Why do people here act like animations....

In order to form that conclusion, you have to make some assumptions about 1) how much of a resource the organization as a whole needs or could make use of, 2) how much of the resource is supplied by each node or unit collected, and 3) how much is collected by other members of said organization. Generally, the PC's inventory of resources used to craft consumables (potions, poisons) or gear (armor, weapons) apply only to the inner circle, those followers who may accompany the PC.

But I admit that I regard complaints about collecting resources to be incredibly petty, at least in DAI*. It's entirely optional, there are other ways to obtain them, and they can be easily picked up en route to other objectives. It's not like the game expects (or even encourages) you to go out elfroot hunting.

* It's an entirely different deal in something like ME2 - there are serious consequences to not upgrading the Normandy, you need resources to buy any upgrades, and the only way to acquire them is planet scanning, which serves no other purpose.


I'm not - and based on the context and content, I don't believe that steamshipman is, either.

Ah, it's mostly me. Like with Bioware, I'm bitter towards Bethesda too. Among Skyrim and all their Fallout games, Skyrim story is the best and most immerseve. I just thought that after New Vegas the will upgrade their storytelling, but they prefered to idiotize it to facepalm degree in FO4, god im angry!

You are right, it isn't (I didn't play MEA yet, just to note). But it is kinda the point and the problem we are speaking about. Without random forts or structures there is no actual exploration, and without exploration open world doesn't make much sense. Open world is characterized with points of interest. And those points have requirements to actually be interesting. And in DAI there is no actual points of interest outside of weak quests and puzzles, about which I answered previously. You see some ruins and they are not that far from you? You are interested, you go there and find nothing but same enemies, and possibly chest, uninteresting collectible (Ubisoft much?) or lame letter. All of this has no relation to the said ruins so all you did is visited point of no interest

It's just a tactical choice in DAI (and both trilogies for that matter), but not in Skyrim. Tactical means searching for effective way to win. If you'll fight in Skyrim in most effective way, you will probably bored quickly. Did you play any jrpgs? DAI combat is similar to jrpgs in the way, that combat mode is entirely different thing from non-combat time. It's a separate thing, entirely focused on defeating the enemy. In Skyrim it isn't. You can characterize your combat. Can roleplay, right in the fighting, as brutal barbarian or cowardly mage or as cowardly barbarian and brutal mage. Or as mad mathematician which is a stretch of course but the freedom just lets you do something along those lines.

This is not true. There is at least one instance in ME2 where planet scanning leads to a silly little sidequest that I found quite enjoyable.

In general, I admit your point, but there is at least one exception.

You say this as if you didn't know I consider BioWare games "drinking games".

Or maybe life is a drinking game. It is all a blur now.

FNV has been developed by Obsidian, not Bethesda. Bethesda was busy developing Skyrim. Which was a stroke of luck, since in my opinion FNV is the best Fallout game of the newer generation. FNV is one of these rare games that got higher user scores than professional ones on metacritic.

Okay - I don't remember ever coming across any, but I'll take your word for it.

I'll also say that finding silly little sidequests was never my purpose in planet scanning.  The purpose was to obtain resources.

There were quite a few N7 missions revealed only by scanning.

Ew... IIRC, you're involved in the film industry in the Atlanta area, right?

Even if Atlanta escapes major direct damage from Irma, you'll likely still be inundated with evacuees from other areas, and probably already are.

Good luck weathering the storm - and stay safe.

That makes zero sense.

That was my biggest concern when I saw so much whining. If BioWare responds to the whining by establishing some policy dictating that all dialogue must be presented in fully animated cutscenes, we'll just end up with a lot less dialogue.

Hm, I see. I know that I can't write or speak in English good enough. But I find my understanding of English rather good, however some notions and concepts what do not have direct translation/analogues in my language can be a problem sometimes. I guess we did "hung up on definitions of things" and this is entirely my fault. I perceived the word "narrative" as eh... as the very fabric of process of storytelling if its makes any sense... well, yeah its meaning is rather vague to me

I don't know. To simplify things to extreme for better understanding, lets imagine that you play one of those ancient Super Mario games (I know nothing about recent ones). There you have a very bleak excuse of a story about princess searching and set of challenges on your way to different castles. As I understand, for you it would be narrative related things. I'm absolutely OK with this. But there also this thing about hitting squares with your head and gaining coins this way. Are those to be considered narrative related too? o_O

Well, this is new level of I don't know what for me. You are using not doing the quest for roleplay in a way that good Inquisitor would do that and evil Inquisitor wouldn't?
That kind of approach is new for me and I think it is rare as you are the first person who explained it to me and I have seen a lot of conversations around RPGs. Considering that, I can see why DAI works for you.

Still remains the point that it's kinda hard to find something what wouln't work. And the more quests the better - more options to roleplay, right? Quality of quests kinda stopped to matter at this point, obviously anybody need blankets and food, and also demand for free deliveryman is self-evident and presented under absolutely any circumstances.
That's interesting. If this approach is implied for somebody to be able to fully enjoy DAI, what would you advice to so called completionists? Do they absolutely need to roleplay Inquisitor with obsessive–compulsive disorder? Or how someone is supposed to roleplay good Inquisitor if he is bored to death with those blankets?
May be I'm not in position to have a discussion about narrative. But I can see how your approach can't be any authority in regards to evaluation of quest-design quality. And 'optional' is bad excuse if, like, 85% of game is optional, and the rest will feel quite out of pace and very rushed without this "optional" thing.


Damn, my bad. I forgot about them and have to apologize. My bad.
But, hey...

I still can answer the question! I'm not complainer on this regard, but I can relate. You see, cutscenes are engaging. You are all there when they happening. But in non-cutscene dialogues only your hearing is busy, there is nothing specific to see aside from lips animation. And people can do other things while listen to dialogue. But they can't. But they have some urge. But they can't. It makes whole thing kinda boring.
I watched video and remembered how those dialogues were and personally I would appreciate if some simple commands were available for idle character when involved into non-cinematic conversation, like you know, to do some push-ups, balance on one leg, to pick his nose. To do something.
Feel free to call me low-attention span monkey or whatever!
Also if you afraid complaints will result in less dialogues then the losing of silent protagonist must have been that kind of tragedy for you. (Yeah, I know it wasn't. Just saying )