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Post by Link"Guess"ski on Dec 19, 2016 20:25:47 GMT
If you were to use all past BioWare games or other RPGs as a point of reference and then point to where you hope ME:A will strike its balance, then I'd appreciate it.
I think a trend with BioWare releases in a couple of year now has been to market it on everything but its dialogue. I'm kinda thankful they did show a little segment in Andromeda at TGA, acknowledging they are proud of what they're doing with the interface for interactive storytelling still, but think back to DA:I and ME3 at their respective E3s and it's almost as if BioWare is all hush-hush about showing anything with dialogue. Thankfully, DA:I was chock-full of dialogue options so it's not that I'm worried about that in particular... but I'm still skeptical as to what the balance of dialogue vs combat is. As it was with DA:I it felt segregated and the same for ME3.
It's as if the game is built around having levels that are mainly filled with combat scenarios and then once you back on the base you'll have a ton of dialogue with companions but it used to be so where most encounters actually start with dialogue and even break up the middle of a "level" with a dialogue confrontation or something of the sort and then lets you resolve a confrontation through cunning and diplomacy rather than brawns. I'm very worried about new BioWare games being made because I feel they've shifted their focus so heavily towards "immediate fun-factor", and I could live with it in ME2 and DA2 because they kept a lot of moments where diplomacy was an option still but they've really been excluding the dialogue's importance lately.
You had those three advisors in DA:I who stood for various non-hostile tasks, save cullen sometimes, but you never ever get to see them shine in missions and while it's nothing to do with you or your dialogue options, it's the fact that there's such a decreased emphasis on anything that ISN'T combat that is so disheartening to me. At its peak it was the In Wicked Hearts and Wicked Eyes or whatever it was called where you're at a ball with people all wearing masks both figuratively and literally and there's plans for an assasination, so the whole point of the level was to blend in as a guest while investigating and preventing any violence from occurring, but as expected it ended in bloodshed and a bossfight no matter how it was played. I thought that was really lame. You had this one, awesome opportunity to solely drive a mission exclusively via emotional tension and political intrigue, and you shit all over it with an, excuse the term, "video-gamey" bossfight.
To me combat and immediate gameplay was never really the draw for BioWare games. They're trying to make it so but I don't understand why because their games sold really well even back with ME1 and ME2 when it was just as much the dialogue that was considered "gameplay", at least to me, but they just insist on throwing you into one combat scenario after another.
Looking at the Andromeda TGA trailer you get circa three sneak peaks at loyalty missions if you look to the right side of the screen where it states which objectives are active, and in all 3 they showed you using all sorts of sick combat abilities and lots of "bro" moments and headshots... and i'm just worried it's always, always combat and dialogue is just some bonus that you do in between but it never matters.
I just hope they are aware of how much a huge chunk of their fanbases play these games for the social aspect of the game's universe which is the dialogue. They know we love the characters but they've begun almost only focusing on that for using the dialogue wheel or interactive cinematics. I want the whole game and the whole story to respect the dialogue wheel as a driving force of the GAMEPLAY and not just combat.
Before you come in and say I have rose-tinted glasses because "ME2 was just as bad" or whatever fanbase cliche you want, consider Thane's or Samara's loyalty missions for a moment. Those were fully fledged segments and not just one or two cutscenes like Dorian or Vivienne in DA:I, that required you to use other systems than action or combat to get through them, and they were awesome for it every bit as much as the missions that had you shoot through a corridor.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 19, 2016 21:22:14 GMT
I am glad they are focusing more on class and combat design. Initially BioWARE borrowed class design from DnD, and the way I played after the first few play-throughs of BG1/BG2 in the early BioWARE games (Infinity Games and NWN2) was by enabling the CLUA Console and insta-killing or H2F'ing my characters because I could not be bothered to spend time on inventory and learning stuff.
See, for me at the time the most important thing were the kernels of the dialogues, and the finer plot points.
