Mass Effect 2 or dragon age conversations

[MiracleOfSound]

They're not all that different really, you can be nice or be a jerk in most situations, just in Dragon Age they are laid out in a less intuitive way.

 

[Jandau]

It depends.

Mass Effect's method is more dynamic and fits a cinematic game better. However, it also requires voiceovers for everything, which in turn limits the options for the player. Dragon Age's system is old-school and allows more freedom, but is less dramatic.

Both have their advantages and their place and Bioware is quite good at deciding which to use.

 

[Punisher A.J.]

Well. I do enjoy Shepards voice... But the descriptions of what he is about to say always seem so... vague. I can never be sure if it's supposed to be something mean or nice.

DA:O was more obvious on it.

I think I'm picking Dragon Age.

Not completly, sometimes for DA:O I want to make a joke and insult someone or insult and make a joke. At least with mass effect 2 I can push someone out a window.

I prefer the mass effect voice conversations but they seem to be just 3 sided at the maximum(also is dragon age the only game where you actually play as someone with no actual name). In dragon age the conversation can end in so many ways. Also the press "x" to skip conversation is good in all but when it confirms your choice of words and your dialoge options come up mid sentence it gets REALLY annoying. (mass effect)

 

[Hawgh]

I rather like them both, each is suited for their own thing.

Though I preferred the DA-esque way of doing things back in Neverwinter Nights, where there is quite a few more 'conversation' skills.

 

[IrrelevantTangent]

Mass Effect, Mass Effect, a thousand times Mass Effect. And this is not because I personally prefer ME over DE. My main problem with the Dragon Age conversations was that you can't sympathize with your main character- he's completely mute. You don't hear him acting out his part in the conversation. How can you possibly grow attached to a character that doesn't even say anything?

In Mass Effect, your character actually talks, which makes things infinitely more realistic and natural-sounding. In Dragon Age we don't have that luxury.

Plus, the Mass Effect dialogue wheel is sleek and streamlined compared to Dragon Age's.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Voiced. It's stupid that you spend millions in creating content and can't even give a few pages worth of lines a voice-over by three or four different persons.

VtM:Redemption did that back in 2000. Every single line, voiced. And it's not like the game lacks dialogue. Silent protagonists, in a world that is supposed to be immersive, dazzle with content, be filled to the brim with people and peasants and merchants and guards yammering about how their nose itches... just makes no sense.

And if it means that every single passerby will stop throwing their generic life-stories at me, all the better. If I'm rescuing a princess, I do not want to hear how her uncles brothers fiancee is jealous of her and masterfully has manipulated the events surrounding the peasants uprising and increase in banditry to cart in assasins to the capitol to take out the guards that surround the princess and then without her guards and advisors present gives in to natural curiosity and leaves the safety of he walls whereupon she was captured.

No, what I want to hear is 'Does it really matter? You get paid, you rescue the princess from unlawful imprisonment and everyone but her uncles brothers fiancee will be happy.'

Redemption didn't let you pick and choose your protagonist though, you played as Christof and you liked it (or you didn't play at all). Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, where you could pick your clan, gender, name, etc went the silent protagonist route where everyone else was voiced, just like Dragon Age did. And Bloodlines was a much better game than Redemption.

I'm not really sure where you're going with your 3rd and 4th paragraphs, as I have no idea how making the protagonist a character with a voice would do anything to stop NPCs from yammering on about their life story.

 

[Acier]

They both work for me.

I like Mass Effect's fully voiced conversations. But I also like knowing exactly what I'm going to say, a'la Dragon Age.

I can see why they didn't do it for Dragon Age though, they would need like I think 6 differant voice actors?

But like I said, either one works for me.

Actually they would need twelve as each origin has 2 genders

Yes, but say they want to have voices but take the cheap way out, meaning they would have 6 voices. 3 for human, elf, and dwarf male. 3 for human, elf, and dwarf female.

They could just use the same voices for all origins, but like I said, thats probably the cheapest way to do it if they chose to.

Well seeing as they had a custom voice option in charactcer creation it would be even more.

Unless they just wanted to trim it down.

 

[Slash Dementia]

I like them both equally.
Dragon Age, like Knights of the Old Republic has the un-voiced dialog fit it perfectly; while a game like Mass Effect, I feel, needs every character to be voiced.

