Dragon Age: Inquisition Pre-Release Thread

[Roguey]

If that was true then NWN would have had an enormous wordcount as well. It doesn't.

This is getting pretty ridiculous, Roguey.

The descriptions and lore books in NWN weren't nearly as long or as numerous as in BG2.

Also consider that 80% of BG was written by one man, Lukas Kristjanson, who was also responsible for design as well (the other 20% was covered by James Ohlen, Rob Bartel, and Matt Horvath). BG2 was written by Kristjanson, Gaider, Ohlen, and Martens with the bulk of it being done by the first two and all of them having duties other than writing. Dragon Age Origins had eight people solely devoted to writing (with additional writing from a few others). It doesn't take eight people to do less than the work of one or four especially since two of those people happen to be Gaider and Kristjanson.

Additionally, KOTOR had four people devoted mostly to writing, with six others responsible for area design. This was when they made the big writer/designer split.

In fact, there were four writers who worked as the leads for various characters and planets. We overlapped some, but I'd say that these people know the most about their respective bailiwicks. My memory is not 100%, but as I recall the breakdown was something like this:

Me: Korriban as well as Carth, Bastila, HK-47 and Jolee Bindo -- I did the initial design on Tatooine, before it was handed off to Luke, so I know a fair amount of what went on there as well.

Drew Karpyshyn: Taris, Dantooine, end levels as well as Mission

Luke Kristjansson: Kashyyk and Zaalbar

Peter Thomas: Manaan, Unknown World as well as Canderous and Juhani

 

[Infinitron]

I'm not impressed by your copypasta. Asking Josh Sawyer whether BG2 or KOTOR had more dialogue.

 

[set]

There is a lot of text in BG2, but you don't get to see it all in one playthrough, unlike a few other games being mentioned in this thread. There are also a lot of optional dungeons in BG2 you never even have to see. There is five or six times the content in vanilla BG2 than there is in two full playthroughs of Dragon Age Origins. There's no contest. It's not even up for debate. The choices are more meaningful too.

I don't get the hypercritical attitude here. BG/BG2 are 'hardly' perfect. But neither is VTMB. VTMB is amazing, but its gameplay is mediocre a lot of the time, and there aren't that many 'C&C' either, most of your choices have cosmetic effects or no noticeable ones.

If we're going to say VTMB is bad for these reasons, we might as well given up because I haven't enjoyed an rpg quite as much as VTMB since I had a chance to play it in '08. Nobody is making RPGs anymore and none of you are helping by having these ridiculous ideas that aren't possible.

RPG engines cannot generate meaningful content yet. Everything has to be hand-built by a developer. There aren't enough hours in ten years for just developers to build all the content we might need to finally say 'your choices matter'. And for every hour a developer spends building shit, that's probably 3 or 4 hours of work for QA, especially in an environment where chocies do matter and QA has to make sure those choices actually work like they should under every situation.

If you're looking for a fantasy life simulator you might want to try Dwarf Fortress, or something. Don't expect quality storytelling there, however. You'll have to make up your own.

 

[Azarkon]

Looking at that Jan Jansen dialogue dump, it drives home just how great of an effect these rules have had on Bioware dialogue:

1. Each of the dialogue nodes (dialogue piece) spoken by an NPC should be limited to two lines. Only in VERY RARE circumstances are more than two used.
2. All character responses should be one line when they appear in the game. There should be no reason for them to be longer than this.

I wonder whether in the transition to VO cinematic dialogue, we lost an important vehicle for characterization in CRPGs.

Sure, modern CRPGs try to match the way people talk IRL, but the way people talk IRL is pretty damn boring...

 

[set]

It's cost-based, more than anything. It's too expensive to have dialogue nodes branch more than twice. It's also too expensive to make them say more than a line. This is why it's so important that people tell developers to stop wasting money hiring stupid voice actors. In very rare cases does it actually make the game better. Obsidian had that mute girl in Dead Money, and all the fans complained, so we'll never go back having big RPGs voiceless.

