RAVEK:

You have got to be kidding me. I'm not looking for cheap forced choices. Kotor was as black and white as a zebra in a silent movie.

You may not like it but it's a great classic and choice to consequence transition was great. When it comes to making games they just have to decide what's going to please the most people and the popularity that KotOR gained is amazing. With that said if you thought the choices were cheap or forced or whatever else I would highly recommend that you forget about DAO.

In this game there is no clear line between and and if anything nearly everyone has ulterior motives so you'll be forced to deal with a lot of choices you will most definitely not like since they appear to involve kill person A, B or C. That IS what the game is about....that is what BioWare is about....don't like it?.....why are you even looking at anything they make in the first place.

I love choice driven plots as many RPG gamers do. The popularity gained by BioWare and their games has gained them over 4.5 million registered members on their website and that doesn't account for the vast majority of the customers who bought their games and never registered.

There's a distinct line between real choices that differ drastically and BS choices that might as well ask you whether you want a blue sweater or a green sweater with nothing else to do. THAT is a forced choice not having the freedom to ally with whoever you wish including the bad guys. In that prospect KotOR was an absolute success.

If they allow freedom to make drastically different choices there are a small handful of people like you crying that they are forced to choose a side. That's exactly what you'll have to do a lot of in DAO....pick sides. How dare they make games with meaningful choices? When all people want is to choose the color of their sweater.....now that would be quality storytelling right there.

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I enjoyed the original kotor but I have to admit that the choice system was too black and white, I'd prefer a less obvious choice system, see the choices in Kotor looked too obvious I didn't get the chance to really put morality to the test, I just picked options to be and options to be , Mass Effect improved this by just summing the choices up into a few words but they put a red colour on the (renegade) options and blue colour on the (Paragon) options, also the options were at top the mutual was in the middle leaving at the bottom, they need to be more random than this. I do like the idea of excluding the morality bar so we can't see how or we are so obviously, only by looking around us can we notice how our actions have effected the world.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

RAVEK:

You have got to be kidding me. I'm not looking for cheap forced choices. Kotor was as black and white as a zebra in a silent movie.

I know what you mean Ravek. Many RPGs claim to have complex moral choices and end up giving you insultingly simple dilemmas. Want to be ? Help stop the bandits. Want to be ? Kill someone.

I enjoyed Fable II because the developers at least tried to rattle you with consequences that you have to live with. Mass Effect is another decent one, play as a noble compassionate person or a brutal racist who will go to any length to get the job done. Either way the ultimate goal is to save humanity. I'd say rather than light or darkness, the game is a big ole bucket of grey sloshed over two different beliefs systems. It sparks the age old debate - do the ends justify the means?

Yes I killed that damn bug and got renegade points, I'm still convinced it was the right decision considering it's species multiply rapidly and letting it live could trigger another galactic war. Can't take that chance! Yes I shot Wrex immediately instead of trying to talk him down. He was a threat to me and my mission, a mission in which billions of lives were at stake!

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For some reason Birdo clearly has the voice of a Japanese man in this trailer. It's like... eating a cake. You expect the cake to be delicious, but when you bite into it, it sounds like a Japanese man. See what I'm trying to say here?

DarthTrethon:

With that said if you thought the choices were cheap or forced or whatever else I would highly recommend that you forget about DAO.

DarthTrethon:

that is what BioWare is about....don't like it?.....why are you even looking at anything they make in the first place.

I try to judge games by their own merit and not by the name of the developer.

markrichardbehenna:

I know what you mean Ravek. Many RPGs claim to have complex moral choices and end up giving you insultingly simple dilemmas. Want to be ? Help stop the bandits. Want to be ? Kill someone.

Exactly. I don't want to choose between and , or the Light Side and the Dark Side, or any other form of Pet The Dog versus Rape The Dog. I just want to choose between different plausible and all in some way reasonable alternatives. I haven't played Mass Effect, but the examples you mention might be close to what I'd like to see.

