Dragon Age

[entrerix]

i like anakin in those prequel movies in a perverse sort of way.

 

this dude grows up to be an egomaniacal genocidest... it makes sense that he was a stupid brat kid with a smart alecky tone and pompous attitude. remember how much of a **** darth vader is in star wars? "your lack of faith is disturbing" dude was a bully, i think the brat kid and awful hayden really nailed how obnoxious vader must have been as a human before becoming the cyborg monstrosity of the original films.

 

of course we all like picturing vader as the evil warlord guy, but i swear, in star wars, he was just a bully who actually had some real power. "now i am the master!", yeah sure vader, you really showed who was the better swordsmen fighting an 80 year old man while you're sitting pretty in a powered up cybernetic body.

Edited October 23, 2009 by entrerix

[Oner]

If you want the really bizzare (and for a further trip away from the dragon age subject) .. the Star Wars Revenge of the Sith sold in Hong Kong.. with the english subtitles on the dubbed chinese track.. and it's just..

Wasn't that the korean dub?

 

entrerix: I guess people expected more majesty and less 20-years-old-little-snot-we-all-know-from-school.

 

On topic: Journeys that buggy piece of flash ****, you'd think an experienced company could make a better flash game then 1-2 guys doing it for free.

Edited October 23, 2009 by Oner

[Maria Caliban]

Remember how it's never outright stated who/what the G-Man is, but is constantly hinted at? Makes up half the fun of Half-Life.

 

Perhaps, but hardly true of the movies quoted - for example Star Wars is one of the most obsessively detailed settings ever and is all the duller for it. We know exactly who Indiana Jones is (OK, elaborated over a lengthy story arc) and so on.

 

Big Trouble in Little China is an old favourite of mine, though, and it is laden with ambiguity. In fact, Kurt Russell's character is an everyman wanderer type.

 

 

Star Wars has become obsessively detailed, but he said the original triology, not everything that's come after. I question the extent to which the setting is dull because of details.

[Raithe]

It's one of those odd things.

Sometimes an abundance of detail can be great and seriously add to the atmosphere.

Sometimes it can just bury a story in amazing dullness.

[entrerix]

entrerix: I guess people expected more majesty and less 20-years-old-little-snot-we-all-know-from-school.

 

 

totally, thats why i said i liked it in a perverse sort of way. it's not what i wanted AT ALL, but after watching all 6 movies in a marathon session, originals first, then prequels, it sort of clicked with me. vader has always been intended to be a somewhat immature ****. his dark majesty is all show, he's really just immature and kinda pathetic. its just a LOT more pronounced in the prequels because you dont get to see him be badass at all.

 

for the record: the prequels are an abomination that i wish could be undone. perhaps the greatest film travesty in all of filmdom

Edited October 23, 2009 by entrerix

[jjc]

Perhaps, but hardly true of the movies quoted - for example Star Wars is one of the most obsessively detailed settings ever and is all the duller for it. We know exactly who Indiana Jones is (OK, elaborated over a lengthy story arc) and so on.

 

Big Trouble in Little China is an old favourite of mine, though, and it is laden with ambiguity. In fact, Kurt Russell's character is an everyman wanderer type.

When I say "Star Wars," I'm just referring to the original movies, before the comics, before the novels, before the prequel films, when their goal was to give you the impression of jumping onto a massive story already in progress. They don't explain exactly who the Empire are or why they exist, but they do include audio and visual cues to relate them to the Nazis and relate the general setting to World War II, specifically a kind of fantasy version of the war already seen in action/adventure films from the previous decades. Why is the Empire run by an evil wizard? Because a lot of complicated stuff happened in the "past." Darth Vader gets the barest sketch of an explanation but it's enough to work.

 

By "Indiana Jones," I just mean Temple of Doom, which is designed to be a standalone entry that functions without any prior knowledge of its predecessor. Again, you jump into the middle of a situation, the conflict with Lao Che, that will never be fully explained. The whole movie is about following a rather mercenary version of Indiana Jones, the treasure hunter, as he journeys into the unknown and learns to care about something other than "fortune and glory." The unknown gets to stay unknown. How does Mola Ram's magic work? What does it imply if his evil god actually exists? These issues aren't addressed.