But after playing a couple of games where CLUA was not available, and the difficulty was not negotiable, I finally clued in that combat can actually be entertaining, and I went as far as deriving pure joy from cool class design. And, to be completely honest, the use of playing the game. Being burdened by daily chores or manuals on everything is getting old. I want to just plug in and adventure. I used to start every game with reading the booklet on the rules. Nowadays, I read the internet instructions on this and that, like Dulfy, since the games come w/o booklets... and I am growing tired of that.
I also said: "No, thank you, but thank you..." to all games that have you do two hours or more of daily repetitive quests before you can start doing fun stuff if you want to keep up. And the whole necessity to keep up in order to have fun.
I enjoyed non combat missions in BioWARE, including the much vilified puzzles in MET. I liked planet scanning, and hacking the text segments the most, I thought really highly of the way these tasks repeated and how 'realistic' and still entertaining they were for me. I enjoyed that sort of creative approach way more than 'see shiny object - click shiny object - watch the progress bar as you load up' process.
Thane's mission along with the Normandy Crash side quests are high on the list of my non-combat missions that were really, really cool.
I also find that 3 to 4 dialogue choices with clearly marked LS and DS, funny one and a flirt sort of distribution hits the spot for me, and I do not like it when flirt takes place of a funny or neutral option. I have not seen the system with character "voice" in the DA:I, but I have tried something like that in the past in the amateur setting when the responses to each dialogue options for the PC complied to a few distinctive "voices" fairly consistently, and yes, it's nice, because the PC stops being the most boring character in the game. So, I am hoping that's what they mean to employ in DA only with full audible voicing, holy cow, that would be cool to see!
On the other hand, fight in the moving elevator in ME3, the Mindfield negotiation battle, the walking on the rotating/broken up parts of the spaceship, geth's Heretic ship and the fast, fluid waves in the MP with minimized class designs are also among my favorite things about the Trilogy.
Overall, yes, I would like to see:
Non-combat missions like Thane's quest or Crash Site; Mini-games instead of gathering & crafting for resources/upgrades; More economical class design, that allows for more movement and less pauses in actions for combat, Some fights that take you out of the rut of the long halls with spawn points, Consistent character "archetype" voices in PC dialogues, and No repetitive grind model. I don't need to kill time. I want to be royally entertained.
And, of course, the difficulty settings. Because, let's face it, I am the gal who used to set CLUA up to insta kill the enemies, when I just wanted to see what happens next...
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Post by colfoley on Dec 19, 2016 22:29:53 GMT
I can see your point first of all but second of all Wicked Eyes Wicked Hearts did not end with a boss battle no matter what you did. If you were good enough you could capture Florianne and judge her at Skyhold. Sure there was combat intersperesed throughout the entire level but that is what you are talking about, I think, quests with dialog that is interspersed with combat here and there. And then you can throw in the loyalty missions too in DA I, not all of them involved combat.
Regardless I think DA I had a very good job with balance going because, lets face it, no game is going to be perfect in its balance. Just A. better side quests. B. less exploration...which I think the exploration of the game more then any new design philosophy neccissitated them going to a heavier combat her side quest game. BUT, regardless, I can't see them not going back to an ME 2 type approach in how they handle the dialog in the missions.
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Post by Pearl on Dec 20, 2016 4:30:44 GMT
Looking at the Andromeda TGA trailer you get circa three sneak peaks at loyalty missions if you look to the right side of the screen where it states which objectives are active, and in all 3 they showed you using all sorts of sick combat abilities and lots of "bro" moments and headshots... and i'm just worried it's always, always combat and dialogue is just some bonus that you do in between but it never matters. The whole point of that TGA trailer was to show off combat gameplay, because we hadn't seen any up until that point. I think your fears are, at this point in time, completely unfounded.
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Post by KaiserShep on Dec 20, 2016 7:20:33 GMT
If you only ended Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts with a boss battle you kinda did it wrong. Detaining Florianne and blackmailing the 3 stooges is the best.
