Dragon Age Inquisition Will "Absolutely" Be Affected by Previous Choices

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Bioware has overtaken Peter Molyneux in the empty and worthless promises category.

 

[GabeZhul]

Sometimes I wonder what people are expecting from previous choices. Everyone should realize that having choices that have great effect in the narrative pose a HUGE additional workload for the developers and said workload scales exponentially with the length of the games in question. We simply don't have the technology to create procedurally changing worlds with AIs to accommodate your choices, so every single "choice that has an effect" means that a team of designers, programmers and other creative people has to work X days/weeks on mapping out the effects of the changes and implementing them into the game.

Bioware has been testing the limits of this approach for a while, but as Mass Effect 3 had already proven, after a while the only way you can deal with the growing number of choices and their interactions is by simply numerating them, otherwise you would have to deal with branching plots that no development team could keep track of and exorbitant development times. Simply put, carryover game-continuity is still in its baby shoes and we should be happy they are even trying instead of complaining about it... unless of course you think we should have tens of thousands of developers and ten year development cycles, that is.

 

[Krantos]

Like the choice to kill Leliana n Dragon Age Origins mattered for Dragon Age 2?

I vaguely remember you guys claiming the same thing for DA2. How'd THAT work out for ya? *cough*Leliana*cough*

So you mean this time Leliana will stay dead?

Or are you talking out of your arse again?

EDIT: Just remembered...

Spoiler

I think that says about all I came here to say.

We haven't forgotten BioWare. We haven't forgiven.

The Internet Never forgets.

Fans Never forgive.

Btw, you also claimed ME3's ending wouldn't be an A, B, or C choice. How'd that work out for you?


Short version: BioWare can't be trusted to make good on their promises. They've lost faith with their audience. Make good on this promise BioWare, and you might have a chance to start winning back some support.

Sometimes I wonder what people are expecting from previous choices. Everyone should realize that having choices that have great effect in the narrative pose a HUGE additional workload for the developers and said workload scales exponentially with the length of the games in question. We simply don't have the technology to create procedurally changing worlds with AIs to accommodate your choices, so every single "choice that has an effect" means that a team of designers, programmers and other creative people has to work X days/weeks on mapping out the effects of the changes and implementing them into the game.

Bioware has been testing the limits of this approach for a while, but as Mass Effect 3 had already proven, after a while the only way you can deal with the growing number of choices and their interactions is by simply numerating them, otherwise you would have to deal with branching plots that no development team could keep track of and exorbitant development times. Simply put, carryover game-continuity is still in its baby shoes and we should be happy they are even trying instead of complaining about it... unless of course you think we should have tens of thousands of developers and ten year development cycles, that is.

I'll never deny there is an extraordinary, and quite frankly, prohibitive amount of work involved to do it correctly. However, there are two ways you can do it:
A. Give the player a handful of meaningful choices, which you know can be utilized in future games.

B. Give the player lots of choices, but make it clear there is a set Canon for how things play out.

Bioware is trying to have their cake and eat it. They give us choices, tell us they all matter, then Retcon it and say "We decide what dead means in Dragon Age" [Direct quote]. That's the core of the problem. BioWare's PR lately (i.e. the past 5-6 years) has been atrocious. If you promise something in a game (in any product, really), no matter difficult it is to do, people have every right to expect it.

If you can't do it, don't promise it. If that's too hard, at least be upfront about your failing.

And Marketing is no excuse. The point of marketing is not simply to get people to buy it. Marketing is attempting to make the product AS IS look appealing. Otherwise, you're just a scammer, a snake oil merchant selling products, not by their actual merits, but convincing people they have qualities they really don't. That's not just immoral. It's borderline Illegal.

So, sorry, but no. People have every right to expect these things from BioWare, because BioWare keeps promising them. If they can't do it. They need to admit that.

 

[james.sponge]

Sometimes I wonder what people are expecting from previous choices. Everyone should realize that having choices that have great effect in the narrative pose a HUGE additional workload for the developers. We simply don't have the technology to create procedurally changing worlds with AIs to accommodate your choices, so every single "choice that has an effect" means that a team of designers, programmers and other creative people has to work X days/weeks on mapping out the effects of the changes and implementing them into the game.

