30 réponses à ce sujet

[Jedi Master of Orion]

I recall back before Dragon Age 2 came out there was mention of "the trademark Bioware humor" (or something to that effect)  that would be present in the game because the game wouldn't feel complete without it. And then at the clip they played to demonstrate it was Hawke saying "She spends her days making poisons and cake. Tell me you didn't try the cake."

As I understand it this is a line from Funny Hawke about Leandra at some point in the game story.

So that brings me to my question about the attempts at a humerous PC in DA 2. I get that he's (or she's) sort of supposed to be sort of like if you got to be more Anders and Alister yourself instead of playing off the funny guy but I honestly don't think I can remember any other character quite like Hawke in any bioware games before. So I would think it's a completely new kind of humor.

I get the impression the Funny Hawke is the most popular of all the personality choices by far, and I will say I had a fair amount of fun chosing a Funny Female Hawke myself at times, but it was still a character that I found a little ackward to play with. I had to periodically take a break from the middle option whenever the need arose. Hawke does not have the slightest sense of tact at all. Even Alister or Anders eventually turned serious when the situation called for it. And I think they both benefitted greatly from that because they felt more like characters than one dimensional clowns because of it. If Anders had contiuned to talk in that jovial tone of voice of his and cracked jokes while the Warden-Commander obliterated Amaranthine I'd have found that rather creepy for instance.

Hawke has essentially none of this unless you intervene and pick a nice or angry dialouge response instead. If you always pick the humerous responses on principle then Hawke basically mocks a mother terrified for her son being haunted by demons, mocks a father holding his dead son in his arms, and treats the potential death of everyone around him (even his own family) with this almost terrifying flipancy. I saw a montage of Funny Male Hawke's comments about the kidnapped party members in Act 3 and he gives the distinct impression that he actually doesn't care at all about his love interets or his siblings, he's just an emotionless punchline machine. To be fair there are some lines that seemed to be delivered like he or she cared about someone or something depsite the jokes, but a lot of the time I felt like I wasn't sure if the next joke I was about to say would make me feel like I'd want to reload a save and start the conversation over again.

But putting aside how funny or not funny I actually found Hawke's humor, I honestly don't know that I've ever seen a character like Hawke before. Has there ever been one? My own history with Bioware games doesn't go further back than Neverwinter Nights but I don't remember ever seeing anyone quite like Sarcastic Hawke in all the years I've played them. Has there ever been one before?

Even irreverant characters like Zevran and Isabela had things they cared enough to get serious about.

I don't know, maybe HK-47 is the closest example? But he was an actual machine who was programmed that way. It was his whole shtick as an assasin droid. Hawke feels more like someone who secretly knows they are in a video game.

Is it really the same old Bioware humor? Because this felt like sometihng completely different to me.

Modifié par Jedi Master of Orion, 03 octobre 2011 - 09:12 .

[Wissenschaft]

Nothing says you have to always respond sarcastically. I too will select a Diplomat or Aggressive response if I feel its more appropriate. I just like Sarcastic Hawke the most because I'm a big joker in real life and I find the sarcasm hilarious especally with Varric.

Modifié par Wissenschaft, 03 octobre 2011 - 09:34 .

[ReallyRue]

I think that's the problem if you repeatedly pick the humorous option over and over. I usually went for the middle option, but in some situations, I'd pick diplomatic/aggressuve options instead. If one of the characters was in mourning for instance, or when dealing with the sadder family scenes, I'd use diplomatic. When dealing with monsters like that crazy guy who murders elven children in Act 1, I'd switch to aggressive. I still used humour enough for it to be the dominant personality, but sometimes I'd switch to others. It seems more like role-playing that way, because you're playing as you or your character would react, instead of "press the button to hear a funny line". I think that's partly why characters like Alistair, Zevran, etc seem more well rounded - because if they'd been the PC, that serious moment would be where you'd picked diplomatic/aggressive instead of humorous as your response.

