Vandicus wrote...
They mattered marginally more to me than redshirt NPC #13 falling off a cliff. I felt sibling B was given a sufficient amount of time if the player uses them. Shorter than that, and well, anyone remember the names of those two Warden recruits who failed the Joining in DA:O? I sure as hell don't.
Ser Jory and--oh. LP beat me to it.
Well, I still get your point, and agree with it. The less screen time and introduction and characterization that a character gets, the easier a genre savvy person can identify them as a redshirt via the
Law of Conservation of Detail. Generally, details become important; if several major details about a character are readily given, we assume they will be important. Conversely, if if they possess fewer distinguishing characteristics, we can assume they are not going to be our butt-kicking buddies for long.
Maybe DA2 threw you into combat a little too soon. Maybe some actual roleplay time would've been nice. I mean, you know it's all going south sometime, but a little bit of fore-roleplay doesn't seem like a bad idea to me.
nijnij wrote...
I'm referring to Bethany's ogre smash death only. In the first video you see the trailer version, where Hawke actually seems affected : he falls down to his knees in disbelief then his eyes say revenge. In the second trailer, you see the reaction we got in the actual game : Hawke raising an eyebrow : "oh, my sister's dead, well that's interesting".
That could explain why I never connected to Hawke as much as I wanted to. Hawke was so stoic there... I know, "badass", but even badasses feel things. They just use the feelings to drive them forward.
Maybe they were limited by the tech at the time.
Medhia Nox wrote...
What makes me more connected to a death - is if I could have prevented it.
This isn't real life - and that seems to need to be said - because while I would have empathy for a real life human being of flesh and blood - a few descriptive words on a page or a few lines of dialogue from a wooden figure on a screen are simply not enough for me.
With a real human - I get more stimuli than a video game will likely ever be able to achieve - so it's probably not really a fair comparison.
I think a player must be engaged in an event for it to have significant meaning - the human mind is often too powerful to just shut off and a person is left saying: "Digital beings - not real - not really happening."
This is the same in a novel or movie too... a character must be developed for you to "care" - because your brain says: "Story - not real - not really happening."
BUT - if you go on a journey with that character your mind can be tricked into the same impulses you'll have for a real human being. When you are engrossed in the story - your brain will no longer fire the "Story - not real." impulse and instead you'll have an organic reaction.
I would imagine this is the ideal.
The worst case of trickery gone wrong... is (possible DA 2 spoiler) the mother.
I WAS tricked into the feeling of a powerful story... I thought I had brought her to this place and I could have stopped it by a few duplicitous dialogue options.
When I found out she dies no matter what - I was divorced from the rest of the game I was so angry.
Anders was just.... the icing on a bitter pill (but that's another topic).
Wow... looks like we are absolutely on the same page! It almost never happens, but I read your post and I felt like I could've been the one who wrote it. that's how hard I agree.
If I feel like Hawke could've prevented it by not being stupid or slow, or like the game cheated me out of responding the way I wanted to, then I feel disconnected. But if the game puts the responsibility in my hands--sort of like the Suicide Mission in ME2 (although really, I think that would've been more fun if it had been somewhat
less forgiving, it still serves as a perfect example)--
then I feel connected.
Sure, that can end in reloading for optimal results, which isn't ideal... but at least the player
cared enough to reload. And if they make an inauthentic choice for their character, they're only cheating themselves. Not everyone will make that choice, and some who do may come back years later for a replay to do it right.
But honestly, most people seem to think the best thing about the Suicide Mission is that
you can both pass AND fail. I certainly feel that way. I had so many replays of ME2, and one of them even included the ultimate failure. I made a Shepard who was reckless and made bad choices, and it was
awesome.
It made my "happy" playthrough (which was Paragade, and not at all sappy due to the whole "Reapers not yet stopped, merely delayed; galaxy not really saved; love interest still going to die" thing) seem all the more rewarding to know how it could have gone wrong. And knowing how it should have gone made the bad playthrough all the more powerful, watching it all slip away through fingers that were just a bit too weak to hold on any longer.
I felt more invested in my dwarf commoner's bitter farewell to Alistair and subsequent saving of the world after a God-baby deal than in Hawke's fate. It wasn't a matter of voice/no voice at all--I prefer a voice most of the time. But it was a matter of
choice. I just couldn't feel I was pulling Hawke's strings when nothing I did saved the lives I wanted to save. Bye, Bethy. Bye, Mom. Bye, Trask. Bye, Chantry Mother, the only decent religious person around. Bye, Orsino, you stupid Blood Mage, and thanks for making life harder for us all.
I feel like I know what the writers were trying to do, and I sympathize heavily, but I don't feel like it worked. It took me out of the experience to feel my choices didn't matter.
Why am I making them, then?
Modifié par Wynne, 04 octobre 2012 - 09:56 .
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