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Post by helios969 on Dec 21, 2016 23:05:07 GMT
If you only ended Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts with a boss battle you kinda did it wrong. Detaining Florianne and blackmailing the 3 stooges is the best. Yeah, but then you miss the single funniest part of the game. Judging her remains. Besides I couldn't stand the conniving little witch, so it was quick execution for her. Not sure I'd really call that fight a boss battle...pretty tame. On this thread, I hate "exploration" which in my view is just to stuff the game with inane filler so the marketing folk can talk up the game length. I hated DAI's approach to dialogue. Despite having "so many" options, I hardly felt taking one choice over another made much difference to my roleplaying experience, plus from conversation to conversation it was inconsistent in what options you had. My favorite system was DA2's with it's 3 very distinctive voices...and the way it kind of locks into a given tone after awhile. I didn't find DAI's balance between dialogue and combat that good either. I liked ME3's system best...or maybe I ended up liking it best because of its urgency and fast-pacing. At this point, I don't think it matters much what any of us want, it's pretty set in stone. I just hope those 4 options are in every conversation and they represent a distinctive voice/tone.
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Post by Cyonan on Dec 21, 2016 23:54:42 GMT
BioWare's market approach for a long time now has been that player choice is supposed to matter, so why not create more situations where the player's actions decides if the quest is to be primarily dialogue or combat?
As noted in Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, you didn't have to have the boss fight at the end of the quest if you did certain things.
I'd like to see more quests where your choices are the determining factor in if the whole thing is combat heavy or dialogue heavy.
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Post by colfoley on Dec 22, 2016 0:19:59 GMT
BioWare's market approach for a long time now has been that player choice is supposed to matter, so why not create more situations where the player's actions decides if the quest is to be primarily dialogue or combat? As noted in Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, you didn't have to have the boss fight at the end of the quest if you did certain things. I'd like to see more quests where your choices are the determining factor in if the whole thing is combat heavy or dialogue heavy. The "Problem" is that games are going towards the direction of bigger and larger and longer (and for good reasons) rather than try and create more compact games. The longer a game is and the more you have to do, the less room for choice you will have. Though DA I did have a good few examples of recognizing player choice. But, I often wonder what would be better: Having a case of a game that is one hundred hours long and has very little room for player choice, or one that is 40-60 hours long but whose paths can vary dramatically depending on your player choice.
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Post by guanxi on Dec 23, 2016 11:11:11 GMT
It would be nice to have more opportunities to avoid combat through dialogue/choices in the main story missions but I think this is the kind of content which would be best suited to side questing. ME1 demonstrated that narrative intersecting with game-design experimentation is how you make side-quests compelling / memorable; for example remember being rewarded for minimizing casualties? For negotiating hostage situations peacefully? Having to report back to Hackett about the morality and consequences of your actions? This is the kind of stuff the series did brilliantly and where it started to lose it's way as side-quest design became increasingly lazy and marginalized over time as the series went on.
Anything that either doesn't work or you don't like you aren't forced to do (again) in the main campaign so they are free to experiment with crazy non-linear branching plotlines, alternative approaches, and dealing with consequences however they like given that it's all optional and the player is similarly free to pick and choose which kind of side-quests appeal to their present mood at the time, i.e. dialogue-heavy or combat focus or exploration focus. Because side-quests can be self-contained or dependent on other side-quests I think we'll definitely see more pronounced and personal choices and consequences and replayability focusing on doing this kind of stuff in secondary quests than in the main presumably typically linear campaign.
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Post by Link"Guess"ski on Dec 23, 2016 17:55:33 GMT
@gunaxi: and those brilliantly designed ME1 side quests are exactly what the Witcher 3 nailed on a larger scale and DAI botched in favor of less substantial, more combat driven, quantity quests and that's what I'm afraid MEA will do too.