Bioware has been testing the limits of this approach for a while, but as Mass Effect 3 had already proven, after a while the only way you can deal with the growing number of choices and their interactions is by simply numerating them, otherwise you would have to deal with branching plots that no development team could keep track of and exorbitant development times. Simply put, carryover game-continuity is still in its baby shoes and we should be happy they are even trying instead of complaining about it... unless of course you think we should have tens of thousands of developers and ten year development cycles, that is.

Then why the hell would they advertise such feature if they are incapable of properly implementing it? How hard is it to just choose certain number of events and make them canonical. They used to do that in older RPG games why not now? Those people are not stupid or disconnected from reality are they?

If you have limited development time then just skip this feature, fans will understand. It's better to be honest about such things rather than just promise features that will never work and hide behind "artistic integrity".

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Yeah yeah, Microsoft. Nobody believes EA any more. Fucking Maxis.

(But no, honestly, while it's true that I aren't invested in Dragon Age, after what they pulled with Mass Effect, I'd be waiting a week or two at least to be sure).

 

[Imre Csete]

Oh yeah, I followed DA2's development from announcement to finish, so much bull, sorry if I'm not that excited for any news about it. I learned from my mistakes and I didn't read anything about ME3. Looking up the dev comments after I finished it, I was glad, I would have surely broke something when I got to the spectacular finale at the end.

Also, which character will they kill this time via Twitter?

Place your bets!

 

[V8 Ninja]

Of course, like how the ending of Mass Effect 3 was decided by previous choices.

(Seriously, no matter how hard Bioware tries or how successful it is, the company will never be able to regain consumer trust.)

 

[GabeZhul]

Sometimes I wonder what people are expecting from previous choices. Everyone should realize that having choices that have great effect in the narrative pose a HUGE additional workload for the developers. We simply don't have the technology to create procedurally changing worlds with AIs to accommodate your choices, so every single "choice that has an effect" means that a team of designers, programmers and other creative people has to work X days/weeks on mapping out the effects of the changes and implementing them into the game.

Bioware has been testing the limits of this approach for a while, but as Mass Effect 3 had already proven, after a while the only way you can deal with the growing number of choices and their interactions is by simply numerating them, otherwise you would have to deal with branching plots that no development team could keep track of and exorbitant development times. Simply put, carryover game-continuity is still in its baby shoes and we should be happy they are even trying instead of complaining about it... unless of course you think we should have tens of thousands of developers and ten year development cycles, that is.

Then why the hell would they advertise such feature if they are incapable of properly implementing it? How hard is it to just choose certain number of events and make them canonical. They used to do that in older RPG games why not now? Those people are not stupid or disconnected from reality are they?

If you have limited development time then just skip this feature, fans will understand. It's better to be honest about such things rather than just promise features that will never work and hide behind "artistic integrity".

Did you serious just ask that...?

They are doing it because it's a selling point. The whole carryover-canon idea exists because players wanted it, buy games with it and arguably they buy them because of it.

Mass Effect, Dragon Age and other more-or-less episodic games with carryover choices are crude around the edges because they are the baby-steps of a new idea and development mentality. These games evolved from older RPGs because players wanted their choices to matter in the canon of their own game sessions. Advocating the return of developer-dictated canons just because we don't yet have the tech and experience to perfect the idea is simply backwards and counter-intuitive logic.

In short, the whole idea is pretty much still trying its wings. They might not work perfectly, but you cannot just up and claim that it will never work in the future, and by doing so you are actually sabotaging the chances of the idea ever reaching full maturity because of your own short-sightedness.

 

[james.sponge]

Sometimes I wonder what people are expecting from previous choices. Everyone should realize that having choices that have great effect in the narrative pose a HUGE additional workload for the developers. We simply don't have the technology to create procedurally changing worlds with AIs to accommodate your choices, so every single "choice that has an effect" means that a team of designers, programmers and other creative people has to work X days/weeks on mapping out the effects of the changes and implementing them into the game.