 

[Zacharine]

Voiced. It's stupid that you spend millions in creating content and can't even give a few pages worth of lines a voice-over by three or four different persons.

VtM:Redemption did that back in 2000. Every single line, voiced. And it's not like the game lacks dialogue. Silent protagonists, in a world that is supposed to be immersive, dazzle with content, be filled to the brim with people and peasants and merchants and guards yammering about how their nose itches... just makes no sense.

And if it means that every single passerby will stop throwing their generic life-stories at me, all the better. If I'm rescuing a princess, I do not want to hear how her uncles brothers fiancee is jealous of her and masterfully has manipulated the events surrounding the peasants uprising and increase in banditry to cart in assasins to the capitol to take out the guards that surround the princess and then without her guards and advisors present gives in to natural curiosity and leaves the safety of he walls whereupon she was captured.

No, what I want to hear is 'Does it really matter? You get paid, you rescue the princess from unlawful imprisonment and everyone but her uncles brothers fiancee will be happy.'

Redemption didn't let you pick and choose your protagonist though, you played as Christof and you liked it (or you didn't play at all). Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, where you could pick your clan, gender, name, etc went the silent protagonist route where everyone else was voiced, just like Dragon Age did. And Bloodlines was a much better game than Redemption.

I'm not really sure where you're going with your 3rd and 4th paragraphs, as I have no idea how making the protagonist a character with a voice would do anything to stop NPCs from yammering on about their life story.

Bloodlines was a more refined and recent version of Redemption. And one of the major flaws it had was precisely the lack of a voiced protagonist. My point was that creating a voiced protagonist isn't that hard, they did it over ten years ago for a full game that had lots of dialogue. It simply requires dedication and resources to make.

What I'm trying to go for here is that, if the creators of the game have time, means and funding to write voiced dialogue to NPCs about superfluous things (plotwise), why shouldn't the content creators and voice actors rather use that time to instead create something with more impact: a voiced protagonist. Bgecause you only have so much time and resources allocated to a single game, and those resources have to be divided accordingly. I personally simply do not see the reason behind creating top-of-the-line graphics, expansive sand-box environments and voiced NPCs, when the most imporant character of them all, the protagonist, has no voice.

 

[high_castle]

I preferred Dragon Age's conversations simply because you have far more control over what you say. ME2 really bugged me because they changed the tone of the conversations. Even the paragon options sounded really renegade-ish at times and broke my immersion countless times. In an RPG, I prefer to control as much about my character as I possibly can since I'm more of a role-player. The moment you take away that control, I'm an unhappy camper.

 

[Internet Kraken]

I'd give a plus to mass effect for the voice-acting, but then i have to take it all away for the annoying paragon/renegade system, the rather unintuitive speech hints and the fact that you can't fit more than 5 speech topics in one "investigate" group. Just feels limited.

DA:O + voice for the main character would be perfect. The different voices you can choose are a throwback to old stuff when few things were voiced and you used to command your party members like units in an RTS. Doesn't work anymore.

Pretty much this. I like that the main character has a voice in Mass Effect, but the dialogue wheel in Mass Effect is annoying as hell. You're almost always only given three options that always consist of the renegade, paragon, and neutral choice. I wouldn't mind that much if it weren't for the point system. You have to make choices you normally wouldn't otherwise you won't have a high enough renegade/paragon score to resolve conflicts later in the game. Dragon Age: Origins didn't have this problem. Your ability to persuade or intimidate people was not linked to your moral choices, so it wins.

 

[Internet Kraken]

Even the paragon options sounded really renegade-ish at times and broke my immersion countless times..

I remember that the paragon solution for a problem involving an Elcor and Quarian was threatening to break the Elcor's legs.

That's not exactly the kind of thing I expect the "ultimate hero" to do. You'd think that would be the renegade option.

EDIT: Crap double-post. Meant to edit this into my last one.

 

[high_castle]

Even the paragon options sounded really renegade-ish at times and broke my immersion countless times..

I remember that the paragon solution for a problem involving an Elcor and Quarian was threatening to break the Elcor's legs.

That's not exactly the kind of thing I expect the "ultimate hero" to do. You'd think that would be the renegade option.

EDIT: Crap double-post. Meant to edit this into my last one.

Exactly. I felt like the devs had an idea of how Shep should behave in ME2, while in DA:O and ME1 the player was able to define their character's...well...character.