156 réponses à ce sujet

[alickar]

i want GOLEMS!!!

[Special_Agent_Goodwrench]

Amazing... just amazing.

[Wishpig]

saruman31 wrote...

SirGladiator wrote...

I too would like to see more diversity of characters. DA has the best looking female dwarves in the history of dwarfdom, and yet the only dwarven teammate in DAO was an annoying dude. DAA was much better, Sigrun was super awesome, if she'd been an LI she might've been the best character in the entire DA universe. Of course we seem to be back to 'annoying dwarf dude' as a party member for DA2, but perhaps there will be a Sigrun-like teammate as well, one can only hope. Also for Elves, I liked the girl in Witch Hunt, somebody like her would be nice. I think outside of Hawke's family members, the Pirate Lady, and possibly Aveline, I don't really need any human teammates at all. Bethany, Pirate Lady, and Aveline right there would make an awesome team, I'd need a Sigrun-like level of awesome to get me to replace of one of those. Make it happen .

Oghren was my favorite male companion and even if he was pretty useless in fights i kept him because of his party dialogue. 
@ OP It doesn`t matter if they are human or not but mostly if you can relate or like them.  

It does matter, to me if not you. I'm a huge fan of dwarves, I think humans are boring, and I hate elves. Obviously I'm gonna be a happy camper with more dwarves! I'm hardly alone in this. Many others find humans boring (nothing wrong with liking them though, diffrent strokes for diffrent folks), many dislike dwarfs, but like elves.

But it does kind of tie into what your saying about relating to characters I suppose. Very much unlike humans, dwarfs and elves tend to vary less in personality, beliefs, ect. Not saying they don't vary, and sometimes radically (Oghren is an example of a cliche, Zevran is an example of a more unique personality, but still shares many of their traits), but your average dwarf will tend be somewhat akin to the dwarf stereotype. Same with elves and their steroetypes. Humans really don't fall into a single stereotype. This is true with most fantasy genres as it's required to have the elves and dwarves stick to a more defined set of traits otherwise they would just be short humans with beards or tall humans with pointy ears. HOPEFULLY you see where I was going with that. hard to explain.

Let me sum it up with Varric real quick. We know very little about him at this point. Although it's clear he isn't your cliche' dwarf like Oghren was. But he still shares some traits with dwarfs that makes him immediatly appeal to me. He's short and tough, certainly boisterous, likes his drink, ballsy, and I'm betting a comic relief. WIll I like him as much as Oghren, prob not, but I can already tell you I'll like him and relate to him on some level.

I relate to the dwarf stereotype and I'm generally drawn to the appearance and attitude. Hence why you are right in a sense.

Sry if that got confusing. Tricky to explain without sounding like I'm saying all dwarfs and elves are the same... which I'm not.

Modifié par Wishpig, 13 septembre 2010 - 11:15 .

[SirOccam]

I like the idea of more diversity (and I'd really like to see a female elf LI), but I think at least half the team should be humans. Just because it makes sense.  It doesn't have to be like those ads you see for colleges or whatever where there just happens to be one person of every major ethnicity.

[andar91]

SirOccam wrote...

I like the idea of more diversity (and I'd really like to see a female elf LI), but I think at least half the team should be humans. Just because it makes sense.  It doesn't have to be like those ads you see for colleges or whatever where there just happens to be one person of every major ethnicity.

LOL  That's such a good example, and so true.

[Wishpig]

SirOccam wrote...

I like the idea of more diversity (and I'd really like to see a female elf LI), but I think at least half the team should be humans. Just because it makes sense.  It doesn't have to be like those ads you see for colleges or whatever where there just happens to be one person of every major ethnicity.

You can't say it makes sense most companions would be human because your in human lands... because it doesn't. Thats not the only factor.

For example, a companion of yours is Varric... the merchant prince of surface dwarfs. It would make just as much sense having multple surface dwarfs with close ties to Varric be you companions as humans...

BUT thats not gonna be how it works out, because variety is the key to pleasing most people.

Modifié par Wishpig, 13 septembre 2010 - 11:29 .

[Saibh]

alickar wrote...

i want GOLEMS!!!

That shows up as a giant hot pink THOU SHALT NOT HOT LINK square to me.

[packardbell]

They could all be human for all I care, they just need a fleshed out and varying backstories.

[Loc'n'lol]

From the filename I'd say it's House's face with "DO WANT" written on it...



Anyway, hmm, no. I don't want non-human companions unless not being human actually provides something new and interesting.

[SirOccam]

Wishpig wrote...

SirOccam wrote...

I like the idea of more diversity (and I'd really like to see a female elf LI), but I think at least half the team should be humans. Just because it makes sense.  It doesn't have to be like those ads you see for colleges or whatever where there just happens to be one person of every major ethnicity.

