Sara Ryder 'SisRyder' (Official Thread)

Indeed, people run differently. Which I why I find people complaining about "it's bad, change it" weird.  I'm bouncy too, unless I try to make very long strides.

That also include the facially animations complains. It's not because something looks goofy to you that nobody does face like that (the eyes not moving excluded). I do goofy face all the time personally.

Heh, I wasn't directly referencing you, but I am pretty sure I've read that post before, so it was probably floating around in my subconscious.  And yah, as we've discussed, ability-use in interrupts and cutscenes is one of my fondest hopes for the game. Shame they're not talking about it yet. 

And I think the Tempest's punningly-appropriate rain-making abilities may just be the product of some camera angle stuff - games often have trouble showing rain with the camera pointed directly at the sky; heck, so do my eyes - though I do really enjoy it when spacecraft in sci-fi do odd things to the local weather just by, y'know, being there. The giant pieces of Terry's Chocolate Orange in Arrival - great, great, great movie, by the way; like a cross between Darmok and The Inner Light - do some cool stuff with mist, for example. (Ooh, I actually just had another thought, which should've maybe been obvious in retrospect: hovering above Ryder as it was, the Tempest was basically a huge, mass effect-powered umbrella... Which is totally my vote for the next Traynor's toothbrush-esque 'mundane use of mass effect fields' consumer product, by the by.  )

If the game lets me get away with it, my whole strategy's gonna revolve around the basic formula of jetpack -> !!Charge!! -> gravity hammer.  (I do think the cloaking effect looks super cool, but my Vanguards are loud, proud, and generally covered in some amount of viscera...)

And yup! Not the ideal sort of expression for a Picard-analogue, but since my Ryder'll be a Picard-analogue who's also the aforementioned viscera-covered Vanguard, I think I can make it work. (Speaking off, I've decided to go with just 'Sara' instead of Jeanne-Luc, sadly. The allure of actually getting to have a voiced first name in a BioWare game is just too much to resist for me.)

I came across this post on Ask a Game Dev a while back - think someone linked it on the BSN, but I can't remember who, sorry! - which goes into the logic behind the paraphrases (you've probably heard a fair bit of it before, even if you haven't read it):

askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/154215697656/why-doesnt-bioware-show-the-full-dialog-options

I actually agree with a fair amount of it, but I still think there's a better compromise to be found than the current BioWare status-quo. The Witcher and Deus Ex both also rely on paraphrases to some extent, but they make them substantially more detailed, so it's much easier to have a good idea of what your character's about to say. I think those more in-depth paraphrases, combined with the tone icons, would be pretty much ideal, so far as voiced protagonist dialogue systems go. (I still like silent protagonists, too - and I've been thinking about ways BioWare could try to regain some of the advantages of that system, without losing those offered by voiced protagonists - but I'm happy to go elsewhere - Obsidian and inExile, mainly, though I would like to see Obsidian have another crack at making a higher-budget, more cinematic RPG, too - to get that experience.)

And I wouldn't worry about Fryda's range, honestly, at least not based on those tweets. Just 'cause she enjoys the sarky stuff more - or, at least, that's the impression I get from her twitter feed; she has a great sense of humour, or at least, one that's pretty well-aligned with my own  - doesn't mean she won't be able to emote the nicer stuff effectively, too. I think she's done a good job of showing emotive range in the brief segments of dialogue we've heard so far, honestly--moreso than any of the Inquisitors, certainly. (Not that I blame the actors for that, to be clear--the flatness was definitely intentional.)

 Say it ain't so, Sifr, say it ain't so.

So at first I wasn't really sold on the whole 'young protagonist' thing... not that I was super against the idea, but as I am in my thirties I tend to prefer playing characters who are a bit more worldly. But more and more I'm coming to like the idea of creating someone a little naive who matures over the course of the story. Like, she starts off super snarky and makes slightly poor judgement calls (like the disarm scene - probably not the best way to get what you want out of that scenario, but I love that the option's there!) but becomes more level-headed and diplomatic as the game goes on. I actually made my favorite Shepard a bit like this. Gave her the Earthborn Ruthless background but played her as a Paragon. Except in certain situations where it made sense for her to lose her temper. Mostly because Renegade interrupts were fun, but also because it made for a more interesting head-canon than playing a pure hero did. And I love me some character growth!

