Many times. ;-)

[berelinde]

How long until the fight-oriented crowd starts pushing its own preferences and asks for RPGs to offer the chance to skip the roleplaying options and go straight to the combat? Would that be Call of Duty: Sigil, or Medal of Honor: Allied Torment? I'm sure even some would say it's already happening.

This is what happens when you try to make games that appeal to everyone, by removing aspects of the game that partly define the genre it's supposed to be about.

The day that happens is the day I quit gaming...(well at least rpgs!) But thankfully I doubt will ever see anything like that...or at least not too many of them!

All cutscenes and most conversation is already skippable. Just hit escape. You'll have to do it repeatedly if the conversation has multpile PC responses, but the player can pretty much just ignore everything that isn't hack-n-slash if they want.

And you know what? I use that feature myself, sometimes. Yes, I do play it for the story, but sometimes, dialogue preceeds a fight. And sometimes, that fight doesn't go the way I want it to and I have to repeat it (I play on either hard or nightmare, depending on how hardcore I feel like being). If I have to go through that conversation 15 times in a row, I'm going to escape my way through it. I already listened to it the first few times.

And while I'm totally behind making boss battles unskippable, I wouldn't mind the ability to pare a few waves off the 87-wave paratrooper random-encounter battles. They aren't testing my tactics, they're testing my patience.

[KIrving]

Regarding the news that BioWare are requesting feedback for Dragon Age 3 the cynic in me has risen to the forefront. Get both satisfied and dissatisfied customers invested in the new game with the notion that they are somehow having input in the story and development process and they may pre-order a BioWare product, at least ONE more time.

This move seems to be a pre-marketing push as they have made it very clear that certain changes are here to stay. Such as a reliance on cinematics (possibly with auto-dialogue moments), fully voiced protagonist, dialogue wheel and iconic companion clothing/armour (with some customisable pieces). I wouldn't be surprised if it's a set human protagonist again too. I'm not convinced that EA are as open to feedback as their BioWare brand are hoping people will believe.

They already have numerous threads and pages with feedback from before and after the release of Dragon Age 2 and that's just on the BSN. How much feedback/suggestions do they need?



Edit - From reading the BioWare thread it seems that they want story/lore related suggestions and Ms Merizan's quote makes it clear how they feel about game development suggestions,

As a last bit of housekeeping, the purpose of these exercises isn’t crowd sourcing or soliciting your game dev concepts (keep those close in case you want to make a game someday!). This should remain a discussion between BioWare and fans about what you loved about Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2—what this franchise means to you.

Each monthly question is also not meant to be a debate so please keep things open enough for everyone to contribute their thoughts."

Edited by KIrving, 17 May 2012 - 10:14 PM.

[Eleima]

Looks like we'll be play as a human again in DA3! How do you guys feel about this? I, for one, really don't mind all that much. I feel it allows them to flesh out the story a lot more, like they did in DA2, to give the protagonist from backstory, more personality. Hawke certainly felt more alive to me than my Origins characters (at least in the beginning; a few of my Origins character feel very much alive, but that's just because I fleshed out a few things in my mind).
So... playing as a human: a bad thing?

[Vicen]

I would agree with you that I do not mind playing a human at all for DA3 (I usually choose human myself for whatever game I am playing first anyways).

Hopefully if they do a DA4 whenever that is or maybe if DA3 gets an expansion we will have other options besides playing as a human...

Edited by Vicen, 23 October 2012 - 08:37 AM.

[Almateria]

I love how there's no choice in Bioware games anymore.

[Eleima]

Almateria, that sentence is rendered null and void by the simple fact that you could choose who you sided with in DA2, and that had some pretty major implications on the storytelling. You want a world where you can do anything, be anyone, kill anything, try open worlds like the Elder Scrolls universe.

[Tempest]

Meh. I find the humans by far the least interesting race in Dragon Age, but here we go again and with the not!Catholic Church to boot. Sounds like I'm going to pass on this one just like DA2.

[Yovaneth]

I'll do as I always do - I'll wait until I've played it before I pass judgement. And no, I really don't mind playing human again. There had to be a development reason for only allowing the one race and we're not privy to it, so no use complaining.

-Y-

[Archmage Silver]

I'll do as I always do - I'll wait until I've played it before I pass judgement. And no, I really don't mind playing human again. There had to be a development reason for only allowing the one race and we're not privy to it, so no use complaining.

-Y-

And it's not like it's that hard to improve on DA II.

[Eleima]

Awww, you're so harsh! Granted the combat was crappy, but I liked the stories DA2 told!

[Vicen]

Awww, you're so harsh! Granted the combat was crappy, but I liked the stories DA2 told!

I agree...I mean honestly besides the reuse of areas a ton and enemies jumping on the screen from out of nowhere all the time I do not see what the big gripe with DA 2 was...I also suppose combat wasn't great but imo it was not horrible either...

IMO it had a pretty good story - the graphics were good (with the high resolution textures even better) the voice acting was solid for the most part - and just about everything else not mention was at least average or above... IF I had to grade DA 2 out of 10 with decimals included I'd give it a 7.7 out of 10 myself...

Hopefully DA3 can at least be an 8, though if I had to guess with all the time and effort they are putting into it I hoping it will be a 9....

[Tempest]

Awww, you're so harsh! Granted the combat was crappy, but I liked the stories DA2 told!

I did, too, once the story started. Pity 90% of the game was already over by that point.

I'll wait and see, I suppose, but I have very little faith in Bioware these days.

[Jarno Mikkola]

I did, too, once the story started. Pity 90% of the game was already over by that point.

Erhm, in your expert oppinion, when did the "story" actually start ?
Yeah, there could have been a bit better tie-ins within the story, but the whole point of it wasn't only the Blood mages, it was actually about getting richer... and gaining influence. "Rise to power."