I really really miss the extensive types of side quests with lots of intricate dialogue in ME1 before and after the mission was over and in the middle of a mission but that probably only worked because the game had only a 15 hours long critical path and only amounted to a bit over 30 hours with most side quests done. That was WAAAAY better than anything else except the more cinematic and focused Loyalty missions of ME2. The companion quests in DAI were forgettable and too short for substance and so were they in ME3 and that's what I fear MEA is also like because it seems to be a design approach in modern BioWare where the writers come up with a fun little questline that then gets gamified in an overly simple manner by some amateur designers, like those lame one-button quests in ME3 where you had to run back and forth between mission markers and get linear dialogue. They've just lost the plot when it comes to sidequesting.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 23, 2016 18:24:23 GMT
BioWare's market approach for a long time now has been that player choice is supposed to matter, so why not create more situations where the player's actions decides if the quest is to be primarily dialogue or combat? As noted in Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, you didn't have to have the boss fight at the end of the quest if you did certain things. I'd like to see more quests where your choices are the determining factor in if the whole thing is combat heavy or dialogue heavy. The "Problem" is that games are going towards the direction of bigger and larger and longer (and for good reasons) rather than try and create more compact games. The longer a game is and the more you have to do, the less room for choice you will have. Though DA I did have a good few examples of recognizing player choice. But, I often wonder what would be better: Having a case of a game that is one hundred hours long and has very little room for player choice, or one that is 40-60 hours long but whose paths can vary dramatically depending on your player choice. I always vote the second choice. The single linear story spread over 100 hours is going to bore me, and give me the "are we there yet?" syndrome. I'd rather have a shorter story that makes me want to see the alternative shorter scenarios with more customizable PC that comes across as a different person.
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Post by Link"Guess"ski on Dec 23, 2016 18:26:45 GMT
^ Alpha Protocol ftw
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Post by Cyonan on Dec 23, 2016 19:00:28 GMT
The "Problem" is that games are going towards the direction of bigger and larger and longer (and for good reasons) rather than try and create more compact games. The longer a game is and the more you have to do, the less room for choice you will have. Though DA I did have a good few examples of recognizing player choice. But, I often wonder what would be better: Having a case of a game that is one hundred hours long and has very little room for player choice, or one that is 40-60 hours long but whose paths can vary dramatically depending on your player choice. It'd be a subjective thing, though personally I'd take the 40-60 hour long game with more player choice. I still feel like developers are trying to chase Skyrim's success in being a game that's as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle. Though it would still be nice to see more choice resulting in dialogue vs combat based situations. DA:I still had plenty of choices you could make, they just only changed the story outcome rather than the gameplay outcome for the most part.
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Post by RoboticWater on Dec 23, 2016 21:37:09 GMT
The "Problem" is that games are going towards the direction of bigger and larger and longer (and for good reasons) rather than try and create more compact games. The longer a game is and the more you have to do, the less room for choice you will have. Though DA I did have a good few examples of recognizing player choice. But, I often wonder what would be better: Having a case of a game that is one hundred hours long and has very little room for player choice, or one that is 40-60 hours long but whose paths can vary dramatically depending on your player choice. It'd be a subjective thing, though personally I'd take the 40-60 hour long game with more player choice. I still feel like developers are trying to chase Skyrim's success in being a game that's as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle. Though it would still be nice to see more choice resulting in dialogue vs combat based situations. DA:I still had plenty of choices you could make, they just only changed the story outcome rather than the gameplay outcome for the most part. I wouldn't say it's Skyrim's success in particular that developers are keen on aping. I'd say most games tend to end up with the Assassin's Creed brand of open world. Maybe I have too much confidence in developers but I just can't imagine that they could so completely misinterpret the core design successes of Skyrim that we end up with games like Inquisition. Maybe the developers are just starry-eyed and think that maybe they'll finally be the ones to translate cinematic storytelling to vast open environments, but they have to know that Skyrim only works because the writers relinquish almost all of their control. That's to say nothing about mechanical freedom and environmental density. The logistics