Modern speech can be very interesting when it's written correctly: see any well-written book.

 

[coffeetable]

so we'll never go back having big RPGs voiceless.

There's one possibility: if W2 or Torment or PE are successes. BG2 sold ~2 million copies in all, and even a tenth of that at full price would be enough to give their sequels >$5 million to work with. Which still isn't much compared to AAA budgets, but when you've already got the engines and tilesets and toolchains developed, I reckon it could go a long, long way.

 

[tuluse]

Well BG wasn't voiceless, just voicelight.

 

[Azarkon]

It's cost-based, more than anything. It's too expensive to have dialogue nodes branch more than twice. It's also too expensive to make them say more than a line. This is why it's so important that people tell developers to stop wasting money hiring stupid voice actors. In very rare cases does it actually make the game better. Obsidian had that mute girl in Dead Money, and all the fans complained, so we'll never go back having big RPGs voiceless.

Modern speech can be very interesting when it's written correctly: see any well-written book.

Books do not convey their characters' personalities through dialogue interaction with a generic PC. They also have the luxury of sustained engagement with the reader over the course of hundreds of pages and the freedom to structure a narrative around the NPCs, so to speak.

Comic books, movies, etc. all have this benefit, and on top of them the aid of the visual medium, which allows artists to convey personality through facial expressions, body movements, etc.

In theory, so do games, but for the limitations of in game rendering.

For modern games, I think I get the bulk of a character's personality from their voice acting, which stresses the importance of hiring effective VOs when your dialogue tries to mimic talk IRL.

But for games without VO, my opinion is that the dialogue style of BG, PST, etc. are of greater effectiveness in conveying personality than trying to mimic dialogue IRL.

 

[Roguey]

I'm not impressed by your copypasta. Asking Josh Sawyer whether BG2 or KOTOR had more dialogue.

What an odd question to ask someone who worked on neither.

Now if you asked if New Vegas had more dialogue than either Icewind Dale the answer would be yes.

 

[tuluse]

What would have had more lines of text, Van Buren or New Vegas, inquiring minds want to know.

 

[Ninjerk]

Is there more Josh-dialogue on formspring or on Obsidian forums? This is important.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Dark Souls has far less spoken dialog than all of those games but tells a far more compelling story by saying less.

 

[Roguey]

For all his praising of environmental storytelling in Bioshock Infinite, Avellone's not said a word about Demon's/Dark Souls. Cause he hasn't played 'em. Cause they're too hard.

 

[Murk]

Those sweaters aren't just gonna wear themselves, you know!?

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

For all his praising of environmental storytelling in Bioshock Infinite, Avellone's not said a word about Demon's/Dark Souls. Cause he hasn't played 'em. Cause they're too hard.

This. Also his oh noes harm spell balance shit while eye crits in his own game is p. rich.

 

[set]

It's cost-based, more than anything. It's too expensive to have dialogue nodes branch more than twice. It's also too expensive to make them say more than a line. This is why it's so important that people tell developers to stop wasting money hiring stupid voice actors. In very rare cases does it actually make the game better. Obsidian had that mute girl in Dead Money, and all the fans complained, so we'll never go back having big RPGs voiceless.

Modern speech can be very interesting when it's written correctly: see any well-written book.

Books do not convey their characters' personalities through dialogue interaction with a generic PC. They also have the luxury of sustained engagement with the reader over the course of hundreds of pages and the freedom to structure a narrative around the NPCs, so to speak.

Comic books, movies, etc. all have this benefit, and on top of them the aid of the visual medium, which allows artists to convey personality through facial expressions, body movements, etc.

In theory, so do games, but for the limitations of in game rendering.

For modern games, I think I get the bulk of a character's personality from their voice acting, which stresses the importance of hiring effective VOs when your dialogue tries to mimic talk IRL.

