5 réponses à ce sujet

[Nyreen]

This is not a hate rant, but a politely-framed open letter. I am not trying to speak for all fans or all fangirls. Yes, I am aware that Gaider or any developers probably won't bother reading it.

Mr. Gaider,


         I was truly disappointed by Ander's change of face in the sequel. In Awakenings, he was a hilarious and lovable. Sarcastic and witty... a confessed cat-lover.

In the sequel he is a terrorist, armed with clichéd pickup lines.

The Justice/Vengeance story "explained" his ridiculous personality change, but did not excuse his poor writing. Like many fans around the forum I was angry and disappointed by the game, its conclusion, and the changed Anders. (Further reading - This article provides some insight into the inner workings of a DA fangirl's mind. )
Moving on, I believe the quote below describes exactly how I and others felt about the romances in DA2.

Viyu wrote...

yoshibb wrote...

Funny I felt I knew Alistair more in 6 months than I did 7 years with Fenris. I liked the companion quests but I think I like just talking about random things at the campsite more.

I did too. Do you want to know why? Because it gave the characters dimension, it made them feel like they had something more on their mind than the blight 24/7. Pretty much all party banter in DA2 is politically charged pro-mage v.s. pro-chantry campaign. The characters seem incredibly 1 dimensional and one track minded, with the exception of Isabella and Varric. Because that's ALL they can seem to talk about. <_<

If anything had be taken from Origins, I wish it had been camp. Or at least some form of open-ended discussions. I felt so cut off from the rest of my party.
 
As a complete outsider to the development of the game, I will not begin to assume why Jennifer Hepler was assigned with writing most of Anders in DA2. Can you tell us why didn't write most of Anders, as you did in Awakening? I will say that I would have put more faith in you to make Anders' story believable. You are responsible for much of Origin's material - most of Alistair and Zevran's hilarious, downright outrageously clever dialogue, and plenty more. I'm not trying to downplay the talents of the other writers on the team. Any game of this size is a combined effort. But I think Anders in DA2 is missing some of your attention.

(I'm sorry this letter went all over the place.) Well, all I can do is cross my fingers, and hope for a better DA3.

And wait for the anti-fangirl trolls to swarm this thread.

[David Gaider]

Celestina wrote...
As a complete outsider to the development of the game, I will not begin to assume why Jennifer Hepler was assigned with writing most of Anders in DA2. Can you tell us why didn't write most of Anders, as you did in Awakening? I will say that I would have put more faith in you to make Anders' story believable. You are responsible for much of Origin's material - most of Alistair and Zevran's hilarious, downright outrageously clever dialogue, and plenty more. I'm not trying to downplay the talents of the other writers on the team. Any game of this size is a combined effort. But I think Anders in DA2 is missing some of your attention.

I'm not certain what it is you assume I would have done differently. The role Anders plays in the sequel was set by myself as well as by the writing team, prior to anyone writing him. Even if I had been the one to write him, he most certainly would not have been the witty fellow you remember from Awakening... he's changed, in some very substantial ways, and if you're mourning the fact that he's different I can safely say that's very much part of the point.

A successful character provokes strong reactions. So I would say Anders was quite successful even if I didn't approve of Jennifer's writing job on him-- which I very much do. I think she did a stellar job. While there's always some trepidation in seeing someone else touch your baby, I had no reservations once I saw how she handled him.

If you felt less connected to your followers, that's too bad. There could be many reasons for that, but if the requirement to someone feeling connected is having long, rambling conversations in the party camp... I can safely say that's unlikely to happen again. I could see front-loading the characters a bit more so players are more thoroughly introduced (as it was, a lot of the character interaction ended up in Act 2 quite by accident) but I have absolutely no intention of returning to the reams of expository dialogue as a replacement for character development anytime soon.

[David Gaider]

The Grey Nayr wrote...
Greg Ellis should have stayed his voice actor IMO. Anders had a much bigger role and more facetime than Cullen before and during DAII so that's the better part to have. But I doubt that's an area of the game you have much control of.

