10 réponses à ce sujet

[brushyourteeth]

Dear DA Writing Team,

I just want to say that I love what you do. Really. The DA franchise is my favorite among a long list of much-beloved games, and I always find myself returning to them for replay when I'm taking a sick day. Or I'm snowed in. Or just because.

But if you could find it in the kindness of your hearts to grant me one little request for the next game, I'd be ever so even more obliged. I'll make my case here.

Can we please not have a dead mother in DAIII?

I realize that it makes for great drama. I also realize that it's a fantasy staple to make your hero or heroine undergo some sort of harrowing event before he or she can become awesome, and the loss of one or both parents is a popular way to make that happen. Frodo is an orphan. Bambi's mom gets shot, and we all cry. It's classic, I know. But here are some reasons why it shouldn't happen in DAIII.

1.) It's overdone. Don't believe me? Check out the picture below.


http://t2.gstatic.co...cNHdyY7haQccJqa
(From left to right: dead mom, dead mom, dead mom, dead mom AND dad, dead mom and maybe dad?, and comatose mom. I rest my case.)

Even in DA:O, we'd lost our parents in almost every origin. Heck, even the drunk dwarven commoner mom telling my Warden to become a prostitute was a breath of fresh air compared to the others. The only other exception I can think of is the dad you get if you play an alienage elf, but then all he talks about is your dead mother. Drag! Sometimes I even played the mage origin just so I could imagine that somewhere out in the world was a happy mom and dad waiting with cookies and a Daughter of the Year trophy for ending the Blight.

2.) Some of us have real-life dead mothers and don't love reliving that event every time we play our favorite game. I feel like I'm self-flagellating every time I watch Hawke cradle DAII's zombie mom (and no, "flagellating" isn't nearly as sexy as it sounds, unfortunately).

All that to say "You've done a great job with the dead mom (and dad - but mostly mom) thing. Five stars. What new feels can you kick us in?" Because seriously, I was personally pretty much over it a game and a half ago.

Thanks for reading - comments are welcome! Anyone who says "I love watching my parents die!" will be immediately branded an extremely odd duck. By me. Silently. In my mind.

Modifié par brushyourteeth, 25 septembre 2012 - 04:03 .

[David Gaider]

Ah, okay. Got it.

Written in notebook: "Next time kill two mothers instead of one. No point getting stale."

[David Gaider]

Xilizhra wrote...
If you bring up a lesbian parental relationship in DA3 for the first time just to kill them, I freakin' swear you'll lose me as a customer.

I honestly don't know whether that's supposed to be a lesbian romance with a parent (?) or just a relationship with a lesbian parent... but either way being the parents of a protagonist is a dangerous, dangerous occupation. Their sexuality is irrelevant.

[David Gaider]

Xewaka wrote...
It's okay, David. No need to refuge behind excuses. We know it's hard to write around parental figures, and easier to just off them "for the sake of the narrative".

Excellent. Thank you for your permission.

[David Gaider]

Lithuasil wrote...
Good writers will care about all their characters, yes. Nevertheless, there *is* a certain amount of... I don't quite want to call it "glee" involved with knowing a scene is going to invoke certain emotions in the recipient of the story.

I would say "glee" is a good word, yes.

Even so, I'm curious why people tend to run with the assumption that we would repeat the same story elements. Yes, parents tend to be taken out of the picture à la the Hero's Journey, but insofar as we writers are concerned we'll move on to some other body part once the original gets too numb from all the punching. So asking us to not write the same story elicits a response which is generally "...okay?" Asking us to not punch you in the gut gets you a pat on the head and an "aww, muffin."

[David Gaider]

Xilizhra wrote...
If you're required to do any gut-punching, make it actually intelligent. Leandra's death was not intelligent. Bodahn's suggestion to wait around so that the killer can have his way with her was extraordinarily stupid. Going to Gascard DuPuis is far smarter... yet somehow, despite being able to get to him much more quickly than you would have been able to do anything by waiting until after dark, you still arrive at the exact same, wrong, time. This is not intelligent, clever, or good writing. This is clumsily applied, pointless brutality that instilled no sadness in me whatsoever, only rage at Bioware personally.

