Fast Jimmy wrote...
The vaguer the...
Do you all hear yourselves?
Yes, setting a canon would tread on the toes of those who did not make a certain decision. I'm sorry, but it you chose to spare or kill Loghain and the canon goes against that, then that's the way things will have happened. But, with the import flags, he's dead anyway, for all intents and purposes. Because Bioware can't invest enough resources to make sure that previous choice is brought back in any sort of significant way.
The Anvil is a good example of this. If you save it, the Dearven kingdom creates armies of golems, armies which give them the power to actually begin retaking the Deep Roads and pushing the Darkspawn back.
Think about that - pushing the Darkspawn back. We're talking about a reclaimed and expanded Dwarven empire. That's a world changer. We're talking about the Darkspawn's numbers possibly diminished before a Blight even starts. That's a world changer. We're talking the possibility mentioned in the epilogue slides that the Dwarves will begin abducting surfaces to sacrifice to create golems. THAT'S A WORLD CHANGER.
But... it's not. Because the choice itself can't be given any worthwhile recognition. So a canon of sorts will be set, essentially to the choice that will have the least impact to the main story. The canon of destroying the Anvil IS set... mostly because they need to do everything possible to ignore the choice in future games now.
The Urn of Sacred Ashes is another good one. A holy relic of unparalleled significance is found and could possibly become a new Mecca. The Chantry would now have a claim to the validity to their religion (and, hence, ALL of its tenets like, say, Magic Should Serve Man, Not Rule Him). They would be able to have the number of converts shoot through the roof and their influence would increase - not to mention they would have access to a substance that could heal any wound/sickness/affliction in case of true emegency.
Given that we are on the eve of a war based on Chantry principles, how does having the most powerful and significant religious artifact to said religion NOT play into the story? But it won't... a default canon will be set anyway, saying the Urn doesn't matter, because that is the result of ignoring/diminishing the choice. The canon is that the Urn was defiled (except that Leliana is alive, so maybe not defiled, but Brother Genitivi is murder knifed by the Warden and the Urn moved by an unknown group).
The above two examples show that mostly ignoring a choice pretty much sets a canon choice, regardless. Did you think at the end of DA2 when you'd sided with the Mages/Templars, that would affect things in DA3? Well, likely it won't. It's going to default to a canon Templat playthrough (since ignoring the choice means that most of the Circle was butchered, not saved, making it like the Circle was Annulled). So congratulations, the inability to ever acknowledge imports in real ways has led to every Mage supporter having the exact same impact on the world as a Hawke that wanted to purge every Mage from Kirkwall.
A set canon isn't perfect, but it at least let's the writers use old characters and concepts again. You may not have killed Loghain, but if he'a dead in the canon, you may see Anora not on the throne, but plotting with one side of the Mage/Templar War to lend her support, adding a really good subplot to the upcoming war. You may not have sided with the werewolves or killed Merril's clan, but it would be an interesting facet of the story if the Dalish were siding against the Mages, due to many of their clans recently being murdered by the fallout from their Apostate Keepers. You may not have given the idol fragment to Varric in DA2, but seeing Varric in DA3, driven mad be it, making him a pale shadows of his former self, would be a scene that really pulls on our heart strings.
I'm not saying to make choices canon in order for these stories to happen... I'm saying with a canon, the writers can tell really good stories, stories we relate to because they reference the world in ways that react with us because we've dealt with these characters and issues in the past. With no canon, we're stuck with never seeing thee characters or choices again... except coded entries, flimsy cameos and silly side quests where the most minuscule of consequences are given a head nod to.
A good story was never told by making story continuity 'as vague as possible.'
The entire issue with the save import is the idea that your choices does not have a profound impact on the next installment of a game in a series. It is, also, believed by some that the level of a storyline would increase if the save import was excluded. This could or couldn't be true. I won't make that assumaption.
However, if the save import are suddenly excluded in the next installement of the game. It's going to make a lot of people upset. Myself included. I won't get to the point where I'll swore my undying hatred on bioware. However, to me the save import is a feature I enjoy greatly.
Sure there can be a lot of work with implimenting these save imports. I won't deny that. However, I won't jump on the bandwagon of getting rid of the save imports. I wasn't actually serious about the vaguer the better.
Modifié par sarcastictruths, 25 octobre 2012 - 11:35 .
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