You can't say it makes sense most companions would be human because your in human lands... because it doesn't. Thats not the only factor.

For example, a companion of yours is Varric... the merchant prince of surface dwarfs. It would make just as much sense having multple surface dwarfs with close ties to Varric be you companions as humans...

BUT thats not gonna be how it works out, because variety is the key to pleasing most people.

I never said it was the only factor, and it's not like I'm saying saying there can't be any non-humans. But surfacer Dwarves are (from what I gather in DAO) fairly uncommon, and most Elves are in alienages or Dalish clans. Of course there *are* surfacer Dwarves and Elves that are either not in an Alienage/clan or they want to leave it. So sure, bring 'em along. But we don't have to arbitrarily force it to be equal in terms of how many people from each race are in the group.

Humans are the race that is most likely willing (unlike most Dalish/Dwarves) and able (unlike most Alienage elves) to be available. Again, I don't mean there can't be any Elves or Dwarves, but the group makeup should somewhat reflect Free Marchian (Free Marcher?) society.

[Rubbish Hero]

This good idea. Player collect like big pokemon people. Might well use pokeball.

Stand around, big poo poo head, wait for use. No natural, contrived disposal tool.

[ErichHartmann]

Rubbish Hero wrote...

This good idea. Player collect like big pokemon people. Might well use pokeball.
Stand around, big poo poo head, wait for use. No natural, contrived disposal tool.

Pikachu, I choose you!  Can we have Yu-Gi-Ho! too?

[Wishpig]

SirOccam wrote...

Wishpig wrote...

SirOccam wrote...

I like the idea of more diversity (and I'd really like to see a female elf LI), but I think at least half the team should be humans. Just because it makes sense.  It doesn't have to be like those ads you see for colleges or whatever where there just happens to be one person of every major ethnicity.

You can't say it makes sense most companions would be human because your in human lands... because it doesn't. Thats not the only factor.

For example, a companion of yours is Varric... the merchant prince of surface dwarfs. It would make just as much sense having multple surface dwarfs with close ties to Varric be you companions as humans...

BUT thats not gonna be how it works out, because variety is the key to pleasing most people.

I never said it was the only factor, and it's not like I'm saying saying there can't be any non-humans. But surfacer Dwarves are (from what I gather in DAO) fairly uncommon, and most Elves are in alienages or Dalish clans. Of course there *are* surfacer Dwarves and Elves that are either not in an Alienage/clan or they want to leave it. So sure, bring 'em along. But we don't have to arbitrarily force it to be equal in terms of how many people from each race are in the group.

Humans are the race that is most likely willing (unlike most Dalish/Dwarves) and able (unlike most Alienage elves) to be available. Again, I don't mean there can't be any Elves or Dwarves, but the group makeup should somewhat reflect Free Marchian (Free Marcher?) society.

No, I know you weren't saying that, and I know what you mean.

I'm saying it makes sense that having more humans than other races due to location makes as much sense as having more dwarf companions due to a dwarf "prince of sorts" being in your group.

But thats not the point. The point is creating a party of widly diffrent characters that will please most gamers. If we brought "what would make most sense" into DA:O's companion list, we prob wouldn't have wound up with some of the most intresting characters. A chantry girl who has whacky visions, a drunk, a murderer, an assassin who just tried to kill you, one of the last sentaint golemns, ect.

[SirOccam]

Wishpig wrote...

SirOccam wrote...

Wishpig wrote...

SirOccam wrote...

I like the idea of more diversity (and I'd really like to see a female elf LI), but I think at least half the team should be humans. Just because it makes sense.  It doesn't have to be like those ads you see for colleges or whatever where there just happens to be one person of every major ethnicity.

You can't say it makes sense most companions would be human because your in human lands... because it doesn't. Thats not the only factor.

For example, a companion of yours is Varric... the merchant prince of surface dwarfs. It would make just as much sense having multple surface dwarfs with close ties to Varric be you companions as humans...

BUT thats not gonna be how it works out, because variety is the key to pleasing most people.

I never said it was the only factor, and it's not like I'm saying saying there can't be any non-humans. But surfacer Dwarves are (from what I gather in DAO) fairly uncommon, and most Elves are in alienages or Dalish clans. Of course there *are* surfacer Dwarves and Elves that are either not in an Alienage/clan or they want to leave it. So sure, bring 'em along. But we don't have to arbitrarily force it to be equal in terms of how many people from each race are in the group.

Humans are the race that is most likely willing (unlike most Dalish/Dwarves) and able (unlike most Alienage elves) to be available. Again, I don't mean there can't be any Elves or Dwarves, but the group makeup should somewhat reflect Free Marchian (Free Marcher?) society.