 

Buckaroo Banzai is also designed to feel like an entry somewhere in the middle of a series of pulp or comic book stories, with numerous references to past adventures and the looming figure of Banzai's nemesis Hanoi Xan, who makes no appearance in the film and doesn't figure into the plot at all. Banzai is the most self-conscious of all the films I mentioned, and practically instructs the viewer through dialog to learn to understand ambiguity in storytelling:

 

"No matter where you go, there you are."

 

"Why is there a watermelon there?"

"I'll tell you later."

 

In all of these cases, it's sufficient for the audience to fill the gaps with their own imaginations. Official film attempts to "complete" the stories of Star Wars and Indiana Jones turned them into something far less interesting than they originally were. It takes skill to recognize when ambiguity is appropriate. There are situations when a question alone will be more interesting than an answer a writer would supply, and there are situations that demand answers.

 

Outside of cutscenes, CRPGs basically tell their stories by allowing the player to run around and vivisect the world, look in everyone's cabinets, chat up every NPC until they spill exactly who they are and what they're doing. It's a like handing the player a manual on a campaign setting that's been torn into bits and prompting them to put it back together. It's undesirable to restrict a player's actions, but you could restrict their ability to gain that kind of omniscience by carefully managing the amount of information the world is willing to give up through dialog and other interactions.

 

 

 

 

 

By the way, W.D. Richter, director of Buckaroo Banzai, was responsible for the massive rewrite that, among other things, switched Big Trouble in Little China to present-day from its original incarnation as a western set in the 19th century.

[Purkake]

If Baldur's Gate is defined by anything, it's the scale of the games and the variety of stuff you got to do. BG II, especially, compiles a whole lot of popular D&D scenarios into one title: fight dragons, fight a demi-lich, fight a tunnel full of beholders, fight a mind flayer city, visit the drow, etc. There were cities, towns, underground tombs, countryside inbetween, and I think everything felt reasonably dense in terms of quests and things to discover. They also put some effort into acknowledging different play styles with multiple kits per basic class type, the stronghold quests, etc.

 

I'd be impressed if BioWare managed to replicate that scale and that variety. I can't speak to the mechanics of Dragon Age because I can't get enough of a sense of them from the materials available. I have gotten a sense of their storytelling and world-building, though, and it's reminding me a lot of their recent stuff like Mass Effect. To start, the player character's place in the world is similarly handled by assignment to the position of "super-agent."

 

Baldur's Gate also gave the PC an innately special position in the world, but the stakes were of a fairly personal nature and were integrated into a storyline that stretched from the first game to the last. Dealing with your inheritance in Baldur's Gate is similar in many ways to dealing with your immortality in Planescape: Torment. Your motivation in both games is to discover more about yourself and stop the people who are trying to kill you.

 

Shepard in Mass Effect is a soldier and his mission is personal in that the title he holds obligates him to defeat the villain and protect the all the NPCs populating the world. A player's interest in this plot will vary depending on how much they care about those NPCs and the world they inhabit. They'll always care less about them than they do their own character.

 

Approaches to world construction in Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect are entirely different. From what I've seen of Dragon Age, one of the largest red flags is that "dragon" is just a type of demon in that world, and that the DA demons seem to be as ubiquitous as ME's Geth. Compare this to the approach Baldur's Gate took from D&D, where dragons are specific organisms with individual histories/personalities/motivations and enough power to claim territory and wealth for themselves.

 

Without the D&D license, BioWare try to design worlds that are streamlined and logical, but in doing so err towards oversimplification and blandness. Their working conditions are different. Dragon Age was conceived by a team working within time and budgetary constraints during the development of a single project. Baldur's Gate got to borrow everything from 2nd Edition AD&D, the sum of decades of work from writers and designers who themselves were drawing on vast histories of mythology and literature for characters and concepts to lift. It's insufficient to describe the Forgotten Realms of that time period as "generic fantasy" when it carried so much weight behind it and was linked to all the other campaign settings by both the planes of Planescape and the space of Spelljammer. Look also to Marvel comics in the 80s for an example of a system for "shared universe" storytelling hitting a peak of madness.

 

If BioWare want to continue creating their game worlds without exterior aid in the narrative department, they ought to screen The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the original Star Wars films, Big Trouble in Little China. There's a bright period in popular culture's history when some smart people figured out that you can expand these fictions through suggestion alone, that mystery and ambiguity aren't the enemy. You really don't have to fill in all the holes, or reduce the work until it's a size where all the holes can be filled.

Summary: DA is not BG2.

