Dragon age 3 you will once again be playing as a human

[MeChaNiZ3D]

What was the main point of this thread. Form what I can gather the title is one decision by developers than never ceases to annoy me, then the body starts with the mention of another option that is also in ME, and then quickly moves on to the phenomenon of coral EA bleaching.

So I'm going to adress the title. How can developers make such detailed and interesting species other than humans not capitalise on the work they've already done. Other races are so much more interesting just by virtue of not being human, not to mention the amount of detail that these particular non-humans have in culture. Wouldn't take much to have a contrived different species PC and a few different dialogue bits here and there, and actually, people go nuts for that s***.

 

[Emiscary]

I like how they play it like giving you less options makes the game feel more personal. Because that's totally how customizability works.

 

[felbot]

well fuck, i wanted to play as a dwarf, or a elf, or anything else than a human.

never understood why devs take away stuff from the sequel.

A lot of studios tracking stats (via achievements) to see who's played what and how. Perhaps they saw who played what races through what origin story, and decided not enough played the other races to justify the work involved?

Same goes for the trend in shorter games, I forget where I saw it, but it was like 10% or less ever finished a long RPG.

thats actually funny because i bought origins because of the multiple races, and now that isnt there

 

[Mortons4ck]

Alright.
What with DA:O choices being all of "Elf" or "Dwarf" I'm fine with being human. They're about as generic as each other nowadays.
I'd rather it focuses more on a central protagonist like Hawke, rather than the empty shell that sometimes said stuff in DA1.

Metagaming aside, I really enjoyed playing as a Elf, if only because I like playing as the underdog. I liked the nuanced and slight variations in the conversations with some characters, and how the game explored some of the sociological implications of having what is basically a second class citizen in a position of power.

 

[Raine_sage]

It is kind of a shame, not because I think DA3 will be an objectively bad game because of this, but because it doesn't really resemble the DA:O game I knew and loved. The choices in race were a draw not necessarily because they provided me with more game play choices (though to anyone who says that they all played the same after the intro I have to ask... did we play the same thing?)but because they let me see the very interesting world the Devs had created through all available lenses.

It let me see first hand how badly the elves were treated, as opposed to just telling me "Oh and by the way no one likes elves. You should care about this for some reason." It let me see both sides of the mage and chantry issue. It gave me an inside look at dwarf culture and how they had to live under the oppressive shadow of the darkspawn every day of their lives, as opposed to the rest of the world who only have to deal with it when there's a blight happening. To me it was the perfect example of 'show don't tell' and it was part of what helped me become immersed in the world.

I don't think DA3 will be a bad game... hopefully. But it just feels like a lot of the things I loved about the first game have been gradually dropped from the franchise. The grey wardens have taken a backseat, the darkspawn (one of the few videogame enemies who really truly terrify me in concept if nothing else) have had a reduced role. And the conflict between the chantry and the templars feels like it's been boiled down to 'wah religion is evil mages are oppressed for no reason' with some shoehorned attempts to go 'oh but mages are dangerous I guess' so they can still claim moral ambiguity. The whole Anders debacle springs to mind.

I guess the tl;dr read is that the franchise doesn't feel like it's ever going to be the game I fell in love with initially and it kind of makes me sad. Especially since, given the love DA:O received when it was released I have no idea why they felt the need to overhaul the game's core aesthetics like this.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

And of course, just like any company would, Bioware is catering to the majority.

Really how did that work out for them with ME 3 multiplayer? Oh that's right it's all but dead.

BioWare has been fairly upfront when they are just deciding something because thats what they want to do. They have no real reason to lie about how many people play as other races,

That statement might be true if it was the Bioware of old which it's not anymore. And sure they have a reason to lie about it they want to cut it out and that's their excuse.

 

[Legion]

Well, my hopes are officially dashed for this game. Are they bringing back the dialogue wheel too?

Yes, this has been confirmed. Although they claim they will be working to improve the paraphrasing.

So we can pretty much guarantee they will have a voiced protagonist as well.

 

[alphamalet]

Well, my hopes are officially dashed for this game. Are they bringing back the dialogue wheel too?

