First Dragon Age infos revealed!

[Slowtrain]

The alien setting was virtually unknown to most CRPG players, so it was a given that trying to market it to people who were familiar with more generic fantasy worlds was a risk that might not work out for the best. That took its toll as well.

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I don't disagree with that. I think PS:T failed for a variety of reasons

 

 

As for inconsequential stuff... The Baldur's Gate series and Knights of the Old Republic are grounded on pretty inconsequential elements, too. Players walk from A to B and are drowned out in repetitive combat that most often is irrelevant to their quest. I think Gromnir pointed out that with KoTOR, Bioware remade PS:T with a more recognizable setting, while replacing the reading with combat. I don't think he's too far off from that.

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Irrelevant combat is probably more interesting than irrelevant dialogue. Not for everybody of course, but maybe for the mainsteam audience. Anyway PS:T was the embodiment of irrelevant combat and had a huge amount of irrelevant reading. I think it would have been a better game if a lot of that text had been edited out. Stream-lined so to speak.

 

Fallout and even BG struck a better balance between time spent reading and time spent doing.

 

edit: quote fixing

Edited December 4, 2006 by CrashGirl

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Can't and won't really argue with that since I agree.

[roshan]

The alien setting was virtually unknown to most CRPG players, so it was a given that trying to market it to people who were familiar with more generic fantasy worlds was a risk that might not work out for the best. That took its toll as well.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I don't disagree with that. I think PS:T failed for a variety of reasons

 

 

As for inconsequential stuff... The Baldur's Gate series and Knights of the Old Republic are grounded on pretty inconsequential elements, too. Players walk from A to B and are drowned out in repetitive combat that most often is irrelevant to their quest. I think Gromnir pointed out that with KoTOR, Bioware remade PS:T with a more recognizable setting, while replacing the reading with combat. I don't think he's too far off from that.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Irrelevant combat is probably more interesting than irrelevant dialogue. Not for everybody of course, but maybe for the mainsteam audience. Anyway PS:T was the embodiment of irrelevant combat and had a huge amount of irrelevant reading. I think it would have been a better game if a lot of that text had been edited out. Stream-lined so to speak.

 

Fallout and even BG struck a better balance between time spent reading and time spent doing.

 

edit: quote fixing

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Time spent doing? Doing what? Fedex quests and mowing down the black areas of empty maps?

[Morgoth]

I agree PST had too much ballast to read, they better should have had an editor.

With Dragon Age though, and all the things you now can show via graphics/animations, reading through tons of lines would even let it appear more unattractive. I prefer to engage characters that response to the choices I make, rather than having 5 options that do nothing.

Edited December 4, 2006 by Morgoth

[Musopticon?]

What PS:T needed was refit of the combat mechanics. But nevermind that now.

 

DA looks yummy, but it's really hard to see it deliver when the last Bioworks have been so crummy.

[Diamond]

Anyway PS:T was the embodiment of irrelevant combat and had a huge amount of irrelevant reading.  I think it would have been a better game if a lot of that text had been edited out.  Stream-lined so to speak

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Or you mean dumbed-down? For me, it was the reason #2 for loving this game (after atmosphere). Oh well. To each their own, I guess.

[mkreku]

Yes, because being able to read pseudo-intellectual fantasy dialogue is truly a sign of great intelligence. Never mind game play, never mind unessential to the story, it's all about feeling intellectual!

 

The reason Planescape: Torment failed was that it was a one-trick pony. If you enjoyed the setting, you had a chance to delve deeper into the story and you could enjoy everything the game had to offer. However, if you had no interest in the planes and the main character, there was nothing else the game had to offer. I guess you could call it focused or niche, but to me that's just bad game design.

 

But I do love how everyone who enjoyed Planescape: Torment are like, "I enjoyed a game, therefore I am more intelligent than thou"..

[Slowtrain]

Or you mean dumbed-down? For me, it was the reason #2 for loving this game (after atmosphere). Oh well. To each their own, I guess.

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No, I just mean edited. Even the best authors have editors. Sometimes, oftentimes, less is actually more.

[Diamond]

Yes, because being able to read pseudo-intellectual fantasy dialogue is truly a sign of great intelligence. Never mind game play, never mind unessential to the story, it's all about feeling intellectual!

 

The reason Planescape: Torment failed was that it was a one-trick pony. If you enjoyed the setting, you had a chance to delve deeper into the story and you could enjoy everything the game had to offer. However, if you had no interest in the planes and the main character, there was nothing else the game had to offer. I guess you could call it focused or niche, but to me that's just bad game design.

 

But I do love how everyone who enjoyed Planescape: Torment are like, "I enjoyed a game, therefore I am more intelligent than thou"..

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Funny, when did I mention anything about being intellectual? CrashGirl said that one thing that I liked about the game should have been pulled out. I disagreed. Don't try to look for things which are not there.

 

Oh, and

"Also players are different nowadays, during 80s and 90s games had to be challenging, now they must be easy and entertaining."

