Jennifer Brandes Hepler wrote...
Dragon Age has always been a game that has pushed the idea of tragedy. When we first discussed having Alistair sacrifice himself out of love of the Warden, there was debate over whether players would find that moving or just be frustrated that he made a decision they couldn't control. We decided to go with what we all reacted to in our guts as a cool emotional moment, and it became a defining part of DA:O for people who experienced it.
I certainly don't deny that most of our writers tend to prefer tragic moments. For me, personally, I've never really trusted an author who wasn't willing to kill a likeable character. Happy endings often feel cheap and unearned. But I have also experienced tragedy-fatigue (parts of GRRM, or the second Melanie Rawn Dragon trilogy come to mind), and I'm sorry if DAII reached that level for some people. I think it's particularly hard to judge the tragedy-per-square-foot sweet spot in a game, since the pacing is very different if you play it over a few days, a few weeks or a few months. I imagine the faster you play, the more saturated it seems.
That said, it is important to us on the team that Dragon Age continue to push the bounds of what a videogame can make you feel. And for that, sorrowful or touching events are a far better guage than happy ones. If your character gets everything he wants, are you feeling happy because you genuinely empathize with him, or just because you've "won" the game? It's when you stop to help a character that you get no benefit from just because you care about him as a person, or mourn the loss of someone like Leandra, who had no game benefit, that we've really reached past the limits of the game with the story.
So, while we have certainly been disapointed in the number of fans who didn't feel a sense of agency with Hawke because of all the emotional events surrounding her/him -- and will be taking steps to ensure a better feeling of personal impact in future stories -- Dragon Age products will likely continue to push the boundaries of dark fantasy and human tragedy. So, while you may experience greater victories in future products, it wouldn't be Dragon Age if they didn't come at a cost.
Tragedy is good, if used sparingly. The problem with overdosing on tragedy is that you stop caring. Eventually, you have to ask yourself why people aren't committing mass suicide if their lives seem to be so immutably miserable. And more importantly, it was tragedy for the sake of tragedy, not because characters were acting in character or because the player's actions caused something to go totally awry.
For example, the plot with Anders. You could refuse to help him, you could refuse to distract the Grand Cleric, you could tell Cullen straight to his face that something bad was going to happen at the Chantry and nothing changes. Anders still succeeds. You could have kicked him off your party for most of the game and he just randomly pops up, even though he explicitly needs your help for most of his quests! It's actually surprising that you consider the inability to kill off a character to be a weakness because Anders has possibly the most egregious example of plot armor in the entire series. Never once does Hawke consider stabbing him in the back before he blows up the Chantry, even though he's a progressively insane abomination who has lost control several times. No, the plot needs to railroad Hawke to that final moment. Hawke comes off looking like a fool, even the perennially genre-savvy and unflappable snarky Hawke or the constantly antagonistic rival Hawke.
Another example is Merrill. Never once does a rival Hawke consider smashing the mirror. He considers it a monumental danger to Merrill yet he stops after withholding the arulin'holm. No, Merrill has to destroy that mirror herself after either her clan is dead or she is banished. That's tragic, after all, right? Even though a Hawke on her rivalry path constantly, and rightly claims its a danger, there is no option other than to be a spectator and watch hell break loose only to say "I told you so!" after the fact. Hawke, again, looks completely impotent as a character and as a hero.
Then there's Thrask, about as Lawful Good as Lawful Good gets with the Templars. So, he sets out on the noble goal of bringing Templars and mages together to reform the Circle, reasoning they don't
have to be enemies. That's all well and good, and it's a much more reasonable and savvy solution than "beat those mages raw!" So, we've established Thrask as a forward-thinking and reasonable man. Who does he ally with? Grace. The lover of a known blood mage and together they take Hawke's friend hostage. This could be Hawke's sibling (which is monumentally stupid). Bethany, for example, is a Circle mage and Neutral Good incarnate. Thrask has her incapacitated with blood magic and trusts Grace. This is to prevent Hawke from interfering. Even if Hawke is
explicitly pro-mage and says so in front of a crowd of noblemen! Is he brain-dead? Again, characters commit brazenly idiotic actions, sometimes against their character because that path leads fastest to tragedy.
Or, in the search for Quentin, this is a real crowner for idiocy: Hawke and his companions miss the secret entrance to his creepy lair because a giant trapdoor was hidden underneath a barrel. Now, leaving out the fact that the trapdoor is in fact larger than the barrel that was over it in Act I, and would thus be really obvious, Aveline really should have had some guys comb that place down. Anyone with half a brain who did a halfway-decent spot check would have found the entrance. I mean, the guy ran into the inner parts of that foundry and mysteriously vanished. He was obviously still there. Aveline, I am disappointed, you are a substandard policewoman.
All in all, Dragon Age II was grim dark with an idiot plot. If anyone, even Hawke, took two seconds to think things through, even if it still resulted in tragedy, it would have been better. Instead, players are left wanting the character to do things infinitely more sensible than the three idiotic options presented. I think a huge problem is that Dragon Age II was never really about roleplaying or the characters. It was about the endgame. The ending of this game was so huge to the setting of Thedas that player choice had to be severely limited, or else it might never have happened. Unfortunately, Hawke comes out of it looking like a dunce.
Modifié par CrimsonZephyr, 12 août 2011 - 06:09 .
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