And while I initially wasn't big on the name Sara (too generic) the fact that NPCs will use it is pretty cool. So I decided that since she is going to be a bit of a brat at first, I'm totally going to model her after a young Jennifer Connelly. And if we get to re-name our pet Pyjack, I'm going to call him Didymus

Yeah Ihave to admit I'm liking the way she sounds too. Jennifer set the bar high with how she did fem Shep Frydda sounds like she's done a pretty decent job herself too based on the scenes we saw in the trailer.

Agreed, not everyone runs the same way, and since Sara's run is mocapped, obviously someone runs like that (not that I think it's a weird way to run to begin with). I saw a few comments like the above after the video released about how weirdly bouncy her run was, but I was confused because I didn't notice anything odd to begin with

For reference, here is some jogging:

I don't know what others see, but I don't see an abnormal amount of "bounce" or anything odd at all about that animation. The dumb hip-sway is gone and they've even improved the ramp/stairs animation, too. If the rest of the animations get a similar upgrade, it'll be pretty sweet.

I just don't see it, sorry. As for Scott, it'll probably look very similar, possibly even the same.

1. To be honest I'm trying not to expect any substantial amount of appropriate power-usage, simply because of past games, so I won't be disappointed. Definitely hope so, though. I hope that at least the jump-pack won't be forgotten about simply because it's a new mechanic that they're taking the time to add. That seems likely to appear in-use in scenes.

A tangent: A natural extension of hoping abilities and powers get used where appropriate would be taking into account mass effect fields and how they can heavily alter intuitive physics. An example would be Scott and Sara on a Remnant platform. The pesky platform shifts and Sara falls, oh noes! Now maybe there's not enough fuel in her jump-pack charge to both arrest her fall and accelerate to get back to Scott. The solution is simple: Use the suit's ME fields to lower her mass and allow for greater fuel efficiency as well as lowering (or entirely negating - see, not intuitive, but awesome) her downward momentum and thus making it easier to stop falling (and get whiplash if she overdoes it).

In some ways I don't blame them for not thinking of all the possible uses of these things in the story simply because the mass effect opens up so many more possibilities than exist conventionally and are therefore obvious to us, but on the other hand use of these fields and what you can do with them should be obvious to someone who's grown up and trained with this technology, and therefore the writers should put some extra effort into it, I think. Another reason to put more effort into it would be to simply exploit the unique and awesome aspects of the lore and universe that they created, which would both be a point of pride as well as probably end up delivering us some awesome and slightly mind-bending scenes.

I always end up writing way more than I think I will... I was originally just going to return the high-five and say I agreed

2. Good point about the camera angles, I have noticed it being hard to see rain effects while looking directly above in games. Yes! Like a rescue/astronaut-retrieval helicopter making a circle of ripples over the water while hovering. Or heck, the wake of a ship. Haha, that paints a funny picture in my head I haven't seen that movie though. For some reason, I haven't even seen a trailer. Mass effect umbrella? It could use the repulsive fields used in kinetic barriers to deflect overhead rain. Nice. Although it would have to be set to deflect fairly slow things, making it somewhat impractical. Yeah, using the Tempest itself might actually work better Reminds me of this.

3. Sounds like Blood-Rage would be a perfect addition to your playstyle That's cool, it's fun... and I have a lot of rage, so I always found it satisfying to wack things as a krogan in MP. But could you imagine it for Ryder? Her melees getting progressively stronger, all the while roaring and laughing maniacally: RrrrAAAAAAGH! AAA-HAHAAAA! Ha! They're dead.
Sorry, got a little carried away Would add a lot of personality though, like mildly-crazy Purple!Hawke. Always wanted to hear Shepard say "Employing Devastator Mode!" as well. Shepard actually had some rather awesomely-intense melee "lines", as well as Sumalee.

Holy crap  Definitely better (and probably more fun to record!) than the common mild efforts of melee attacks in most games.

Wait, what? I must have missed something; they say Sara and Scott outloud?! Wow, I'll have to try that out at some point... which won't be hard since I suck at thinking of names anyway. But I'll have to do a custom name for my self-insert (probably second playthrough) so I can maximize how many times they say "Ryder". Speaking of which, it'll be interesting to hear the difference between a Scott/Sara playthrough and a custom one. You could always have one of your characters be Jeanne-Luc though, eventually, since it's a cool idea!