No, I know you weren't saying that, and I know what you mean.

I'm saying it makes sense that having more humans than other races due to location makes as much sense as having more dwarf companions due to a dwarf "prince of sorts" being in your group.

But thats not the point. The point is creating a party of widly diffrent characters that will please most gamers. If we brought "what would make most sense" into DA:O's companion list, we prob wouldn't have wound up with some of the most intresting characters. A chantry girl who has whacky visions, a drunk, a murderer, an assassin who just tried to kill you, one of the last sentaint golemns, ect.

Ah, okay, I see what you're getting at. Yeah I agree that there should be a wide variety of strong personalities, for great justice dramatic possibilities. But the good thing about that is most personalities can be on any race. For example Zevran could have been a human or a Dwarf pretty easily.

That's one thing I didn't like about ME2. I have never played a FemShep because your romantic options are Jacob "The Priiiize" Taylor or two weird-looking, green, scaly, lizard guys. I'm sure it's just my own RP-ing shortcomings that are to blame, but I don't really dig the whole interspecies thing when they're that different. I make an exception for Asari, because...well just because.

That's not as big of a deal for Dragon Age, because none of the races are THAT different. The only one that kinda makes me shudder is Dwarves. But anyway...the point is that I'd like to see more non-humans, but only if there are compelling reasons for them to be there and it's not simply a matter of mandatory diversity.

Modifié par SirOccam, 14 septembre 2010 - 12:15 .

[David Gaider]

Hm. Personally I've never thought of characters as races, first... and I'm not very big on making the player's party a collection of every minority or oddball in the land. The party reflects the setting, to me, so therefore you find a majority of humans simply because that's what the setting is.



Not to mention that I find nothing intrinsically exciting about a character that is an elf or a dwarf, simply by virtue of them being that race. I suppose there's always going to be people who have a special like or dislike for certain characters or even classes & races... so someone wanting more or less of one is great, but chances are we're going to go with what we feel works best for the game, the setting and our story.



"kthxbye" notwithstanding.

[Saibh]

David Gaider wrote...

Hm. Personally I've never thought of characters as races, first... and I'm not very big on making the player's party a collection of every minority or oddball in the land. The party reflects the setting, to me, so therefore you find a majority of humans simply because that's what the setting is.

Not to mention that I find nothing intrinsically exciting about a character that is an elf or a dwarf, simply by virtue of them being that race. I suppose there's always going to be people who have a special like or dislike for certain characters or even classes & races... so someone wanting more or less of one is great, but chances are we're going to go with what we feel works best for the game, the setting and our story.

"kthxbye" notwithstanding.

Something I always respected about BioWare's race-making/crafting skills is that they create races that have a specific hat on, sure, but go right ahead a subvert them. Humans are almost always defined as "And these guys are actual individuals!". All of the other races fall pretty squarely in the perimeters of their race in most fantasy RPGs.

I think a lot of us have been condition to always associate a race's traits as being inextricably a part of them, and then pick a favorite race based on those traits. I don't have a particular love for dwarves or elves because of the things associated with their race--I might love the complexity and intrigue of the dwarves, but I don't look at a character like Harrowmont and instantly like him or dislike for being a dwarf. I treat them as I would a human in that situation.

I don't think, oh, look, another fast-talking gnome. Can't wait to meet you.

[Kileyan]

David Gaider wrote...

Hm. Personally I've never thought of characters as races, first... and I'm not very big on making the player's party a collection of every minority or oddball in the land. The party reflects the setting, to me, so therefore you find a majority of humans simply because that's what the setting is.

Not to mention that I find nothing intrinsically exciting about a character that is an elf or a dwarf, simply by virtue of them being that race. I suppose there's always going to be people who have a special like or dislike for certain characters or even classes & races... so someone wanting more or less of one is great, but chances are we're going to go with what we feel works best for the game, the setting and our story.

"kthxbye" notwithstanding.

I agree I don't want and elf or a dwarf just to reach some diversity quota. But I do appreciate your different races in this particular game, not because they are simply a dwarf or elf, but because they truly do think differently and what that brings to the table. Sigrun is my example, one of my favorite characters, not because she was a dwarf, but because she was the lowest caste and of the Dead Legion. It was an interesting character, getting into the head of why and what made her tick, understanding what it must be like to have nothing, be thought of as nothing, and finding being the Dead Legion as a promotion in life. I do tend to like the really alien cultures over yet another human with daddy issues or political motives.

[Wishpig]

David Gaider wrote...

Hm. Personally I've never thought of characters as races, first... and I'm not very big on making the player's party a collection of every minority or oddball in the land. The party reflects the setting, to me, so therefore you find a majority of humans simply because that's what the setting is.

