Has anyone from the design team ever explained why they managed the transition of Zevran from Origins to Awakening so badly. One of the big attractions of the game for most people is the interaction of characters and the way you can build relationships, romantic or just friends. Zevran is one of the most interesting characters in the original who seems to go through the biggest learning curve as he discovers how to truly love or simply be a good friend. He certainly seems to have far greater emotional depth than many of the other characters. So why is he the only character who is not accounted for until the very end of Awakening and then in such an illogical way?
So far I have played through Origins with two characters, a male elf scout who ends the game with Zevran as his devoted gay lover, and a female elf mage, who opted for simple friendship at the outset and ends the game with Zevran as her devoted best friend, or in his words “mascot”. I played through to the end of Awakening with my first character to be told that I go to look for Zevran in Antiva. Why would he have gone to Antiva and why would I think of looking for him there? I know there is meant to be a letter somewhere in the game files that you can unlock if you wish (and know how to do it) but to my mind if it is not in the actual game it doesn’t count. Even so, the letter suggests he has gone to Antiva to do deal with the Crows. What sort of deal could he possibly do with them? Please stop trying to kill me/kill my lover? Like a personal visit by Zevran is going to carry any weight with them. To my mind the last place you want to be if you think the Crows want to kill you is in their power base and my conversations with him led me to believe that preferably he would like to get as far away from them as possible.
I’m wondering if I will even get that much of an explanation when I reach the end with my lady mage, bearing in mind she is not in a romantic relationship with Zevran. Whilst my elf boy had said that he intended to go travelling at the end of Origins, she made it quite clear she was going to continue to work chasing down dark spawn as a committed Grey Warden (as she knew that is what her lover Alistair wanted to do). Whilst Zevran drew the line at actually becoming a Grey Warden, he definitely wanted to stay with her as a sort of in-house assassin. In fact his codex entry initial quote had actually changed from “The Crows send their regards” to “I intend to see this through to the end with you. After all….someone must take responsibility for preventing your untimely death”. So his changed status and mindset had been acknowledged and whilst I fully expected him to say he was leaving me once the arch demon was dead, you could argue that the reason he didn’t was that he knew I had unfinished business with the dark spawn. Certainly the knowledge that he was still going to be around had brought a big smile to my girl’s face.
It seems to me that an opportunity was missed in that a very good reason could have been given why he was missing from the main character’s side – he was pursuing leads undercover about possible plots against his friend/lover – which would have tied in perfectly with an actual plot thread. Instead there seems a determination to send Zevran back to Antiva and the Crows. If the main character dies at the end of Origins, Zevran goes back to Antiva. Even if the main character no longer needs him/is dead, why would he want to go back to a life that deep down he clearly hated and from which he was so grateful that you released him? What was the point of making you think you had freed him from the Crows and that he wanted to stay with you, if the writers had no intention of carrying that through?
Where is Zevran? (spoilers)
Débuté par
Gervaise
, mai 23 2010 10:23
Retour en haut
