Bioware let's have a talk about your conversation system.

[Irridium]

This won't be true in five years time. Eventually we will see a dialogue system like DA:O that is fully voiced and it is a win win for everyone.

Which is what The Witcher did way back in 2007. And that game kicked ass.

OT: I'm not too fond of the dialog wheel either. I like knowing exactly what my character is going to say. With Mass Effect, and now Dragon Age, I have to play "guess what he's going to say", and quite a few times the actual dialog didn't match up too well with what the summaries were.

The wheel also kills role-playing. Mass Effect is not a role-playing game. You are Shepard, you play Shepard, and you choose responses he would say, not you. And now DA2 seems to be doing that. People seem to confuse role-playing with stat-building. This is wrong. Role-playing is creating a character, and, well role-playing him/her.

In Mass Effect, you are Shepard. No matter what. In DA2, you are Hawke, no matter what. And you cannot break out of these character molds and shape your own. Your set with what Bioware gives you. And if you try to divert from that, you get railroaded back into being Shepard/Hawke.

Hopefully DA2 offers more role-playing then Mass Effect, but with the wheel I doubt it will be the case.

We have been playing RPG's with pre-made characters since the NES. Opinions will vary but most people understand that you don't need a character creator to be an RPG. In ME you are Shepard, you are stepping into his shoes. You are playing a role and making decisions that affect the game.

Yes, but in those you actually were able to branch out and do something different. You were able to make the main character your own.

You can't really do that anymore.

The only things your decisions seem to affect are how many emails you get and what kind of news stories are broad-casted. Even choices that should have mattered, like leaving Kaiden/Ashley to die, are done in such a way it feels cheap and weak. Both have the same damn dialog, animations, and attitude when you encounter them on Horizon.

 

[Warped_Ghost]

On the bright side for both sides
Hopefully the technology will get to the point when it can be our voices instead of actors.

 

[Defense]

We have been playing RPG's with pre-made characters since the NES. Opinions will vary but most people understand that you don't need a character creator to be an RPG. In ME you are Shepard, you are stepping into his shoes. You are playing a role and making decisions that affect the game.

It always seemed to me like I was just hijacking Shepherd's mind instead of being my own character whenever I played Mass Effect, but that's just me.

 

[MoNKeyYy]

I completely agree with you on the point about how the dialogue in the old elder scroll games (well, morrowind anyway, I haven't played any others =P) is better than fully voiced but only partially characterized NPCs. And that's really the problem. Voice does not equal character. Anyone who's read a book could tell you that. I have incredible respect for authors because they can create character and mood and emotion through nothing but words, they don't have the same kind of sensory aids artists across other mediums do. But I digress. I personally prefer to have as much of an in depth system as possible that allows me to explore and get as deep as I can. How this relates to bioware I'm not really sure, but I thought I'd toss it in anyways =)

 

[Fappy]

I think you have a legitimate point, but I am going to hold off on my opinion until I play through the entirety of DA2.

 

[mentalkitty789]

I don't have many complaints about the 'wheel' itself. The idea isn't bad to me, it isn't great. My largest complaint was it was up for good, middle of eh, and down for asshole. It was a bit too predictable. I will admit I like having more choices on what to say than what I do with the wheel. Either way I can enjoy both. With Shepard, he is already defined in a sense. You just choose how his life effected him, aka is he an asshole or goody-goody. There were times I could get into it but the 'Good Evil' bars ruin it for me, not the wheel itself.
I think the wheel for DA2 will be much better, because it isn't good or evil responses. It is each option is its own attitude...Aka sarcastic or serious or silly. That seems like a good idea, but I'm sure there will be times when I want to do say something one way when it just isn't an option.
With the character from dragon age I feel they were more yours to define because of the variety of choices in the dialogue. I enjoy old and newer rpgs. Shin Megami Tensei, DA, ME, Ogre Tactics/Battle, ect. I personally like the SMT games the most when it comes to an RPG, the questions the game asks aren't good or evil. They are lawful or chaotic. Freedom or Peace. Anarchy or Order. Questions like these are INFINITELY better than good or evil in my opinion.
The only thing that I can complain about is how chaos and law can lead to the same outcome...
Like in Ogre Tactics you have the choice to purge a town or try and save it. Let's say you choose to follow your Lord's orders and kill everyone. I think there should be one more dialogue option to go about how you do this. Aka, you're doing it because you're Duke said so and you can't refuse his order, OR You don't care what he said you just think these people are cowards and want to kill them. One is 'Lawful' and one is 'Chaotic' while still having the same outcome. I know it costs money to do things like this but it is an interesting thing to tinker with in my mind.

 

[Varitel]

I always preferred the immersion of the dialogue wheel in Mass Effect over other dialogue systems in voiced RPGs. I guess that's because I don't really project myself onto the character in an RPG if it's voiced. In a voiced RPG I find it breaks the flow a bit if the conversation stops and we have to pick from a long list of options every five seconds. I am including games with voiced NPCs not just ones with voiced player characters. In an unvoiced one, it really doesn't matter, so more options is better.

 

[Belgian_Waffles]

This won't be true in five years time. Eventually we will see a dialogue system like DA:O that is fully voiced and it is a win win for everyone.

Which is what The Witcher did way back in 2007. And that game kicked ass.

