Aermas wrote...
Aladdin is kind from the beginning (giving his hard won bread to starving children) & Zevran is a rapist.
The story of Aladdin I remember reading didn't have him giving bread to children. If you're referring to the Disney movie, that opened up another can of worms.
Which expression of Aladdin is 'the right one?'
Hukari wrote...
Well played, but allow me to answer first your non-rhetorical question. No, it is not an inaccurate assessment, -for that part of the story-. If characters remained the same as when you first meet them, then what is the point of the story? You've gone from beginning to end and not changed a whit. Within ten minutes of meeting him, Loghain became the ultimate evil in Ferelden. And yet, he grew; his character molded, it shifted. It changed.
I agree that characters should change over time. I think one of the reasons companions receive the emphasis they do in BioWare games, is that they can change while the writers can craft an internal 'arc' for the PC.
Morrigan goes from being fairly self-absorbed to loving/respecting the PC. I found it very moving when she said that she considered me a friend - her first and probably only friend.
To the Zevran question, I would also argue; He is not a rapist, by Ferelden's standards. You provide the caveat that he would be convicted in a modern court. Indeed he would. But Ferelden is far from modern; in a place where vigilantism and murder are, seemingly, commonplace, I doubt they have much in the way of available people to investigate and prosecute trials outside of high treason and other crimes of gravitas. Otherwise, we adventurer's would be out of work (Making our living off of aforementioned vigilantism, murder, property damage, theft, et cetera, et cetera).
Fair enough. Your definition of Zevran doesn't include rape. Others do.
Edit: I think, Maria Caliban, the thing that I am trying to summarize is thus: Stories are meant to occur with sentient, living beings. We see examples of people changing fashion styles, behaviour, personality, in rapid succession in our own modern lives (and, indeed, in more ancient periods). Yet, we still understand who they are, because we've decided to learn about their personality. If my friend puts on a different shirt, he doesn't cease existing as my friend; he is just my friend with a different shirt. That, I think, is the dissonance we're seeing here; we see it as detrimental to both gameplay and story to have us restricted to 'von und only von' outfit. It implies that they have no personality to identify themselves.
I feel the need to clarify my position. I don't think that visual expression is the most important form of expression for a game character. I don't think that clothing is the most important form of visual expression.
This conversation began when someone said that clothing
doesn't matter at all unless it disguises something.
I disagree with that. In visual medium, characters are given a standard look (even in shows where characters change their clothing, they tend to have a recognizable style) and it's not simply because the creators are lazy.
Yes, characters meant to be expressions of people, but I've never taken a writing course where the teacher said that a real person would be a good character. The best characters are simplifications of real people. The complexity and nuance of a real person would utterly fail in a movie or novel or game because we experience real people over hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of hours, wherein the longest a game is would be 100 hours and less than 10% of that is spent on a single NPC.
No, real people don't need gimmicks to exist. Characters do.
It's fine if you don't like the 'special uniform' gimmick, but I object to the idea that clothing is not a legitimate or useful expression of character.
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