Sable Rhapsody wrote...
mllrthyme wrote...
What I think character driven story, I thought back to BG2 and how it was more about discovering the PC as a character and what their power/lineage entailed. It was only a side effect that the PC's "birthright," so to speak, could effect the rest of the world.
And to top it all off, it doesn't look like Hawke has any special birthright, unless you count the epic suck of having been born in Ferelden X number of years before a Blight. Hawke seems to have started out as a more-or-less normal person, maybe marginally less so if you play him/her as a mage. A normal person living a normal brown Ferelden life before the darkspawn turned up and ate Lothering. And that ordinary person, without birthright or office or prophecy somesuch, grows up to be the person who changed the face of Thedas, and the player's job is to determine how.
This. I am actually very excited to take a person with very little 'special' qualities of his own --
except for his personality -- and through purely my own choices, turn him/her into a legend. This, to me, seems much more player-oriented than either Mass Effect or Origins, actually. No longer are circumstances outside of my control dictating who my character can become, and how he/she does so.
In promoting Origins, I remember when the Powers-That-Be stated that there would be no morality meter because no matter who your character was, in the end he/she would end up doing roughly the same thing: defeating the Archdemon and ending the Blight. Even in this very regimented set of goals, as we saw, there was a lot of room for the player's personality and choices to shine through, even though we were just picking Dalish Elves over Werewolves, say, as our third fighting squad, or chosing Loghain to make the sacrifice rather than Alistair... little things, if you think about it, but to a character's point of view they mattered quite a bit.
Now, it appears that we-as-players have the chance to make decisions in very big things. Hawke is not given the quest to, say, defeat X bad guy and so become the defining force in Ferelden's future. Yes, Hawke becomes a legendary figure... but how many ways are there for that to be true? Is he to be a King Arthur, a Robin Hood, a Batman, a Guy Fawkes, a Captain Kidd, a Genghis Khan, an Al Capone, or a Gandhi? And that's only looking at male archetypes! There are so many ways to bring change, just because the promotional art shows a man with a sword, the decision has been made that Hawke is some specific person, hell, we are already each putting our own spin on him/her without more than a glimpse!
This is an opportunity, not a cage. From what we've heard so far, it is quite likely that our Hawke's will be able to vary widely, only now the difference will not be superficial-- sorry, but apart from a few mentions in Orzammar and the Circle Tower, the differences between my beloved Lady Aeducan and my male human Mage were largely superficial... each recruited four armies and defeated the Archdemon... the plot remained unchanged. Other than that, we still have access to different combat styles and different romances (and hopefully, still the same different sexualities... fingers crossed!) Now, not only will that all be true...
But if I choose to play a Jezebel femme-fatale who charms her way into power, and you to play a benevolent warrior who slices and dices the invading Orlesians to become a mighty general, it will
matter. It will
change things. Ferelden will be a different place due to Hawke's actions... not only will we affect the lives of our companions, but every man and woman. If I sound overdramatic? It's because this is. It's epic on a whole new scale.
TL;DR: This is something to be happy about.
Modifié par Hawksblud, 21 juillet 2010 - 10:10 .
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