But for games without VO, my opinion is that the dialogue style of BG, PST, etc. are of greater effectiveness in conveying personality than trying to mimic dialogue IRL.

There's more personality in 10-lines BG1 Minsc than there is in fully-voiced mexican space Marine in ME3.

I'm not against voice light or voices in general, but when you put the restriction that all dialogue must be voiced... you're killing the amount of possible dialogue and choices and permeatations of dialogue and all of that. It's utterly stupid we are killing the quality of games for some people who don't like to read in an RPG.

 

[Zed]

There's more personality in 10-lines BG1 Minsc than there is in fully-voiced mexican space Marine in ME3.

I think one reason for this is that characters in BG are written in a literary sense (to describe their character), whereas ME3 is written to cater to the player (informative and supportive). That's why so many NPCs in BG are assholes, and everybody in ME are your best pal aliens.

 

[eremita]

There's more personality in 10-lines BG1 Minsc than there is in fully-voiced mexican space Marine in ME3.

I think one reason for this is that characters in BG are written in a literary sense (to describe their character), whereas ME3 is written to cater to the player (informative and supportive). That's why so many NPCs in BG are assholes, and everybody in ME are your best pal aliens.

Can you elaborate? I don't think you can't have asshole characters in formula like ME on principle. Rather, I would say that the idea behind ME is that those characters can be changed/persuaded to some degree. Which is of course problematic. It would be far more realistic and compelling, if some of the characters had motivation like money/power etc and Shepard would be forced to either accept it (and probably manipulate them) or kick them out/stop caring about them. But it seems that every character can be persuaded for "higher cause" shit or is just grateful when Shepard gives a shit.

 

[Zed]

There's more personality in 10-lines BG1 Minsc than there is in fully-voiced mexican space Marine in ME3.

I think one reason for this is that characters in BG are written in a literary sense (to describe their character), whereas ME3 is written to cater to the player (informative and supportive). That's why so many NPCs in BG are assholes, and everybody in ME are your best pal aliens.

Can you elaborate? I don't think you can't have asshole characters in formula like ME on principle. Rather, I would say that the idea behind ME is that those characters can be changed/persuaded to some degree. Which is of course problematic. It would be far more realistic and compelling, if some of the characters had motivation like money/power etc and Shepard would be forced to either accept it (and probably manipulate them) or kick them out/stop caring about them. But it seems that every character can be persuaded for "higher cause" shit or is just grateful when Shepard gives a shit.

what I mean by "assholes" is that they treat the player like shit. I'm not necessarily only talking about companions (although most evil characters are acting appropriate to their alignment), but also stuff like stuck-up nobles dismissing your character.
they are characters that remain in character throughout the game.

and as you say, Mass Effect NPCs can be persuaded to change. they're all tsundere sex dolls in the end.

what I meant by "informative and supportive" is that ME NPCs have no agendas of their own and everything revolves around you. at least more so than in BG.

 

[set]

That is a good point.

When was the last time a character in ME double-crossed you?

Uh... never? Unless I'm remembering wrong. And don't say what's his face- there never was a cross to double with him. He was always evil and the plot making you work for him was so convoluted it was just stupid.

In BG/BG2, there are several instances where quest chains can end with it being revealed the quest giver was less-than-scrupilous and executed their own agenda using you. This is very much the case in VTMB, where it's sometimes extremely subtle.

 

[Dreaad]

That is a good point.

When was the last time a character in ME double-crossed you?

Uh... never? Unless I'm remembering wrong. And don't say what's his face- there never was a cross to double with him. He was always evil and the plot making you work for him was so convoluted it was just stupid.

In BG/BG2, there are several instances where quest chains can end with it being revealed the quest giver was less-than-scrupilous and executed their own agenda using you. This is very much the case in VTMB, where it's sometimes extremely subtle.

