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[Gorgophone]

I'm in the same boat as a number of people here who prefer customizable unvoiced protagonists, in RPGs at any rate - it's just a slight preference, as I really enjoy making my characters entirely my own. That's not to say I don't enjoy games that centre around a pre-made character. It's a bit of a different experience, though, and I find that if the character doesn't appeal to me, it's hard to sympathize with them.

I have to say, though, I'm really looking forward to DAII. I find a lot of defined protagonists in games - especially male ones - are, er... of a type? A muscle-bound, barrel-chested, gruff type? A personality-of-a-shoestrap type? Maybe developers purposefully avoid injecting too much colour into these characters to make them more universally appealing, but I sometimes feel it falls flat, especially when the characters are voiced. (I'm... not looking at you, Shepard. Really!) But I'm not so worried about Hawke - I really, really enjoyed the writing in Origins. So much so that I'm excited to see how the writers tackle Hawke - I hope we can direct his personality ourselves somewhat, but even if his personality is already strongly defined, I'm confident he'll be fun to play. Different storytelling, different experience, hopefully just as awesome.

That said, I'm curious about what the decision to have the game revolve around a set, voiced protagonist means for any future Dragon Age games. I like the idea that the devs want to explore different kinds of storytelling in the DA world. But if DAII sells better than the first, will the sales dictate the direction of future games? Do you think we'll continue to see a mix of narrative structures in future games, or is the story of the single voiced protagonist the way of the future? Is this approach more popular?
I don't know much about EA, but if they follow the trend of, er, some other publishers and start to push for shorter development cycles, this could affect the type of stories we see - maybe a game like DAII, without the origins, is more manageable to develop in a shorter time? Or, more hopefully, the development team will be able to choose what direction they want to take, whatever that direction is.

Any thoughts? I'm not clamouring for a DAIII yet, but I am intrigued by the idea of a series that uses a different perspective for each installment, and wondering if that's what we'll really see. I admit I'd be a bit disappointed if the series dropped things like choosing origins or races entirely. On the other hand, I'm excited to see what the DA team does with Hawke's story.

[Tooneyman]

As long as DA 2 isn't like gears of war with swords I'll love it.