Game News First Dragon Age screen & info

[Excalibur]

cool thanks

 

[Deacdo]

Tough to get excited. Bioware's ideas on RPGs and atmosphere don't quite click when their games get released, I find.

I'd love to see a darker game world and more visceral combat...but Bioware doesn't seem particularly inclined that way. I'm also not terribly interested in paying a lot of money for a short adventure so they can put a ton of voice acting in I won't like and a multiplayer mode I won't use.

 

[Ladonna]

Can you give an example of how dialogue would work David?

Pretend that Player Character was asking an NPC something, I take it that there won't be dialogue choices, so how does this work?

 

[RGE]

Re: First Dragon Age screen & info

Really? The ones that were done in the NWN engine?

Is that bad? I didn't know. Anyway, it's a personal preference, nothing more. I think that this - link - looks much better than the screen in the article.

I agree, because up until now I had a vague hope that it'd be a more Conan-like RPG with barechested warriors and bloody battles in deserts to music similar to the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack. Ancient fantasy instead of medieval, I guess. So seeing a medieval guy running in a medieval city is a bit of a disappointment. Even if that city looks way better than the NWN1 cities, which never looked 'right'.

In NWN I always used a zoomed out isometric-style view because that gave the most gameplay advantage. Given that combat often came without any other warning, it made sense to keep the view zoomed out at all times.
Sure, I could have zoomed in further and perhaps made things prettier, but what was the point? It only meant restricting awareness of the surrounding environment, and consequential gameplay disadvantage.

It basically amounts to reducing your units' line of sight in exchange for making them prettier. What sane player is going to do that?.

Maybe that was the case in the default campaign, but in some modules it can easily be more of a benefit to zoom in over the PC's shoulder since the draw distance is the same. Thus an overhead camera might show 10 meters in all directions, while a zoom over the shoulder shows 20 meters forward. Which is a good thing if you want to shoot enemies from far away and know with reasonable certainty that you won't be attacked from behind. Sometimes those enemies don't even react, because apparantly their scripts won't allow them to react to things when the PC is that far away. Poor creatures. :twisted:

But I guess that using extreme distance like that is mostly useful when fighting horribly difficult enemies, and that's mostly an issue in unofficial modules.

 

[galsiah]

Re: First Dragon Age screen & info

Maybe that was the case in the default campaign, but in some modules it can easily be more of a benefit to zoom in over the PC's shoulder since the draw distance is the same.

Sure - I can believe that. I haven't played any modules. Perhaps I will sometime.

However, that's still an instance of the same problem (as I see it) - i.e. that view selection becomes a matter of squeezing gameplay advantage out of a situation, rather than a matter of selecting a view which looks good and is convenient (or "immersive" :shudder.

I think the aim should be to achieve independence between view and gameplay benefit. That way players can choose (a) view(s) on the basis of aesthetics and practicality.

Perhaps this isn't achievable in practice. If it isn't, a fixed view is worth considering (if it'll tend to be more appealing to players than the view they'd choose themselves for gameplay advantage).

 

[RGE]

I guess it could be achievable if what you see doesn't affect your gameplay at all. This in turn could be achieved if a) you're not allowed to control the combat actions of your character at all, or b) gameplay is carried out on a different screen, such as a minimap of the battle, and the view only shows a non-interactive movie of what the results look like. Hm, sounds like a game idea worth investigating. For people who make games, that is. Maybe it's already been done?

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

I agree, because up until now I had a vague hope that it'd be a more Conan-like RPG with barechested warriors

Sweaty, well-oiled, ripplingly-muscled warriors?

 

[RGE]

Sure. Though they'd eventually end up with a lot of sand sticking to all that sweat and oil, but hey, that'd make them look downright primordial, wouldn't it?

No bare chests in NWN2 though. A tunic for every man, for the sake of modesty! And I had such plans for the jungle. Now I guess they'll all have to wear some body armour.

But body armour isn't always cool.

 

[kingcomrade]

What? If you can't see the jugs on the elf chicks then why even include the race?