RAVEK:

Exactly. I don't want to choose between and , or the Light Side and the Dark Side, or any other form of Pet The Dog versus Rape The Dog. I just want to choose between different plausible and all in some way reasonable alternatives. I haven't played Mass Effect, but the examples you mention might be close to what I'd like to see.

If you're looking for any sort of realism BioWare and DAO are the wrong things to look at. This game has darkspawn, entire collections of demons and a plot that highly revolves around betrayal......so think conspiracy theories up you ass at every corner. Do you kill the ones who appear innocent or the ones who appear guilty? And who was pulling the strings anyway? Is that cool new monk party member what she looks like......actually no she used to be a bard and in DAO bards are high level spies that can kill you with a blade of grass. Why did she join you? You being a Gray Warden can draw a lot of attention.....is it possible she's there to keep tabs on you or set you up for something later?

The game is brutal and EVERYONE has their own goals and interests while only most would stab you in the back to get what they want. So with that said there's nothing to see here.....move along. Although to be fair maybe their next game might be your dream game where all the choices are reasonable with amazing plots like choosing between cheese chips or spicy chips and the color of your sweater.

Frankly if you want reasonable choices go to Taco Bell or something where you'll only be faced with top of the line reasonable choices like whether you want a taco or a quesadilla.

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RAVEK:

markrichardbehenna:

I know what you mean Ravek. Many RPGs claim to have complex moral choices and end up giving you insultingly simple dilemmas. Want to be ? Help stop the bandits. Want to be ? Kill someone.

Exactly. I don't want to choose between and , or the Light Side and the Dark Side, or any other form of Pet The Dog versus Rape The Dog. I just want to choose between different plausible and all in some way reasonable alternatives. I haven't played Mass Effect, but the examples you mention might be close to what I'd like to see.

Also agreeing here. It's something Bioware have been particularly guilty of since, I dunno, Knights of the Old Republic, and as a storytelling tool it's a bit of a blunt cudgel. They're particularly guilty of the / minigame thing a lot of games have going on, where there's even a bloody meter at the side of the screen telling you how happy-clappy or baddass you're being. Give the kiddie sweeties? The meter ticks up toward saintly a few points. Feed him broken glass - the metter ticks down a few points. And the icing on the cake is that they then give rewards in the way of powers (and Game Trophies now) for achieving Uber or UberNaughty on the Great Game Morality-o-Meter to deliberately steer you to either one or the other. It's absolutely absurd, utterly counter-immersive, and frankly reduces the whole thing to an emotionally distant farce. I have a brain, FFS - I don't need a massive sodding meter telling me how nice or nasty I'm being, and I especially don't need a sliding tally that tells me my average. Just get your act together and do it through creative storytelling and consequence instead, and I'll do all of the emotion stuff myself then.

Put it this way, there's a moment in Mass Effect where you can commit genocide of a species. It was effectively 'Push Switch to wipe out Race B", or "Let Race B Go". The whole thing was so badly written that you end up feeling absolutely nothing apart from "Oh, look - I've got a few more Baddie Points on my meter! Yay!" - and any game that can make your efforts at genocide seem distant and uninteresting is doing something seriously wrong.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - if you want to give the player intelligent, game-effecting choices that don't feel desperately forced and ultimately shallow, you could do a lot worse than look at The Witcher. Lunatic nudie cards aside, the moral maze and later consequences CDProjekt dumped you in was streets ahead of anything BioWare has done thus far. That game actually made me feel bad about some of the choices I ended up taking.
(EDIT - I seem to remember Vampire:Bloodlines making a decent stab at this in parts too.)

