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[AmstradHero]

Firky wrote...
I took Dog along because I was waiting for him to have discrete content. Like Sherry the Mouse in Ultima V and how she was the only one that could go through mouse holes and find secret little areas. Even just a couple of Dog-only areas would have been cool. But there weren't any.

That would have made Dog more interesting. I'm still not sure it would have been interesting enough for me to want to pick Dog as a party member, though the completionist in me may have disagreed...

Firky wrote...
The question about whether a story from the POV of a mute character would be interesting reminds me of So Much to Tell You, by John Marsden. (That book all Aussie 90s teens had to read for English, right?) It's about a girl who is traumatised and selectively mute. She is transferred from hospital to a girls' boarding school and keeps a diary.

Ah, I got Letters from the Inside. I definitely see how a mute character would work in that regard - they can still provide plenty of information to the reader, even if they don't talk with other characters. The problem for a game is how the communication is made effective. If it's rarely a two-way exchange, then I don't see it being that rewarding for the player. I imagine it would be doable, but it's going to take a lot of work from the design team to figure out how they can get the mute NPC to "communicate" to the PC in order to get a meaningful relationship between the two characters. I do think it would be a really interesting design challenge.

Firky wrote...
Personally, although the character in So Much to Tell You, had a typical mind and was silent because of the trauma, I think it'd be just as interesting to read a story about what was going on inside a character with a differently organised mind, in one way or another. (But it's something I'm interested in.)

I think the difficulty in reading something by a differently organised mind is that it would likely be difficult for people to relate or understand. I mean, even having had a friend with (mild) Asperger's Syndrome describe some of their thought processes just didn't really make sense - just some of the conclusions and determined actions don't really logically follow for someone whose brain isn't wired that way.  I agree that it still could be interesting, but I think it would be a very challenging read in many ways.

[Renmiri1]

Sejborg wrote...

** snip **

1 - Do you think this Cole character (or someone similar) could work as a companion in DA3?

2 - Would his interactions need to be different from typical companions in order to make him "come alive" as a character?

3 - Would Cole be an offensive character?

1 - David Gaider, who wrote Asunder has hinted Cole will be in DAI and possibly a companion

2 - Yes, he is very very shy, barely talking. He wishes to dissapear when people are near, and his efforts are so sucessful it gets to the point of  very few people noticing him and even  fewer remembering him

3 - No

[Firky]

Uh oh. I don't like the idea of Cole as a companion at all. (Honestly, I'm not really sure how to try to explain that, but it gives me a really bad vibe.) I think Cole is right on the line of where book characters don't translate well into games, for me anyway.

Amstrad: Ah, Letters from the Inside. So many John Marsden books during those years.

In terms of minds which are organised differently, though, DA already has the Qunari and the Tranquil, and even differences between your Varric and your Merrill style of character. They're (broadly) all easy to understand, motivation wise etc, right?

I think one of the best bits in DA2 was when I realised what the Saarebas was going to do, just before he did it. Because it seems so senseless, to my mind, in that circumstance, anyway. Yet, it was presented so that I understood why he was doing it.

The interesting thing is that, if Saarebas was originally intended to maybe not do what he did in DA2, the player would have controlled that outcome through dialogue. I always picture that moment being like talking to Viconia, in that it was sometimes hard to anticipate how to manipulate her. (Assuming the player actually wanted to do so, like keeping Sten in Origins, and not roleplay a strict mindset.)

I've made two (very small <20,000 word) mods for Origins now, and some other interactive stuff, and that's exactly where I struggle; that moment where your conflicts come together and you want to allow the player divergent outcomes for a problem he or she doesn't necessarily have a lot of insight into. (Even with simple characters.)

Thanks for discussion (everyone.) Food for thought.

[Sejborg]

AmstradHero wrote...
Okay, that's more reasonable. From your previous posts, it seemed you were suggesting "hey, we would save a massive amount of time and money by including a half-wit character". You don't. You save some, but it's not a massive saving.

Then it seems we agree. Or at least we are now on the same the page. 

AmstradHero wrote...
It is not, and should never be, a core argument for a character. I don't believe there's a locked line between time input and output - if I did, I wouldn't advocate so many "flavour" things that most players ignore. It's more than your posts were suggesting big savings from having this kind of character, which simply isn't the case. 

I was calling it a low cost character to write, and to give voice over to if IRC. But I might remember wrong. 