 

I wonder if he's right.. It sure feels that way

 

I guess that's why I feel most games of today are 'dumbed down' for the console crowd.

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Hypocrite.

[alanschu]

I remember my first playthrough of Torment ending short. The opening conversation with Morte was a bit eye-opening because I was not expecting to do quite so much reading.

 

 

As I heard more and more about the game being les awesome, I gave it another try. I'm glad I did, because I really did enjoy the whole experience. But I don't think it's a stretch that the style of game design they used is certainly a niche. I prefer it to a wide open sandbox like Morrowind/Oblivion myself.

[mkreku]

..had a huge amount of irrelevant reading.  I think it would have been a better game if a lot of that text had been edited out.

Or you mean dumbed-down?

Funny, when did I mention anything about being intellectual?

In this context, it sounds like editing out a lot of unnecessary text is related to making the game dumber, as if being able to read through ten thousand words that does not interest you somehow makes you more intelligent than the player who enjoys playing the game instead.

 

"Also players are different nowadays, during 80s and 90s games had to be challenging, now they must be easy and entertaining."

 

I wonder if he's right.. It sure feels that way

 

I guess that's why I feel most games of today are 'dumbed down' for the console crowd.

Hypocrite.

Ok, explain to me why I am a hypocrite? In the above quote I'm guessing that the reason why I feel console games are dumbed down is because the games are getting easier and easier. It doesn't really have anything to do with intelligence, unless you enjoy playing games published by Mensa. Your definition of dumbing down is if you have to READ less. Two different definitions, yes? So how am I a hypocrite? You may want to look up the definition of the word first.

[roshan]

Intelligent people generally like reading. Less than intelligent people dont like reading so much. People who are dumb tend not to like reading at all. These are facts.

 

Based on the above facts, we can conclude that those who dont like PST are not the best that the human race has to offer, intelligence wise.

[Volourn]

"These are facts."

 

Not really. Circumstantial evidence at best.

[Arkan]

Based on the above facts, we can conclude that those who dont like PST are not the best that the human race has to offer, intelligence wise.

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That makes you one of the best the human race has to offer, intelligence wise? Pretty bold statement.

[alanschu]

Intelligent people generally like reading. Less than intelligent people dont like reading so much. People who are dumb tend not to like reading at all. These are facts.

 

Based on the above facts, we can conclude that those who dont like PST are not the best that the human race has to offer, intelligence wise.

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Facts? My Mom reads waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than me. But no offense to me mum, I demolish her in overall intellectual ability.

[Morgoth]

Reading educates/bias you, but doesn't make you more intelligent.

[Cantousent]

She'll get smarter as you get older, alan. :Cant's poking alan in the ribs icon:

 

Anyhow, I liked PS:T. It's my favorite game so far. I completely agree with Diamond that the atmosphere made the game. I also agree with mkreku that folks who couldn't find interest in the setting were cut off from much of what made the game so enjoyable to the rest of us.

 

PS:T is one of the few games I consider art. The design team followed a real vision. I think that's why it won so many awards but received such a tepid response commercially. Folks can see how hard the design team worked to create the game. They can see that the design team crafted a game with an overarching vision that certainly transcends a game.

 

I'm probably not the smartest person around these parts. Maybe even one of the dumbest. Nevertheless, the argument isn't so simple as thinking the folks who didn't like the game are illiterate fools and the folks who did like the game are pretentious snobs. Some folks who didn't like the game undoubtedly didn't understand it. Some folks can't understand pacman. It's a cruel world. Some folks who like the game really do believe their personal tastes set them a notch higher than the unwashed masses. Too bad for them.

 

The rest of us should avoid the gross generalizations and discuss the merits of the game.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Too much reading wasn't really the issue. You're likely to read the same or as much in console RPGs and the quality of the writing in those ranges from passable to abysmal; yet, people still read them. The problem is that, like CrashGirl pointed out, editing was necessary. I'm not sure removing 'fluff' would have been beneficial (since much of the filler just gave a distinctive nature to the dialogue) but the flow of dialogue was often too much to handle. At given points we'd have tons of dialogue with some character that would last on for ages. Looking back at Ravel, she was one of the best NPCs I have ever encountered in a CRPG so the lenghtly exposition was welcomed and even necessary. The problem starts when you have such lenghtly convos with secondary or irrelevant NPCs which just drag the game's pace.

[Volourn]

The best example of 'too much fluff' was when the one npc gives the history of the Blood War. Most of that was unnesseccary word vomit that added nothing (or very little) to the story that was being told. In fact, i'd wager that even those who actually like PST (like me) probably skimmed a lot of that dialogue because the fellow was just regurating word vomit which is very gross.

[roshan]

Based on the above facts, we can conclude that those who dont like PST are not the best that the human race has to offer, intelligence wise.

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That makes you one of the best the human race has to offer, intelligence wise? Pretty bold statement.

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No, far from it. But certainly much higher than average. By "not the best" I was letting the PST bashers off easily. I dont want them to feel bad about themselves.