just don't work out. Assassin's Creed, however, has a formula that seems a bit easier to copy: just make more activities; narrative and mechanical freedom be damned. I still don't know how developers assume that their environments will be fun to explore without an equivalent to free-running, but I digress. As to the OP, I don't think we'll ever see a drastic shift towards dialog (or, more broadly, narrative choice and consequence) and mechanical harmony. That's the kind of thing most innovated upon in the immersive sim genre ( Deus Ex, System Shock, Thief (the older ones), etc.), because those games tend to emphasize systems over anything else. BioWare isn't really a "systems" developer and Mass Effect is possibly their least "systems" game to date. BioWare is more of a presentation developer; they want to make games that are great to play and great to look at. Unfortunately, production value will always come at the cost of scale and usually at the cost of depth, both of which are ideal for emphasizing choice and consequence. It's a balancing act BioWare are actively trying get right. I just don't think they'll be able to do it if they keep spreading themselves so thin every title. At this point, especially now that BioWare have found an addictive (if not incredibly deep) core gameplay loop in the form of multiplayer, BioWare isn't likely to overhaul how their mechanics fit together. I would love them to just start from scratch: change Mass Effect's core mechanical philosophy to be systems driven. The differences between tech and biotic powers should be more than nomenclature, base building should be more than a progression sink, and dialog should be more than slightly interactive cutscene. It sounds like a lot (because it is), but until there's a cultural shift Mass Effect's overall design, BioWare will continue to merely inch ever closer to dialog and mechanical harmony. I would hope the new IP tries something like this, but we'll have to see. It kinda sucks for BioWare. I'd be willing to bet that there is a significant (or at least non-negligible) amount of staff that want to see a smaller, tighter, systems-driven Mass Effect, but know they probably can't get their wish because it's harder to market that. That's partially because immersive sims aren't the most popular genre, but more importantly, I just don't see how a marketing team would OK a "smaller, more intimate game" that would allow the kind of freedom we want. I honestly can't think of game to do that other than DAII, and I don't think it would be easy to convince EA to allow another DAII. That said, Inquisition wasn't bad. In fact, I thought it was better than most BioWare games, and that's saying something given how big it was. IIRC, the Mage/Templar mission choice near the beginning of the game affected not only which mutually exclusive quest you got to on, but the secondary antagonist and enemy compositions later in the game. Within the realm of all RPG, it maybe isn't the most spectacular example of choice and consequence, but among BioWare games, it's up there. From the pre-release material, it was pretty clear that they wanted those kinds of choices throughout the game, but were evidently unable to deliver. It's unfortunate Inquisition's scale prevented that from happening.
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Post by Link"Guess"ski on Dec 23, 2016 23:00:57 GMT
Skyrim came out in 2011 and were widely regarded as a big success throughout 2012 when many AAA titles released and many new AAA projects began. I know games change over the course of development and we don't use "design-documents" as much as we used to, but basically a lot of titles that have just come out or are soon releasing after a 3+ year dev cycle starting in either 2012 or 2013 were conceptualized right around the time when Skyrim was the new shit, so that's why we see such a massive surge in "open world" games from all the big studios right now, and also The Last of Us-esque third-person "deep narrative" games (or those that try to be lol).
Did you guys see the Sony press conference this year at E3? They're remaking God of War into an over-the-shoulder heavy, deep artsy game about emotions because The Last of Us, they're making another Hillbilly Zombie IP set in a forest-environment because Walking Dead and The Last of Us and pathos, and before those we had several horror-esque, adventure-esque games where you had to throw items to distract monsters TLoU-style or a "middle-aged father in shirt and backpack with his not-daughter" Resident Evil iteration.
Just sayin' this is how the industry works mostly; in cycles of trends until the next thing comes around and then 3 years after that we see the waves of other AAA titles aping it.
It's mostly the result of "goin' where da money's at" but it's also sort of systematized in the form of Focus Testing which all major AAA publishers do a lot and BioWare has clearly done so since getting taken under EA's wing because that's how EA does things. Mac also said ME:A has been "focus tested" a lot, and I'm sure all games, ME2, ME3 and DA:I were as well, and DA2. The more established and popular the franchise is the more it gets focus tested. It also ruined Dead Space which started great as an EA franchise but then got more and more lame in spite of how much better DS2 was in pacing, action and design (but way worse narrative and tension) and DS3 dropping the ball, all because they made it more and more into Gears Co-Op action shooter than a horror-franchise.
