57 réponses à ce sujet

[Elthraim]

    One thing that Origins tried to do (with varying degrees of success from one origin story to the next) and that DA2 has also tried to do is make your family and/or upbringing factor into the story.  

    BioWare has stated that George R.R. Martin's the Song of Ice and Fire novels have influenced the world of Dragon Age, and it shows in what happens to your characters' family members in both Origins and DA2.  In myths and fiction, a hero often needs to lose people close to him/her in order to move on and fulfill his/her own destiny, but Martin's slow, unflinching, sadistic decimation of the Stark family seems more like what Dragon Age is going for.  Martin, however, was wise enough to give us a good amount of time to meet and begin to like the family members he will later tear away from us, which is where BioWare has failed with both Origins and DA2.

      1) We as players have no prior emotional ties to our characters' family, so killing one of them very early (i.e. Origins' Human Noble story or the early Carver/Bethany death based on your class choice) has no emotional impact on the player.  The opposite side of this spectrum is Fergus in Origins: your family is murdered and you think he may be alive, but he only reappears in the celebration sequence at the end of the game in a moment of 'Hey! Guess what?  I'm not dead!  What?  You stopped caring 30 hours ago?'
      2) A completely random, horrific death in the family (i.e. Leandra in Act 2) is jarring and scatalogical unless the loss leads to an important turn in the story (which it did not in that case), and again the player is unlikely to have developed an emotional connection to that character.  Given that you have no power to stop Leandra from dying, I felt that her death was a cheap shock tactic with little emotional or dramatic impact.
      3) Perhaps the root of the issue is that the voice acting and animations for these death scenes are so ham-fisted or melodramatic that the plot event is more likely to evoke laughter than sadness or pathos.

     So why even bother?  Just like in Neverwinter Nights 2 (which was Obsidian's work, not BioWare's) the family element to the plot of DA2 is more of a hinderance to the player's enjoyment of the game, a nagging pause in the story to play out a pre-determined drama for which you feel no emotional interest. 

    If BioWare can't portray family relationships with any dramatic weight I wish they would simply take a cue from the Elder Scrolls and make your character a prisoner with no past.  After all, why do we play RPGs?  We don't want to wade through hours of dialog about a family and past to which we as players have no personal connection.  We want to build significant bonds with the other characters in the story as we move through the world.  I feel that DA2 succeeds at the latter, so I wish they would stop trying to force the former into a story where it doesn't fit.

Modifié par Elthraim, 23 mars 2011 - 05:17 .

[AntiChri5]

Speak for yourself.

My Hawke was motivated entirely by the need to protect his family.

He ends up accomplishing everything he set out to do for them, but only when it is too late, and they are all stripped from him.

[The Angry One]

NW2's family element was horrible, especially since you could give your characters your own backgrounds.
"Hi, I'm a 700 year old noble elf! I live with my pauper father who found me 20 years ago in a backwater ass village!" wait, what?

Origins on the other hand handled them well for what they were - origins.
DA2's I like well enough. Not a fan of being shoehorned into a single background but it works. Yes, Leandra's death was nothing but an attempt to generate cheap pathos.

[King Killoth]

ok my comments on all three points
1) all of the orgins in DAO had family members die off to motavate you to join the wardens. also to give your warden a past he needed to overcome and shape him into the hero he was destended to be
2)hawke's mothers death had more than jsut the impact on hawke if you notice at the end the first enchanter uses the same magic used on hawke's mother to turn into a nightmare. showing her death was a steppingstone to greater evil.
3) i found the VA very fitting. as hawke holds his mother in his arms and crys as she slipps into death realy touched me and same when you lsoe your sibling in the begining. you get a sence of lose and your family feels it and makes mention of it later in the game. now it is possible toi ignore it and move on by useing evil diologe. me personaly even my evil hawke was sad when his brother was kileld and even more sad when his mother was murdered.

[Ziggeh]

Fridge filling.

[Maria Caliban]

Elthraim wrote...

Why does BioWare bother giving your characters a family?

So you can lose them.

[Gentleman Moogle]

I also felt that Bioware mishandled the Hawke family. The interaction between them was enjoyable -- what little there was -- but I feel they missed the boat. It could have been so powerful if the family had thrived beside Hawke, if they had grown as he grew, if they had stood beside him through everything the game through at him. They could have been his anchor, his reason for doing everything he did, his drive to succeed.... Hell, even if they DID want to go the "Song of Fire and Ice" route (Never read the books, and have no desire to), the deaths would have meant something to the player if, before the fall, there had been a tangible rise as well.

But no. All they were was a great big red flashing "TRA-JUH-DEE" button that Bioware pushed whenever it felt we needed a kick in the joy department.

After Leandra died, if I had been in control of Hawke, he would have packed up his sh*t and beat feet for happier parts. Wasn't any reason to stick around that cesspool of a city anymore.

[viverravid]

Why give you a family? So they can kill them off or otherwise deprive you of them, of course.

