It better be worth this $7, you filthy mangina or I'm going to... send you mean PMs!
Dragon Age: Inquisition (Plot Details in Spoilers!)
- Thread starter Eonan
- Start date
Joke's on you, they cancelled that DLC, so if it does get game time, it'll probably be part of DA3 and then you're $60 in the hole.
WHAT NOW?!
Just to amend something (since this kind of is the keystone of the post).
It's a fact that you don't have to fill in the blanks. It's not a fact that there's more of a storytelling aspect with a voiced protagonist.
Some people do RPGs for precisely the reason that they want to play in the role of a character - with part of that appeal being filling in your own blanks. Some people don't want to put the mental work into doing that, and so I don't begrudge them preferring games that do the imagination work for them.
But when I'm voicing my own characters, the storytelling aspect is every bit as strong, if not more so, than if I'm having it done for me.
They should have made every single part of the story a hyperbole by Varric, narrated by him in every way; not just the prologue and his personal sidequest. Would have made it far better.
Tuco
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Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Yeah the most recent time I played through, I thought it was kinda weird how badass I was in the prologue. Totally forgot that Varric is exaggerating everything until the scene cuts back to him. The shit where he single handedly charges into Bartram's mansion was pretty funny too.
I never noticed the silent character in DA1's first playthrough either. Sitting down with it again about 6 months ago though it was VERY obvious to me. As was the Dragonborn's in Skyrim, I find those long silent pauses in diolague painfully obvious now.
It's a semantics argument - I use storytelling as a verb, and if the story is not written into the game and told to you, then yea, there's less of it. That's the fact part.
The why you want one over the other - you like filling in blanks, you want to hear how your character reacts, 8 billion reasons later...those are all the reasons how it appeals to you. Voiced protagonists tend to make me feel closer to my game and my story, because not only have I lived through it while playing, but with the choices I've picked, I've practically coded a character in the game myself to react and slay dragons in a manner I dictate. Previous games in the past (especially those with silent heroes) don't quite get that far, because you won't ever see your choices reflected in that character. Neither is better than the other, but I think it's an argument about MOTHERFUCKING WORDS AND WHAT THEY MEAN when we sit and argue the storytelling aspect of it. No one is "telling" you a story; they're giving you some key aspects of your persona and from there it's game on.
"See this spot on the character sheet? That's where you write your back story, because that shit is relevant."
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Maybe it's just being a min/maxing power gamer but I find it very difficult to attach myself to the imagined emotions of my character in an RPG. Even if I start out with a coherent sense of my character, or even if I'm doing a replay focusing on a non-ideal set of characteristics I find that all RPGs devolve into the same 'everything in the world is just a source of gold, xp and items to me' approach to the game and my character's goals.
A voiced character reminds me that yes, what I'm doing has a purpose more than being the ultimate badass.
A voiced character reminds me that yes, what I'm doing has a purpose more than being the ultimate badass.
I don't think it's strictly the voice that does it. Tuco brought up GTA3 earlier and I made a joke about it, but that silent protagonist(antagonist?) had more character through his actions than my Grey Warden who just stared blankly at the screen while I decided what he was going to say.
Same with Chrono Trigger. Chrono never said a word, but you had a sense of who he was through his actions and his sprites.
Really it boils down to investment in the story by the game's designers. Bethesda keeps getting ridiculed because they don't make that investment since that's not what they think their game is about. Their philosophy is make a big world, populate it with things and a story will appear even if that story ends up being about taking an arrow to the knee.
Taking the risk and telling your own story I think in the end has the greater potential.
Same with Chrono Trigger. Chrono never said a word, but you had a sense of who he was through his actions and his sprites.
Really it boils down to investment in the story by the game's designers. Bethesda keeps getting ridiculed because they don't make that investment since that's not what they think their game is about. Their philosophy is make a big world, populate it with things and a story will appear even if that story ends up being about taking an arrow to the knee.
Taking the risk and telling your own story I think in the end has the greater potential.
You aren't a min/maxer as much as a cheater and sploiter, Tuco. That is probably your problem. It is hard to get attatched to characters when you cheatcode past the early stuff!
Right. I can imagine that defending crossroad keep from the king of shadows is just one step in my epic god damn life, and I can imagine that every time I talk to Deekin in the shop that I am asking about his family because I love him, but that shit ain't happening.
The first time my Shepard actually responded in a way to a situation that matched what I thought was going on in my head, that blew me away. I like being blown away. It's a lot of fun.
GTA3 and Chrono I think had very imagined ways already that they thought those characters should be, you were simply driving them, not providing them with the basis of who they were. If that makes sense.
Not being able to romance Varric was the fucking worst thing about DA2. THE.WORST.THING.
I think an important part of storytelling is the characters involved and their individual depth. When developers go to great lengths for them we get a better storytelling experience.
The Japanese have been doing this since "day 1" really and is part of the reason Final Fantasy, Zelda, Chrono and others are some of the best loved RPGs, some are even strong enough, like FF7 and its spawnlings, to be a fun read as a summary without the gameplay. They didn't need talking protagonists (is that the right word?) Because the characters were so well thought out it didn't matter.
In the west though very often we see non-talking protagonists in games where the character has little to no personality built in other than a rather vague background. This diminishes the developers ability to tell a story. Now, when they preset half your character like with Shepard, they have a lot more to work with and can do more actual storytelling with the game.
The Japanese have been doing this since "day 1" really and is part of the reason Final Fantasy, Zelda, Chrono and others are some of the best loved RPGs, some are even strong enough, like FF7 and its spawnlings, to be a fun read as a summary without the gameplay. They didn't need talking protagonists (is that the right word?) Because the characters were so well thought out it didn't matter.
In the west though very often we see non-talking protagonists in games where the character has little to no personality built in other than a rather vague background. This diminishes the developers ability to tell a story. Now, when they preset half your character like with Shepard, they have a lot more to work with and can do more actual storytelling with the game.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Personally I wish games would start copying Bastion and use more narration. I'd love to have Morgan Freeman come in and narrate me navigating the nth dungeon in Skyrim.
Feel free to reduce an opinion to a limitation of the author but it's not a very useful practice.
"It's dragon detail, and skyrim is one damn fine continent to be working with dragons."