Bioware has been testing the limits of this approach for a while, but as Mass Effect 3 had already proven, after a while the only way you can deal with the growing number of choices and their interactions is by simply numerating them, otherwise you would have to deal with branching plots that no development team could keep track of and exorbitant development times. Simply put, carryover game-continuity is still in its baby shoes and we should be happy they are even trying instead of complaining about it... unless of course you think we should have tens of thousands of developers and ten year development cycles, that is.

Then why the hell would they advertise such feature if they are incapable of properly implementing it? How hard is it to just choose certain number of events and make them canonical. They used to do that in older RPG games why not now? Those people are not stupid or disconnected from reality are they?

If you have limited development time then just skip this feature, fans will understand. It's better to be honest about such things rather than just promise features that will never work and hide behind "artistic integrity".

Did you serious just ask that...?

They are doing it because it's a selling point. The whole carryover-canon idea exists because players wanted it, buy games with it and arguably they buy them because of it.

Mass Effect, Dragon Age and other more-or-less episodic games with carryover choices are crude around the edges because they are the baby-steps of a new idea and development mentality. These games evolved from older RPGs because players wanted their choices to matter in the canon of their own game sessions. Advocating the return of developer-dictated canons just because we don't yet have the tech and experience to perfect the idea is simply backwards and counter-intuitive logic.

In short, the whole idea is pretty much still trying its wings. They might not work perfectly, but you cannot just up and claim that it will never work in the future, and by doing so you are actually sabotaging the chances of the idea ever reaching full maturity because of your own short-sightedness.

I wouldn't say players demanded the feature it was more like enforced by designers and people just went with it because it sounded attractive.

As for save imports and player created canon it all comes down to manpower - like you said in your previous post - and development time and they have none of that, if they expanded the team, game budget would be much higher and thus the game would need to sell twice as many copies and we know those games don't have that many fans. All I'm asking for is a little bit of common sense if you can't do it properly don't do it at all. Save import would work great in small episodic games but not in big projects with so many variables (unless they had 5 or 6 years of development time).

 

[Genocidicles]

snip

It's no much that our choices have little effect.

It's that Bioware says "Your choices are important! They really do matter guys! Hang on to your saves, you're going to need them for all the mind blowing things they change in the next game!" and then players just get like an email or something.

Bioware hypes up the choices almost as badly as Peter Molyneux. If the player's choices affect nothing, then Bioware should shut up about them.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

No no, the choices do matter. You will receive a nice letter from the people you saved or none if you let them die.

 

[1337mokro]

If you actually bought Dragon Age 2 and import a save file your characters IQ drops 20 points.

Sadly I am one of the idiots that did buy a copy so making a retarded mage will be fun.

I THINK this was supposed to be a dig at Dragon Age 2, but I honestly cant tell.

OT: Oh jesus, drop it, stop trying to be mass effect. Just go with your own canon so we don't have to deal with the calls of "RETCON!"

I won't explain the joke, the joker wouldn't be happy. Just keep in mind that it was a CHOICE to buy Dragon Age 2.

 

[Amaror]

Sometimes I wonder what people are expecting from previous choices. Everyone should realize that having choices that have great effect in the narrative pose a HUGE additional workload for the developers and said workload scales exponentially with the length of the games in question. We simply don't have the technology to create procedurally changing worlds with AIs to accommodate your choices, so every single "choice that has an effect" means that a team of designers, programmers and other creative people has to work X days/weeks on mapping out the effects of the changes and implementing them into the game.

Bioware has been testing the limits of this approach for a while, but as Mass Effect 3 had already proven, after a while the only way you can deal with the growing number of choices and their interactions is by simply numerating them, otherwise you would have to deal with branching plots that no development team could keep track of and exorbitant development times. Simply put, carryover game-continuity is still in its baby shoes and we should be happy they are even trying instead of complaining about it... unless of course you think we should have tens of thousands of developers and ten year development cycles, that is.

Yeah no game could pull of having a huge world and choices that matter *cough* The Witcher *cough*

 

[GabeZhul]

snip

It's no much that our choices have little effect.

It's that Bioware says "Your choices are important! They really do matter guys! Hang on to your saves, you're going to need them for all the mind blowing things they change in the next game!" and then players just get like an email or something.