 

While you do make some good points, this post is not the "OMGZ best post ever" that some people make it out to be. First of all, there's a ton of people who describe FR as "generic fantasy". Secondly, you don't need a super fleshed out setting, to make story good, all you need is clever writing hinting at things that are out there, kind of like HL2 does.(but I guess that was kind of your point)

 

The main character shtick does sound pretty weak sauce, though. Bio seems to be taking the easy road in that department, maybe it's to get the expanding audience interested.

Edited October 24, 2009 by Purkake

[Wrath of Dagon]

To misquote Hemingway, a writer needs to know a lot more about his subject than he puts on paper. Also my impression is DAO setting has a lot of detail which will not be in the game, but may be in the Codex if you care to read it.

 

Edit: And there will be a lot of things which are ambiguous, such as where did Darkspawn come from, does the Maker exist, and is the legend of Andraste true?

Edited October 24, 2009 by Wrath of Dagon

[theslug]

To misquote Hemingway, a writer needs to know a lot more about his subject than he puts on paper. Also my impression is DAO setting has a lot of detail which will not be in the game, but may be in the Codex if you care to read it.

 

Edit: And there will be a lot of things which are ambiguous, such as where did Darkspawn come from, does the Maker exist, and is the legend of Andraste true?

As far as I know they've already explained where the darkspawn come from in like 50% of the trailers that have been shown. Something about mages becoming corrupted and becoming monsters or some other nonsense.

[MacMichael]

To misquote Hemingway, a writer needs to know a lot more about his subject than he puts on paper. Also my impression is DAO setting has a lot of detail which will not be in the game, but may be in the Codex if you care to read it.

 

Edit: And there will be a lot of things which are ambiguous, such as where did Darkspawn come from, does the Maker exist, and is the legend of Andraste true?

As far as I know they've already explained where the darkspawn come from in like 50% of the trailers that have been shown. Something about mages becoming corrupted and becoming monsters or some other nonsense.

 

According to Chantry legend, mages destroyed Heaven and they were punished for it by being turned into the first darkspawn. The same Chantry that kills mages that aren't under their control and who gain their power by being the prime human religion that saved us all from the evil of mages. Maybe it's true, or maybe it's just them holding on to their power.

[alanschu]

MacMichael wins!

[Monte Carlo]

Dragon Age's setting is fully fleshed-out and yeah, some of it will never get used but is sitting there in the background like the stock in a well-prepared broth.

 

But...

 

I like the gist of jjc's argument a lot. As DA stands, Dave Gaider has had the opportunity to live the Dungeon Master's dream and make the ultimate homebrew campaign world. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I get the impression that we MUST love Ferelden and it's marvellous NPCs, the games mechanics spring from this. It's the ghost in the machine. Thr NPCs are in a camp... is this a gameplay consideration or a 'LOVE THESE DEEP NPCs?' consideration? Probably a bit of both.

 

OTOH, I love the BG series but loathe the Forgotten Realms. Go figure. It was for the reasons jjc articulated better than I could.

 

Anyway, imagine my character is (say) the Dwarf peasant rogue dude from DA:O. Why should he know anything about anything? Why not just drop him into this huge, intricate, swirling world and see what happens? On one level the character might not be interested in legends and the Chantry and the Grey Wardens... he might just want food, loot and action. Alternatively, he might become obsessed with the minutiae and politics of the world (which is there if you wanted). He can investigate, find out more, be rewarded in other ways. As it stands, the gamer is likely to be fed Ferelden lore like a foie gras goose.

 

I'm about to go completely off-beam now so bear with me.

 

Do you like The Wire or Generation Kill? I do, a lot. They dump you in an alien world (a squad of American detectives, a Marine Recon platoon) and make no allowances for your ignorance of their mores. You have to catch up. You have to think (it took me until mid season-two of The Wire to figure out waht a Re-Up was). It's challenging and demanding. I know that sort of entry into a game is probably a bit too strong, but to capture the essence of the approach in a CRPG would be deeply cool. I'm not a Planescape fan, but this was one of the things it did well, and allowed me to discover at my own pace. Shame there wasn't any action to get in the way but that's another story.

 

Cheers

MC

[alanschu]

As it stands, the gamer is likely to be fed Ferelden lore like a foie gras goose.

 

For the most part, you find out about the lore if you talk with people that will tell you about the place (usually in a creative way that makes it seem like you're not just being lectured even though you're an adult), and through codex entries.

