49 réponses à ce sujet

[Taleroth]

Call to Adventure



You won't find "saving your own ass listed." But that's because it fits into so many of the subtropes and is not distinct. Maybe running for your life causes you to end up in the Call Recieval Area. Or Taking Up the Sword causes someone to want to kill you.

[CJohnJones]

Save the world always bugs me. You could get as much drama if you were saving a city or restoring your family honor or clearing your name of a crime or defeating a single gang of malificars or something. The drama scales up as you scale down if it is done right.





That said, at least you aren't assembling the seven pieces of an item which you may then use to PWN the bad guy, who you would easily crush except that he is immune to anything but the two-handed macguffin of doom.

[Curlain]

I think Planescape: Torment did a good job of presenting a plot that had nothing to do with 'saving the world,' but was more character exploration and findout out who The Nameless One was, why were you immortal, what other lives you had lead. The best RPG I've play alongside BG2 (which was more traditional but had great characters and story), the most unique I've played so far as well

[RunCDFirst]

I'm hoping for more politics, but people didn't like Anora so my guess is that'll never happen.

[Ulyn]

My preference is for world-saving. Mass Effect and Dragon Age were both excellent cases for the "save the world/universe from ultimate evil" principle. The only real danger is when you have a franchise of games and have to constantly find The Real, Even More Serious Threat to the World/Universe with each sequel.



There's lots of good models for how to deal with this kind of problem; and you can bet the developers were thinking of precisely these issues long before Dragon Age ever shipped. The likeliest (and most tried and true) solution is a pre-planned trilogy, envisioned in advance to avoid an anti-climatic or hokey-seeming succession of averted apocalypses.



One could even imagine a "Star Wars" model in which the second sequel has a bleak and distressing ending; not a great idea for the start of a franchise, but 2 thirds of the way through a trilogy, players are willing to accept an unhappier ending to set up the climax of climaxes in the finale.



With respect to the original poster's desire for more "low fantasy" (Conan-y type stuff) as opposed to "high fantasy" (kings, saving the world, LOTR) - I don't quite agree. It is a worthy genre, but BW is great at high fantasy, while side-quests, middling plot-lines and DLC usually already provide a fair amount of "low fantasy stuff." For exmaple, dungeon crawling, villains and bosses unrelated to the Ultimate Evil, etc.



My preference is for high fantasy in CRPGs, and low fantasy in MMORPGs. I thought Age of Conan was brilliant in finding an intellectual property most suitable to the idea of 10,000 players. It had its own problems and ironically had some distinctly high-fantasy touches, but to my mind, Conan is an MMO/low fantasy character*, Alistair and the PC are CRPG characters.



*till he became a king. Hey, life's inconsistent.

[Kohaku]

RunCDFirst wrote...

I'm hoping for more politics, but people didn't like Anora so my guess is that'll never happen.

I'd like that too. I really would love to be able to topple whole governments and see what the consequences are throughout the game.

I wonder if there is a game out like that already…

[RunCDFirst]

Ulyn wrote...

My preference is for world-saving. Mass Effect and Dragon Age were both excellent cases for the "save the world/universe from ultimate evil" principle. The only real danger is when you have a franchise of games and have to constantly find The Real, Even More Serious Threat to the World/Universe with each sequel.

There's lots of good models for how to deal with this kind of problem; and you can bet the developers were thinking of precisely these issues long before Dragon Age ever shipped. The likeliest (and most tried and true) solution is a pre-planned trilogy, envisioned in advance to avoid an anti-climatic or hokey-seeming succession of averted apocalypses. 

One could even imagine a "Star Wars" model in which the second sequel has a bleak and distressing ending; not a great idea for the start of a franchise, but 2 thirds of the way through a trilogy, players are willing to accept an unhappier ending to set up the climax of climaxes in the finale.

With respect to the original poster's desire for more "low fantasy" (Conan-y type stuff) as opposed to "high fantasy" (kings, saving the world, LOTR) - I don't quite agree. It is a worthy genre, but BW is great at high fantasy, while side-quests, middling plot-lines and DLC usually already provide a fair amount of "low fantasy stuff." For exmaple, dungeon crawling, villains and bosses unrelated to the Ultimate Evil, etc. 

My preference is for high fantasy in CRPGs, and low fantasy in MMORPGs. I thought Age of Conan was brilliant in finding an intellectual property most suitable to the idea of 10,000 players. It had its own problems and ironically had some distinctly high-fantasy touches, but to my mind, Conan is an MMO/low fantasy character*, Alistair and the PC are CRPG characters. 

*till he became a king. Hey, life's inconsistent

I thought Dragon Age was low fantasy.

Modifié par RunCDFirst, 09 décembre 2009 - 11:09 .

[Titius.Vibius]

I like to see more combat and assassin type of mission, I don't want to bring you Leliana and that's final.