I do actually have a lot of say in voice actors, but in this case it was out of our control. Shenanigans meant we could only have Greg Ellis for a smaller role-- so Cullen it was. It didn't bother me on the whole, as I like Cullen and having both characters present was going to be an issue no matter what, but in this case it's simply how the cookie crumbled.

Modifié par David Gaider, 21 avril 2011 - 04:46 .

[David Gaider]

Addai67 wrote...
Curious.  You say that as if they are mutually exclusive, rather than complimentary.  I'd just as soon have Alistair explain something to me as read it in a codex or see a cinematic- scratch that, I would much prefer it.  Since he can also offer his own opinions on the subject matter, it works to personalize world and game information as well as give insight to the character.

Yes, in a world where More is always Better there'd be no reason not to have it both ways. Lots of dialogues in camp, with expository dialogue about anything that strikes your fancy, initiated conversations out and about in the world and DA2's more detailed series of personal quests.

Considering, however, that a game like BG2 where people still felt plenty connected to party members even though you couldn't click on them at all and had no control over when they spoke to you, I'm not certain the issue here isn't one of expectation rather than execution. Not that execution couldn't improve, sure, but some people seem to equate lots of dialogue to emotional connection... and I'm not sure they're as connected as they seem to think.

[David Gaider]

The Grey Nayr wrote...
Also have you ever considered doing the voice of a character yourself?

Sure, I tried my hand at VO. I think it's safe to say that being able to speak is as much an indicator of being able to do good voice acting as being able to compose a sentence is an indicator of being able to do good writing.

Modifié par David Gaider, 21 avril 2011 - 05:15 .

[David Gaider]

julian08 wrote...
Ha, well played Mr. Gaider. People like me who have to play a lot of their favorite games in Dosbox are always going on about how perfect BGII was, and now you use that as an argument. Well played indeed.
But let's be realistic: BGII was released in 2000, and in game terms that pretty much means that it predates the Roman Empire. Fully voiced companion dialogue was just impossible to do back in the day. To me, it seems that your argument is like saying "Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush was a great movie, so modern movies don't need sound or color."
Really, it's your own fault people. You showed us what could be done in terms of characterization and party banter nowadays, and now we won't accept anything less.

:blink:Ahem. . . no disrespect meant of course. Please don't use your writing sorcery to make my head explode.

You misunderstand. I am not saying that those expectations aren't justified... things have changed. But some perspective is required. Some people are expressing that they didn't feel as connected to the characters and then looking for what was different and deciding that must be what's at fault. I'm not convinced it is.

And if it is, and someone's requirement is that they must have everything and more in order to feel connected to a character at all ...then you're not going to be connected to any of our characters in the future. If that's truly what it takes, then I can safely say it's not going to happen.

This is not to say that some middle ground isn't possible, but that's middle ground and not "why not just do both?" As I said earlier, in an ideal world you'd get to click on your party members everywhere you liked, get lots of options for new dialogue to initiate and get quest dialogue to boot... but until this becomes the Companion Relationship Game, that's probably unrealistic to expect. Even in DAO that didn't happen, and DA2 was probably even more character focused. There are always going to be resource issues as well as other limitations to contend with (if you want cinematic dialogue, for instance, you need a set stage-- the dialogue cannot happen anywhere... the way our engine works dialogue that can occur anywhere must be "unstaged" and thus have a fixed camera), and while I understand that players will always want more of everything, I'm not at liberty to be okay with the idea that more of everything is required in order for a player to feel emotionally engaged.... and I simply suspect that some people are seeing something missing from what they had before and deciding that the equation now adds up to less than zero.

In short: they're feeling what they're feeling, and that's valid, but there may be other reasons behind it that are more easily addressed. If not, and they require constant dialogue in order to feel any emotional connection, then they're simply not going to get it.

But this is a discussion for a different thread, as it no longer has anything to do with Anders. I'll leave you guys to it.

Modifié par David Gaider, 21 avril 2011 - 04:24 .