There's been a lot of talk (both civil and not so civil) about the way Bioware has been handling their fully voiced games.
Some people like the cinematic feel of two or more voices going back and forth, while many prefer the freedom of several answers instead of three.
I've been sitting on this topic for some time now, for a while I've been neutral on the subject but after finally finishing my Dragon Age: Origins marathon I've finally come up with my own opinion.
After much consideration, I do believe that the non-voiced text responses are superior... for Dragon Age.
You see that's not a cop-out answer, it's really true; let me enlighten you.
When Bioware came across the dialogue wheel that they now slap onto everything nowadays willy nilly it was a smash, everyone was hailing Bioware as the second coming of storytelling everyone loved putting in what they wanted to say and have Sheppard repeat it with his/her own brand of speaking. Here's the problem though you're not playing yourself, you're playing Sheppard.
Let's jump to Dragon Age: Origins for a second.
In DA:O I wasn't anybody, I was just myself.
It was me who joked with Allistar, it was me who woo'd Leliana, it was me who sat and drank with Oghren; reminiscing about the old days in Orzimmar, well you get the idea.
I don't get this feeling in Mass Effect, sure I still get to control the conversation, but it isn't me, it's Sheppard, I'm just a little man standing in Sheppard's brain telling him/her what would be appropriate to say after he handed me three things he think might be worth saying for giggles, like I was some miniature wingman.
This is not totally the fault of the dialogue wheel, it falls more on the fault of being a fully-voiced game.
See RPG's haven't really recovered from voice actors, way back when during the early days of The Elder Scrolls series you could ask any NPC where anything was and he/she would point you where you needed to go.
In today's game world that would be completely unreasonable for someone to ask of a game company, hell some NPCs won't even engage you in a real conversation they'll just give you some random line or two they'll spout over and over again until you're bored or you finally get shipped off to the funny farm.
We can not move forward until we repair the damages we've taken from sailing through the rocks so to speak.
In DA:O at any time you can have anything from 4-8 things to talk about when conversing with an NPC, in Mass Effect you usually have three things to move the conversation occasionally getting a few more if you wanted to get some extra options to get a short version of events or motivations of thing you can read from the codex.
Now this system works for Mass Effect because as my fellow Bioware enthusiasts know, Mass Effect is much more black and white than DA:O which is a game that deals in extreme gray situations and morals.
The differences go deeper the dialogue wheel is much more suited for spectators along with the player as opposed to a text based response which is much harder to involve an audience.
Why do you think that Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bioware's upcoming MMORPG, is fully voiced? Eight classes each with two voices (one male, one female) for a a game with every class story the size of Knight's Of The Old Republic. This is because the game would sell poorly if four people in a group were reading each other's responses, my theory is supported on the fact that a huge majority of this game relies on you and your friends laughing it up to the responses that you and your friends fling around going back and forth in a conversation with one poor NPC in the middle of it.
I'm getting a bit off topic here, I've played the Dragon Age II demo five separate times, Bioware seems to have the right idea with the direction they've taken with this wheel, it's personality based instead of moral based, which is an interesting twist but anyone who's extensively played DA:O knows that there are always more than two ways to solve a problem and none of them are completely good or evil, save a few rare examples.
Contrast this with Mass Effect where you hold up for "Have Sheppard give everyone a hug." with holding down to get "RAWR SHEPPARD SMASH!"
Bioware I have one last thing I need you to hear. For the love Christ stop having Sheppard/Hawke answering on their own!
You remember the first time Sheppard spoke without a prompt from you? Yeah, I still get pissed every time that happens.
TL;DR: Hey look a tree.
Some people like the cinematic feel of two or more voices going back and forth, while many prefer the freedom of several answers instead of three.
I've been sitting on this topic for some time now, for a while I've been neutral on the subject but after finally finishing my Dragon Age: Origins marathon I've finally come up with my own opinion.
After much consideration, I do believe that the non-voiced text responses are superior... for Dragon Age.
You see that's not a cop-out answer, it's really true; let me enlighten you.
When Bioware came across the dialogue wheel that they now slap onto everything nowadays willy nilly it was a smash, everyone was hailing Bioware as the second coming of storytelling everyone loved putting in what they wanted to say and have Sheppard repeat it with his/her own brand of speaking. Here's the problem though you're not playing yourself, you're playing Sheppard.
Let's jump to Dragon Age: Origins for a second.
In DA:O I wasn't anybody, I was just myself.
It was me who joked with Allistar, it was me who woo'd Leliana, it was me who sat and drank with Oghren; reminiscing about the old days in Orzimmar, well you get the idea.
I don't get this feeling in Mass Effect, sure I still get to control the conversation, but it isn't me, it's Sheppard, I'm just a little man standing in Sheppard's brain telling him/her what would be appropriate to say after he handed me three things he think might be worth saying for giggles, like I was some miniature wingman.
This is not totally the fault of the dialogue wheel, it falls more on the fault of being a fully-voiced game.
See RPG's haven't really recovered from voice actors, way back when during the early days of The Elder Scrolls series you could ask any NPC where anything was and he/she would point you where you needed to go.
In today's game world that would be completely unreasonable for someone to ask of a game company, hell some NPCs won't even engage you in a real conversation they'll just give you some random line or two they'll spout over and over again until you're bored or you finally get shipped off to the funny farm.
We can not move forward until we repair the damages we've taken from sailing through the rocks so to speak.
In DA:O at any time you can have anything from 4-8 things to talk about when conversing with an NPC, in Mass Effect you usually have three things to move the conversation occasionally getting a few more if you wanted to get some extra options to get a short version of events or motivations of thing you can read from the codex.
Now this system works for Mass Effect because as my fellow Bioware enthusiasts know, Mass Effect is much more black and white than DA:O which is a game that deals in extreme gray situations and morals.
The differences go deeper the dialogue wheel is much more suited for spectators along with the player as opposed to a text based response which is much harder to involve an audience.
Why do you think that Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bioware's upcoming MMORPG, is fully voiced? Eight classes each with two voices (one male, one female) for a a game with every class story the size of Knight's Of The Old Republic. This is because the game would sell poorly if four people in a group were reading each other's responses, my theory is supported on the fact that a huge majority of this game relies on you and your friends laughing it up to the responses that you and your friends fling around going back and forth in a conversation with one poor NPC in the middle of it.
I'm getting a bit off topic here, I've played the Dragon Age II demo five separate times, Bioware seems to have the right idea with the direction they've taken with this wheel, it's personality based instead of moral based, which is an interesting twist but anyone who's extensively played DA:O knows that there are always more than two ways to solve a problem and none of them are completely good or evil, save a few rare examples.
Contrast this with Mass Effect where you hold up for "Have Sheppard give everyone a hug." with holding down to get "RAWR SHEPPARD SMASH!"
Bioware I have one last thing I need you to hear. For the love Christ stop having Sheppard/Hawke answering on their own!
You remember the first time Sheppard spoke without a prompt from you? Yeah, I still get pissed every time that happens.
TL;DR: Hey look a tree.