[Taleroth]

How does one do politics and get a player to care? If politics somehow kill his family, how does that not come across as just "evil politician?" Which is less "politics" and more "evil baron/king/overlord."

[Ulyn]

RunCDFirst wrote...

I thought Dragon Age was low fantasy.

"Dark fantasy" was the usual line, but I know what you mean.  "Dark" - while not an established term - is often seen as related to "Low," largely because of the tone of Howard's Hyborian universe. And maybe someone used the term low, I dunno. The dichotomy between high and low can work a couple of different ways.

Kings and the fate of the world vs. the ultimate menace, or hardbitten mercenary fighting a losing (and irrelevant) battle to save a badly-sited frontier post from barbarian incursions?  DA:O would be high fantasy.

Quasi real universe or clearly fantasy universe?  DA:O would almost certainly be high fantasy; there are some markedly clear parallels with the real world but you could say that of much high fantasy.

Focus on relating the epic tale or include warts and all, beggars, blood poisoning and scoundrelry?  This would be one of the clear dichotomies in which DA:O could be seen as low  fantasy; but again, a lot of high fantasy has more pretences to grit and realism without being categorized with Conan.  GRR Martin's universe, for example.

"Non-gritty" vs. "gritty" - same as previous.

For me the decisive thing is the focus of the storytelling; is it about fighting with the lost heir to the throne and saving the world from ultimate evil.  The rest of the traditional high-low dichotomies have kind of collapsed since the days of Tolkien and Howard.   On that grounds I see it as being classically high fantasy right down to the royal bastard.  Some other companions and plot elements are redolent of low however.  "Dark" might have been a conscious wish to eschew high and low as labels

This collapse of most of the high-low split - the grittification of high fantasy - is also why I think they don't have to give up "saving the world" in order to get a lot of the upsides of old low fantasy.  The textured moral landscape and subplots are good enough for me, and they can co-exist with an overarching threat like the Darkspawn.

A related thought about the darkspawn as the apocalyptic threat:  I wonder if the absence of a clear-cut, personalized supernatural antagonist - an Archdemon made into a Soveriegn-like boogieman through dialogue, more alarming telepathic visions, a variety of different ways - was a policy decision for the game, rather than an "ommission" as some people have charged?

It does somewhat skew things towards a low fantasy setting by subtly backgrounding the darkspawn menace as one among several, in common with human evil and "demonological evil."  Alternatively, it could also reflect a decision to have particular types of "villains" progressing from an Archdemon in DA:O to the scariest and most malevolent concept they can find for DA:3 - Sandal Rampant or whatever.

[Taleroth]

RunCDFirst wrote...

I thought Dragon Age was low fantasy.

It's most definitely not.  It's "Dark Heroic Fantasy."  Which is not to be confused with Dark Fantasy.

[Ulyn]

I guess technically we should consider the possibility that their "Dark Heroic Fantasy" was the product of a 5 hour argument between the writers about high and low fantasy, rather than just press release fluff to bring in "males aged 18-24."

[RunCDFirst]

Ulyn wrote...
Interesting information

What is an example of a low fantasy story? It sounds like the term has been misused when I've come across it.

Taleroth wrote...

How does one do politics and get a player to care? If politics somehow kill his family, how does that not come across as just "evil politician?" Which is less "politics" and more "evil baron/king/overlord."

You don't need your family dead for a player to have invested interest in political outcomes. I mean, look at all the people making guides on how to get the throne, or discussing how they would have liked to off Anora and marry Alistair and not be a royal concubine. 

I feel like the Origins can be used in a very interesting manner. Just throwing out some ideas, but say you did a sequel with two countries at war. How about Orlais and Tevinter over some Holy March or what-have-you. Half the Origins could be in Orlais, the other half could be in Tevinter. So long as you present both opposing sides properly, there shouldn't be a single 'evil' politician but just different perspectives.

[Taleroth]

Ulyn wrote...

I guess technically we should consider the possibility that their "Dark Heroic Fantasy" was the product of a 5 hour argument between the writers about high and low fantasy, rather than just press release fluff to bring in "males aged 18-24."

Why do you think it's in quotes?

[Ulyn]

RunCDFirst wrote...

Ulyn wrote...
Interesting information

What is an example of a low fantasy story? It sounds like the term has been misused when I've come across it.

Not necessarily; its other meanings may be "accurate" but, IMO, less relevant today.  Basically, Robert E. Howard's Conan stories are what I think of as ground-0 of the opposite of high fantasy.  That example of a doomed, irrelevant defence of a bad-idea frontier is an actual Conan story, Beyond the Black River.  It's available on wiki-source, along with a lot of his others.

The trick is, they weren't -called- low fantasy even though they're diametrically opposite to (Tolkien-centric) high-fantasy.  Howard and his successors called them "Sword and sorcery" instead.  "Low fantasy" on the other hand has apparently meant a "real world with some twists instead of fantasy world" setting.  At least according to the wikipedia article, which cites literature and names a bunch of examples.

