SpunkeyMonkey said:
Regards the decisions themselves, I just think the very core of D&D based fantasy is about playing as something you can't be in real life, and that the extra effort put into having selectable races is worth it. Resources could be freed up by dropping other aspects of the game (such as a voiced protagonist - need more lines for other characters? Pay the other voice over people more from the budget used on a voiced lead.)
I totally agree about not having a voiced lead - DA:2 and ME:3 felt like movies, and badly directed ones at that. The way Hawke would say the opposite of what you wanted him too was embarrassing. Overall it's a flawed system because of those exact paraphrasing reasons you state. When you are given an option, whatever choice you read and select is what you've already read in your head, so putting an extra link in the chain of having the protagonist speak the desire only adds an extra obstacle to overcome. You should just get a reaction from the NPC instead ala RPGs of old IMO.
I certainly wouldn't complain. A lot of people feel that having a silent protagonist is immersion breaking, but to be honest I find it a lot easier to get into a game if it requires me using a bit of imagination, rather than the game taking it out of my control and doing something itself. It's not a problem in action games, but when you are creating your own character there should be as little influence on the developers as possible as far as I am concerned, as it's one of the reasons I like RPG style games.
Although DA2 got away with it to a small extent because FemHawke had an excellent voice actress.
Regards the D-wheel I see your point, but I don't like the way that it allows choices to be bracketed into "good/bad/humorous/paragon/renegade/safe/etc." - it kills the RPG feel for me and it should be down to the player themselves to interpret what a sentence is IMO. One person may see telling someone their fat as an insult, another may see it as doing them a favour by trying to point out where they can better themselves, another may just think they are being funny. To label them as "good/bad/etc." takes the player out of the equation too much and forces a perspective on someone. It's very poor roleplaying. I also don't like how the investigation option is "safe" - what if I ask a sensitive question and they get upset and storm off? Or if I ask a question that unearths more than they want it to? To add to the feel of realism there should often be a sense of having to choose your questions wisely and the dialogue tree does that better for me.
I think most of that is down to how they used it. David Gaider explained that in essence the wheel works pretty much the same as the dialogue tree in DA:O, the only difference is that it let's you know what each thing does. For example you have the investigation, paragon, renegade or in DA2 the emotion based options. In DA:O you essentially had that, it's just it wasn't shown. So you had investigation options such as asking questions or aggressive and kind responses, but they didn't label them as such even though the effect was the same.
The problem with the wheel though is that it makes it feel less organic. When you get a list of options, but don't know what the outcome will be, it feels much more like a conversation. The wheel feels more like a mini-game where you try and say the the right thing to succeed.
If they can make it work then I won't mind, but to be honest Bioware have made me raise my eyebrows with a fair few decisions in their last few games, I am hoping that they remember why DA:O was such a popular game in the first place. Even though I didn't hate DA2, there were a lot of mistakes to learn from, and I hope they learn them well.
