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wrighteous86

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wrighteous86

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#1  Edited By wrighteous86

@Ghostiet said:

@Wrighteous86:

I'll get to the rest of your post later, since I'm in a hurry, but that screenshot from Planescape Torment is less of an example and more of a manipulation, considering a) that conversation is literally minutes from the end of the game and b) most of it is exposition, with some choices leading to the same answers.

Look at your dialogue choices from Baldur's Gate 2 and yeah, it boils down to roughly the same shit that's in the dialogue wheels of DAII and ME. Ditto in Origins, where some of your dialogue lines are just phrased differently with the exact same outcome and hell, most of the time they are even in the same damn spot - number 1 is almost always the one that advances the conversation, 2 is a rude option, 3 is a nice one, 4 is exposition branch, etcetera.

True, that Torment pic is a bit manipulative. It's mostly exposition that result in the same long-term effect; but that kind of exposition goes a long way towards how someone feels about a game. I feel like Bioware is trying to do the things that The Walking Dead is doing, just doing them poorly. They could learn a lot from Telltale.

(Very vague Walking Dead Ep. 3 spoilers:)

If you've played the game, in Episode 3, you can high-five a character named Duck. It's just one response of many that you can have to him. It has NO effect on the rest of the game, yet it still feels like a meaningful choice because you made the choice and you bonded with that character. While events unfold the same whether or not you high-fived Duck, your choice colors your perception of that character, and his plot line, from that point on. People keep talking about high-fiving Duck, because it became an emotional lynchpin for them.

So, even if that endgame discussion in Planescape Torment really only has 3 results, HOW you get to those 3 results can have vastly different emotional implications, and really change how you react to that scene.

(Let's have a reasonable discussion about this; I'm enjoying this.)

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wrighteous86

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#2  Edited By wrighteous86

@MarkWahlberg said:

@Wrighteous86said:

To be fair, it was their moronic call to scrap the existing engine from DA:O and try to create a brand new one with that ONE YEAR OF DEV TIME they knew they had. DA:O wasn't beautiful or anything, but the sequel would've been much better off with more content and less graphics. Instead of redesigning and remodeling everything, maybe they could have just crafted a few more areas and made sure that plots and characters developed appropriately.

Awakenings was better than DA2. Use the time and resources you wasted on DA2 to make Awakenings better and stand-alone and it would have been a great sequel.

I hadn't realized they'd made a new engine, I just thought it was an aesthetics change. That is an odd choice, especially considering how big a deal they made about the toolset that was released with Origins (which was actually pretty sweet). Going to a new engine sort of negates that whole thing.

Just looked it up. It was a heavily modified version of the DA:O engine. Sorry for the misinformation.

I still think that overhauling the entire aesthetic was time poorly spent though, given only a year. Makes sense when everyone called Origins "dull-looking" though.

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wrighteous86

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#3  Edited By wrighteous86

@Ghostiet said:

Also, the dialogue choices were actually indicative of what would happen with something as simple as icons, something that Mass Effect actually never nailed. Also, what is actually the benefit of having a blank-slate? Can someone explain to me what's so appealing about having a character that never speaks and exist solely in writing in a medium that is, among other things, about immersion? Apart from creating wildly awkward-looking cutscenes?

No Caption Provided

The above is a major problem with a dialogue wheel, there's no nuance or depth to your choices. It's Positive, Negative, Goofy, or More Info. Pretty much every time. There were also a few (albeit rare) instances where the symbol and the dialogue weren't enough. One time, in Sebastian's quest, I had the option of saying "You're wrong", either to the Demon, or Sebastian, and I had no idea who I was going to say that to, or what I was saying was wrong, and it completely broke that quest for me.

The icons were a good addition to the dialog wheel, and I don't mind it in ME, but I liked DA for being different from ME. ME was like a movie, and you directed the main character. DA was like a novel, and you WERE the main character. Having him voiced wasn't what I disliked in DA2. I disliked that he was a character. He was Hawke. He wasn't you. You were just making Hawke's decisions for him. In DA:O you created your character, went through his or her origins, and, in many respects, determined who they were in their entirety. You PLAYED a ROLE. In ME and DA2, you take on a role. It's the difference between making your character in D&D, and playing a role in a play. Sure in a play you can decide how a character feels or reacts, but the options you have with the role are pretty confined. And while that was HELPED by being voiceless, because your imagination filled in the blanks, having Hawke be Hawke does change things. It's better for some reasons and worse for others. ME did that fine, DA did the other way fine. I didn't like that they made DA more like ME.

