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[Mystch3vi0us]

     I feel the need to preface this with the fact that I'm not exclusivly talking about LI's, though the idea did come to me while reading a thread on realism in relationships. 

     One of the largest things Bioware is pushing for DA:I is the ability to influence things around you based on your choices rather than just a set path, and I got to thinking, why should that just apply to I got so and so to like me or I got so and so to hate me?  Looking back at previous Bioware titles we see that through conversation we have been able to alter npc reactions by influencing them in conversation.  Whether it be SWTOR 2, or a great example would be The Old Republic's Sith Warrior relationship with Jenna.  (I think I got that right.)  You can, through conversation, create an npc who reacts very morally while remaining within the confines of the story or one truely sadistic tart who kinda gives me the willies. 

     So why shouldn't something like this be applied to DA:I?  You have to figure that with the current storyline morality is going to be rather ambiguous as camps for how to treat this rebellion are very staunchly divided.  It just makes sense to me that you can end up with a seeker joining the party who, while not neutral of opinion, is influencable on how she deals with it.  Does she take a MLK approach trying staunchly to keep everything civil or do we have a militant Malcom X renegade who says put em all in the ground templar and mage alike for defying the chantry?  Maybe even add a moderate option in there through dialogue that is a third party neutral option.  Don't change them at all.  Maybe that is what happens when you don't chat up  your companions or take them on quests with you.  Yeah it makes ample sense to do this with LI's (and I would love very much to see this.) , but as with anyone you spend a lot of time with, they change you.

     As far as the world changing as a result of you making these decisions I would love to see these changed personalities effect choices you have in the world.  Lets say you walk into a camp of mages with said same seeker, Cassandra is a great example for this, and instead of her sitting silently while you try to negotiate a peaceful agreement to buy lyrium she argues and iniatiates a fight that either gets you free lyrium or forces you to go else where.  Maybe, that same attitude will open a door for you that would have been otherwise shut had you taken a more peaceful approach.  Perhaps make 2 NPC's exclusive to a certain line of thinking.  Maybe a Qunari won't join a peaceful player while an elf won't join a militant one.  A mage won't join if anyone in your party sides with the templars while a templar won't join an apostate.  I think that something like this would really give liscence for some creative role playing and give players a much more diverse experience during future replays. 

     Lastly for the love of pete, the dialoge wheel is fine but please get rid of the icons telling you what each option means.  Keep the words in red for intimidate, blue for persuade, and maybe gold or nothing for added dialogue options.  But, marking something as good guy response or bad girl response almost forces people to make decisions.  Yes we can physically choose whatever we want, but I've seen more people than I care to mention choose something because it's the Paragon, or nice guy option even though their character had to that point never responded in that way.  It's like a mental trap that players fall into.  The Must get everything mentality.

[Malanek]

Was it Jaessa? I think that personality shift was a bit extreme and would normally be a bit unrealistic but having one or two companions alter their philosophy during the game could work.

I think the dialogue wheel icons are needed with paraphrasing to help indicate a tone. In ME it wasn't because the top one was always paragon, bottom renegade. However, not every choice needs an icon. I believe the majority of them should be neutral. In DA2 I felt a lot of silly lines were written to give all these outlandish responses just to fit the icons. They should be a tool, not a direction to the writers of what they have to write.

[Maclimes]

I miss KOTOR's "influence your companions" system. It was never quite fully fleshed out, I think. But I do like that idea. Similar to the way you can "harden" Alistair or Leliana. I'd like to see more of that.

[Malanek]

Yeah, the "hardening" is a good example of that.

[Mystch3vi0us]

Hardening is very much like what I'm proposing, but it's also not. (odd to say but hear me out.) Hardening allowed companions to react differently to decisions you made on a reaction scale. +5 affection ect. This is less about just getting them to react on a scale and influencing their personalities as a whole. Maybe the banter could change and they stop prancing around like a ditz or they stop allowing people to walk all over them. As I mentioned earlier maybe they jump in in conversation where they wouldn't have before and take hard stances either opening up new options for the player in the dialogue tree or closing them off. Again this isn't just, at least not in my mind, just for LI's but for all playable NPC's.

In another thread someone was talking about having vendetta's between companions. I feel that something like this could work really well to get them to let go of their anger or foster the anger in a character forcing a climax. (*evil grin*) What if when you foster a positive relationship you squash the conflict and you can keep both characters but if you bring the vendetta to a climax you unlock more story and items?

[Wulfram]

I don't generally want companions to feel too much like putty in the PCs hands. I want them to be strong and have their own opinions.

[PsychoBlonde]

Malanek999 wrote...

Was it Jaessa? I think that personality shift was a bit extreme and would normally be a bit unrealistic but having one or two companions alter their philosophy during the game could work.

I'd like to see more of this, but not them altering their philosophy unless, of course, that's their entire personal character arc.  There was some of this in DA2 from the oddest source--Varric.  You couldn't change Sebastian or Anders or Fenris or Merrill in any substantial way, but you could get Varric to not murder his brother.  It was a really great moment.

What I'd like to see, and is more doable and sensible, is for the PC to have an effect on how people *apply* their philosophy, what lengths they're willing to go to, etc.  There's a world of difference between, as suggested, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.  And there's a big difference between the two of them and Nelson Mandela.  How a given person applies their ideals is far more significant to their relationships with other people than the content of those ideals--I'm a hardcore atheist Objectivist but I get along fine with friends who are strong political liberals or highly religious because none of us want to force anybody to adopt our views.  We value discussion and debate and letting people go to Hell in their own way if that's what they want.

I think this is the primary problem I have with the rivalry/friend meter--because it only rewards extremes of action, it pays no attention to application.  There aren't companions who respect your desire to get all the facts before you make a decision or your efforts to reconcile people.  I think the system needs to be more complex.  I've made a few suggestions along these lines--adding a "corruption" meter for the PC, for instance. And no, not like a renegade/paragon meter, this would be a one-direction-only meter that indicates how many times you've done something truly nasty in pursuit of your goals.  Certain companions should have certain reactions at different milestones based on the direction you've pushed them in and the state of your meter.

For instance, if you have a companion who is rabidly anti-Qunari, but you've consistently tried to nudge them to be less extreme, when you start racking up the corruption points, maybe they lose their temper at you because now YOU'RE the one acting like a fanatic and being a hypocrite.  But if you have another companion who started out as more moderate in outlook (and you encouraged them in this), maybe they decide it's time to save you from yourself.  They might have a huge argument over this right in front of you.

That's not the only way to do it, certainly.  My biggest hope is that whatever method they choose will be very consistent and suited to the overall game style.  I'm also hoping that the game story has a more consistent overall style--they did it with the art direction, let's see it applied to the rest of the game, now.

[Mystch3vi0us]

@blonde I can't say I really see where you are going. I never said that I wanted their philosophy to change. My example had a lot more to do with their methods, which leads me to think you're agreeing with me. ???

At any rate I don't like the corruption meter Idea because I think that morality systems pigeon hole players into the morality of specific writers. An example of how I view this as a horrible Idea is a quest in SW:ToR when a woman robs the military hospital of all it's medicine so that she can give it to the orphans. The choices were to give to medicine to the kids or to the injured troops. (You are a trooper btw.) When you are told that not giving medicine to kids makes you a horrible person, I can't help but want to slap this writer btw, that the morality system is BS. This is a round about way of explaining why morality decisions bother me.