Word to the wise though, Ravek - Mass Effect is essentially KotOR III without lightsabers, with a 3rd person shooter engine to work alongside the force biotics system. But it's business as usual for their cookie cutter morality system, and it's fairly ham-fisted. It feels pretty forced all round tbh. Point in case - the ship's pilot (an NPC) can't just be a pilot, he has to be a pilot who's faced a hard life of adversity and brittle bone disease, rising up through the academy to become the best there is and earn his wings for the best ship the fleet has to offer. Overwriting everything to within an inch of it's life does not begin to describe it. There's a line in the sand where too much detail becomes a turgid step into the surreal, and they've not so much crossed it as are looking back down the beach with binoculars, wondering where the hell it was.
Don't get me wrong - it's actually quite a game overall, but it feels plastic, brittle and ultimately quite shallow. It's more or less a parade of clichés from the Star Trek Next Generation school of storytelling, and you're not going to find anything new by way of moral choices there. They've still got that cretinous ie/baddie-o-meter thing going on.

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DarthTrethon:

Frankly if you want reasonable choices go to Taco Bell or something where you'll only be faced with top of the line reasonable choices like whether you want a taco or a quesadilla.

He's not talking about choosing between a bacon or cheese sandwich, he's talking about replacing obvious black and white choices with complex ambiguous alternatives designed to challenge the player's ethics. Isn't that one of the things Peter Molyneux has been addressing these past few years?

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For some reason Birdo clearly has the voice of a Japanese man in this trailer. It's like... eating a cake. You expect the cake to be delicious, but when you bite into it, it sounds like a Japanese man. See what I'm trying to say here?

That doesn't sound too then. I think I've agreed with you in the past that The Witcher on the other hand was indeed pretty about this ... the consequences of your actions were also pretty subtle occasionally, if I recall correctly.

Maybe I just need to play the Witcher again. I never got too far before.

matneee:

They've still got that cretinous ie/baddie-o-meter thing going on.

I'm making notes of the things that make up a 'mature' game.

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The only thing worse than beating a dead horse is betting on one.

In Star Wars, I think the bar had its point though. Star Wars is always about Black & White, or Bad. You did not gain ultimate power from being a "grey" Jedi. In Mass Effect on the other hand side it was pretty pointless.

The /Bad bar does not exist in Dragon Age, at least as far as I've read. There will only be a friendship-o-meter for your companions to see how near they are to you. It may be questionable to have this, but you don't have to keep an eye on it if you don't care. At least I never did in any game and always did what I thought I was in the mood. The group relations will be developing according to your actions and so will the whole "environment". I could think that it is similar to Fable on that matter and how the townsfolk reacted towards you.

Anyway the main thing about Dragon Age for me is that it will be a tactical RPG in a western style with a hopefully ruleset. At least they will also provide a Pen&Paper version of the ruleset, so it sounds very promising to me.

As I said in my previous posts, the modding community will certainly provide stories, if the main game/story fails to be delivering.

On the side of blood and gore that seems to be an argument about a mature game, I can say that we here in Germany will certainly not see much of this because they usually cut this out in games to provide youth protection. Although I don't really see the point of it when the game is rated 18+, but the many killing sprees in the last years forced this upon us. I don't care about it.

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"*** the World and drop the Neutron!"

Yes you do need to keep tabs on how friendly you are with your party because once you do enough acts against their goals/beliefs/mood/whatever they will turn on you. There are also single major choices that can make them turn on you as well. This isn't a party system where they just get upset and not give you minor quest but they will act against you.

With that said if you loose enough party members or the best ones the game will be significantly harder later on. This is NOT KotOR/ME/JE where the game is so easy you don't really need companions....the game is made like the BG games and is built to be more challenging. Again....choice will lead to consequence so choose carefully.

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markrichardbehenna:

RAVEK:

You have got to be kidding me. I'm not looking for cheap forced choices. Kotor was as black and white as a zebra in a silent movie.

I know what you mean Ravek. Many RPGs claim to have complex moral choices and end up giving you insultingly simple dilemmas. Want to be ? Help stop the bandits. Want to be ? Kill someone.