I liked DAII and I have to say that it has it's fair, FAIR share of problems, but it makes my blood boil when people post bullshit like "a Mass Effect dialogue wheel" just because it uses a wheel instead of a list, despite not really being similar. It's the same shit all over again, like people arguing about every character in the game hitting on them, which is blatantly false - it only appeared that way because RPG players were groomed throughout the years to think that every situation has some perfect, golden ending, so they were too afraid to simply say "no thanks, I'm not interested" because it caused a slight drop in approval. I never heard people complain about that in Mass Effect, despite the fact that shit like this actually happens there.

I think Anders hits on you as long as you're not blatantly a dick to him consistently before that point. Not that that's an issue. That's how life works, and some people are just gay. I had no problem with that. They play their hand against your point though when they made it so you could romance anyone even if they hate you. They basically put that feature in there because they didn't want players to cater to each character just so they could sleep with them; which implies that they think it's important to let a player sleep with every character (removing consequence and allowing everyone a "golden romantic ending" with anyone and everyone they want). Why couldn't they have any of the CHARACTERS say "no thanks, I'm not interested". Hey Merrill, I just murdered your entire village. Let's fuck. "Um, okay, teehee!"

I feel similarly about choices - "fuck your choices", you say? Yes, fuck your choices. If ignoring your choices allows the writer to do something coherent and not fuck over good-written characters like Miranda or Grunt because 50% of the fanbase made different choices than you, then yeah, I'm all about that. "Fuck your choices" is keeping with one of DA's major themes - that sometimes there is no golden way of fixing shit and sometimes you have to choose A over B. DAII drives this point home, albeit clumsily, by taking over the plot at points and telling you that no, sometimes something bad has to happen. It did it somewhat clumsily, but my point still stands. Sure, you could have a fairly "golden" ending in Origins, but it required jumping around a lot of hoops and knowing what to do beforehand (the Orzammar politics) an even then you ended up alienating someone along the way, like Alistair.

Fuck your choices in terms of plot, and not giving the player everything he wants? That's great. I LOVE having to deal with the consequences of my actions in games. When characters die, I love that it's "my" fault. I love when sometimes, despite your choices, shit just happens. They do both of those things great in The Walking Dead. When Leliani dies in DA:O and then appears in DA2 regardless, with no explanation? That's not dealing with my choices, that's poor planning and forethought on the part of the writers. I don't know how you think that makes a more "coherent" story for me. If they wanted her to be so important to the plot that she'd return regardless, they shouldn't have made it possible for her to die, either by removing that option for me, or having me make that choice and having her escape at the last minute. There are ways to give choices and still write what you want in the sequel, you just need to think ahead. You don't give gamers 3 options and then say, I don't like one of those, so it didn't happen. That's bad writing. They did the same thing to me in Awakening. I sacrificed my Warden. When I played Awakening, I made a new Warden from Orlais. But, because of that, I couldn't transfer my save and my choices. The only option I had available to me was to ignore the choices I made or pretend my Warden survived death. They could've easily planned ahead to have me transfer my choices but not my Warden, or made some mention of how my Warden was back (if they were feeling lazy). They didn't. They didn't care to. And I DO have the right to be pissed off, because THEY are the ones that promote how their games are full of meaningful choices and consequences.

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wrighteous86

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#4  Edited By wrighteous86

@CL60 said:

@Bane122

@Phatmac said:

There has to be someone out there that actually didn't think Dragon Age 2 was that bad right? Ugh. Looks like I'll be defending it forever.

I'm right there with you. In many ways, I actually like 2 more than the first.

It really wasn't that bad, it's just the reusing of environments made everybody overreact to literally everything else.

I had real issues with the plot and some of the characters as well, and the change from a silent, user-created protagonist to a Shepard-like hero with the Mass Effect dialogue wheel, but we had this argument many times over a year ago, haha.

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wrighteous86

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#5  Edited By wrighteous86

@Ghostiet said:

@Demoskinos said:

@SlightConfuse said:

@Solh0und said:

Am I the only one that looked at the ending to Witch Hunt as a hint to what may happen in Dragon Age 3?

considering merril has one of those mirrors in DA2 i expect it to play a role. plus i think they were teasing dlemith making a move in 2 as well.

count me among hose that like DA2, great combat and story

She HAS one of the mirrors BUT its the same mirror that Duncan smashed in the dalish elf origin story. So unless you help her complete it it remains broken.

