Sabriana wrote...
ms_sunlight wrote...
Am I the only one who doesn't get that the fact that it probably would have all happened anyway is the whole point of the story?
If it is, then they cleverly concealed that with their ad campaign. I for one was led to believe that Hawke was a character I (the player) shape and develop, along with the companions and their individual relationships.
You absolutely do create, shape and develop Hawke. The fact that the non-chosen dialogue lines reflect your past personality-type picks show that. If you tell Hawke to be sarcastic enough times, he'll be sarcastic on his own.
At the end of the day, those events -were- going to happen. Anders is right about that, at least. All you get to do is choose how Hawke -responds- to events unfolding around him, much like in real life.
While playing a middle-of-the-road Hawke, I found an interesting and telling line in the dialogue. I forget exactly where it came from now and I'm going to paraphrase it here, because I don't remember the exact words, but it was basically something like:
"I'm not here to make a stand for anything, I just keep finding myself in these situations"That, to me, sums up the entire raison d'etre of the story in DA2. You have a refugee from Kirkwall who isn't trying for power, even if you wish to view Acts 1 & 2 in that way. He's (I'll say 'he' for now, just to make the grammar easier) trying to take care of his family, the best way he can. That means working for smugglers or mercenaries in Act 1. He's very good at what he does, which brings him to the attention of more important people, and you get the events of Act 2.
He doesn't really -want- to do anything except make a home for himself and his family in Kirkwall, but life keeps throwing curveballs at him and he has to deal with them. How Hawke deals with what happens is what you get to choose. How he deals with it, and how it affects him.
I will definitely agree that this ... method... of telling a story in a BioWare game is new and untried. They may decide that it was a miserable failure and not do it again, based on player reactions. I don't care, personally - I like both the "hero" story of DAO, where you're saving the world, and I like the more personal story of DA2, where you're not saving anything, you're reacting to life in a powderkeg of a city.
I will also definitely agree that because its untried and new, people were blindsided by it. People expected a standard BioWare game, where you play the hero and save the day, and you choose how that day is saved. Paragon or Renegade? Sacrifice or unholy covenant with the witch? Keep the base or sell the base?
That's a fair and valid expectation to have, I think, and the cries of "but, but, that's not what I got" are justifiable.
Personally speaking, I found the story in DA2 to be much more immersive and less requiring of the trusty old suspenders of narrative belief. There's no pressing danger through Acts 1 and 2, you're not "Racing against the clock" like you are in DAO, and so the sidequests don't feel forced. I'm not trying to rescue Martha's Cat for the 100th time while the Blight is sweeping across Ferelden.
In fact, the quests in this game (to me) didn't really feel like they could be divided into "main" and "side" quests anyway. Obviously, from a technical standpoint, main quests are "quests that advance the main story" and thusly, it is so, but without that overarching threat like the Blight, there's much less urgency.
Also, to clarify - I think I may have mis-worded my point in my earlier post.
You, the player, are obviously playing through Hawke's story. And very true, the events of the game are about Hawke and his companions and family. The end-of-Act 1 main quest obviously has nothing to do with Kirkwall, the city. But the overarching story being told in the game itself is the story of the implosion of Kirkwall. This is the backdrop to Hawke's story, much as the American Civil War is the backdrop to Gone With the Wind. The only difference is that Hawke's more caught up in the events of the Implosion of Kirkwall than Scarlett O'Hara ever was with the Civil War.
I found the device to be a refreshing change in this sea of copypasta save-the-day RPGs, but I'll conceded that a) it isn't to everyone's taste, especially those who need to be the hero in their games, and
it blindsided a lot of people (myself included) who were expecting one of those aforementioned copypasta save-the-day stories.
The moment where it first hit me was during the second act. No spoilers, but towards the end of the second act, an event happened that made me realize that events in Kirkwall were spinning out of control, out of control of any one person, be it the Knight Commander, the Arishok, the Viscount, anyone. It was then that I realized that what the story was actually about, was Hawke trying to survive in this tumultuous time, and do the best that he can.
Aveline, I believe, calls Hawke "the eye of the storm" at one point. I think that's very telling.
Modifié par Raphael diSanto, 13 avril 2011 - 12:41 .
Retour en haut
