Dick Justice
Banned
Lol, race DLC is inevitable. Fucking Bioware.
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New Dragon Age 3 Details And Concept Art
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
It just seems like they have painted themselves into a corner with save imports.
David Gaider has been heavily implying that he is or has been against it.
Now they are messing around with the idea of being able to pick your backstory without save imports.
It sounds like they had some really cool on-paper ideas, made Origins, and then realized that they couldn't feasibly follow-through on it in their current state.
Either way, I'd very much like to see this new system, whatever it is. Maybe it's a wall of pre-game choices.
RPGCrazied
Member
I'll keep my eyes opened, but after DA2, my expectations are quite high and doubt they will get there. My only problem really with 2 is the over use of area's, and having no auto attack.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
I'd be fine with just some basic core choices at the start of the game rather than a save import.
Ya, $1.7 billion in a country with a GDP of $1.4 trillion is not really a sizable proportion. That said, the Canadian gaming industry still employed like 16 000 people last year, and is the third biggest gaming industry in the world, so it's still worth supporting.
Lots of franchises recovered on the third game after a poor second game that was a huge departure from everything that made the first game enjoyable. For now I am willing to give DA3 the benefit of the doubt. I never played STWTOR, and I enjoyed ME3 despite the ending, so one mediocre game is not enough for me to jump on the Bioware bandwagon.
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
My biggest question mark is mostly the fact that many of the people in high up positions during Origins' development are either not working on it anymore (James Ohlen left for TOR, Georg Zoeller left for TOR and then left BioWare) or have left BioWare (Brent Knowles, Origins' lead designer left and Origins' executive producer Dan Tudge left). I'm sure there are plenty of other people that have been there a while like David Gaider but when the Dragon Age franchise is now effectively having its course charted by Mark Darrah and Mike Laidlaw who have such gems like DA2 and Sonic Chronicles as their big leadership positions in games....yeah, I'm not getting my hopes up.
DA2 had some interesting ideas, but the very fact that they tried to make such wholesale changes to a fairly successful game when they had to have known they didn't have much time to make the game screams bad management or poor planning. I don't doubt that BioWare still has passionate people working on Dragon Age, but I seriously question the direction Darrah and Laidlaw are trying to take it.
SquiddyCracker
Banned
I shall enjoy making the Dragon Age 3 OT
You have big shoes to fill after Shit Mountain.
Krauser Kat
Member
DO:O was one of my fav games this gen. If it returns to that, i will be thrilled.
I'd like to play this game, DO:O.
Why are they so stubborn with the protagonists race? All the different options that opened or closed depending on your origin were such an awesome thing in DA:O.
Of course that is rhetorical question. Cacsading options are antagonistic to author guided stories. And we can't have them stopping us from experiencing gaming's literary equivalents to Foundation and LOTR. There will come a time when game writers will find out how to subsume their literary ambitions under the form of the medium they're writing in. And we'll all be the happier.
With regards to the game? It better have an extensive demo and early rave reviews. My goodwill towards Bioware run out completely.
Of course that is rhetorical question. Cacsading options are antagonistic to author guided stories. And we can't have them stopping us from experiencing gaming's literary equivalents to Foundation and LOTR. There will come a time when game writers will find out how to subsume their literary ambitions under the form of the medium they're writing in. And we'll all be the happier.
With regards to the game? It better have an extensive demo and early rave reviews. My goodwill towards Bioware run out completely.
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
It's cheaper to develop too... no multiple item variations, no conversation forks, no voiceovers for every race...
ShockingAlberto
Member
It's not even a literary ambition thing. They did other races before, a whole game ago, this is a decision born of the marriage of marketing (because a segment of gamers will raise hell if the main character isn't voiced) and convenience (so they don't actually have to voice the different characters).
They can hide behind the guise of not wanting to redo Dragon Age Origins, but ultimately the root cause is that they simply can't be bothered.
Yes, yes it is. Now that the Quest for Glory devs have their own kickstarter going all I need is Arnold Hendrick to announced he wants to do a Darklands kickstarter and I would be set.
Depends on how they're doing 'character customization'. If you can equip armor to your squad mates like in DA:O, you'd have to do a model for the dwarf companion anyways. They didn't add voices for the protag in DA:O, but that worked fine because your character wasn't a mute. They still said things in conversations, you just didn't hear it. And it's not like DA:O had drastically different conversations because you were an elf. It was like one extra sentence.
Of course, I'm sure Bioware will just do the ME2&3 thing where 'oh you can just unlock alternate attire for companions'. The laziest way out, but I'm sure they thought they were geniuses for that. The WORST part about that is they could at least make very different armor designs for the alternate appearances... but they just recolor them.
