They require changes of the 3d environment. And that's a lot of work.
I'm pretty sceptical about this, actually.
This is how far I can zoom in on the Enhanced Edition. I don't see a problem here. Just make the faces a little bit nicer to look at and the Enhanced Edition would be ready for some close-ups. What more would you want from it? Many games with much worse graphics than D:OS have already been doing this for decades.
I really hope they're not going to take away the ability to rotate the camera in D:OS2 in order to save effort decorating the map like in vanilla D:OS.
So it should be structured like a fetch quest, rather than present a situation that you can choose to look into, if you are so inclined?
Not at all. I said it could be as simple as him asking you a question. "Have you seen Maxine?" "Do you know what I should do?" By asking you questions, he makes you a more active participant, and he
shows that he is interested in her. If he asks you about Maxine, but learns you can't help (because you don't know anything) then that's a good segueway for him to tell you a bit more about the situation. It doesn't mean he is asking you to do anything after the conversation is over.
In fact, if you want the conversation to tie together really well, you could have that segueway into his backstory with the ship. "Ever since I washed up on the beach, Maxine has been the one thing that helps me to forget the screams of my friends as they fell beneath the waves."
How is the Witcher 3 quest guy's long monologue any different than Zixzax, besides the camera moving around and changing perspective (sometimes annoyingly, IMNSHO)? The player has an occasional 'continue' question, with a fake choice a couple times that gives a short diversion before getting back to the where you can 'continue', and at the end there are some questions that can provide a little more detail.
I'm not talking about player input -- I'm talking about the conversation.
Unsinkable Sam: *Meow* Never saw you in the King Crab before! You're welcome to scratch me behind the ears if you like, I won't scratch back!
Player: Who are you?
Unsinkable Sam: I am Unsinkable Sam! At least, that's what they call me around here. Used to be a ship's cat, but the clipper I was on sank and I was the only one to wrestle himself free from the waves. The people here were kind and took me in. Been the King Crab's foremost patron ever since!
Player: Tell me about the ship you were on.
Unsinkable Sam: A magnificent ship she was! Used to belong to a pirate I was told. Unlike me, she didn't prove to be unsinkable though. We hit the cliffs right 'neath the lighthouse. Not very apt a name for that building I might say, for no light was shining from it!
Unsinkable Sam: The moment I hit the water, I writhed around like I would on a hot tin roof. By some miracle I managed to reach the beach covered in kelp and smelling worse than a fishes' funeral parlour, but I was alive, and that was more than anybody else could say! (This is actually a rather flippant way to talk about all your friends dying, and almost dying with them.)
Player: So you were the only survivor?
Unsinkable Sam: So I was! What friends I had, they all drowned alongside the rats I used to hunt in the galley, and there I was, all alone. (Once again, comparing the tragic deaths of your own friends to that of the rats in the galley. Classy.)
Unsinkable Sam: Not that I have it bad here, mind you. I've milk and fish aplenty; most folks will pet me kindly, and when one of the village girls holds me tight against her ample bosom I purr up a storm, but I do long for a companion of my own kind, and in that regard, there's no one like Maxine!
(He never shows a hint of distress. What is Unsinkable Sam's motivation in telling you all of this? It just seems that he's keen to tell you a story. If I were reading this passage in a book, it would sound great. But not when it's being presented as dialogue.)
Geralt: Your wound? Feeling better? (A pretty good icebreaker, actually.)
Guillaume: It's healing splendidly, though I'm to avoid trouble for some time. To be frank, that is precisely why I wished to speak with you. (He hesitates.) (Great segueway.)
Geralt: Want me to stand in for you, take some trouble on your behalf?
Guillaume: That could well be the case. You see, there is a maiden - nay, a lady. I suspect someone's cast an ill spell on her. A curse, perhaps.
Geralt: Lemme guess - she suddenly grew cold, haughty and distant, though the night before she was flirtatious and alluring?
Guillaume: Tut-tut, witcher - you jest, yet the matter is grave. Though, true, the lady in question is dear to my heart - I shall not deny it.
(Notice how about half of the dialogue so far -- and half of the information we get from this exchange is coming from Geralt -- not Guillaume?)
Both of these characters are supposed to be lovesick. Only Guillaume actually acts like it.
I can also try to find a similar example from a Bioware game if you think it's impossible to do this when the character's a blank slate.
As for the camera angles in the Witcher 3 scene, they added in some unusual camera angles in this case in order to draw your attention to the bird, which would later be an important part of the quest. Normally, they use the camera a lot more conventionally. But this is simply an issue of how you feel the scene should be directed.
I'm not suggesting that they direct
scenes like in the Witcher (as great as that would be). But I would like characters to express themselves physically, and I would like to be close enough that I can see them doing it.