First death was totally meh, because no time to build up a connection. The others work reasonably well. Some really well.

[Elthraim]

@AntiChri5: That's a valid portrait of your character, and perhaps I'm in the minority.

I would have vastly preferred, however, that BioWare would have given us one sibling or parent and allowed us to grow fond of or resentful toward them before our choices in the game dictated their fate. No matter what you do or how you feel about Carver/Bethany, you cannot have them by your side in Act 2 or the majority of Act 3. My first run through Act 1 left Bethany in Kirkwall to be forced into the Circle. When she was afflicted with the taint in my second run I felt like BioWare had cheated me out of saving her, and cheaply at that.

Modifié par Elthraim, 23 mars 2011 - 05:30 .

[Elthraim]

@King Killoth: I think the VO/VA was better in DA2 than in Origins, and I liked when Aveline and Bethany reacted to Wesley's and Carver's deaths, respectively. I found Leandra's voice to have less impact, and as she's the one mourning most often (or, when she dies, trying to evince mourning from us) I felt underwhelmed by those moments.

[Sabariel]

So they can kill them all off, make you cry, bottle your tears, and sell it in France as a sports drink.

[Foolsfolly]

Best BioWare death ever?

Zu from Jade Empire. He's there with you for most of the game. He sacrifices himself to save you and Dawn Star. The family in this game were rather expendable because they were designed to be so. Zu you never thought was expendable, likely because he was companion and tied to the main story/Dawn Star's story.

The redshirt from the beginning of a BioWare game is really expected and yeah, you barely spend time with your family. Which means you don't care as much when they die.

Now if Merrill or Aveline died....I'd have been heart broken.

[dreadpiratesnugglecakes]

I thought that killing off Leandra was a bit of a cheap shot; just over the top tragedy. Otherwise, I liked the idea of fleeing Ferelden with your family; I'm a bit tired of being the man/woman with no name hero that becomes great. It made Hawke more human for me.

[Icy Magebane]

I really don't care about Hawke's family. Carver was kind of cool the first time around, but now I just get the feeling that including him on missions deprives me of friend/rival points that could be used on other characters. Every time I see Leandra I think about her gruesome fate... not cool. I'm not one of those people who enjoys feeling bad. And Bethany means nothing to me yet, since I still haven't played as a warrior or rogue.

The family is more a nuisance than anything else at this point. But like I said, they were alright on the first playthrough...

[AngelicMachinery]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Elthraim wrote...

Why does BioWare bother giving your characters a family?

So you can lose them.

The same reason they made me keep killing bastilia... unless that was a quirk of the lesbian mod...

[LightningOkami]

Leandra's death made me shudder, just thinking about what she went through makes my stomach churn :/
I liked Hawke having a family, the first death scene was 'mehhhh' for me too, since i didn't interact with them, but i did feel upset when the mother died.

[Arawn-Loki]

Telling a story is challenging on its own terms. Integrating one with a game complicates the challenge. 

Modifié par Arawn-Loki, 23 mars 2011 - 06:25 .

[AlexXIV]

If they implemented something new in their game, why would they do it in the worst possible way? Well, because they are Bioware.

[Quill74Pen]

It's interesting that, later in the game, you do find out your uncle had a daughter, and you actually get to meet her in one of the side missions. She's your cousin, and she's pretty kick butt. Sadly, she's not a playable character, though.

Quill74Pen

[Keltoris]

AngelicMachinery wrote...

The same reason they made me keep killing bastilia... unless that was a quirk of the lesbian mod...

You need a better Bastila mod...

[Deylar]

Don't you get it Bioware is trying to tell tales of their own woeful lives.

[Halo Quea]

I agree with most of you, the family is pretty expendable in DA2. Which is kind of stupid because Hawke really doesn't have a story without the Hawke family. Which means he has no story at all.

I mean he spends all of this time talking with and doing personal quests for his companions but doesn't seem to care about his family at all. Hawke's wouldn't even get off of his butt to go visit Bethany in the Gallows to tell her that their mother was dead. He doesn't ever inquire about her time in Circle either.

And then there is the Amell Estate, it's the smallest house in Hightown. If Bethany and Carver had actually survived the journey from Lothering, there wouldn't have been any place for them to sleep. Just more evidence that the Hawke family was never a real factor in the game.

The family's only purpose is to provide a reason for Hawke to be in Kirkwall, and once that reason is established they are discarded characters.

[dewayne31]

well i hope if we hawke and have a surviving sibling that they play bigger hopefully as a companion. and bioware does a better job with them. cause i agree they were expandable

[Lithuasil]

Why does Bioware bother giving you enemies, you end up killing them anyway.

Oh.
Wait.

[AlexXIV]

Lithuasil wrote...

Why does Bioware bother giving you enemies, you end up killing them anyway.

Oh.
Wait.

Because that's the purpose of an enemy. Unless you think the purpose of a family is to die your argument is rather stupid. What will you tell us next, that our enemies also have families?