David Gaider wrote...
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.
Actually, it does have to do with Anders, and the writing of Anders, though not only with Anders. Let me say up front that I don't hate DA2. I actually like it--just not as much as I liked Origins. I was excited when I read the background pieces for all the characters, including Anders. The character writing was not "bad" for any of the characters.
The problem isn't even necessarily about the change to all staged dialogue. There were many conversations in Origins that could only take place at the party camp (such as Zevran's post-Taliesan romance conversations) or during specific quests (as in when Sten challenges you during the Sacred Ashes quest). There were even whole conversation lines in Origins that would not trigger until after certain plot events, so that isn't the issue either. The complete lack of control over pacing is irritating. I hated it in KOTOR, hated it in Jade Empire, hate it in DA2. "Don't call me, I'll call you." is a pretty unrealistic way to handle the depiction of a relationship that spans a decade or more, and you already demonstrated that the engine can handle both user-initiated and NPC-initiated dialogues in Origins.
None of that is my primary issue with the characters in DA2. The problem is that in your ferver to ditch "exposition" for showing rather than telling, you forgot that real people
do get to know one another, at least in part, by telling. I did not learn about my husband's childhood solely by watching home movies of him as a child. I didn't get to know my best friend solely by watching her interact with her other friends. That is pretty much what we are left to do in DA2. And the showing part of things just doesn't hold up as well. In Origins, and to a lesser degree in Awakenings, we could have "pointless" in terms of plot line conversation with our companions. Those silly conversations with Alistair in which he referenced sex as licking a lamppost and tried to deflect personal questions by claiming he was the child of very religious flying dogs did serve a purpose. They gave dimension to the character. The party banters were similar. Almost none of them had anything at all to do with the blight. Starting with Awakenings, the party banters have consisted largely of your companions sniping at one another. As of DA2, they now snipe about their personal obsessions outside of which they have no interests. Merril is all "blood magic- Yeah! Go elves!" and cute one-liners that she says to everyone but you. Anders does nothing but whine about how awful things are for mages, how awful the templars are and how evil blood magic is. I get that he has reason to be obsessive, but come on, we've been dating for 3 years and not a single mention of ANYTHING else!? Fenris goes on and on about how evil all magic is--oh, and how happy he is to know nothing at all of his elven heritage. Varric plays mother hen and Isiabella doesn't own her sexuality, she is her sexuality. (and as a happily out bisexual woman I have no problem with her being sexual, it's just that sex seems to be all she ever talks about) They will talk to each other, but not to you--at all--which seems especially odd if you are romancing one of them. The only characters who seem remotely multi-dimentional are Aveline and Varric.
So, it is the writing, but it is the writing for all of the characters (compounded with plot holes the size of a high dragon). It isn't about fans demanding MOAR!, it's about better balancing what we will be given. The Origins characters felt more real because we saw them respond to all sorts of situations in very real ways. They deflected questions they didn't want to answer, had flaws and failings, made mistakes, got snarky and jealous. In DA2 we get little snapshots of the characters. It feels exactly like I was sitting there listening to Varric talk about what someone else did. That isn't entirely bad, but it does take a lot of the "RP" out of the RPG. It felt like Diablo with companions, and while I loved the Diablo series, I liked DA:O a whole lot better. It's a function of the changes to dialogue, the framework of the story, and yes, the writing.
I'm not screaming for the writers' heads. The writers just need to go back to the basics they did so well in Origins--story telling basics, not necessarily the same game mechanics. The story and the characters are what kept people hooked despite the bugs and the issues with the combat system. It is probably my favorite game of all time even though I can make a list of problems a mile long.
)
Retour en haut