Yes, this has been confirmed. Although they claim they will be working to improve the paraphrasing.

So we can pretty much guarantee they will have a voiced protagonist as well.

Yup, more "positive news". I guess this more of a personal squabble, but I HATE voiced protagonists in RPGs that have dialogue choices. Why they had to go the Mass Effect route is beyond me.

 

[Legion]

Well, my hopes are officially dashed for this game. Are they bringing back the dialogue wheel too?

Yes, this has been confirmed. Although they claim they will be working to improve the paraphrasing.

So we can pretty much guarantee they will have a voiced protagonist as well.

Yup, more "positive news". I guess this more of a personal squabble, but I HATE voiced protagonists in RPGs that have dialogue choices. Why they had to go the Mass Effect route is beyond me.

My issue is not that I dislike voices, I dislike that having voices restricts dialogue, and leads to my most hated feature of Mass Effect 2, 3 and DA2:

Auto-dialogue.

These games are made so that we create our own character and have our own story. Having that character say things without us choosing to completely undermines that. Especially when the game tries to force emotion onto the player and has the voiced protagonists express the emotion/thought without player input.

Hopefully Bioware will finally understand this, and stop trying to enforce their own behaviours onto what are supposed to be our characters.

 

[alphamalet]

Well, my hopes are officially dashed for this game. Are they bringing back the dialogue wheel too?

Yes, this has been confirmed. Although they claim they will be working to improve the paraphrasing.

So we can pretty much guarantee they will have a voiced protagonist as well.

Yup, more "positive news". I guess this more of a personal squabble, but I HATE voiced protagonists in RPGs that have dialogue choices. Why they had to go the Mass Effect route is beyond me.

My issue is not that I dislike voices, I dislike that having voices restricts dialogue, and leads to my most hated feature of Mass Effect 2, 3 and DA2:

Auto-dialogue.

These games are made so that we create our own character and have our own story. Having that character say things without us choosing to completely undermines that. Especially when the game tries to force emotion onto the player and has the voiced protagonists express the emotion/thought without player input.

Hopefully Bioware will finally understand this, and stop trying to enforce their own behaviours onto what are supposed to be our characters.

Exactly! It's like they think it is a good idea to sacrifice immersion for the sake of making the game cinematic.

 

[AntiChri5]

And of course, just like any company would, Bioware is catering to the majority.

Really how did that work out for them with ME 3 multiplayer? Oh that's right it's all but dead.

BioWare has been fairly upfront when they are just deciding something because thats what they want to do. They have no real reason to lie about how many people play as other races,

That statement might be true if it was the Bioware of old which it's not anymore. And sure they have a reason to lie about it they want to cut it out and that's their excuse.

ME3's multiplayer is far from dead, and many long time Mass Effect fans consider it the best part of the game, to their eternal surprise.

They don't need an excuse. I have seen, many many times on the BioWare forums BioWare employees outright saying "This is the way we are doing it because this is the way we want to do it. If you don't like that then tough, this isn't the game for you." Why would they need an excuse?

 

[Thoric485]

Great, full VO and a dialogue wheel with faces on it again.

If only mindlessly chanting "we've been listening and we'll continue to listen" in every press release fooled anyone.

 

[ThriKreen]

And where is this number coming from? I know a lot of people who play other races, especially the 2ed time through.

I'm calling BS on this Bioware has made their reputation on RPGs with choices that matter, a reputation I might add that gets damaged with each new game. It's also what made the Witcher 2 so good.

Just to be clear I'm not calling BS on you I'm pretty sure they probably made the statement, the statement however is complete %^&%$, not out of the ordinary for EA tho.

Less EA and more just sensible responding to stats and adjusting their development and game design to account for how players play.

I'll have to dig up the page (hard to find for some reason), but a couple months after the release of DA:O, they released a breakdown of stats gathered from the game, races and classes played, % completed, etc. There's a reason achievements are so common place you know, it's not just to give you OCD to be a completionist to keep playing the game, but also a way for devs to track players and their actions, and as a result, modify for later games. Since, you know, only listening to just forum posts are squeaky wheel situations.