I tend to think that particular definition of "low fantasy" is a lot less common now than a "high fantasy" vs "sword and sorcery" one.  But; can't back that up.

[Duck and Cover]

We only saved Fereldan. I was actually disappointed I didn't get to save the whole world. I went thru all that hearthache (losing Morrigan etc.) for nothing?



The Orleisan grey wardens could have cleaned things up. My actions were meaningless. The only thing they did was ensure the independence of Fereledan (and save most of Fereldan's population as well)

[Ulyn]

D&C: I didn't get that impression really; what little we know of Darkspawn strength replenishment suggests that a conquest of Fereldan would've left the Darkspawn in a position to confront the whole world, not just the Grey Wardens of one or two countries. It was sort of left open to interpretation, though.

[Statulos]

If there is a sequel featuring imported pc and some (or even better all!) of the current companions, I´d like to see something more "personal" and intimate.

BG2 was a middle ground between the "save the world" you see in DA:O and the "nobody really gives a rat´s ass about you" of Planescape: Torment (well, not that much but you get my point; Sigil and the planes exist with or whitout the Nameless One).

In fact and from a more philosophical point of view, my character would be very dissapointed with himself: he has been able to stop a Blight, appoint a new king both for the dwarfs and for Ferelden, see a relic incredibly sacred for thousands of people, defeat several dragons, take down a great war hero and significantly change the life of a nice set of people, even one of those alien qunaris.

I mean, I´m not buying that **** of "you cannot handle this" Morrigan gives me by the end of the game; I have been able to handle worse cluster****s along the game; survive massive carnages and so on. At this point I have an amount of power that really few dream of and yet, there´s something where I don´t have real power: my own life (the taint and all that thing is still there and I cannot get rid of it).

So that would be a cool experience to play and a nice homage to Planescape: you have the power to change whole nations but can you really given an answer to "what changes the nature of  a man"?

Modifié par Statulos, 10 décembre 2009 - 01:45 .

[The Angry One]

Ergh I'd rather not get into the level of navel-gazing that PS:T reached. Yes I must be that one person who doesn't think it's god's gift to RPGs.

[DeathWyrmNexus]

I actually had a story idea before where the player would enter the world for reason X and then build into the big problem scenario. Actually having the big problems start to connect to an overarching problem would be nice.



So instead of saying SAVE THE WORLD, they lead you into it with story and side quests, then you put the pieces together and discover what is really wrong with the world.

[Saurel]

yup I'm not a big fan of saving the world. Conspiracy and politicking is where its at

[Statulos]

The Angry One wrote...

Ergh I'd rather not get into the level of navel-gazing that PS:T reached. Yes I must be that one person who doesn't think it's god's gift to RPGs.

I didn´t expect less from you.

But at least that game didn´t involve any "you´re  the last hope of humanity" thing and I really liked that change.

[Inakhia]

Looking at the history of the Blights and the fact they've named the series Dragon Age: whatever means we'll probably be seeing the rest of the stories set within this century mark. This makes another Blight storyline unlikely given how rare they are.

As such a massive 'Save the World" and as a medieval society, usually your country *is* your world, introduction to this world is a pretty good and basic one.

Its a reason to have various other races and countries interact in a way that they normally wouldn't have. So you get an introduction to said various races and people. It gives players a nice reasonably understandable plot and uses that to give them a teasing taste of the greater world that's out there.

"First taste is free little girl."

Now they've got us hooked, we know what to expect game play wise and character interaction wise, they can scale back on the huge and world spanning plot lines and concentrate on possibly smaller scale and more personal stories. We've seen and experienced one countries view point, I'm sure the next story will be set in another country with more politics and responsibilities. They've tested out the origins, have an idea of what was liked the most and can now gear more towards what players what more off.

As a starting note in a franchise it makes a certain amount of sense that things aren't to complicated or geared to heavily towards a certain manner. Its already exposing us to an entirely new world and given us just a taste of what's out there and for the most part has left everyone desperately waiting to see what happens next, whether its old gods, magical upsets or politics gone wild but most likely all three.

[circa89]

kallikles wrote...

Agreed. Or, if saving the world is absolutely essential for some reason, then at least give us multiple, different ways of doing it.

As it stands, the story is really quite bland.

I think the story is okay, I just cannot see myself playing this game more than twice because of the extremely long play time. I love games with long play time, but with so many different options, I think boredom sets in way before wanting to find out more branching endings and overall endings do. I'd probably just look up the endings instead of seeing them happen because quite frankly that's a lot of work for very little reward other than actually visually seeing the endings.

That said, less about saving the world, yes. Bland story, unavoidable, things get bland for playtime's sake.

[borelocin]

I was required to save the world in a Bioware RPG ? That never happened before