What segment is this? If it's the ME fanbase, who cares? They've got their game. If it's the 'mainstream', Skyrim is doing just fine with no voiced main character. I really don't think people care about voiced main characters as much as game studios think.
Eh, Skyrim is a very different game from this series. A mute protag doesn't have the same implications for Skyrim that is has for a game like Dragon Age.
But there's a difference between a mute protagonist like DisHonored or a mute protagonist like DA:O. You still make decisions as the latter. AND xbox pushed that stupid kinect to talk thing in ME 3. If they really wanted to push that, they wouldn't have Shepard repeat what you said.
ScepticMatt
Member
Those concepts looks very good so I'm hoping DA3 visuals are good.
It's not hard to improve on "shit mountain" DA2 tough.
It's not hard to improve on "shit mountain" DA2 tough.
I would guess Dragon Age 4, since I imagine they're rebuilding all their art assets with next-gen in mind, and once they have the ones for Dragon Age 3 done, it's significantly less work to go add the other races for Dragon Age 4 with minimized development impact.
SquiddyCracker
Banned
I'd be okay with a single race so long as it wasn't human.
Discotheque
Banned
Yeah I had no problems with DA O's unvoiced protagonist.
But then I don't mind voiced either but at least do something good like Witcher 2. Bioware can't do shit. Shephard and whoever that dude was in DA 2 are dull as hell.
Demoncarnotaur
Member
Is the game going to be like DA2 though, with recycled environments and little to no exploration?
Bornstellar
Member
Since this seems to be a good place to ask, I acquired DA:Origins via the Origin coupons and was wondering what mods I should be running with it to fix bugs / improve visuals. Any suggestions would be welcome.
what, all four of them?
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
I'd guess it has to do with their Sacred Cow of maintaining the cinematic approach and voiced protagonist/dialogue wheel. For whatever reason now, BioWare does not even try to touch those aspects of their games.
And having multiple races would require more work given that type of presentation- they'd need not only male/female voices for one race but all the possible races, and you'd likely need different voices since they went and gave the different races different accents in DA2. Plus with more cutscenes and cinematics, they'd have to account for the various heights and animations of the different races. Plus modifying all the armors and so forth.
I don't either. I think its as much to do with presentation as anything. And that's where I think BioWare is sitting in No Man's Land and not even doing a good job with their attempts at cinematic games.
If you want a smooth, cinematic experience with a voiced protagonist in an RPG, do it like Alpha Protocol. That kept things moving and kept conversations nice and fluid. With BioWare right now, they have the paraphrases and the wheel which simply obfuscate or over simplify responses so the player doesn't know what their player character will be saying and yet the conversations end up lacking any flow or momentum like you'd think they'd want given the voiced protagonist and cinematic presentation.
Sure, people complained in Origins how the Warden player character would often just have a blank look, but thats more a problem with BioWare not utilizing the non voiced player character to its full extent. Honestly, if they were to do a non voiced player character again, I'd love it if they simply had conversations take place in a first person view so you could focus on the person you're talking to and then maybe they could add more nuance to the body language there- have conversations more like the Deus Ex: Human Revolution dialogue battles.
Thank you. A mute or silent protagonist =/= non voiced protagonist.
This person over on the BioWare Social Network has put together a really nice index of various mods to use for Origins. I can't remember what high res mods I used, but the Morrigan Restoration Dialogue Patch mod is great if your character gets involved with Morrigan at all. It restores a good deal of dialogue and content related to her that was cut for some reason and fixes a lot of dialogue and other bugs.
Bornstellar
Member
Thanks.
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
At this point that's definitely the case. But I recall several interviews with the Doctors prior to Origins coming out or shortly thereafter where they elaborated on the difference in presentation of Origins' non voiced player character and a voiced player character like Shepard in Mass Effect being a purposeful decision which enabled first person versus third person role playing. First person where the player can sort of self insert themselves and third person like Mass Effect where you're just sort of guiding Shepard around but you aren't Shepard.
Here is one interview with Muzyka from 09:
And another:
Of course, both Muzyka and Zeschuk are gone now, so there you go.
SquiddyCracker
Banned
Dragon Age 3 lOTl A game of companion romances
I have not completely lost interest in this series after getting burned by DA2, since I *really* like DA:O, but I sure will wait for impressions this time.
One could hope that people at Bioware would look at DA2 reduced sales and think "... hmm... maybe not everything needs to be packaged in a cinematic style", but yeah, not going to happen. It certainly appears to be the only type of presentation they appear to be interested to do now.
Which is why I find it funny that....
... Obsidian in their one and only try to make a "cinematic experience" took Bioware's dialog wheel and made it better (at least for me) by playing to it's strengths. Sure, you lost some liberty to explore dialog trees with NPC (not that were much of that in both DA2 and ME3) but the end result was lot more interesting.
