It seems these days romance is taking center stage in BioWare games. It's become a requirement to get the most out of their characters. If you don't pursue romance, too bad. Be prepared for a very short dialogue tree. This leaves many characters with only a few lines in a 30-40 hour game.
But what about friendship? Shouldn't you at least get to know the characters before you become involved in a intimate relationship? This has always puzzled me with BioWare games. Whenever BioWare actually says "no, you can't romance this character" the players get upset and we have 500 ****ing threads about it on here a day later. So, naturally, they say "**** it, let's just make 'em happy so they'll shut up".
But what we end up with as a result is VERY shallow characters that are more like cardboard cut outs than people. One-dimensional characters that have a 'problem' that only the player can solve, and after the player solves it, (and a few short conversations later) they want to ****. It's AFTER that you get to see just how shallow and unrewarding the experience is.
But friendship involves actually caring about someone. How many people on here can truly say they care about their love interest in the games? Enough to just be their friends? Or does it HAVE to be a romantic involvement for you to care?
So, I hope future BioWare games take a more mature approach to how PEOPLE are presented in their games. Because as it is right now, I swear I think the people who make these games are all incredibly immature. Especially the writers. Building believable friendships is more compelling than "progress through five conversations to have sex".
Friendship is more important
Débuté par
EpicBoot2daFace
, sept. 22 2012 09:42
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#2
Posté 24 septembre 2012 - 11:45
David Gaider
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- BioWare Employees
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- 4 514 messages
EpicBoot2daFace wrote...
It's not the only one.
Cardboard cut out cliches. All of them.
Wow.
Sorry, but that link... sure, let's reduce the characters to broad categories, and then if we squint hard enough it'll look like they actually fit in those categories (when, let's face it, many of them don't with any but the most cursory examination). And this is supposed to be profound information to whom, I wonder?
They're called archetypes. If you try hard enough, you can make any character fit into one. Someone breaks out the word 'cliche' in this context as if they've said something meaningful, as if the lack of archetypes would be either better or even possible.
I'm not going to stand here and suggest that any character we've written at BioWare is a model of brilliant originality... but if someone's going to criticize a piece of writing it would be excellent if they could manage to summon up a critique that manages to do more than provide the shocking discovery that archetypes exist. That would be nice, and thank you.
/end diatribe
Modifié par David Gaider, 24 septembre 2012 - 11:48 .
