R2s Muse wrote...
LolaLei wrote...
Y'know, I really disliked how there was only maybe 3 sympathetic Templar characters in DA2, 2 of which you only see briefly. I know they portrayed almost every mage in Kirkwall as mad or a blood Mage, but they always made a point of showing us that it was just retaliationdue to the Templars and Meredith treating them badly. DG said that neither the Mages or the Templars are supposed to be ultimately "bad" or "good" but I think they could have done a better job at showing us the plight that the Templars have to deal with on a day to day basis. It wouldn't have taken much for them to give us a few flash backs of Cullen's torture in Ferelden or had him go into a bit more detail about it, maybe even shown us a Templar suffering from severe lyrium withdrawl symptoms, or a Templar caught having a relationship with one of the Gallows Mages, to which Meredith reacts by making said Templar strike down his lover as punishment (thus showing us the Knight Commanders gradual descent into madness.)
You know, DG has an interesting comment about this ... somewhere. Probably the Thedas UK interview? He talks about how they made certain choices because western culture always tends to side with the underdog. So, it seems a really hard balance to strike, keeping both sides equally good/bad, while recognizing that your target audience will naturally side with one of them no matter what. Seems like you'd want to weight the other side then, but then how much do you weight it? Tough indeed.
You know, if I were on the dev team at this point I would yell, "Eureka!" and say, "why don't we also write companion short stories to flesh out some of the story we can't tell ingame??"
This is a place where I need to respectfully disagree with DG's comment and ask him to think a little deeper and broader. (which, I suspect, he already has ^^)
People around the world tend to side with the underdog.
The problem -- and it is a huge problem -- is that the story fails to show how dangerous mages are such that the player feels real fear.
The codex talks about abominations as a rare, cataclysmic event yet our Hawkes and Wardens see many abominations and take them down with ease. Likewise, the act of freeing someone from demon possession is an extremely rare event (noted in the codex and, if I remember correctly, in Asunder) yet our Warden, Hawke, and Rhys+Wynne all have opportunities to successfully perform this supposedly herculean act. Many common people supposedly fear mages, yet the only strong taste of it we feel first hand is during that very tense scene in a pub in Asunder. Many parents of mage children willing wish to get rid of these "sinful creatures," yet we see Isolde do everything she can to keep Conner (even though a disaster occurs). Finally, if we play a mage Warden or mage Hawke, we never feel any sense of fear that our own powers and emotions might betray us.
So, when DG talks about players not seeing mages as potentially dangerous despite the fact that there is ample evidence in the games and books that they are, the problem is that the player is never made to feel the danger or the associated fear. Even the (supposed) horrors of blood magic are glossed over.
Cullen's strongly worded concerns in Act 1 of DA2 come off as the rantings of a bigot, Jowan's and Merrill's blood magic can be easily overlooked, and the entire reason why mage children and their uncontrolled emotions/magic can cause problems is completely glossed over.
Don't get me wrong: I think the concept of magic in Thedas is completely brilliant. I love the fact that magic, the fade, and fade spirits and demons are directly to different emotional states and human experiences (rage, justice, etc.), but the concept isn't explored enough in the games or the books. It is far too easy to see the templars as entirely unnecessary (even though Wynne strongly disagrees!) and to see Anders' position on mage freedom as the *only* solution to the problem or a bloody revolution as the only possible response (it isn't but, from a writerly perspective, Anders needs to play the role he plays in order to push plot points forward and set up the war, thus he needs to do something that shatters trust between templars, mages, and the chantry. successful revolutionary tactics for ending oppression work to build trust, not shatter it, but this leads me into a huge academic meta that I've already posted to tumblr some time ago…).
So, my point is that Dragon Age does something really interesting and really risky: it shows us a very complex world through the eyes of characters who represent atypical viewpoints. We never get to directly feel the fears that other people have unless we work hard to empathize with them and carefully read all of the codices.
More short stories would help but I think the PCs need to directly experience the danger and fear.
Modifié par vieralynn, 25 juin 2012 - 02:07 .
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I can "loan" you my kindle version if you like (I think I could figure out how to do that on amazon... dunno if it works international, tho.)
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