6 réponses à ce sujet

[Amycus89]

In DA2 you are thrown in to a no-mans land that you don't care about, with a family you know nothing about, and thus don't care about, and then thrown into a city that you are never giving any reason to care about, with its inhabitants you never have any reason to care about.

I know that Da2 tried to do a more personal, emotional story compared to origins. And I actually like that idea, as opposed to everything being "epic" where the whole world is once again in peril and you are the only one to stop it. Unfortunately, as I think it is pretty clear now, it failed pretty spectacularly in these areas. 

WHat DA2 SHOULD have done: Make the game start first in "just another peaceful day" of Lothering, right before anyone ever hears about the blight. Let us learn about the town, our family and other inhabitants (and finally some basic lore of the place for first time players), so we can care about the loss later on. Then let the news about the darkspawn reach the town, and you need to go to Ostagar for the battle. Then let us see from the perspective of the common soldier there, about Loghain, the king, and the grey wardens - and finally see the chaos that breaks out when the darkspawn overrun you after Loghains betrayal. Fight for your life to get back to Lothering and the rest of your family,and see the panic spread throughout the town before the darkspawn overrun the place. THEN we are at the place where DA2 actually (unfortunately) starts. 

Then we are, after having a certain companion killed (that we actually might have a chance to care about now), thrown into a short cutscene where we are suddenly teleported to Kirkwall. Why not let us have some gameplay during this joerney, where all the refugees are packed like rats, to show the hardship Hawke and his family had to go through. Have some quests of merely finding enough water to survive, or medicine to sick passengers/companions. Make it feel like things went from bad to worse. THEN we are FINALLY in Kirkwall, and this time we know in our minds that we really, really don't want to go back through the same way we came, 

Then just about 10 min in we have, unfortunatey, ANOTHER timeskip where we suddenly have worked a whole year (well that was fast. What was the big deal, we got in and suddenly have better weapons and armor. Didn't feel much like living in servitude if you ask me...). Once again would have been an excellent opportunity to make us feel like we had hit rock bottom, and something had to change. And then we might also have actually have known all the city's inhabitants instead of suddenly having a bunch of strangers calling out to me like I had known them my whole life -not to mention that it would have been an excellent time to give some branching quest lines depending on whether you went with the smuggler or mercenary.

I could continue, but I think I have made my point. Stop with the timeskips, unless you make us sit in a prison for a year or two (but then the world outside should have also changed). It disconnects us from our characters.

Modifié par Amycus89, 04 août 2012 - 11:49 .

[Allan Schumacher]

1) Killing of a family member only minutes into the game when you havn't had any chance to learn about them is a pretty bad idea,

I can both agree and disagree with this.

Certainly the loss is more generally effective the more interactions (preferably positive) the game player has with character that dies. At the same time, I know people (myself included) that still found the scene emotional the first time they saw it.

Maybe a scene like this strikes a chord with me because I can relate on a personal level (I lost my brother when I was 13), or maybe I find myself more easily able to get into a character than others. Though I will admit I do believe I'm in the minority in terms of feeling this way.

[Allan Schumacher]

Outside of the game, sure I understand the necessity for it from a developer stand point. I don't know, perhaps I just wish it had been done another way. Maybe instead of just killing one of them off, had you all ever considered just changing the sibling selection right as you load into the game? Varric's initial exaggeration shows you with your non-dead, class-appropriate sibling. From the initial introduction there was no reason to think there was a third Hawke child. So a mage Hawke gets Carver and non-mages get Bethany from the get-go, no death. Bingo.

How is this actually any different? I'm not sure why you're upset with an arbitrary death due to which class you choose, compared to an arbitrary sibling simply not existing due to which class you choose.

Yes part of the reasoning was class make up (although that's not the only reason). But straight up one thing I like about it is it immediately adds a level of replayability (which I almost always love), so it's hard for me to go "booo, it's arbitrary based on my class choice which doesn't really make much sense" when the other part of me goes "cool I get to experience some completely different content." I also consider it an integral part of the plot because part of the story telling for the game was the struggle between Hawke and his/her sibling.

Imagine how much more foolish it'd be if it was Bethany telling mage-Hawke "You just don't understand how difficult it is to be an apostate mage!" and part of the animosity Carver has is that Hawke is an apostate mage and part of the issue is that their lives are more difficult as a result.

Change how the game decides which family member dies, and suddenly you're reworking a lot more of the conversations or just flat out adding more just so that it can make sense.

[Allan Schumacher]

nightscrawl wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I'm not sure why you're upset with an arbitrary death due to which class you choose, compared to an arbitrary sibling simply not existing due to which class you choose.

