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[TheButterflyEffect]

I really, really hope the PC in this game will at least be allowed to have some personal happiness in the end, once the world is saved and all.

Saving the world tastes sour if you're left alone and miserable in the end. Seriously, the ending of the original game tasted so sour that I was nauseous afterwards. I had to get up and go take some Gravol.

"Yay! You saved the world! But you're still just a mage/the insignificant younger sibling/an elf who's exiled from the Alienage/an elf whose exiled from your clan/a casteless dwarf/an unwanted ex prince(ss). Sorry."

Geez, where the hell's your respect for the person who saved your scrawny neck?

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Modifié par TheButterflyEffect, 07 novembre 2012 - 09:00 .

[David Gaider]

TheButterflyEffect wrote...
Saving the world tastes sour if you're left alone and miserable in the end. Seriously, the ending of the original game tasted so sour that I was nauseous afterwards. I had to get up and go take some Gravol.

If you considered the original game to have a sour and unhappy ending, this is probably not the series for you. From the other thread on this topic, it's easy to see that some people really do just want fantasy wish-fulfillment-- save the world, get the girl/boy, live happily ever after. Totally understandable.

This is not that series. This does not mean that every story need end on a bitter note (as much as I joke about liking bittersweet endings the best, I don't in fact think that every ending needs to be bittersweet... and I don't actually think that 'bittersweet' actually qualifies unless there's also some sweet in there), but endings without some kind of personal cost from the hero are unlikely. Ewok parades and "yay! you get everything you ever wanted!" type ego-boost endings are not really where we're ever going to go. If that's not clear after the last two Dragon Age games, then I guess you're not paying attention.

And, incidentally, whatever you thought of Mass Effect is really quite irrelevant on this front. There is very little crossover between the teams on the creative side, so trying to look for some kind of historical pattern or expecting that a perceived pattern will continue is more of an exercise in frustration on your part. Just so you're aware.

[David Gaider]

shlenderman wrote...
The thing with the op was, I guess, that her female elf got dumped a little too hard.

My impression is that some people see romance plots as separate from the main plot-- as in the offering of a romance of any kind is like a contract guaranteeing that, despite whatever else happens in the plot, that romance needs to have a happy ending. If not marriage & babies, then the possibility of such as you run off into the ether with the romance of your choice.

I don't really agree, there. Not that such endings should ever be possible, but that they're required. That their mere existence means the entire game has transformed into a love story where everything else is secondary. I certainly understand why someone might want that, but that's simply never going to be the case-- it wasn't 13 years ago when I started writing game romances, and isn't now.. Will this cause some folks to thrash around and despair about how we're "getting it wrong" and no doubt completely misunderstanding what makes our stories awesome? Probably. And yet.

[David Gaider]

eyesofastorm wrote...
But you have said multiple times that you like to do new things and don't like to retread old ground.  A rainbows and butterflies ending does qualify as something different for you.  Why completely write that off as a possibility?

I've never dove head-first into a barrel of razor blades either, but I doubt I'll ever try that just for the sheer novelty factor.

[David Gaider]

Maria Caliban wrote...

You can have a happy ending in DA:O as long as you make the right decisions.

Playing a female non-human who romances Alistar and puts him on the throne in not a right decision.

Not if your goal is to marry the king of Ferelden, that's true. Yet there are people who honestly believe they are being punished because they chose not to be human or a noble and yet are not given all the same opportunities that a human noble might have. There are consequences to that decision they don't like (ie. which don't lead to the happily-ever-after with Alistair), and thus they are wrong.

Which I'm fine with. I can't tell them what should be important to their own game, but I'll never consider that an actual problem.

[David Gaider]

Medhia Nox wrote...
But if we're talking having misery endings for their own sake - no thanks. It's very Hipster... and to me it amounts to the worst form of emotional grab in modern storytelling. They are - to me - just as bad, if not worse, than saccharine endings.

I'd agree with that. I have no obsession with pain for its own sake-- and I think some of the comments prove that. DAO could indeed have had a very happy ending for you... provided you were willing to pay the cost, and depending on what your criteria for "happy" was. One could also look on DA2's ending as happy or bitter, depending on what was more personally important. So that's fine. My only issue was ever the notion that there should be no cost at all.