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Post by colfoley on Dec 23, 2016 23:04:27 GMT
Skyrim came out in 2011 and were widely regarded as a big success throughout 2012 when many AAA titles released and many new AAA projects began. I know games change over the course of development and we don't use "design-documents" as much as we used to, but basically a lot of titles that have just come out or are soon releasing after a 3+ year dev cycle starting in either 2012 or 2013 were conceptualized right around the time when Skyrim was the new shit, so that's why we see such a massive surge in "open world" games from all the big studios right now, and also The Last of Us-esque third-person "deep narrative" games (or those that try to be lol). Did you guys see the Sony press conference this year at E3? They're remaking God of War into an over-the-shoulder heavy, deep artsy game about emotions because The Last of Us, they're making another Hillbilly Zombie IP set in a forest-environment because Walking Dead and The Last of Us and pathos, and before those we had several horror-esque, adventure-esque games where you had to throw items to distract monsters TLoU-style or a "middle-aged father in shirt and backpack with his not-daughter" Resident Evil iteration. Just sayin' this is how the industry works mostly; in cycles of trends until the next thing comes around and then 3 years after that we see the waves of other AAA titles aping it. The bad thing about it is gaming is always three years behind its own trend. Its sometimes a wonder the game industry can even function and be popular and profitable.
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Post by Link"Guess"ski on Dec 23, 2016 23:06:28 GMT
Skyrim came out in 2011 and were widely regarded as a big success throughout 2012 when many AAA titles released and many new AAA projects began. I know games change over the course of development and we don't use "design-documents" as much as we used to, but basically a lot of titles that have just come out or are soon releasing after a 3+ year dev cycle starting in either 2012 or 2013 were conceptualized right around the time when Skyrim was the new shit, so that's why we see such a massive surge in "open world" games from all the big studios right now, and also The Last of Us-esque third-person "deep narrative" games (or those that try to be lol). Did you guys see the Sony press conference this year at E3? They're remaking God of War into an over-the-shoulder heavy, deep artsy game about emotions because The Last of Us, they're making another Hillbilly Zombie IP set in a forest-environment because Walking Dead and The Last of Us and pathos, and before those we had several horror-esque, adventure-esque games where you had to throw items to distract monsters TLoU-style or a "middle-aged father in shirt and backpack with his not-daughter" Resident Evil iteration. Just sayin' this is how the industry works mostly; in cycles of trends until the next thing comes around and then 3 years after that we see the waves of other AAA titles aping it. The bad thing about it is gaming is always three years behind its own trend. Its sometimes a wonder the game industry can even function and be popular and profitable. Movies kinda work the same way I believe if you consider the MCU vs the struggling, but starting, DCU. It's because the bigwigs at the top who set things in motion at the major studios want to be where they see other studios making their money, and that's how competition works but because of the cycle of a project which is usually 1-2+ years in movies it's the same thing as in games where dev cycles are simply longer so the "trend-delay" feels bigger.
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Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR
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Post by wright1978 on Dec 23, 2016 23:10:16 GMT
BioWare's market approach for a long time now has been that player choice is supposed to matter, so why not create more situations where the player's actions decides if the quest is to be primarily dialogue or combat? As noted in Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, you didn't have to have the boss fight at the end of the quest if you did certain things. I'd like to see more quests where your choices are the determining factor in if the whole thing is combat heavy or dialogue heavy. Couldn't stand how choice was handled in wicked hearts. Unclear/indirect mess.
