Realmzmaster wrote...
I agree with bringing shealth back but not the way it was implemented in DAO which made no sense. Mark of the Assassin's attempt at stealth was more realistic. In DAO you could use stealth to walk right into the kennel in Eamon's castle and the dogs did not detect you. What did they lose their sense of smell? You could also use stealth in broad daylight with no cover.
I agree, but I don't want it to be too compartmentalized either, with stealth sections interrupting a game in which stealth is otherwise relatively meaningless. I'd prefer the silliness of DAO stealth to that.
What it comes down for to me has more to do with character than mechanics. As I get older, I don't have much interest in playing characters that are particularly courageous or confident in their facility with violence. I enjoy trying to imagine how a regular person would act caught up in all these things. At the beginning of the game in particular (before I gain confidence in my abilities and my companions), I really need the option to try to avoid combat (via stealth, flight, bribery, deception, etc.).
Failing to avoid combat is OK. Fighting for your life and grappling with the consequences of violence are a huge part of what draws me to this. The city elf origin from DAO felt a little impossible to me, but the themes were right -- I could understand why my character would be moved to act whether or not he was a do-gooder, and I could understand how the situation could disrupt his risk-averse nature. While some of the people he killed during the rescue probably deserved it, others probably didn't, but I could also understand my character's murderous rage at that point. And you could play it a little risk-averse poisoning guards. I'd have preferred that being a talented warrior was even less important to that plotline than it was, but it basically worked for me.
The fact that I couldn't figure out a way to play Hawke as someone who was genuinely risk-averse (not saying it was impossible, just that it didn't work for me) really limited my ability to engage. It was so *close* to what I wanted too! I made money as a smuggler, which is totally in my wheelhouse... but I didn't get to actually smuggle anything! I was able to develop really strategic relationships (the head of the city guard, central figures in the illicit economy, a human weapon), but I wasn't really quite able to play my character as if it were really important for him to utilize those resources well, because he just had to fight his way through everything. It still makes me sad.
In general, I feel like both DA games did a good job with parts of this at certain times. DAO was pretty effective at helping us understand why someone who wasn't particularly noble or brave would join the Wardens (though some origins worked better than others), and after Ostagar at helping me understand why a risk averse character might still feel like they had to recruit all these groups. No one else was going to do it. I would have liked the chance to play those early post-Ostagar moments a little more scared -- I've often thought the game could have used a sequence where you had to go into hiding briefly before you could start mustering armies -- but it basically worked.
But DA2 doesn't even allow you to avoid that fight between the Kirkwall guard and all those disaffected soldiers at the end of the prologue. Every Hawke I can imagine would have run like hell at that point, which probably would have burned his chances at getting in the city via that particular bribe, which would have meant he had to find another way in. Once again, the smugglers and the mercenaries could have been the key to resolving that, or they could have gone in some other direction. But boy do I wish I'd had the chance to play out that year as a smuggler. I'm actually terrified that DA2 was the closest they're going to get to the story I want to play, and they skipped over the parts of that story that I'm the most interested in (surviving via illicit means in a hostile environment).
I guess more than anything, I want the world to feel genuinely dangerous. That's one of the things I really loved about that NWN module A Dance With Rogues, how dangerous the world this woman was confronting was and how she needed to use the full range of her talents and resources to survive it. Avoiding combat wherever possible helps me feel that, but I can also see situations where this could be foregrounded by being forced to commit acts of violence that you might not feel comfortable with. Killing the last of the soldiers in Lothering over Leliana's objection is one example, but more morally compromising violence to establish your credibility would be even more intersting.
We engage in all kinds of violence in video games all the time. That doesn't bother me. That violence is central to the danger I just mentioned and to the moral choices we role play. But something about the way Hawke would just wander into a situation and be forced to kill all kinds of people kind of sickened me. My characters aren't do-gooders, but they don't want to engage in slaughter either. If they can avoid killing someone, unless that person really wronged them or someone important to them, they'd probably prefer to avoid it. And they certainly aren't confident they can win every fight they find themselves in.
I think that's kind of fundamental, really, and the extent to which I'm able to role play that plausibly in DA3 will probably determine whether I keep playing these games. I know the characters will be great, and that the story will have some pretty interesting themes (while DA2 didn't quite work for me, I liked what I feel like they were *trying* to do with it story-wise). But what I really want a video game to do is show me how a risk-averse character who begins as neither righteous nor deeply immoral confronts a dangerous world, makes mistakes, gains confidence, and eventually develops the belief that (s)he has the responsibility to do something very dangerous because it's so important. Preferably with lots of law breaking and class resentment along the way.
Modifié par darrylzero, 30 mars 2012 - 05:41 .
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