Anyway, while replay for choices are still in - after all it's a hallmark if the studio's game design - the issue is justifying something like the whole dwarven commoner and noble origin when only 10% of the player base bothered to play them. So the idea was to remove the races but expand on the choices within the game play itself or something (however well that worked out for DA2, I haven't played it so I won't comment).

 

[Tohuvabohu]

My issue is not that I dislike voices, I dislike that having voices restricts dialogue, and leads to my most hated feature of Mass Effect 2, 3 and DA2:

Auto-dialogue.

These games are made so that we create our own character and have our own story. Having that character say things without us choosing to completely undermines that. Especially when the game tries to force emotion onto the player and has the voiced protagonists express the emotion/thought without player input.

Hopefully Bioware will finally understand this, and stop trying to enforce their own behaviours onto what are supposed to be our characters.

and this is exactly why I hated, among every other shitty thing in the game, a voiced protagonist in DA2.

With how Bioware handles their voiced-protagonists and their dialogue wheel. I am certain they're not going to match the advantages of the silent protagonist like with DA:O. The fact that you're stuck playing as a human again is undeniable proof of that. The fact that the series went from having 3 playable races down to 1 is a leap backwards that it will probably never recover from.
People call it 'catering to the majority.' I call it laziness.

As much as this sucks - I'm still giving DA3 a chance. My hope is that at the very least, the game won't be absolutely terrible like DA2 is. It's probably the last chance I'll ever give Bioware.

 

[Radoh]

So I'm playing as a human again, do you know what that means?
It means that I'm going to have a much more personalised story which focuses less on world building and more on character development, which is good because we already have a developed world we will be working in.
Ideally yes, this game would allow for a deep, personal story for each individual race, class, background etc, but that game would be a project worth about ten years to make since you'd need to start again for every race and it would cost an ungodly amount of money which would just not be a feasible risk for any business to take.

 

[Legion]

With how Bioware handles their voiced-protagonists and their dialogue wheel. I am certain they're not going to match the advantages of the silent protagonist like with DA:O. The fact that you're stuck playing as a human again is undeniable proof of that. The fact that the series went from having 3 playable races down to 1 is a leap backwards that it will probably never recover from.
People call it 'catering to the majority.' I call it laziness.

As much as this sucks - I'm still giving DA3 a chance. My hope is that at the very least, the game won't be absolutely terrible like DA2 is. It's probably the last chance I'll ever give Bioware.

I agree that the dialogue wheel does have more disadvantages than advantages, as far as personalisation and character creation goes.

I am not sure I'd called a human protagonist lazy though. They have limited manpower and resources, as well as a time frame. If they feel that those resources are better spent elsewhere than on creating more variety, then that's not necessarily laziness (although it definitely feels like a step backwards from Origins).

To quote Allan Schumacher who is the "Technical QA analyst for Dragon Age" (whatever the hell that is). His response to somebody saying it was lazy on the forums was:

"Define lazy.

Actually don't. You can hate our decision, but just call a spade a spade and say you don't like the decision we made. If you think I'm "lazy" then you don't know me, nor my colleagues.

We aren't sitting around with our feet up drinking cognac going "Good show mates, now that that's resolved there's not much to do but sit around and enjoy the sun!"

 

[CheckD3]

Personally, I don't really care for DA. I ADORED the opening to it, where your choices give you different opening stories. But after that, it lost me so I barely got past the first mission in the castle place.

I've heard all the arguments before about DA2, and from what I've heard and what I'm seeing about this now, it seems like they're starting to take a step in the right direction actually. I'm not a fan of the only human aspect of the game, I think I've been a human just a few too many times, but at least they're trying to keep it fresh somehow.

Bioware is one of the few companies I think we'll see who tries to be original in a setting in which it's damn near impossible. Sure the ending to ME3 got fucked up, but really, no one's perfect, and they tried they're damnedest to fix it for everyone.

The world would be a better place if Bioware started their own kickstarter for games so they could publish them w/o EA. But in that world we get Last Guardian updates again, Psychonauts 2, and Activision stops being douchebags while EA and Ubisoft drop online passes...and Microsoft makes XLive free