AmstradHero wrote...
Dog, for example, required a lot more work from animators because finishing the dialogue couldn't just rely on the two standing characters default stage. While you won't have this problem with a Hodor, extra work may be required on facial expressions or animation to help convey the meaning of a sentence above and beyond the simplistic Hodoring - if there's reduced variation in dialogue, then the character could easily seem emotionally disfunctional if something like this isn't done. Dog got "happy bark", "sad bark", "curious bark" subtitles - it would be incredibly condescending and insulting to use "happy hodor", "sad hodor", "curious hodor" subtitles, meaning this needs to be conveyed another way. These are the things you really have to think about in order to effectively and tastefully convey this character. It's really not as easy as "just make the NPC Hodor and you're done."

Of course it shouldn't just be one single sample of "Hodor" that was reused all the time and then just with a subtitled emotion. That would be lame. I imagine when the character have been written then you go through his lines and see what emotions he go through. Perhaps he is often written as being neutral. Then you record a a bunch of neutral "hodor's". Perhaps he is only surprised three times during the game, so you just record one surprised "hodor" and reuse it, or if it is different degrees of surprisement (is that a word?) then you record different degrees of "surprised hodor". Perhaps he often gets angry and to different degrees, so you record the amount that is needed to convey that. And so forth. 

AmstradHero wrote...
Yeah, I thought of editing my original post to change that. Saying they have poor characterisation wasn't necessarily accurate, because even a one-dimensional character can have good characterisation. The greater issue is from a mechanics and interaction perspective, it would be very hard to give the character depth. Just like dog is pretty shallow as a character.

Dog is just a dog, so of course that is a shallow and boring character. There is only so many ways you can go with the characterization of a dog. The Hodor on the other hand, is a human and that opens up whole world of possible personalities. A giant of a human that can only speak one word, that wields a war hammer, who like stories, is afraid of drunk people - whatever the writer decides upon. I'm sure the writers can give a Hodor character depht and in cooperation with the animators make him come to life.

AmstradHero wrote...

Sejborg wrote...
If I was the director on DA3 then I would tell my team that they had to include a character such as Hodor.

No. NO. NO. I could not disagree with this strongly enough. Next you'll be declaring "the game must have multiplayer" and "the game must have microtransactions." EVERY decision should be made in support of the game rather than an arbitrary "we must have feature X".

I would never demand the bolded things. I love gaming and I don't want to rape it. The one saying the bolded parts would obviously be the suit from EA. 

AmstradHero wrote...
If this character is going to exist, then it must be discussed why this character will be valuable, how they will add to the story and the party and the player's experience. Arbitrarily declaring "X WILL BE IN THIS GAME" is one of the worst things for cohorent and well designed games.

They will do as I command or I will have their heads! For I am the director of Dragon Age 3! Muwhahaha! 

Nah... I wouldn't just throw it in their heads and then slam the door and leave. I would discuss my intentions with the team, and let them know what it is we would be trying to achieve. 

AmstradHero wrote...
I understand you're saying it should be done from a benevolent "it will make the writers think differently" perspective, but they're the writers. It's their full time job to write. As a director, sure, you can offer up ideas and suggestions and talk through options - but if you start directing and micromanaging them... that's when you get a Brendan McNamara fiasco or a Mass Effect 3 ending. I would never advocate or support this approach.

Yes. The writers are the writers. But the writers are not the animators. And the animators and writers need to put their heads together to make this character work. And in the process of creating this character, they would learn the value of having other kinds of interactions than the typical: "one on one, standing in front of eachother talking". In The Walking Dead you could suddenly have interactions while moving. It was almost mindblowing that my character was walking all the while I was selecting dialogue options and talking to companions. Try and imagine The West Wing without all the walking among all the extras working and going about their own business - instead you just had two characters standing in an office, talking. 

Having Merrill standing on the balcony in DA2 just staring, at nothing - it was both incredibly weird and imersion breaking. 

Now because the team have to bring this Hodor character to life without using lengthy dialogue, then they would have to come up with something for him to do. They can't just resort to talking. Make him train his sword skills with another companion, have him pick flowers, chop wood, whatever. Imagine if the team saw the value this had. Imagine if this sense of life he expressed without talking was to spread onto other characters. Imagine a camp where Oghren was actually drinking; Leliana was playing a tune on a banjo; Sten was sharpening the sword you had found him. Imagine if the camp was actually alive. Imagine  

The devil is in the detail. Now add the details! 

Renmiri1 wrote...
2 - Yes, he is very very shy, barely talking. He wishes to dissapear when people are near, and his efforts are so sucessful it gets to the point of  very few people noticing him and even  fewer remembering him

Ehh. A character you barely see or hear. I don't think that will work as a companion.