Bioware hypes up the choices almost as badly as Peter Molyneux. If the player's choices affect nothing, then Bioware should shut up about them.

That is true, but that has more to do with the disconnect between the developers and the PR guys. It's the latter who are hyping up the feature because for them it's not a gameplay innovation that can lead to more varied and interesting gaming experience for the player but simply sales buzzwords that also imply the need to buy the previous installments of a sequel, thus advertising the entire series in one fell swoop. This is, by the way, the biggest issue with the carry-over-canon of these games; the PR people making outlandish promises that the development team gets burned for once the game is released. It's kind of sad and infuriating if you ask me...

Yeah no game could pull of having a huge world and choices that matter *cough* The Witcher *cough*

Excuse me, but are you following the discussion? This is about choices carrying over from one game to the sequel and keeping a player-specific canon. The Witcher games have a great amount of player agency in them, true, but they are irrelevant to the current topic. Let's return to this when the Witcher 3 (hopefully) takes to concept a step further.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I doubt those decisions will mean anything, given Bioware's (and EA's, more broadly) track record on such things.
Just another PR bonfire to look forward to when they inevitably get caught exaggerating or flat out lying about something for the third or fourth time.

All I'm asking for is a little bit of common sense if you can't do it properly don't do it at all.

Common sense from a marketing department?
It's their job to exaggerate and lie; some more than others as EA hasn't exactly shied away from the notion of lying to make pre-orders this year.

 

[Mikeyfell]

We already say Morrigan in the teaser you idiots!

If you modeled her you obviously put her in the game even though the last DLC in DAO gave us the option to kill her.

Seriously Bioware lying to us will only make it worse. Remember the whole "A, B, C." Yeah... that sure didn't back fire on you.

Does that mean that even though we already saw Lelianna alive at the end of DA2 that she'll just randomly be dead again if we killed her in DAO?
THAT'S STILL A RET-CON!


What about Anders, Justice, Alaster and Nathan Howe? Huh? What happened to them?
This isn't taking our choices in to account. This is realizing how bad you fucked up and lying to our faces.

 

[Sarcastic Tasha]

Yeah I think people expect too much. Was I the only one who was actually impressed playing Mass Effect 2 and seeing the game had remembered the things I'd done in the first game? I remember listening to the galactic news and hearing about how some hostages had been killed reminding me that I never had got around to that side mission in ME1. It was just a little thing but it made it feel like my choosing to ignore that side mission had actually mattered. One of the small things in Mass Effect 3 that really impressed me was during a conversation with Miranda where she admits she'd been wrong about wanting to install a control chip in Shepard. That conversation changes slightly depending on whether or not you'd had the conversation with Miranda in ME2 about the control chip. That just seemed like something that could so easily have been overlooked but it wasn't.

If Shepard chose to drink coffee instead of tea one time in Mass Effect can't people just be pleased that Shepard then had an "I love coffee" mug in her cabin in ME2 instead of a teapot? As opposed to complaining that Shepard actually accepted a cup of tea from Liara in ME3 instead of throwing the cup back in her face while screaming "Its like you don't even know me!"

Short of making ten different games within one game our decisions can't matter in a way that entirely alters the plot or the game's environment. So they have to matter in a more superficial way (like the news reports, emails and the things people say) or on a more personal level (relationships between characters, the death of a character, etc).

Obviously sometimes it doesn't work. I was personally disappointed not to see Morinth in ME3 but not many people saved her in ME2 so I guess the developers decided it wasn't worth spending the money on having her return. Seems like loads of people are annoyed about the Leliana thing, wouldn't really have expected that many people to have killed her anyway to complain about it. Decisions following through in DA2 did seem more tagged on than in Mass Effect (probably because Mass Effect was intended to be a trilogy from the start whereas Origins was a stand alone game)but there were still some quite nice moments like seeing Alistair again or how Isabela remembered her time with Leliana and the Warden. But then I actually enjoyed Dragon Age 2 so I probably just have brain damage or something.

It may not be a perfect system but its got to be better than developers just choosing a canon where the warden could end up being a male human noble who tended towards lawful good while your warden was a female city elf who tended towards chaotic neutral.