You're right about humorousHawke being quite unique though. Sometimes I see elements of her/his humour in other characters (like Alistair or Isabela), but there's a lot of lines that seem rather crazy, like Hawke's in her/his own little world, and it only seems funny to us because we don't understand the logic of her/his little world. Like when Templar Emeric is talking about the missing women, and the middle response is something like "don't you just hate losing things? I do it all the time". I think elements of Hawke have "Bioware humour" and other parts are just Hawke being a little crazy. Unless of course, they just wanted us to know that the game would have humour of some sort in it.

Edit: Gah, ninja beat me to my first point!

Modifié par ReallyRue, 03 octobre 2011 - 09:43 .

[TastesLikeTNT]

The thing is, the sarcastic dialogue options are not supposed to be seen as a single personality set. They are dialogue options - no matter what personality you might envision for your Hawke, going purple means saying something snarky. Even if the situation is serious, choosing sarcasm means making light of it and not taking it seriously.

I have three Hawkes with Snark as their dominant personality, yet they are all different from each other. Warrior!Hawke had a rather Alistarian sense of humor and was rather sweet - lots of diplomatic in addition to sarcasm. My rogue was snarky, but relatively hot-heated so Aggressive was a popular choice, and my mage was very light-hearted and joked all the time, inappropriately or no. The latter is probably more to your experience and no - I've never played anyone like that before. It's a basket of fun, but I can't help but feel as if she's bottling up emotions something fierce.


EDIT: For lots of things. LOTS of them.

Modifié par TastesLikeTNT, 03 octobre 2011 - 10:49 .

[whykikyouwhy]

I don't know about any parallels with characters in Bioware games, but Sarcastic!Hawke does have shades of the protagonist from the Bard's Tale series (imo).

[Jedi Master of Orion]

Well, I don't mean to imply that I only picked the sarcastic options because I didn't. I tried my best to say something more befitting of the situation but without playing through as that type of character before or knowing what Hawke was about to say, it felt a lot like guess working trying to determine when that would be. There were a few sarcastic options that fit in quite well, depending on their delivery.

Modifié par Jedi Master of Orion, 03 octobre 2011 - 11:05 .

[DrFumb1ezX]

Humor can actually be an attempt to deal with loss. You could probably roleplay a Hawke who has no idea how to handle anything stressful except with humor.

[Yuqi]

I think fenris makes a comment about humerous hawke 'hiding behind jokes*

[Dave of Canada]

soccerchick wrote...

Humor can actually be an attempt to deal with loss. You could probably roleplay a Hawke who has no idea how to handle anything stressful except with humor.

Pretty much this. I cracked jokes at my father's funeral and when a friend of mine died in an accident despite people saying it's not the time.

[TheJediSaint]

Contrary to what some people are saying, i think a lot of Hawke's sarcastic lines have more emotional impact than the more serious choices. Think about the sarcastic lines that Hawke can say while he is trying to deal with the death of his mother, for example. You really get the sense that he/she is only just barely able to maintain enough composure to crack a joke.

[mesmerizedish]

Um... it's your character. If she never stops making jokes, even while obliterating Amaranthine, it's because you're playing her that way.

Come on guise, it's pretty common sense.

[Xewaka]

ishmaeltheforsaken wrote...
Um... it's your character. If she never stops making jokes, even while obliterating Amaranthine, it's because you're playing her that way.
Come on guise, it's pretty common sense.

There is no sense more rare than common sense.

On the other hand, Mass Effect 2 system conditioned the users to always pick the same regardless of the situation. Can't fully blame them for that.

Modifié par Xewaka, 04 octobre 2011 - 04:45 .

[Wulfram]

ishmaeltheforsaken wrote...

Um... it's your character. If she never stops making jokes, even while obliterating Amaranthine, it's because you're playing her that way.

Come on guise, it's pretty common sense.

What's confusing is that sometimes Purple Hawke is fairly appropriate - they're not making wisecracks, they're putting a brave face on things, trying to keep peoples morale up or expressing deep emotions in ways which aren't quite so embarassing.  But other times they're just being an insensitive jerk, and it's not always particularly obvious which is which.

Not to mention the occasions when you don't have any control over Hawke.  Like the bloody stupid speech at the end.

[TheJediSaint]

Wulfram wrote...
Not to mention the occasions when you don't have any control over Hawke.  Like the bloody stupid speech at the end.

Hey! I liked the sarcastic speach at the end.

[Wulfram]

TheJediSaint wrote...

