The one that hit me the most was the one where you had to search for Hawke's mother. At that point I was truly quite stressed out and worried if I might get to her in time. Considering the fact that I didn't develop that much of an attachment to the Hawke family I felt that this small plotline adds a bit of depth and added a bit of emotional investment into the characters. I thought that it was a very good play on my emotions by Bioware.
When I reached her, I was confronted by feelings of remorse and rage, because I didn't know if she was dead or if I was in time to save her. With the clever use of camera angles, it slowly revealed a large scar on her neck, showing that she was murdered and that I was too late. I was enraged and I was ready to spam all of my skills and I wanted to kill the blood mage badly, preferably in the most gruesome way possible.
Then she stood up. That was when all immersion and emotional investment evaporated away as I was presented with something so ridiculous and juvenile that I wasn't sure if I was meant to feel angry or just laugh. It felt like I was watching a cartoony joke with franken-mom dancing around while I took care of mobs.
For a game that is said to tell a personal story, I can't help but feel that such an important scene like this was also handled in such an impersonal way. The murderer is a nameless blood mage whom you had never met, and your mother just happened to be an unfortunate victim. It would have made no difference if Hawke's mother had died in a house fire, which was how impersonal it felt like.
I don't really want to dig up a comparison with DA:O but I'd like to put a case in point that even though I only knew the Warden's family for a brief few moments at the beginning of the game, the story felt very personal because of how Bioware had cleverly written Arl Rendon Howe. He was a scheming figure that had his own agendas to take your family and rights away from you. He wanted to screw you over and you had to take a long fight to get to him, where eventually, you got your revenge. That revenge was sweet and swift, and I reveled in relief that I had finally brought justice to the Warden's family. I think Bioware should have done the same with the blood mage, they could have made him someone you knew personally earlier. He could have had a tragic history that you experienced with him that could possibly add a redeeming quality to him despite what he did. Similarly they could have made him into a crook, someone who you despise deeply because he had wronged you at every turn since the beginning of the game.
I know people will post that this is not DA:O 2, but it is DA2. I am aware of that but I think they need to keep in mind that good narrative is not something that is unique to DA:O, and DA2 should not throw away a good style of narrative just because it desires so desperately to be different from DA:O.
Anyway that is enough from me. Did anyone else want to share any scenes in DA2 that they thought was weird?
Modifié par lltoon, 26 mars 2011 - 04:42 .
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