I enjoyed Fable II because the developers at least tried to rattle you with consequences that you have to live with. Mass Effect is another decent one, play as a noble compassionate person or a brutal racist who will go to any length to get the job done. Either way the ultimate goal is to save humanity. I'd say rather than light or darkness, the game is a big ole bucket of grey sloshed over two different beliefs systems. It sparks the age old debate - do the ends justify the means?

Yes I killed that damn bug and got renegade points, I'm still convinced it was the right decision considering it's species multiply rapidly and letting it live could trigger another galactic war. Can't take that chance! Yes I shot Wrex immediately instead of trying to talk him down. He was a threat to me and my mission, a mission in which billions of lives were at stake!

A game that had many different outcomes, with all of them having their own form of consequences was Baldur's gate Shadows of Amn on the p.c. I had a mixture of aligned characters and Npc's in my party. I had to make tough decisions as well. and I agree with everything you two guy's have said.

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From what I've read with what they're attempting with the origin stories and from speaking to some Bioware devs about it I'm looking forward to it, but every time they release new media it does nothing for me.

The recent pieces they've put out all have really odd voice acting, much of it doesn't seem to fit with the characters, setting or the tone they're going for.  It also seems to drift between Dragon Age dialogue and modern English - there's one video where they're talking about the darkspawn (or something) and then one says 'is it just me or did it just get cold in here' which just grates.

e.g.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/leliana-cinematic-dragon-age/55763
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5hwznpjtUE

 

The Bag:

From what I've read with what they're attempting with the origin stories and from speaking to some Bioware devs about it I'm looking forward to it, but every time they release new media it does nothing for me.

The recent pieces they've put out all have really odd voice acting, much of it doesn't seem to fit with the characters, setting or the tone they're going for.  It also seems to drift between Dragon Age dialogue and modern English - there's one video where they're talking about the darkspawn (or something) and then one says 'is it just me or did it just get cold in here' which just grates.

e.g.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/leliana-cinematic-dragon-age/55763
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5hwznpjtUE

 

The red haired girl is Leilana and she has a french accent because the character was born in Orlais not in Ferelden....devs intended that. As for the thick accent guy I don't know where he's from but if I had to guess I'd say he's from Orlais as well.

I don't find anything wrong with their voices nor do I see how that would somehow be against the "tone" they're going for. The point is that nearly every character has their own distinct attitude, personality and culture. And what do you mean by "Dragon Age dialogue"? I've seen them use a collection of tones and accents but they always spoke in plain modern English as far as I can tell.

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I don't like how the player does not have a voice, they could of just had one female voice and one male voice like they did in Mass Effect at least.

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*Warning 'Officially Awesome!' is a registered phrase of Fata1moose Corporation using it will result in lawsuit.*

I'm not talking about their accents, to me it's just odd and in that first link some of it's pretty bad and it's not helped by the way they cut it which makes it come off as more stilted than it really is.  Also the lip-sync which varies from non-existent to almost passable isn't helping (it may still need a final pass, but it's odd they'd not do one for a trailer) which makes it look like it's dubbed.  Plus the voices do sound much of the time like they're dubbed, like they're not coming from within the 3D world rather just being played directly.  But I'll put that down to the video, I reckon it will be 'correct' in the game.

As for the tone thing, it's comments like 'oh great another crazy', 'did it get colder or is it just me' (probably quoting neither 100% accurately) just feel wrong.

It's just with the standard of voice acting and writing in, say, Mass Effect and what they've shown for ME2 it seems sub-par compared to their other output.

Yeah I agree the voice acting and lip sync seems pretty bad, hopefully it is not that bad in the final product, it was like when that guy was laughing it was so off. I'm on the fence about this game some of it seems pretty cool but other aspects are trash.

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*Warning 'Officially Awesome!' is a registered phrase of Fata1moose Corporation using it will result in lawsuit.*

I've got my pre-order in cause I'm, you know, part of the problem

The Bag:

I've got my pre-order in cause I'm, you know, part of the problem

Cancel it! Haha I'm just kidding, I bet you will like it but for me I hope there is a demo. If not I will just look at reviews. 

