104 réponses à ce sujet

[Dhiro]

Maclimes wrote...

Il Divo wrote...

Pedrak wrote...

The initial Carver/Bethany death was a misstep (meaning that it felt flat and toothless - the sibling dies too early for the player to care, except for a generic "Oh, that kind of sucks"), but it was also an exception - Bio usually handles this kind of things well.

Eh, most of the times Bioware has done this, it still felt trivial, DA2 included.

Baldur's Gate 1: Gorion
KotOR: Trask Ulgo
Mass Effect 1: Jenkins

It's simply a case of getting rid of a character whom we barely know. Compare for example the intensity of choosing a squad-mate on Virmire after having time to get to know the character. It works much better, imo.

Jory and Davik in DA:O, not to mention the multitude of expendable characters in the various origins.

Maihri in DA:A, also.

(I still weep for Trask Ulgo, though. He was both a companion AND a tutorial.)

I remember that there was a line to rage at Trask's killer and express how long you've waited to cut his head off in blind vengeance.

I stared at that line for five minutes before googling "Trask".

[Get Magna Carter]

There are a number of ways death can have "meaning"
"Loss" -requires some sense of normality -a short scene of the Hawke family in Lothering before they fled might have made the loss of a sibling more significant.
"guilt" or "responsibility" requires the player to feel they have some influence on if or how or when the character dies.
"shock"/"horror" - is either tied to loss or to a personal threat possibly combined with helplessness..it worked better in the female city elf origin to represent the horror of her situation

[unbentbuzzkill]

deaths in DA are like burps in real life everybody has had at least one. But anyway deaths have no meaning in DA when you need to advance a story I thought everybody knew that.

[RazorrX]

I think *some* deaths were well done, and others just never really touched me. To kill someone at the beginning of the game does not have any impact to me as I do not really know them.

When Mama Hawke died, that was a touching moment. I did not even try to see if there was a way to go back and stop it - it was so nicely touching that I did not want to change anything (which I guess was good since you can not change it).

I thought the Keeper dying for Merrill was touching. Merrill never really thought of the keeper as her mother, but it is plain that the keeper thought of Merrill as her daughter.

Bethany dying in the deep roads was a touching moment.

But for the most part many deaths lack emotional connection needed to actually mean anything.

[Palipride47]

Maclimes wrote...

Il Divo wrote...

Pedrak wrote...

The initial Carver/Bethany death was a misstep (meaning that it felt flat and toothless - the sibling dies too early for the player to care, except for a generic "Oh, that kind of sucks"), but it was also an exception - Bio usually handles this kind of things well.

Eh, most of the times Bioware has done this, it still felt trivial, DA2 included.

Baldur's Gate 1: Gorion
KotOR: Trask Ulgo
Mass Effect 1: Jenkins

It's simply a case of getting rid of a character whom we barely know. Compare for example the intensity of choosing a squad-mate on Virmire after having time to get to know the character. It works much better, imo.

Jory and Davik in DA:O, not to mention the multitude of expendable characters in the various origins.

Maihri in DA:A, also.

(I still weep for Trask Ulgo, though. He was both a companion AND a tutorial.)

The weird thing is, I think some people still have a connection to who we would consider "redshirt" NPCs (like Mhairi, I certainly miss her) but they were killed off pretty darn quickly. I think the difference is that Mhairi, Daveth, etc. had a purpose, and a place. When a sibling dies, it is because you can't have so many companions, and you needed party balance, which is why the character that dies is the opposite attack "style" of yours. Maybe that is why it seemed universally annoying. Mhairi seems mroe random and senseless, considering she would have been a decent companion (imo), and the new recruits died as part of the storyline to show the gravity of the sacrifice you character was making.

The best way to describe how I felt about player agency with other events, would be that I did nothing to ensure my mother's death or prevent it. It was truly random. With Anders, I was an overly-trusting accomplice. Maybe if my first playthrough, I didn't help at all, my reaction may have been different. Or maybe it was because I had him around for three acts and a bunch of conversations and misadventures, whereas I had, maybe, three conversations with ma that were not very engaging compared to anything with a temp companion in Origins or Awakening. *essay over*