Hey! I liked the sarcastic speach at the end.

Maybe it was approprate to your Hawke, it wasn't appropriate to mine.  And even if it was, it should have been a choice.

And I'm picky about my speeches.

[DrFumb1ezX]

Wulfram wrote...

TheJediSaint wrote...

Hey! I liked the sarcastic speach at the end.

Maybe it was approprate to your Hawke, it wasn't appropriate to mine.  And even if it was, it should have been a choice.

And I'm picky about my speeches.

I still say Shepard should learn from Hawke. I mean, exactly how many times has Shepard promised to buy everyone drinks? Hmm?
I rest my case.

[Jedi Master of Orion]

Wulfram wrote...

ishmaeltheforsaken wrote...

Um... it's your character. If she never stops making jokes, even while obliterating Amaranthine, it's because you're playing her that way.

Come on guise, it's pretty common sense.

What's confusing is that sometimes Purple Hawke is fairly appropriate - they're not making wisecracks, they're putting a brave face on things, trying to keep peoples morale up or expressing deep emotions in ways which aren't quite so embarassing.  But other times they're just being an insensitive jerk, and it's not always particularly obvious which is which.

Not to mention the occasions when you don't have any control over Hawke.  Like the bloody stupid speech at the end.

Yeah, this was mostly what I was getting at. There were a lot of purple Hawke dialogue in serious situations that I thought worked very well, and didn't seem out of place at all. For example, despite her using humor even then, I didn't mind Funny Female Hawke's last conversation with Bethany if she dies in the Deep Roads or the dialogue  optinos with Leandra after she is murdered.

A couple of the times I acutally thought the delivery made all the difference, like that line about King Calian missing his life more than them in the prolouge. Male Hawke sounds like he's telling a dark joke with a twinge of bitterness, female Hawke sounded like she was just randomly making a wisecrack.

But I could never tell which one was going to come out of Hawke's mouth whenever I picked one. There are also times when some of the dialouge Hawke says is automatic and determined by the personality choice (which I don't have an issue with per say to be honest) where Hawke says something irreverant that is beyond the player's direct control. And since the tone and manner of Hawke's voice seems to change drasticaly in some cases if you pick a dialouge option outside of your primary personality I figured the personality choices were mostly intended creatre a character that worked best when you usually click on the same dialouge option most of the time.

[Taritu]

I liked sarcastic Hawke, a lot. Really, really liked her. I mean, her life is in many respects living hell. My first playthrough I lost my entire family, my girlfriend is cracked in the head (I mean, I love Merrill, but she's cracked) and a war starts that I can't stop and my choice of who to side with turns out to be essentially meaningless. I have money, and some good friends, I guess, but basically my life is awful.

Constantly joking about it seems like the best way to cope. Especially as I engage in red handed slaughter of all who stand against me. I and my companions are clearly the greatest wreaking machine in the city, and it doesn't matter. Just doesn't matter.

This, truly, is hell.

And I laughed at the Boneless women joke. Also, at her comment when the smuggler decides to cut her down "I made my reputation slaughtering my way through Kirkwall. You want to commit suicide?" Ha. Nice to see an acknowledgment.

I have lots of issues with the game, but I really really liked Hawke. I'm going to miss her in DAIII.

(Of course, I did sometimes choose non-Sarcastic responses, mostly to my friends.  And coming from her, the kindness was even more touching.)

Modifié par Taritu, 06 octobre 2011 - 05:54 .

[Eudaemonium]

A pure-purple Hawke is basically a merciless troll, oft-times funny, oft-times cruel. I love her, but at the same time I actually don't like having purple as the dominant personality. As such I usually play a Hawke who is dominant blue or red, but mix-and-match as the situation dictates. I love some of the humourous lines, and several of the ambient remarks Hawke makes, but there are odd automatic lines with her that bother me, so I tend to avoid using it as a dominant tone. I have done a full-run with it, though, and loved it immensely (though I did mix-and-match in that too). I can appreciate the hiding-behind-humour/coping-mechanism aspects of the personality. In answer to the OP, no I don't think there's ever been a Bioware character like Pure-Purple Hawke, but I think part of that is (for me) that Pure-Purple Hawke doesn't really feel like a person.