OT: I'm not too fond of the dialog wheel either. I like knowing exactly what my character is going to say. With Mass Effect, and now Dragon Age, I have to play "guess what he's going to say", and quite a few times the actual dialog didn't match up too well with what the summaries were.

The wheel also kills role-playing. Mass Effect is not a role-playing game. You are Shepard, you play Shepard, and you choose responses he would say, not you. And now DA2 seems to be doing that. People seem to confuse role-playing with stat-building. This is wrong. Role-playing is creating a character, and, well role-playing him/her.

In Mass Effect, you are Shepard. No matter what. In DA2, you are Hawke, no matter what. And you cannot break out of these character molds and shape your own. Your set with what Bioware gives you. And if you try to divert from that, you get railroaded back into being Shepard/Hawke.

Hopefully DA2 offers more role-playing then Mass Effect, but with the wheel I doubt it will be the case.

Everybody here's the point I was trying to make condensed into a paragraph,
I felt like Sheppard's Little Angel and Demon on his shoulders.

 

[Xaositect]

I initially liked the conversation wheel for Mass Effect for the reasons people still trot out: its the same as dialogue, but instead of just reading it, your character speaks it.

Two reasons Im not so hot on it anymore?

Rather than liberating roleplaying by offering a fresh new optional direction, its stagnating it now. Its become the norm to automatically take away player freedom. Sure listen to male or female Shepards bland, often shitty voice acting in mass effect might be "cinematic", but it also will repeatedly remined you "THIS IS NOT YOUR CHARACTER! YOU ARE NOT PLAYING A TRUE RPG!"

What ever happened to the ability to mentally roleplay to assist in game playing? My character in Baldurs Gate had 1000x the personality, backstory and emotions as Shepard because I filled in the gaps in my head! Now that such asking for such a mental commitment from gamers is obsurd! We must stick to "press a so something awesome can happen".

Its a shame because it was a promising direction in ME1. It just needed more options and more varied directions.

Of course like everything that needed improving in ME1 bar the shooter combat, ME2 ignored or abandoned it. The answer to conversations that just featured the same answer spoken slightly differently in ME1 was to simply have two answers in ME2 leading to the same place.

What Id like to see Bioware do is for starters stop ruining such a great concept by dumbing it down for "teh l33t sinnymatticz!!!" and actually try and better vary and broaden the dialogue available on the wheel at any given time (this would require not being lazy however, and Im not sure if thats beyond Bioware at this time). Also stop using it for every fucking thing.

But thats probably too much to ask, since harcore RPGs are almost completely dead. Most of what is left is dumbed down action games calling themselves RPGs repeatedly in denial, which in reality just contain the litest of RPG lite and dont even deserve to be linked to the genre.

 

[realslimshadowen]

I was honestly annoyed, and did not get the point, of allowing us to choose a voice in the original when all you get are a few acknowledgement lines. That was fuckin' pointless.

And I really don't buy into the "blank slate" school of video game lead character design--it can work, in certain situations, but not all the time--so I kind of like the way they went with Mass Effect and DA2.

 

[Realitycrash]

I would be fine with the voiced dialogue if I only had more than 3 options! FFS half the humor of Dragon Age: Origins were reading all the hilarious conversation-options you had! (Like in Fallout-series. They have made this into an artform). Now what do you get? 3 options, and you don't even get to read the scripted lines for the options you don't pick.

 

[white_salad]

I agree with an above poster. Enough with the "good, evil, and neutral" shit. I don't want to be a flower child, Hitler, or a blank slate, k thx...

Well, the Dragon Age 2 wheel does actually have more than that. I noticed different symbols in the same place. I saw a red havel, which seemed to be a sort of "Take Charge" while there is a red fist for kind of "aggressive response", the jokey is obviously nuetral, but in the good slot is a branch for what seemed sort of a make peace option, and a halo and wings for of course, flower child response. So it's slightly deeper than just good bad and nuetral, but not much.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I agree with an above poster. Enough with the "good, evil, and neutral" shit. I don't want to be a flower child, Hitler, or a blank slate, k thx...

Well, the Dragon Age 2 wheel does actually have more than that. I noticed different symbols in the same place. I saw a red havel, which seemed to be a sort of "Take Charge" while there is a red fist for kind of "aggressive response", the jokey is obviously nuetral, but in the good slot is a branch for what seemed sort of a make peace option, and a halo and wings for of course, flower child response. So it's slightly deeper than just good bad and nuetral, but not much.

What people doesn't seem to really have realized is that DA2 isn't Paragon/Renegade or Good/Evil in alignment axis. As you've found out, there are many different symbols that differ based on the context of what is happening in the conversation. Sure, the lower one is usually a more blunt or offensive option but it isn't automatically the evil option. Just as the top one is usually diplomatic or submissive that doesn't instantly make it good. Hopefully that trend will follow through in all of DA2 and not just the demo.

 

[Popido]

They should just let you choose your optional path at the start. Im not really into this pressing buttons things. Movies should never require you to confirm your options in middle of it. I dont think I'll rent their movies anytime soon. :\

 

[Flames66]

That's one of the reasons I still have not played any Mass Effect games. I do not like someone else voicing me. I have my own voice and I will decide how each dialogue option is said. I'm hoping there is a mod or something somewhere to disable the Shepard voice so I can actually get into the story.