Not to mention that I find nothing intrinsically exciting about a character that is an elf or a dwarf, simply by virtue of them being that race. I suppose there's always going to be people who have a special like or dislike for certain characters or even classes & races... so someone wanting more or less of one is great, but chances are we're going to go with what we feel works best for the game, the setting and our story.

"kthxbye" notwithstanding.

Thanx for the nice response. All makes sense... but I don't get one part...

You say your "not very big on making the player's party a collection of every minority or oddball in the land."

Well.. no offense... but that describes many of the companions in DA:O. Morrigan is the daughter of the uber almost godly flemith, Alistair is a bastard prince, Shale is one of the last sentiant golemns, Loghain is king kinda, Oghren is the husband of a paragon, Leliana likes me having sex with nugs, and Zevran is a wild bi-sexual killer.

I'm pretty sure they all fall into the minority/oddball camp.

Modifié par Wishpig, 14 septembre 2010 - 12:39 .

[Rubbish Hero]

ErichHartmann wrote...Can we have Yu-Gi-Ho! too?

No as good pokemon, no watch.

Modifié par Rubbish Hero, 14 septembre 2010 - 12:40 .

[David Gaider]

Wishpig wrote...
You say your "not very big on making the player's party a collection of every minority or oddball in the land."

Well.. no offense... but that describes many of the companions in DA:O. Morrigan is the daughter of the uber almost godly flemith, Alistair is a bastard prince, Shale is one of the last sentiant golemns, Loghain is king kinda, Oghren is the husband of a paragon, Leliana likes me having sex with nugs, and Zevran is a wild bi-sexual killer.

I'm pretty sure they all fall into the minority/oddball camp.

There's nothing that says just because a character is human that they have to be boring. To me, it's much more interesting if a character is a mage, or an Antivan or a Chasind barbarian witch... there's so much room to explore within the human cultures that I don't find it particularly limiting to make them human any more than it's intrinsically interesting to make a character elven or dwarven.

And having unique or oddball characters is fine-- Justice was unique, after all. I just think that if absolutely everyone in the group is unique than that uniqueness becomes commonplace. I'd rather not do that. But I never meant that there can't be interesting things about the party members, but that covers a much wider spectrum than simply their race.

So if I (or the rest of the writing team) come up with some concepts that work better as non-humans and there's more of those concepts than human ones-- then yes, we'll have more non-humans than humans in the party. Failing that, however, we'll stick to the party as a microcosm of the setting. And that's as far as it goes.

Modifié par David Gaider, 14 septembre 2010 - 01:20 .

[ErichHartmann]

You have to bring back Justice or introduce another good spirit! :innocent: Probably my favorite character.

[krasnoarmeets]

Sten was alien to the setting of DAO. I'm just saying. His presence was explained obviously, but he was still an oddball.

[Brockololly]

I don't care if the companions are human or not- if the setting deems it to make sense they should be mostly human, then fine. It makes sense that you'll run into some more unique individuals and unique or oddball species/characters like Justice considering the PC is often doing extraordinary and exceptional things and traveling the world.

But so long as the characters are interesting, thats the important thing. I'd gladly take a party of all human characters if they were interesting and lively human characters that can seem like individuals while still shedding some light on the world.

[Darkchipper07]

David Gaider wrote...

Wishpig wrote...
You say your "not very big on making the player's party a collection of every minority or oddball in the land."

Well.. no offense... but that describes many of the companions in DA:O. Morrigan is the daughter of the uber almost godly flemith, Alistair is a bastard prince, Shale is one of the last sentiant golemns, Loghain is king kinda, Oghren is the husband of a paragon, Leliana likes me having sex with nugs, and Zevran is a wild bi-sexual killer.

I'm pretty sure they all fall into the minority/oddball camp.

There's nothing that says just because a character is human that they have to be boring. To me, it's much more interesting if a character is a mage, or an Antivan or a Chasind barbarian witch... there's so much room to explore within the human cultures that I don't find it particularly limiting to make them human any more than it's intrinsically interesting to make a character elven or dwarven.

And having unique or oddball characters is fine-- Justice was unique, after all. I just think that if absolutely everyone in the group is unique than that uniqueness becomes commonplace. I'd rather not do that. But I never meant that there can't be interesting things about the party members, but that covers a much wider spectrum than simply their race.

So if I (or the rest of the writing team) come up with some concepts that work better as non-humans and there's more of those concepts than human ones-- then yes, we'll have more non-humans than humans in the party. Failing that, however, we'll stick to the party as a microcosm of the setting. And that's as far as it goes.

Confirmed all party members are human!

[andar91]

Edit:  Deleted my comment.

Modifié par andar91, 14 septembre 2010 - 01:47 .