First, about companion quests triggers: I don't know how usual this is among players, but I find that usually, characters that cause a less than good first impression start gathering dust in camp/house/whatever, unless the game itself gives them a chance to shine in the form of companion quests.
This might actually help the player understand better the character and have him grow on the player; it gives more chances to assert more about our character's nature, and perhaps even define a particular point of our character that would've passed undetected otherwise. However, if it is a necessary condition to have the character in the party for its quest to trigger, this chances will easily be lost. DA:2 was better than DA:O in this regard, as all companion quests save one would be triggered by mail.
Therefore, I would ask that companion quest triggers occur regardless of whether or not said companion is in the active party at all times: this would ensure that party composition does not hurt the chances of the player to experience as much content as possible.
Regarding the second issue: I believe it is safe to assume that there will be some manner of companion DLC, based on the precedent of the last four releases of Bioware all having them (Shale in DA:O, Zaeed and Kasumi in ME2, Sebastian in DA:2, and Javik in ME3). I would ask to make this companion not essential to the main plot. Let me use an example from DA2 to illustrate this point: In DA2, Fenris and Sebastian should've switched places as "core" companion and DLC companion, for the following reason:
Sebastian's related quest all give a certain amount of insight about Elthina, Grand Cleric of the Chantry, and thus Hawke (and the player) could understand better the position and role she would play in stimying the final mage-templar conflict, and by proxy, the mage-templar conflict that constitutes the core of Chapter Three and arguably the whole game. Whereas Fenris is completely pointless and irrelevant to any of the main plots. Even his supposed role as Anders' foil is better served by Sebastian, since Sebastian position is not "I hate mages because of personal issues" but "I believe in the Chantry principles", which not only throws a more positive light towards the Chantry (and by extension, Templars), but is in general less based on a grudge and more on actual ideals and morals.
Therefore, had Sebastian and Fenris swapped places as core and DLC character, the main campaign would've suffered less, and people who for whatever reason couldn't access the companion DLC wouldn't receive a slanted and incomplete perspective of the main conflict; whereas people who wanted the companion DLC would've still have received a certain amount of insight about Tevinter.
So I would ask that, for DA 3, any projected companion DLC is closer to Fenris than to Sebastian in terms of relevance to the main plot (that is, only tangentially relevant, rather than holding key information to a side of the conflict).
Modifié par Xewaka, 18 septembre 2012 - 06:30 .
Retour en haut
