View Single Post
Old 2012-02-25, 12:46   Link #1802
Nixl
Senior Member
 
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by MeoTwister5 View Post
And that's the problem right here. Does Bioware's attempt to give first time players a sort of semi-intro automatically become a reduction of narrative quality as a foregone conclusion? The game isn't even out yet, we don't even know exactly how this newbie intro is going to go, and people are automatically assuming that this concession to the newbie player is itself a reduction of quality. We have bits and pieces of what it'll be, and I don't expect it to be any sort of perfect at all, but all I see are fragments: until I get to try it out on my own, any and all conclusions I have are premature. Do we know this as a fact, or even as a personal opinion based on experience? No, just an assumption.

And as an extension of my chosen profession, I prefer evidence over assumption. I'll make my conclusion whether the narrative suffers or not when I actually experience it, and not simply a priori.
True, it does remain to be seen what they do, but at this point I have very very little faith in them. I think we can agree that there are many ways for Bioware to fill in any potential narrative gap without resorting to changing the actual gameplay or narrative/dialogue.

I will use Blizzard as an example since they also have games that are entering trilogy size or beyond. During the installation of each of their games now is a story prompt titled "The Story So Far." It is basically a narrative summary of what happened in the past. For Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty Blizzard had a slide show with pictures of all the key characters in the past games and the even the actual text was narrated to the player. Thus, all someone had to do in order to catch up was watch the video and it all took place during the installation of the game, rather than time spent in game explaining everything.

I think that type of catch employed by Blizzard could potentially serve Bioware in this case and allow them to avoid long recaps of everything within the game and/or simplify the story.

To be clear, making the story easier for new gamers is not bad if done well, but I have no faith in Bioware to do anything but a recap or dumbed down dialogue.
Nixl is offline   Reply With Quote