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*Warning 'Officially Awesome!' is a registered phrase of Fata1moose Corporation using it will result in lawsuit.*

Lip sync? I didn't notice lack which as far as I'm concerned is enough for me but I'm just not sensitive to this. Of all the billions of complaints I've read across the months that I've been on the BioWare forums lip sync never came up a single time and I've seen quite a lot of trivial complaints. If it really was that bad I'm sure one of the hypersensitive fans that can't stand 3 pixels lacking would have jumped on that.

Well there's definitely no shortage of crazy people/things in DAO so the oh great part seems to fit right in then the cold part simply appears as response to temperature change although I haven't heard it in context. It just seems odd to complain about such trivial things since they aren't insulting nor do they display any sort of attitude as far as I can tell. What kind of criticism is to say they just "feel" wrong anyway? Surely there must be a reason for that.

As for the complaint about quality again I don't see a complaint there either....what do you expect exactly?  This isn't D&D or the formal medieval game with the "thou shalt" or whatever attitude. DAO has its own distinct atmosphere and attitude and as the BioWare devs have said many times don't look at this and expect it to be D&D or ME or whatever you were into before.

Now a bit more on the maturity argument since del still brings it back:

In the eyes of the medieval people everyone alive today.....including the most formal politicians and industry heads and everyone that falls under any sort of "maturity" standard today......is a disrespectful little brat simply because we speak and dress and act differently and yet look at where we are compared to that time. Every passing generation looks at the new one with a measure of contempt for abandoning tradition and finding their own way.....these things just "feel" wrong. D&D and whatever else we may be used to are not coming back and they won't be remade....at least not without drastic changes. Times change, people change and life goes on but that does not make it a negative change in any way even if all we were used to has been scrapped and/or forgotten. We as a species only survive through adapt and overcome.

New demands require new attitudes and new standards of formality. Part of the desire to survive is the desire to preserve our ways and standards but the truth is it won't happen no matter how hard we try, if our children don't abandon our ways that our grandchildren or grand-grandchildren will. Changes occur so fast that we don't notice them until it's too late and then there's no going back....then two things happen: we feel resentful and we don't understand the changes that occurred in others while we are completely oblivious to any change than may have happened in us.....so we cope the best we can. By trying undo the irreversible through explanations and reasoning about how we are better but there's no going back there's never any going back and our ways become obsolete.....when you have so many cultures interacting with each other you not only have a million standards in different individuals but many new standards are created every single second and when all these different expectations have to work together for political policies or business or videogames or whatever new standards and attitudes are created......attitudes we don't understand and may not even like. But we are no longer relevant because the customer base has drastically changed.

So you can call this immature or pre teen kiddie attitude or any other contemptuous remark to make you feel superior but times change and there's no going back.

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psst I think Darth works for Bioware.

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*Warning 'Officially Awesome!' is a registered phrase of Fata1moose Corporation using it will result in lawsuit.*

Fata1moose:

psst I think Darth works for Bioware.

Hahahaha I wish. I really, really wish I had the skill to work for BioWare. Oh well....maybe in the next lifetime.

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Actually, I think I'm beginning to see what they're trying to achieve now I've seen the new "Violence" pt 2 trailer. It's quite a lot more nuanced, and really cast things in a different light for me

Dragon Age : Origins - Violence pt2 Trailer

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DarthTrethon:

Lip sync? I didn't notice lack which as far as I'm concerned is enough for me but I'm just not sensitive to this. Of all the billions of complaints I've read across the months that I've been on the BioWare forums lip sync never came up a single time and I've seen quite a lot of trivial complaints.

Trivial complaints? Only if someone has decided beforehand that he will consider the game great, and has spent his time since then fitting the evidence to the picture instead of the other way around.

LOL@Darth

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The only thing worse than beating a dead horse is betting on one.