Having thought further on it what I really don’t like is that this is basically a compromise between having a fixed character, and the player’s ability to customise their character. However, the manner in which the compromise is being done is the wrong one and seems to me at least to actually fail to address the issue which is being compromised over. People who are fine with a fixed protagonist are generally fine with any fixed protagonist, so the extra customisation really doesn’t add much value for them. While people who want more ability to define/make their character just view a fixed protagonist with some window dressing and are left with the feeling they’re still playing a fixed protagonist.
Ideally Bioware should just decide if they want a fixed protagonist or greater customisation and forgo the half measures which one end of the spectrum can do without and leaves the other end of spectrum unsatisfied.
If you want to do a story about character ’X’ then just define a fixed character ‘X’ and put all those resources you’re using towards window dressing into more gameplay and other characters. How many more NPCs could you add in if you didn’t have two VA’s for the same main character? How many more exotic or interesting abilities could you work on giving companions if you didn’t have to draw up three distinct classes for the main character?
Conversely if you want to give people the ability to customise their characters do so properly even if those choices end up being ultimately subtle and sparse throughout the main story line. One of the main line of attacks used with regards to origins not mattering in DAO was that past the origin quests there were very few ‘true’ differences between which characters you played. The fallacy which seems to go unaddressed with regards to this though, is that people were looking back at it having played multiple times and as such became imminently familiar with all the little details. The truth of the matter however, was that at first blush it still felt like you were playing your own different character. More importantly, you actually had to play through the game two or three times to really cotton on to the fact that the ultimate differences between each origin were subtle and sparse. Given that according to Bioware itself most people only played once and some of those not even all the way through, that illusion would be maintained for the vast majority of players.
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All the above said, I understand that resources are limited and that Bioware is essentially trying to bridge the gap between the fixed protag crowd and the customisation crowd. The main problem with this as I mentioned at the start is that I think it is being done in a fashion which fails to address the desires of one camp and adds little value for the other. If you are going to go for the compromise route, then you should look at the underlying issues between the two, one wants a substantive protagonist and the other wants a substantive choice in ‘their’ protagonist.
Given this will presumably be a party based game, with various party members from different races/backgrounds, a more satisfying compromise would have been to develop say three properly fixed characters from within that ‘party pool’ and let the player choose at the start which one of those three would be ‘their’ character.
This way the fixed protagonist crowd gets a substantive voiced character that is tied to the story, the ‘customisation’ crowd gets a choice of three substantially different characters to choose from. Whilst Bioware looses very little in the resources department; they don’t have to make three separate classes for one character, they don’t need two voice actors for the same character and finally the two other un-chosen characters in a given play through are still used as party members and as such not ‘wasted’.
Modifié par Drasanil, 28 octobre 2012 - 08:25 .
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