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Post by colfoley on Dec 23, 2016 23:17:27 GMT
The bad thing about it is gaming is always three years behind its own trend. Its sometimes a wonder the game industry can even function and be popular and profitable. Movies kinda work the same way I believe if you consider the MCU vs the struggling, but starting, DCU. It's because the bigwigs at the top who set things in motion at the major studios want to be where they see other studios making their money, and that's how competition works but because of the cycle of a project which is usually 1-2+ years in movies it's the same thing as in games where dev cycles are simply longer so the "trend-delay" feels bigger. The reason the DC EU is struggling more then the MCU is the mere fact they are trying to copy Marvel's success and 'do what Marvel is doing' without any of Marvel's substance. IE have a big fight movie between your two well known characters without bothering to establish something like...3...4...5? of those major characters in the movie. Actually though what I have noticed is, oddly enough, movies seem to have this weird ability to predict future trends. You have two movies released in the same year, Spectre and Mission Impossible Rogue Nation...and there really wasn't a trend from movies to do that sort of thing at the time, but yet both movies had eerilie similar plots.
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Cyonan
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Post by Cyonan on Dec 23, 2016 23:49:05 GMT
I wouldn't say it's Skyrim's success in particular that developers are keen on aping. I'd say most games tend to end up with the Assassin's Creed brand of open world. Maybe I have too much confidence in developers but I just can't imagine that they could so completely misinterpret the core design successes of Skyrim that we end up with games like Inquisition. Maybe the developers are just starry-eyed and think that maybe they'll finally be the ones to translate cinematic storytelling to vast open environments, but they have to know that Skyrim only works because the writers relinquish almost all of their control. That's to say nothing about mechanical freedom and environmental density. The logistics just don't work out. Assassin's Creed, however, has a formula that seems a bit easier to copy: just make more activities; narrative and mechanical freedom be damned. I still don't know how developers assume that their environments will be fun to explore without an equivalent to free-running, but I digress. The way I imagine that actually went down was that a number of the higher ups agreed that the game should be more like Skyrim because it was so successful and the developers were kind of stuck trying to make it work. Either that or they really did think they would be the ones to make it work, but ended up letting the side content suffer greatly as a result. Couldn't stand how choice was handled in wicked hearts. Unclear/indirect mess. It might just be me, but I like it when the game isn't always 100% clear about what the outcome is going to end up as. It makes things feel a bit more real since all I really know is what my actions will be. I don't know how everybody else is going to act.
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by Andrew Lucas on Dec 24, 2016 3:23:07 GMT
Below average game. Not a good example, and Bioware should take nothing from it.
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slimgrin
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Post by slimgrin on Dec 24, 2016 4:21:56 GMT
I can't fault any of Bioware's games for getting this wrong. I think they understand the balance perfectly well. Not worried about it.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2016 20:08:33 GMT
Would have loved Alpha Protocol more if the mission designs weren't linear gameplay wise (i.e. "You can't pass Marburg's villa if you didn't invest in martial arts" or "You can't fistfight SIE if you want a boss fight with her")
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Post by Link"Guess"ski on Dec 24, 2016 20:55:27 GMT
Looking at the Andromeda TGA trailer you get circa three sneak peaks at loyalty missions if you look to the right side of the screen where it states which objectives are active, and in all 3 they showed you using all sorts of sick combat abilities and lots of "bro" moments and headshots... and i'm just worried it's always, always combat and dialogue is just some bonus that you do in between but it never matters. The whole point of that TGA trailer was to show off combat gameplay, because we hadn't seen any up until that point. I think your fears are, at this point in time, completely unfounded. The TGA trailer was a full blown in-game features preview. We saw combat, multiplayer, conversations, loyalty missions, Nomad and my fear comes from the fact that they showed clips of 3 different Loyalty missions and the footage was all combat. The showdown with Sloanne Kelly was also weak because it was all variations to the same response, but I digress. At least we saw dialogue, and I know the loyalty footage was of the middle of a mission. I just hope the final game has substantial, story-driven side quests, where combat is entirely possible but completely optional.
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Post by Link"Guess"ski on Dec 24, 2016 20:57:43 GMT
Below average game. Not a good example, and Bioware should take nothing from it. Combat sucked ass, but everything relates to RPG elements were fine especially the narrative side of the game. The dialogue system was amazing and the branching paths were impressive as was the sense of roleplaying as an undercover agent.
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