4. I hadn't seen that link, no. And after reading it, I am unmoved. Completely so. I hate to say it, but the question and answer dealt with the issue in a
very black and white manner, with no room for innovation and problem solving.

I hadn't heard the point about subvocalization before, but I don't think it warrants locking players out of seeing the whole line if they wish. I don't think that's really any more weird than time pausing and you thinking about what your character should say, but I understand.

Saying a phrase like "Tell me more" can be different depending on tone is actually a point against paraphrasing, not for it. If you see the whole sentence, you have a much better idea of what the tone will be. They could get around that with tone icons, though.

And the point that it would clutter the screen completely falls apart when you consider that that was never a problem for games with voiceless protagonists, and they even had longer and more options, generally. I've tried out a mod for FO4 that shows the whole lines, and it's not cluttered at all. Now, if they want to keep the dialogue wheel in Bioware games, I agree it wouldn't work, but that's where the "hover over an option for 3 seconds to reveal the full line" thing comes in. With that system, there wouldn't be any extra clutter since the preview would appear where the subtitles usually go. This also blows the "different languages could take up more room" argument out of the water for the same reason.

Nitpick: They said "repeat it twice". Nope, it only repeats once

When it comes to things like this, there is literally no downside to adding more options. Options are optional, after all. You don't want to see the full line? Great, don't hover over a paraphrase for 3 seconds. You do want to? Great, do that. It's such an easy solution that should really satisfy everyone, I'm disappointed they're apparently so averse to it. I don't want to have to resort to reloading saves because I picked the "wrong" line, or even just to see what they all say to begin with How is that good for pacing or roleplaying?

I'll read your post about voiced and voiceless protagonists soon, always short on time

5. Nah, I wasn't really worried, hence the tinfoil hat. You're probably right. At the very least, we'll get some awesome snark. Yeah... poor Inquisitors.

Fryder? Oh no, what have you started?

I might steal your idea, too Sounds like good development and similar to my own in real life.

That reminds me of how I played my Shepard a bit. She was a Colonist/War Hero:


So while she was generally polite and diplomatic, she easily lost her cool when it came to batarians... Understandable considering that background. In my mind, she secretly relished the Skyllian Blitz in some ways, since it was practically vengeance for Mindoir. Her rage kept her going and let her "seal the breach" alone. She hated the batarians' culture and what it had wrought, but not the species itself. Sadly, most of the batarians she met were slavers or ultra-"national"ists, since they're almost the only ones in Citadel space. She helped the one on Omega dying of the plague.

To come back on-topic, I wonder what background(s) we'll have for Scott/Sara. I hope that we can choose something once again, even if it's only as in-depth as this, and I hope I can have fun RPing from there as I did above.

I like the name Sara(h), aside from Sera ruining that for me slightly... but somehow the different spelling helps, ha. It would be interesting to finally have our first name said aloud, so I'm sure I'll use Sara for at least one run.

I did when she was initially announced on the "Who are you going to play as first?" thread, but re-edited the post to change it to Sis Ryder.

Figured that Fryda Wolff has enough trouble with people mispronouncing her name, that calling her character Fryder wouldn't help.

yeah and given Ryder fits this profile it's not really a surprise I was going to reflect that a bit too in her appearance on my first Ryder.

Yeah, Fryder does roll off the tongue better than FemRyder.

(I apparently made a similar joke on the naming thread in Sept, although it was about Male Ryder)

I'm still calling her SisRyder.

It was less disbelieving you and more wondering why people would have trouble pronouncing that

Also, I still feel like sentences like "DON'T SCREW THIS UP FOR ME, RYDER" are directed at me personally for a split second, by reflex, and often end up with tiny reactions like "WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?" or "Yeah, I've heard all the jokes before..." or "Yeah, I don't like how I look much either" before realizing they're talking about the character 

It's so weird

Same here really I tend to just use male or female Shep when I'm talking about one specific gender and will likely do so with Ryder as well generally. However when I talk about the character in general I tend to use neutral words or at least try to. Whilst it's likely I'll go female first I will be doing male playthrough's as well so will try to remain as neutral as possible.