And while stealing from Alpha Protocol, they could also copy the ideas for world reactivity to your decisions. It would probably only work in the context for a single game, but in the end the whole save-import from Bioware doesn't work anyway. It isn't possible the have a budget that account for all possibilities, and so far the solutions always end up unsatisfying, going from generic dialogues, glossing over big decisions, having generic stand-ins if certain characters is no longer alive, to railroading events despite any player actions to set up events for future games (the awful Act 3 of DA2).
One could hope that people at Bioware would look at DA2 reduced sales and think "... hmm... maybe not everything needs to be packaged in a cinematic style", but yeah, not going to happen. It certainly appears to be the only type of presentation they appear to be interested to do now.
Which is why I find it funny that....
... Obsidian in their one and only try to make a "cinematic experience" took Bioware's dialog wheel and made it better (at least for me) by playing to it's strengths. Sure, you lost some liberty to explore dialog trees with NPC (not that were much of that in both DA2 and ME3) but the end result was lot more interesting.
And while stealing from Alpha Protocol, they could also copy the ideas for world reactivity to your decisions. It would probably only work in the context for a single game, but in the end the whole save-import from Bioware doesn't work anyway. It isn't possible the have a budget that account for all possibilities, and so far the solutions always end up unsatisfying, going from generic dialogues, glossing over big decisions, having generic stand-ins if certain characters is no longer alive, to railroading events despite any player actions to set up events for future games (the awful Act 3 of DA2).
ChosenPredator
Banned
i like how you had all those options to pick other races in the first game...it seems everyone loved it ...my head hurts thinking of why their fixated with one character...for me its one of the only rpg i would repeat playthroughs to see things in a different perspective.
Studio resources are limited. When you make the decision of supporting several races that change how the world view your character, you create an immense amount of work. Each quest has to be tailored to each race to make sure they is a semblance of logic in how the world works. Now, if you have a hundred designers, animators and modelers, you have a shot at creating a very unique and incredible experience.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Bioware already has issues with content creation and actually finished game. Just look at DA2 and parts of ME3.
If one single PC means that I get more unique content and a world that reacts to my actions, then I'm all for it.
I would actually be surprised if a strong majority didn't play as human character. Add to that there was probably some influence from focus testing.
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
Probably.
But race selection and the Origin stories are one of those sorts of value added things that can extend the life of a game. Like, I might only play through the game once, but knowing that they put in fully fleshed out Origin stories for different races and classes (mage) makes me hang on to the game longer or installed longer, knowing that there is more content I haven't accessed and maybe I'll try that out at a later date.
Its the same with games like Alpha Protocol or New Vegas or The Witcher 2 that has a decent amount of unique content you can't experience in one playthrough. Even if I don't experience it, it enriches the game simply by knowing its there and available.
As has been said, I don't think it's that they feel that people would prefer to only play as humans. It's that they feel that people would prefer to play with a voiced protagonist, and that means only human (for whatever reason).
I've beaten DA:O five times and I'm currently inthralled in my third playthrough of DA:2; I love both games (and I plan to keep re-playing them).
As long as the world remains rich with depth and the gameplay continues to focus on party-based combat, there is nothing Bioware can do to make me not want a Dragon Age game.
DA:3 can not get here fast enough.
As long as the world remains rich with depth and the gameplay continues to focus on party-based combat, there is nothing Bioware can do to make me not want a Dragon Age game.
DA:3 can not get here fast enough.
lastplayed
Member
But why? You could easily have the same male and female voice for three different races, they're not that different.
Bioware has displayed a... habit of gleaning waaay too much information (and often, I personally believe, incorrectly), from the metrics they get when looking at things like game completion and stuff. iirc, most people picked human, ergo, they went with a human character.
Given that they're humoring adding them, but not doing it this time, I have to assume it's an art asset/animation production and/or loading issue, since I agree that they could just have the same voice on everyone and almost assuredly will if they ever have multiple races again.
This sounds terrible. How would this make you feel unique at all when the only thing that would change is the character model? Having the same voice actor for Human/Dwarf/Elf just chaging up a few lines to suit that race would be worse then just having only one.
At least with only one doesn't feel like a model swap.
I'm okay with just Human, but maybe that is why this seems terrible to me? If Nirolak is right and the majority would be cool then what the hell ya know? Just seems like everyone wanting it because of depth and bringing something different to the table would sacraficing a huge part of that by having ever race voice acted by the same two people.
Ghost_Protocol
Member
For god's sake take your time with this one......This does not need to release in 2013. Push it to 2014 and make it incredible.