That's not really true. There's plenty of betrayals in ME, not only that but you yourself can perform far more betrayals in ME than something like BG1/2 where you were just someone's bitch. The thing is though in ME the reasons all the betrayals suck is because everyone whom betrays you, dies or vanishes within minutes due to retarded writing which works like this 1.) I forgive you 2.) Why did you betray me 3.) Ima kill you.

 

[Newfag-er]

and as you say, Mass Effect NPCs can be persuaded to change. they're all tsundere sex dolls in the end.

what I meant by "informative and supportive" is that ME NPCs have no agendas of their own and everything revolves around you. at least more so than in BG.

not Ander

 

[set]

That is a good point.

When was the last time a character in ME double-crossed you?

Uh... never? Unless I'm remembering wrong. And don't say what's his face- there never was a cross to double with him. He was always evil and the plot making you work for him was so convoluted it was just stupid.

In BG/BG2, there are several instances where quest chains can end with it being revealed the quest giver was less-than-scrupilous and executed their own agenda using you. This is very much the case in VTMB, where it's sometimes extremely subtle.

That's not really true. There's plenty of betrayals in ME, not only that but you yourself can perform far more betrayals in ME than something like BG1/2 where you were just someone's bitch. The thing is though in ME the reasons all the betrayals suck is because everyone whom betrays you, dies or vanishes within minutes due to retarded writing which works like this 1.) I forgive you 2.) Why did you betray me 3.) Ima kill you.

Can you refresh my memory? I can't remember a single instance in all of ME1 or 2. I mean, sure you can double cross somebody, but that wasn't the point. The point was that characters in ME1-2 didn't have their own agendas - or when they did - they never quite made any sense (see: Liara in ME2) because they were never actually explained.

TIM is someone who uh, has his own agenda, but it never quite makes any sense. He also doesn't really double cross you, he's so incompetent he actually believes you'll give him Andross when you pewpew him to death.

The 'Shadow Broker' was an interesting character in ME for a while because he must have had some sort of motivation outside the realm of 'reapers vs universe' or 'humans vs aliens', but he was naturally removed with something far less complex or mysterious... during a comic book. Thanks again, BioWare, for making video games and RPGs.

None of your companion characters have agendas either, half of them hang around because, uh, well lawful good maybe.

But then again, I can't be fucked to remember much of ME2 and ME1 was a while ago.

Anders is interesting as he sort of breaks the mold. He has his own agenda! And it kind of makes sense... no wait, no it doesn't. He's a terrorist because, uh, he's possessed by an evil spirit he thinks is good. Maybe it has some twisted sense of logic to it, but it's never really built up. An agenda to me is... a plan. Anders never has one. It's just - "if I blow up this building it will surely start a civil war which will surely give the mages a chance at freedom".

I think the core problems with DA/ME universes is most antangonists are quickly supplanted by that 'ancient evil' thing. For ME, every antagonist that lives longer than five minutes inevitably becomes infected with reaperz, replacing any human motivation with something cartoony. Dragon Age's mage/templar plot could have been kind of interesting if Meredith hadn't been smoking ancient evil meth. The political conflict in DAO would have been much more interesting with a foreign army, instead of an army of ogres and undead.

 

[Caim]

Only character from a Bioware game with their own agenda that makes sense is, from the top of my head, the boss you fight halfway into Lair of the Shadow Broker in Mass Effect 2. Her personality made sense (accept to do some dirty work now and then for intel that allowed her to do her job), the reason she came into conflict with Team Shepard was logical (Shepard was helping a friend to kill a dude, which she wanted to prevent) and the aftermath if she were to succeed was understandable (Shepard was more or less a rogue agent that nobody trusted, it would not be too difficult to talk people into believing they went off the deep end).

Too bad that antagonists like this didn't stick.

 

[DalekFlay]

Developers don't think players like NPCs with real agendas, the ability to double cross or lock you out of rewards. They think players want to access everything and not be troubled or locked out.

I don't think this is true, mind you, but it's what developers think.