 

[spartandude]

snip

It's no much that our choices have little effect.

It's that Bioware says "Your choices are important! They really do matter guys! Hang on to your saves, you're going to need them for all the mind blowing things they change in the next game!" and then players just get like an email or something.

Bioware hypes up the choices almost as badly as Peter Molyneux. If the player's choices affect nothing, then Bioware should shut up about them.

That is true, but that has more to do with the disconnect between the developers and the PR guys. It's the latter who are hyping up the feature because for them it's not a gameplay innovation that can lead to more varied and interesting gaming experience for the player but simply sales buzzwords that also imply the need to buy the previous installments of a sequel, thus advertising the entire series in one fell swoop. This is, by the way, the biggest issue with the carry-over-canon of these games; the PR people making outlandish promises that the development team gets burned for once the game is released. It's kind of sad and infuriating if you ask me...

Yeah no game could pull of having a huge world and choices that matter *cough* The Witcher *cough*

Excuse me, but are you following the discussion? This is about choices carrying over from one game to the sequel and keeping a player-specific canon. The Witcher games have a great amount of player agency in them, true, but they are irrelevant to the current topic. Let's return to this when the Witcher 3 (hopefully) takes to concept a step further.

The point about the Witcher is relevant, that had saves carry over from the first game and effect the second, sure they didnt completely change the game, but they were there, it changed a few questions pretty well and did alot more in that regard than DAO-DA2 or the ME games did

 

[Darren Carrigan]

I didnt know inquisition was only on Next Gen.
FUUUUUUUUUUUU

 

[Ishigami]

Yeah I think people expect too much. Was I the only one who was actually impressed playing Mass Effect 2 and seeing the game had remembered the things I'd done in the first game? I remember listening to the galactic news and hearing about how some hostages had been killed reminding me that I never had got around to that side mission in ME1. It was just a little thing but it made it feel like my choosing to ignore that side mission had actually mattered. One of the small things in Mass Effect 3 that really impressed me was during a conversation with Miranda where she admits she'd been wrong about wanting to install a control chip in Shepard. That conversation changes slightly depending on whether or not you'd had the conversation with Miranda in ME2 about the control chip. That just seemed like something that could so easily have been overlooked but it wasn't.

If Shepard chose to drink coffee instead of tea one time in Mass Effect can't people just be pleased that Shepard then had an "I love coffee" mug in her cabin in ME2 instead of a teapot? As opposed to complaining that Shepard actually accepted a cup of tea from Liara in ME3 instead of throwing the cup back in her face while screaming "Its like you don't even know me!"

Short of making ten different games within one game our decisions can't matter in a way that entirely alters the plot or the game's environment. So they have to matter in a more superficial way (like the news reports, emails and the things people say) or on a more personal level (relationships between characters, the death of a character, etc).

Obviously sometimes it doesn't work. I was personally disappointed not to see Morinth in ME3 but not many people saved her in ME2 so I guess the developers decided it wasn't worth spending the money on having her return. Seems like loads of people are annoyed about the Leliana thing, wouldn't really have expected that many people to have killed her anyway to complain about it. Decisions following through in DA2 did seem more tagged on than in Mass Effect (probably because Mass Effect was intended to be a trilogy from the start whereas Origins was a stand alone game)but there were still some quite nice moments like seeing Alistair again or how Isabela remembered her time with Leliana and the Warden. But then I actually enjoyed Dragon Age 2 so I probably just have brain damage or something.

It may not be a perfect system but its got to be better than developers just choosing a canon where the warden could end up being a male human noble who tended towards lawful good while your warden was a female city elf who tended towards chaotic neutral.

Pretty much this.
I enjoyed the differences that my ME and DA:O save games provided. The games felt a little bit more personalized and cohesive despite some continuation hiccups here and there.
For example the Citadel in ME2 felt way more hostile towards humans if you abandon the council in the first game. That left more of an impression on me than running into Samara in ME3 despite having picked Morinth in ME2.
In the end expecting a completely different game is just unreasonable. So having some choices being overruled by the dev team?s decisions is fair game.