I always interpretted that the dominant-tone system, actually even from before the game came out, was there just to give you an overall consistency, rather than dictate how you were supposed to play. That seems to be how a lot of people see it: I am going to play 'Diplomatic Hawke', or 'Troll Hawke' or 'Angry Hawke', rather than 'rounded-human-being Hawke'. Not saying you did this, OP, since you clarified that you didn't, but I've seen a fair few people critique DA2's roleplaying possibilities because of its limiting personality system, when I think they just haven't really understood how it was meant to be used. Of course there are criticism of it by people who have understood it and just don't like it, and those are fine and completely valid. It's just that I found DA2's system, given the voiced PC, to be probably one of the best RPing systems I've encountered. It was always firmly on the 'Positives' side of my review.

I loved Hawke, and I loved playing her. She felt like a person and a character in the story to me, in a way that neither the Warden nor Shepard ever did, who felt like *my* character but not *a* character and like *a* character but not *my* character, respectively. Hawke managed to be both for me, which is a fine line to tread and obviously wn't be the same for everyone. I personally found that Jo Wyatt's delivery helps with this, I think, because I find her voice more consistent between tones than Boulton's - they seem like the same person in a different mood, rather than a different person (not all the time, but most). Like Taritu, I will miss her come DA3.

[Apollo Starflare]

I'm a big 'purple Hawke' fan, but I'll agree with those saying that there are times when it really feels odd to have as a dominant personality. I quite liked the final speech by purple Hawke, but yeah definitely bits throughout the game where you kinda wish you could force a more aggressive or tactful reply/delivery.

Good point you raise about it not being anywhere near as common in the BioWare PC previously though, it's true that whilst you could choose amusing lines of dialogue on and off in previous games, it was usually left to the comic relief character(s) or hybrids like Alistair to provide the bulk of the 'BioWare humour'.

[Wulfram]

Purple Hawke reminds me of Alan Shore from Boston Legal.

[ReallyRue]

Taritu wrote...

I liked sarcastic Hawke, a lot. Really, really liked her. I mean, her life is in many respects living hell. My first playthrough I lost my entire family, my girlfriend is cracked in the head (I mean, I love Merrill, but she's cracked) and a war starts that I can't stop and my choice of who to side with turns out to be essentially meaningless. I have money, and some good friends, I guess, but basically my life is awful.

Constantly joking about it seems like the best way to cope. Especially as I engage in red handed slaughter of all who stand against me. I and my companions are clearly the greatest wreaking machine in the city, and it doesn't matter. Just doesn't matter.

This, truly, is hell.

And I laughed at the Boneless women joke. Also, at her comment when the smuggler decides to cut her down "I made my reputation slaughtering my way through Kirkwall. You want to commit suicide?" Ha. Nice to see an acknowledgment.

I have lots of issues with the game, but I really really liked Hawke. I'm going to miss her in DAIII.

(Of course, I did sometimes choose non-Sarcastic responses, mostly to my friends.  And coming from her, the kindness was even more touching.)

I saw something similar when I played Hawke that was almost pure purple. She lives in her own little world, because her life seems to become more and more rubbish with each passing day (the only properly good thing that happens to her is the money, and even that's tainted by Carver leaving to join the Wardens).

And I saw the insensitive comments that way too. She's kind of detached from the world, watching it unfold with humorous commentary, based on the first thoughts that pop into her head. Sometimes she doesn't quite realise that the other people don't see the world the way she does.

I liked that. My Warden seemed much more like a combination of the diplomatic and aggressive options in comparison. The variety is nice.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I almost never choose the supposedly humorous lines, because I can't tell from the paraphrase whether the joke will actually be in character for my Hawke.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 07 octobre 2011 - 05:29 .

[Quething]

That's why I quicksaved before every conversation my first run through.

Though ultimately, this is one of those "all trials can be alleviated by PC players" thing. If I get an unprompted Hawke line that really doesn't suit, I just use the console to zero out my personalities and switch over to the one that will give me a line that's better suited. It's not a perfect solution, but it does come in handy when my "suave silvertongued master persuader" character needs to both successfully lie to templars and convince Dalish assassins to back down.