[Gfted1]

Ive never played PS:T but, TBH, the constant cutscenes in NWN2 are killing me to death. Way too much yikkidy-yak, IMO.

 

Meet new person

5 minutes of cutscenes while you navigate the responces

Walk 20 ft

Assinine bickering breaks out over how to handle a situation

Repeat

[Slowtrain]

Intelligent people generally like reading. Less than intelligent people dont like reading so much. People who are dumb tend not to like reading at all. These are facts.

 

Based on the above facts, we can conclude that those who dont like PST are not the best that the human race has to offer, intelligence wise.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

It's quite true that I am not one of the best of humanity's children, intelligence-wise or any other-wise. Nonetheless, I quite enjoy reading. Books, cartoons, screenplays, magazines, etc and so forth.

 

I don't however enjoy reading my games. A little reading can be a good thing. Fallout 1, for example, which is probably my favorite crpg, never struck me as a game in whcih the reading was an onerous task.

 

In PS:T, the reading struck me as an onerous task.

 

IMO, PS:T would have been well-served by cutting the combat altogther, editing down some of the text-heavy areas, and adding more adventure game elements. As a D&D adventure game, I think it would have been more focused and probably more generally well-recieved

[Wistrik]

It depends on what I'm reading. PS:T was tedious reading for me, so I quickly grew weary of it and moved on. Plus I'd rather read from a page than from a glowing screen.

 

I have mixed feelings on dialogs. If they're spoken, I'd rather not see text because almost always there's an error in the text. There is no dialog text in Half-Life 2 (in my install) and I love it. Characters say their part and things move on. Games are becoming more and more like interactive movies, and I never watch a movie with subtitles enabled.

 

I agree about NWN2's cutscenes. Not only are they long-winded, but they're chained together in some places. You can't leave the computer to do something else because the game requires input once in awhile. So there I sit waiting to be able to do something again. Clicking through the dialog works, but that's a lot of clicking. In future expansions I hope they shorten the cutscenes to something more like Baldur's Gate 2, which I feel were appropriate length. They conveyed what was happening and didn't require all day to do it.

 

Part of me hopes Dragon Age will have the option to disable text so that we listen to what's being said, but can offer text responses. This was possible in Diablo 2, a relatively old game.

[Pop]

What? Big cutscenes? Sure, they were big, but they didn't particularly unnecessary to me. The cutscenes involving Black Garius were obviously written like a novel that shifts between the first and third person. The player is let in on info so they have an idea of what is going on beyond their character without the character being privy to it. I personally found the BG2 dream sequences to be much more annoying than the NWN2 cutscene dialogue.

 

I can't expect NWN2 to not have a lot of text because I can't expect every RPG to be like KOTOR, with full voice acting for every line. That would add a LOT to the already large game. And I read faster than I listen to voice actors. If I can get subtitles, I will. Most of the time I'll cycle through dialogue pretty quick. Not usually if I've never heard the VA before.

 

As for not being able to leave your computer, the cutscenes provide a pause option, they always have.

 

The best example of 'too much fluff' was when the one npc gives the history of the Blood War. Most of that was unnesseccary word vomit that added nothing (or very little) to the story that was being told. In fact, i'd wager that even those who actually like PST (like me) probably skimmed a lot of that dialogue because the fellow was just regurating word vomit which is very gross.

I don't remember that being a required dialogue. And I'd probably hate an RPG in which all dialogue was strictly functional. NPCs are supposed to be characters, and I'm not sure of a way in which to establish a character without dialogue. I think the point of the Blood War guy was that he was a windbag. He was also explaining the context of the game. I don't know if you noticed, but there are several running themes to PST, and the Blood War is one of them.

 

If I had never played D&D and there wasn't a lot of dialogue, PST would have been intolerably confusing from the outset. Hell, it was pretty confusing even with my broad foundational knowledge of the conventional D&D universe.

[Wistrik]

I suppose my annoyance comes from playing for hours, intent on getting to a certain point before I stop, only to be faced with yet another cutscene. Under more relaxed conditions I'm happy to sit back and watch.

 

From the standpoint that much of the situation with Jon in BG2 was a bit contrived, yes, those cutscenes could be annoying, but I liked how they were done from a technical standpoint.

 

I had another look at that town screenshot from DA, and it looks like a combination of NWN and Dreamfall, with perhaps some Ultima thrown in. I guess everyone's going to look a bit generic when it comes to towns. They may not include a toolset on initial shipment of the game, but if the OC proves to be a lot of fun, I'm going to be hankering for a toolset so I can make my own modules.

 

Hopefully the maps will be bigger. I had an idea to implement Ultima IV with NWN2, but the maps are too dinky to properly portray the Britannian continent. This game needs a MMORPG style world renderer that can handle huge continents many miles across. Ultima IX did something close to that with its heightmap, so I was a bit disappointed that NWN2, a much newer and more advanced game, was relegated to console style mini-maps. I have to wonder if DA will be any better.