Giltspur wrote...
SirOccam wrote...
The rivalry system is better by an order of magnitude than the old approval meter. Can you just imagine what the Morrigan romance might have been like with a Rivalry system? Too amazing for words, that's what it would have been like.
How do you think the rivalry system could improve the Morrigan romance? I'd like for that to be true, but I'm skeptical.
In DAO, I liked being able to disagree with Morrigan on some things. So for example, the group comes across a baby on the ground crying. I decide to rescue it. Morrigan whines that we shouldn't waste time on a single child when there's a world to save. I ignore her, possibly laugh at her and rescue the baby. Alistair takes a shot at her. I yell at Alistair, suggesting that I'm the only one that gets to yell at Morrigan. (After all, I'm engaging in a balancing act here. I don't need the peanut gallery complicating things.) Obviously this is all in my head. But it's essentially a way of describing how I interpeted "Morrigan Disapproves -12". I drank up those disapproval like...you know that old candy Pixie Stix? You know how there was a giant straw version that had so much sugar it could perhaps cause brain damage to a young child? I drank up disapprovals like a young child would that. And it was amusing. So am I rivalmancing her? Thing is my Warden was also getting a lot of "frienship points" during the campfire chats about her past. How do I max one of the meters with her? And the problem is that DA2 tends to reward you for maxing a meter and not for having a relationship that has moments of agreement and disagreement.
Another concern. I see Morrigan as more complicated than say Fenris or Anders. Fenris and Anders are mostly obsessed. They each have one issue that they care about and that dominates their personalities and your friendship/rivalry decision points regarding them. I see Morrigan as being somewhat more complicated. She has this survivor mentality. So you might think her obsession is "only the strong survive". But there's also a respect for directness or subversiveness (which isn't quite the same thing as my Warden would contrast with her on some of those while agreeing on others). She's also vulnerable to criticisms that suggest you think she's artificial or don't respect her autonomy. I imagine part of that vulnerability coming from a hypocrisy about herself that she isn't ready to own (using you but afraid of being seen as a user...and that makes sense because that's not all that she's about even if it is something she does). In other words, Morrigan is complicated, the sort of NPC that Bioware should aspire to make.
But I worry that the Frienship/Rivalry system would butcher her. I worry I'd be stuck in the middle of the meter and that they game would hold that against me as a player--that I wouldn't be able to "soften" her or get the ring ending, for example. Maybe friendship/rivalry works best for characters that are obsessed (like Fenris and Anders). How do you handle Morrigan with DA2's Frienship/Rivalry without oversimplifying her? I have ideas on how to change DA2's F/R system to accomodate Morrigan, but I"m curious if you or others think you can improve Morrigan using DA2's system as it is.
You're not alone in getting tons of Morrigan disapproval. The solution to this was to metagame, to leave her out of the squad when you knew a disapproval situation was coming up, to look for any chance to agree with her to counteract all the disapproval, or to spam her with gifts. All of it feels very artificial to me. You're playing with a meter instead of interacting with a character.
What you say about DA2 I think actually describes DAO perfectly:
"And the problem is that DA2 tends to reward you for maxing a meter and not for having a relationship that has moments of agreement and disagreement."
I don't think the rivalry system is perfect, but I love that it not only allows dissension, it can reward it. In DAO it's something you have to make up for with gifts or whatever.
When I think back to my DAO playthroughs with a Morrigan-romancing Warden, there is little she should have ever approved of. I rarely did things her way. What I found myself doing was telling her what she wanted to hear during our fireside chats, and giving her gifts at every opportunity. I guess you could say the game was pretty realistic in that regard.
So it worked because I acted one way (the way I wanted to act), but talked a different way (the way I thought Morrigan wanted me to talk). The talk plus the gifts counteracted the disapproval from my actions enough that a romance was possible. Yay. But it doesn't feel right. It feels like my Warden has to "make up for" his convictions, instead of standing by them and telling Morrigan that if she doesn't like them, tough. Maybe she could be the one who changes, much like Fenris or Isabela or pretty much anyone else in DA2 can.
Morrigan was my favorite character by far in DAO, and in fact she's my favorite in the whole DA franchise so far. But yes I do think her romance could be greatly improved with the DA2 system. In some ways I think she is as obsessed as Anders or Fenris (actually I don't think Fenris is that obsessed, or rather, you can deal with his obsession and he's still got more to work on), and I don't think she changes very much at all. Sure, she can say some nice things near the end if you romanced her, but it doesn't change her actions at all. Maybe she's doing a little metagaming herself.
She's still got her agenda. She's still going to want to do the Ritual and make an OGB. She's still going to leave you.
As much as I loved the Morrigan romance, I would have liked to have felt like my character was strong enough in his convictions that he didn't have to compensate for them. In DA2 it feels like characters respect Hawke's opinions and in many cases are affected by them. In DAO it's like each companion goes "no, that doesn't agree with my personal outlook, you lose approval." You either make up for it later or just accept the fact that a relationship isn't going to work with that companion. In DA2 it's more like "hey, that doesn't agree with my personal outlook...I might have to consider what you're saying/doing." You can change your character's mind, or your companion can change theirs. I think that's great.
The DA2 system isn't perfect, and sure there's still a little metagaming going on. But I just can't express how much I love the ability to tell a companion what I really think. It makes them feel a lot more multi-dimensional. So although I think Morrigan was the most multi-dimensional character in Origins, I think she would have felt even more so in DA2's system.
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