Game News Brenon Holmes on DA and strategy

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: BioWare; Dragon Age

Brenon Holmes was spotted talking about <a href=http://forums.bioware.com/index.html?viewcat=23>Dragon Age</a> related things including things <a href=http://forums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=436101&forum=84&sp=45>he doesn't fully understand</a>:
<br>
<br>
<blockquote>One thing I'll mention is that DA is a fairly different beast from what we've done before. It will not be a combination of every game we've done since BG.
<br>
<br>
We have a lot of different people at the company, and the design approaches can vary a fair bit from team to team.
<br>
<br>
You *should* be able to play with any PC character... <u>because the PC character is largely irrelevant</u>. It's the party that matters. Depending on your party composition, I suspect that various configurations will have a hard time of it.</blockquote>Cool! Teh role-playing!
<br>
<br>
<blockquote><u>Strategy implies that you know in advance what you can do</u>. Unless you have a list of things you can do, there's no strategy involved in any case... it's just muddling your way through in the dark until you find clarity.
<br>
<br>
<u>How would you strategically make your way through a game when you didn't know what was going to happen next?</u> You can make choices based upon the current circumstances, but I fail to see how that's any different from what we're doing.</blockquote>I think that Brenon's just redefined the concept of strategy.
<br>
<br>
<br>

 

[Volourn]

"You *should* be able to play with any PC character... because the PC character is largely irrelevant. It's the party that matters. Depending on your party composition, I suspect that various configurations will have a hard time of it.
Cool! Teh role-playing!"

He's talking about combat, fool. He's saying that unlike, say, NWN if you choose a mage it won't matter as much as you likely have a fighter to take that aprt. If you take a fighter you'll have a mage backup since you'll have a full fledge party.

Afterall, in a typical game like BG or TOEE; you will have a aprty of fighter, mage, cleric, and rogue with one or two extra characters therefore the battle strategy remains the same pretty much throughout. Only in silly odd examples like your all rogue party you try to repeatedly pimp to me would require a difference (not that it does in TOEE since the combat is so easy anyways). In a game like NWN or even FO to a lesser degree, the character you choose makes that much more of a difference since it's not so easy to cover your characters' weak points.

Why you brought up role-playing in a combat strategy issue is nonsequitor. Don't be a goopaop.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

On the other hand, he is right when he points out Brenon's doubt about strategy. It would seem Brennon doesn't think strategy is possible without foreknowledge, which is just silly at best.

 

[Volourn]

That's why I didn't mention that part. <>

 

[Sarvis]

On the other hand, he is right when he points out Brenon's doubt about strategy. It would seem Brennon doesn't think strategy is possible without foreknowledge, which is just silly at best.

Not really. I think Brenon just didn't express it very well...

Basically when you form a strategy you're attempting to influence what will happen with your choices. In a game like chess you might offer a bishop, knowing ahead of time that your opponent will take the bishop but worsen his position. In other words you chose to leave the bishop vulnerable because you knew, with reasonable certainty, what would happen.

If you have no idea what the result of any given decision would be, then you have no way of planning. Therefore no way of making a strategy.

Now I'm sure you're thinking that militaries create strategies all the time in the chaos of battle, when they can't predict outcomes. However that is not true at all. Good strategists have a good understanding of this stuff, a good knowledge of historical battles and of tactics not to mention knowing human nature. When a general orders a charge he probably knows almost exactly what the effects will be.

Wars are won, like in chess, by dictating what your opponent does through your own choices.

If you have an opponent who is completely unpredictable, you cannot create a strategy against him... well, other than perhaps overwhelming firepower... hehe.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

My spidersense indicates you're correct.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Strategy requires planning.

Tactics is what you require when shit goes awry and you need to improvise. If that's what Brennon was referring to, then Brennon is right, but he's not very good at expressing himself.

 

[themadhatter114]

It's not that he's not good at expressing himself, it's that VD quoted him out of context. If the quote which was being responded to had been included, it would've made more sense.

In quotes, above the remarks about strategy, is this from a Bioware forum member:

In addition, the games have become quite linear (Bioware assures us DA will also be linear in the big picture -- "pinch points" will see to that according to developer statements). So, its hard to make a mistake by doing quests out of order or to lose one's way through the game. Thus, apparently no planning or strategy is required to find one's way through the game.

Thus it was merely said that you can't strategize the order in which to complete quests when you don't know where the story is going. The remark had nothing at all to do with battle strategies or tactics, which is obvious from the thread context. Apparently the poster he responded to thought it would be a positive if you could completely fuck yourself out of finishing the game by doing quests in the wrong order, and that you should have to use 'strategy' to figure out what order to do quests in.

He was responding to some idiot that was complaining that he didn't think the game would satisfy him unless he felt like there was a great possibility that dying wasn't the only way to lose the game. Of course, linearity is a legitimate complaint and it's pretty cool when you can do a quest early and fuck yourself because you're not powerful enough, but it's not in any way a positive if you can 'lose your way' in a game because you did something in the wrong order.

Ability to put quotes in context would've helped a little, here.

 

[Spazmo]

It's not that he's not good at expressing himself, it's that VD quoted him out of context.

Quoting out of context is a time-honoured technique of investigative journalism.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Well, I think the idea of having to strategerize a correct order of quests is pretty stupid - because it's the same thing as being linear! If you're going to allow the player access to all quests in the game right off the bat, but if he does them in any order he can get screwed or stuck and never complete the game, then there's no point in allowing the player to do them in any order in the first place. You end up with a linear OR SCREWED plot situation. I fail to see how this is even remotely a good idea. So, yeah, the poster who originally stated that is a dumb fuck.

If he wants a way to "lose" without dying, a much better idea is to give the player a goal and track how the player handles the goal. For example, say his goal is to save the generic princess. Have it so that the way the player saves the princess can lead to a number of different outcomes at the game. If he took some short cuts and didn't quite cover his bases, he still saves the princess but the kingdom is screwed because the player unleashed doom and despair on the kindgom for a thousand years or something. The game is complete, but the player either fucked up or he just didn't care about the results of his actions.

Doing things in such a way that the player gets stuck and the game isn't possible to finish is just lame. It's much better to still allow the game to be finished, but still tell the player he fucked up. That way, the player might decide to replay the game in order to do it better. The way the original poster is suggesting, the player would have to replay the game just to finish it - it's forcing the player to replay to complete it rather than replaying it being the choice of the player.

 

[themadhatter114]

I think it is acceptable that a player be fucked if he attempts a certain quest too soon, but it is absolutely retarded that a player could be fucked for completing any quest too soon.

 

[DemonKing]

If you have an opponent who is completely unpredictable, you cannot create a strategy against him... well, other than perhaps overwhelming firepower... hehe.

So basically every opponent the US has ever been faced has been completely unpredictable then?

 

[Sarvis]

If you have an opponent who is completely unpredictable, you cannot create a strategy against him... well, other than perhaps overwhelming firepower... hehe.

So basically every opponent the US has ever been faced has been completely unpredictable then?

Take some logic courses.