 

IMO, it's definitely not rammed down your throat. There's tons of Codex entries that I didn't bother reading. And the codex entries are often updated as you learn more about something. So you can't just say "Oh, there's X things in the codex, so there's X instances of stuff to learn"

 

My first playthrough I didn't even know of the teacher teaching some kids that asks you if you want to help give the lecture about Ferelden (i.e. an opportunity for you as a player to learn, while your character technically could know since he was also taught).

Edited October 24, 2009 by alanschu

[Oner]

Animal slaughter gameplay That fire storm-cyclone-thing looked cool, and this was only on X360.

 

Bridge ambush

 

Dog and bandits Heh, I'm sooo gonna tell Morrigan to piss off.

[Monte Carlo]

^ the GUI and radial controls for spells look very well done, am looking forward to the battles.... altho' I imagine friendly fire will be a bit of an issue.

[Oner]

I wonder if you can set in that tactical scripting menu that your companions retreat when the mage starts doing his thing.

Edited October 24, 2009 by Oner

[Monte Carlo]

Most people will just switch friendly fire off, although there are detailed NPC behaviour settings.

 

I'll keep it on, it ruins it for me if my party are immune to bloody great fireballs, it's like throwing hand grenades and not having them harm you 'cos you're not a 'baddy'.

[Maria Caliban]

Most people will just switch friendly fire off, although there are detailed NPC behaviour settings.

 

Friendly fire is on unless you play on easy, which the majority of gamers don't do.

 

... As DA stands, Dave Gaider has had the opportunity to live the Dungeon Master's dream and make the ultimate homebrew campaign world. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I get the impression that we MUST love Ferelden and it's marvellous NPCs, the games mechanics spring from this. It's the ghost in the machine. Thr NPCs are in a camp... is this a gameplay consideration or a 'LOVE THESE DEEP NPCs?' consideration? Probably a bit of both.

 

David Gaider probably had nothing to do with the camp system. It

Edited October 24, 2009 by Maria Caliban

[Monte Carlo]

^ sorry to disappoint, but I actually rate Dave. And I guess you have to have a bit of an ego to write, which is what he does.

 

It's just that I don't really like Bioware's take on 'story-driven,' I find it intrusive. So maybe I'm guilty of using 'Dave' as shorthand for the Bio design ethos when I shouldn't.

 

Cheers

MC

[Oner]

^ sorry to disappoint, but I actually rate Dave. And I guess you have to have a bit of an ego to write, which is what he does.

I have been told there's a really funny novel (Cyberiada IIRC), and the first thing the author does is berate himself in the foreword.

[Nepenthe]

^ sorry to disappoint, but I actually rate Dave. And I guess you have to have a bit of an ego to write, which is what he does.

 

It's just that I don't really like Bioware's take on 'story-driven,' I find it intrusive. So maybe I'm guilty of using 'Dave' as shorthand for the Bio design ethos when I shouldn't.

 

Cheers

MC

 

I dunno, Dave G. gets a free pass from me due to his work on Ascension. I think it goes a long way to show how passionate the guy is.

[Azure79]

I want friendly fire. I loved timing and spacing my fireballs just right in the IE games to my frontline fighters retreated just in time, or held the line while an immense fireball exploded directly in front of them, but never touching them.

[Purkake]

I want friendly fire. I loved timing and spacing my fireballs just right in the IE games to my frontline fighters retreated just in time, or held the line while an immense fireball exploded directly in front of them, but never touching them.

 

It was nearly impossibly to predict how far the fire would go, they didn't show the radius when you were aiming it like in NWN2 and other newer games.

[Nepenthe]

I want friendly fire. I loved timing and spacing my fireballs just right in the IE games to my frontline fighters retreated just in time, or held the line while an immense fireball exploded directly in front of them, but never touching them.

 

It was nearly impossibly to predict how far the fire would go, they didn't show the radius when you were aiming it like in NWN2 and other newer games.

 

If you used fireballs enough, you got the gist fast enough. Or loaded the fighters with fire res gear.

 

If I was playing on the pc side, I'd never imagine turning off friendly fire. Since my situation in life forces me to go with a console version, I don't think I can be bothered with the extra hoops the console controller adds to the mix. :/

[Oner]

I usually held the line with the PC char (wearing boots of speed) till the mage finished her spell, then outran the blast.

Or played Guess the Range. Good times.

 

 

Why do these surveys keep asking what I like/don't like/want to change in the damn flash game?

the

same

as

last

time

you

asked

Edited October 24, 2009 by Oner