Thanks for the feedback. Next time we'll try not to write something so blatantly stupid. I'll mark it on my "things to do" list.

[David Gaider]

Hawkeyed Cai Li wrote...
I'd just like to see a reconciliation, I guess. Or a happy family. Variety. And all that.

Yep. Variety is good. And your gut's probably sore... time to move onto the shoulder.

[David Gaider]

Lithuasil wrote...
Just as long as you leave the kittens alone! 

I might kill off one kitten... so long as you get to raise his traumatized sibling, until he grows up and becomes Batman. FOR VENGEANCE.

[David Gaider]

Catia wrote...
Sorry to say, but anything regarding our protagonist and his/her family has likely been decided upon for at least a year if not longer.

This is true. Not that we couldn't change it, if we wished, but some things about a story are pretty fundamental and thus not changed lightly.

In the meantime, though, I'm grabbing some popcorn and kicking my feet up while I read some of the topics on BSN, because to read some of them, you'd think BW hasn't even started writing the story yet--that they're just sitting around, waiting for us fans to tell them what to write.

That's always the impression I get from BSN-- that if we aren't sitting by with pads in hand, waiting expectantly for instructions, that we aren't "listening". It's not quite true, obviously, but it certainly seems that way.

[David Gaider]

Brockololly wrote...
Well, I think some of that comes from the transparency or lack thereof with the whole development process for a game like DA3. On one hand you have statements saying how much you guys listen to feedback and yet on the other its been radio silence for so long on anything concrete about DA3. So people likely have no clue as to where in the overall process of development the game is right now or even what that process looks like.

Depends on what kind of transparency you're looking for. If you mean developer diaries and so forth, that's likely to come-- but, again, not until we have something to show. That's part of the policy we've mentioned consistently, and that means that until we show something, the amount of conversation we can have is limited.

If you mean transparency in that we're going to talk about the things we're thinking about, but might end up cutting or changing, keeping you up to date on the process as it happens, no-- I wouldn't expect that, were I you. We have been collecting a lot of feedback in the year (more than, actually) since DA2 came out, and that's informed a lot of our decisions... but that means many of these decisions have been made. Things can indeed still change, but not fundamental things... and certainly not until and unless we can show what we've done. There's very little point in soliciting feedback for things based largely on fan speculation or assumptions based entirely on DA2.

So until we show more, patience is advisable. If that's not possible, my advice would be to take a break from the forums until we've revealed more for you to talk about. If even that's not possible, you're going to have to tolerate the rampant speculation-- but not assume that we're spending our time taking it very seriously at this point.

Modifié par David Gaider, 27 septembre 2012 - 09:22 .

[David Gaider]

brushyourteeth wrote...
Just want to chime in and say, Mr. Gaider, that my intention in creating this thread wasn't at all to make you feel insulted - just to put my opinion out there (as we've been asked multiple times to give them) in a polite and respectful manner. Any criticism can easily come across as harsh, especially over the internet. So you're clearly not happy with the way my thoughts came out, and I'm genuinely sorry.

No need to apologize-- I wasn't insulted. I was mostly teasing, and responding to the "overused trope" comment which had been brought up not only by you but by numerous posts after yours... we tend to change things up from game to game, so it's entirely possible that a particular element will either not be repeated at all or suddenly become a major or minor thing compared to its previous incarnation.

It's also possible that any subject we write about will touch a personal chord with a member of the audience... whether it be the death of a parent, the death of an ill loved one (such as in Thane's case), or any other number of subjects. I'm sympathetic to your loss, but I hope you understand we really can't avoid these subjects out of sensitivity... or we'd have to avoid them all.

That said-- if it wasn't clear through my teasing, point taken! Sorry if I came across as hostile to you. I imagine I do that sometimes, as keeping my tongue firmly in cheek is the primary way I deal with the overwhelming barrage of comments here... keep in mind as well that unless I'm responding directly to someone, chances are I'm addressing the collected posts in a thread and not just the original one (as was the case here, as my initial post was in response to two pages of posts-- but I can see how you might interpret that otherwise).

Modifié par David Gaider, 29 septembre 2012 - 06:54 .