hoorayforicecream wrote...
How different might it be?
There's no way to know unless we go through the whole process and see wher eit leads.
Typically, when I create a character concept, I fill it in as much as necessary to make sense for that point in the game. I don't look at a character as an unassailable whole. Major parts of the character's motivation can still remain the same even if a choice I made along the way needs a retcon. Unless you're talking about fundamental core issues to a character, it shouldn't be that difficult. If you are, then why not do what you did in DAO under a similar situation? Stop the game, start a new Hawke, and make that Hawke one who would have a different reaction to that critical path decision.
Even if they;'re not unassailable core issues, they might have had an impact at any previous point during the game. Would Hawke have behaved differently at any previous point had you had this new character design from the start? How do you know?
For example, I hypothetically created a dwarf-hating Hawke. She hates dwarfs with a passion, thinks they're dirty, evil thieves all the time. And then she's forced to deal with Varric, who is a dwarf, and embodies everything that she hates in a dwarf. One Hawke would be unable to deal with him. She'd never take help from a dirty, smelly dwarf. She'd rather die than undertake quests for a dwarf (still a non-spoiler forum). Her story ends here.
But what if she cared for her family more? She loves her family and realizes that she can't go on the day-to-day in such poverty. She can work her way up, but what of her mother? She grudgingly accepts, and bites back her cynicism in dealing with dwarfs because she knows she needs to do it for her family. Maybe she snaps at him (direct/aggressive) whenever she has to deal with him. But then over the course of the story, he grows on her. He's still there when she needs him, even if she sends him on all the dirtiest tasks to find traps and such. Eventually, she can come around and not hate the dwarf so much. Maybe he earns her respect through years of grudging work together. Other dwarfs still set her teeth on edge, but this one is not as bad as she thought originally. Not that she'd ever admit it aloud...
In both situations, Hawke is more-or-less cut from the same cloth, with the same background. In the former, her hatred for dwarfs overpowers her loyalty to her family. In the second, it's the opposite. Not a lot of changes being made at the time of the choice, but it works with the story presented. It's just another constraint you have to work with.
It is typically the unassailable core features that cause me problems. I tend to design characters around less obviously relevant characteristics. I played a Warden whose every opinion stemmed from a passionate belief in individual property rights. He saved Redcliffe because people's property was being threatened. He helped the greedy merchant in Lothering because he'd acquired those goods fairly. He didn't help people because he cared about people. He helped people because he cared about property. But in DA2, that character was forever uttering lines that espoused views he wouldn't espouse, because the paraphrases were written assuming that some aspect of the lines other than how they address property issues was the relevant bit. So selecting dialogue would always be nothing more than guesswork.
I played another Warden who was shy and would always defer to others to make decisions. DAO let him waffle and delay, and then a companion would make a suggestion and he could follow along. But what of DA2? Hawke cannot deflect or waffle, because there's no way to tell from the paraphrases whether he'll make an assertion rather than ask a question.
As long as the characteristic that you care about isn't one BioWare foresaw, then the paraphrases are consistenly useless.
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