Perhaps it's because the death scenes played out exactly the same way for both, which is what made it seem arbitrary. Sure, you could argue that, because they're twins, they might have the same (foolish) reaction in such a situation, leading them to be killed, however that statement seems to suggest a closer relationship as twins than we are led to believe they had in the game. Why didn't they react the same way and both get killed? Or why didn't they react in such a way as to work together to prevent either from being killed?

That's a fair enough point.  Although I'm never sure if we should change things based purely on metaknowledge, but I can understand the perspective.

I also felt like it was stuck in there to get an emotional reaction. I only really felt bad for Leandra in that scene, to be honest, since her child was just killed in front of her. I never felt sad on behalf of my Hawke because I didn't even know the person. I feel like Bioware is telling me I should be sad about this person's death because of who they were, which, to be honest, is another way of them controlling the PC and limiting role play.

I saw it more as setting up the emotional reaction for Mother moreso than Hawke.  Although to be fair it's been quite some time since I have played through any of the content so I may be missing conversations where Hawke is demonstrating some sort of emotional reaction to the loss of the sibling.  I still consider JerkHawke to be one of the coldest people ever when he says "I'll come back when you're less maudlin" to his own mother!!! >.>

And... I've gotten really far off track of time skips. Sorry about that.

Conversations always evolve, and I'd still consider it on topic since part of the time skips revolves around the loss placed upon the Amell family (Mother definitely struggles with it).

[Allan Schumacher]

ReggarBlane wrote...

It is interesting that some issues arise from meta-gaming, and people claim meta-gaming to be the problem and give the issue an allowance.

Yet, it seems to me to be unrealistic to expect all (or even most) players to completely ignore their previous play-through. Unlike me, most people do not have rampant amnesia.

Also logically if someone purposely takes a different route in their choices in a subsequent play-through, that person must meta-game in order to make a different decision than they did in the previous play-through.

I strongly feel that developers and writers of games should expect meta-gaming if their content is variable and worth replaying. To me, the whole "you'd only know that through meta-gaming" is a weak argument. When certain games seem to handle meta-gaming fairly well (like DA:O), games that do not (like the second Dragon Age) should not be able to use such an excuse.

It's more an issue of "should we bother trying to account for metagaming?"  IMO, no.  Otherwise you don't get plot twists like the one in KOTOR, or other things like that.

You're right that people don't immediately get amnesia, but I'm of the variety that the first playthrough is of paramount importance.  Deus Ex successfully convinced me that if I wanted to, I could have sided with UNATCO.  This helped contribute to me absolutely loving the game's story and considering it one of my favourite game experiences of all time.  I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't, but I realized that the game did such a fantastic job of letting me think choices were available that didn't actually exist, but then leading me along the way to choose the actual path the game went along.  Also going with the first playthrough, if the first playthrough isn't interesting, the chances of there being a second playthrough becomes significantly less.  All the creative reactivity in the world doesn't mean much of people don't feel compelled to give it another whirl.


The issue with the metagaming in question is why does this situation with the siblings really bother people.

I personally think it can be often be drilled down to "because I'd like more content" (which is what the player would get if the game properly delivered the ability to choose which sibling died).  Am I wrong with this?  Is there something else more fundamental that I am missing?

[Allan Schumacher]

Um, other than the choice itself being additional content, how does this change things? You still have the one sibling through Act 1, and presumably either Bethany or Carver's actions would play out the same during Act 1 regardless.

Done properly, you'd get to see the parts of Act 1 done without the need for one apostate mage (Hawke or Bethany) and a sibling who isn't (Carver or Hawke). In this very thread you see people saying they would have liked to see how it'd be with different sibling pairings, not to mention the gameplay elements which would allow another permutation of party make up.

The best thing I can think of for that scene in particular would have been a combat/tactical choice, ie "I moved left when I should have moved right" kind of thing, which makes the death partially dependent on your actions, but still more or less accidental, as opposed to what actually happens where Bethany or Carver make a brash move, attracting the attention of the ogre.

Would it have been better to give some indication that Bethany feels she's in the shadow of Hawke if Hawke is a mage, and have Carver feel the same if Hawke is a martial soldier (Warrior/Rogue). This would provide some level of motivation for why each sibling decides to charge forward and make the death seem less arbitrary.

(Though I'd wager it'd make the death less sympathetic, but I digress)

[Allan Schumacher]

But if you'd really wanted to side with those UNATCO guys in that first playthrough, that would have been a problem, yes?

Given the circumstances that the game uses to still force you down the non-UNATCO path, probably not. I'll never know though.