Doesn't matter. Gaider said that unlike Mass Effect, there's "player canon" and "official canon" - they prefer to disregard some player choice (like Leliana's possible demise) in favor of telling a coherent story that doesn't have to outright marginalize plot points and characters. I hope they stand by it, because there are few games that handled long-time consequences well and it's pretty much just a gimmick.

I don't think you can fix the mirror anyway. That quest was so broken though, who's to say. Even if you can, but didn't, Bioware will just make it so she did in Dragon Age 3, if not because of you, through a line of dialogue saying some other pale imitation of you did, cuz fuck your choices!

@JazGalaxy said:

@Tennmuerti said:

@Phatmac said:

@msavo said:

@Phatmac: Than they can expect less sales like with Dragon Age 2 when compared to Origins.

Didn't DA2 sell better than Origins?

Nope.

It started out strong due to pre release hype, lack of pre release info, and preorders but then quickly lost momentum and started selling less then Origins. DA2 sold only almost half in total. Word of mouth can be a bitch.

They chased after the mass market and it did not pan out (game's issues did the rest). Just like trying to make ME2 into more of a shooter and appeal to a much bigger mainstream audience did not raise their sales all that much either.

Yeah. I mean, the thing that made me have zero interest in DA2 is when the games director, who I can't imagine still works there, smugly explained all the reasons why DA2 was going to be better than DA1, and it was jaw droppingly obtuse. All the details in the backgrounds and different environments? Gamers don't really want those. DA 2 is going to streamline by eliminating all tha tgraphical clutter that nobody is really interested in. Charachter customization? DA2 is goign to do away with all that so they can focus on what gamers REALLY care about: story. Combat? Gamers don't really care about strategy and challenge, they just want to do big cool combos and feel powerful.

It was watching a guy sit in a chair and regurgitate back to me everything I hate about modern videogames like he just discovered the formula on how to make the perfect game.

Mass Effect 2 was toxic to them because it made them think that the things that game did well were what they needed to double down on for all games in the future. Bad leadership and bad development.

He also lied about features that were supposedly in the game, that weren't, the day before the game released. People asked about auto-attack options in the console version (so it would play more like DA:O), and we were consistently told it would be an option, they just weren't showcasing it. He reiterated this up to the day the game came out. Fans got copies of the game early, and released videos showing the option wasn't in there. He called those fans liars and said they were playing hacked versions of DAII (though they bought boxed copies in stores early). The day the game came out, there was no auto-attack. "Oops, we didn't know the feature we said was in the game and on the disc wasn't in the game and on the disc."

People flipped. A month later they added it in a patch. Doesn't change that they lied the day before the game came out saying it was there so they could get big Day One numbers. Fuck you Mike Laidlaw.

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wrighteous86

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wrighteous86

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#7  Edited By wrighteous86

@believer258 said:

The next consoles from MS and Sony might turn out to be $600 "beasts" that are really loud and crap out on their owners after a year due to inefficient cooling.

And people will praise them for it.

I don't get this, the stakes are already so high on video games that we either get AAA software or downloadable titles, with nothing in between; where a company lives or dies on the success of its last game (or two). Continuing down this route will lead to another market crash.

Either the next Sony and Microsoft systems will be SLIGHTLY more advanced and cost $350-$400 (which I don't see happening), or they will double-down on graphics and horsepower again and release $450-600 consoles which I won't get for two years until they are much more stable and less cost-prohibitive.

So, in either case, Nintendo will be okay price-wise or power-wise. The issue is that nobody is going to make games for them, and they don't believe in paying for 3rd-party exclusives.

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wrighteous86

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#8  Edited By wrighteous86

Blizzard games (used to play through in God mode) and Dragon Age: Origins (have to drop it down to easy at tons of tougher fights).

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wrighteous86

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#9  Edited By wrighteous86

@SargeGulp said:

Pretty sure any naysayers are in the minority though no? Huge amount of Subs begotten according to the Live Stream "Ticker".

Were there a lot of new subscribers? I thought it only went up like a hundred or two, but I may be mistaken.

@Milkman said:

@Hailinel: @devilzrule27: It's their job. It's obviously going to be during work hours. Most people are not going to come into work for an extra eight hours on the weekend.

Not that I'm complaining, but arguably if they did it on a Saturday they could take a long weekend afterwards and probably get a lot more viewers/subscribers/guests. It's not like Mondays during the summer are exactly busy for them or the game industry as a whole.

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wrighteous86

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#10  Edited By wrighteous86

I missed part of the show, are Patrick and Ryan just gonna do quick looks of all the Jurassic Park games?