Wulfram wrote...
Allan Schumacher wrote...
Outside of the deathblow (if people can't recognize this as an oversight/mistake, then that's their prerogative), is Leliana depicted as clearly as dead as... the PC (or any companions) that are knocked down in combat?
A) You can't loot the PC/Companions
They get up again after combat
C) They don't get a codex entry saying they died.
These arguments are not very strong, in my opinion.
You're taking game mechanics and going "because I can loot this person, they must be dead" or "because
my characters gets back up again after combat, it's obviously not the same."
Point A is easy, because I can simply state "there's no need to create a gameplay mechanic for looting PC/Companions." In fact, I'll state that there's straight up smoke and mirrors for the entire system that for a gameplayer are mostly irrelevant. If you want to get technical, most characters you fight in game don't actually use the items that you find in their loot. The loot is often a part of a script that fires OnPlayerDeath and until that event fires, never actually exists in the game world, even though a game player will make the connection "I fought a player with a cool looking sword, and that sword was in the bodybag afterward... therefore the game engine had this player using this sword" when often that just isn't the case. Framed differently, what should we have cut from DAO to support the looting of allies, to ensure that you won't be misled by this game mechanic?
Point B: Your characters only get back up again after combat, iff (note iff vs if) a party member survives.
Clearly people can get knocked down and NOT be dead, however, as this can happen to people all the time - the players . If you'd prefer, your counter argument
should have been "Leliana had no supporting members to ensure she'd come back up" if you wanted to be scrutinizing towards the application of game mechanics and the reality depicted within an RPG. Although I'd still feel you're being unreasonable.
Point C is at least
something to go on. Imagine if the Codex entry had simply said "And Leliana was left, presumed dead!" How much metaknowledge do you really want in your Codex entries though. Next thing you know we have people going "Wait... the Codex hints that she might not be dead! I want to go back and kill her!"
As for cinematics: It's another gameplay abstraction. People get full on cleaved with full twohanded sword swings and get right back up into the fight, but in a cutscene a target creature can be killed with a stab of good old murder knife. Your criticism here is a general criticism towards RPGs in general, however, as the entire genre is rife with situations where this happens. Alternatives would be excessive realism in normal combat (often not so fun), or having the player start chopping through someone for a few minutes in a cutscene (something that looks absurd, IMO).
You're right, we could still go "just kidding" with something in a cutscene, but there are differences with cutscenes and gameplay combat. One of which is more ostensibly an abstraction, which often has a very limited relationship with real life, because concessions get made to attempt to ensure something is frankly, somewhat more entertaining and fun. Some games work well enough with ultra-realistic combat, but I don't think that the Dragon Age games (or most RPGs) fit this bill at all. So if you're holding up the narrative to be precisely consistent with what you're seeing in gameplay, all Dragon Ages (and most RPGs in general) are not going to jive very well with this perspective.
My point being that gameplay is an abstraction of a lot of things. Effectively saying "Everyone else we attack is definitively dead" is an assumption on your part. It's an understandable assumption, but given that the only other instance we have of people getting knocked down is the player character and his/her companions (and they get up, but with injuries), relying specifically on game mechanics that are fundamentally already abstractions of reality with a lot of smoke and mirrors isn't a very strong argument.
If it makes you feel better to feel it's just a retcon, then fine, it's a retcon. Put yourself in a place where you can either go "I'm okay with this" or stay at "I'm not okay with this." If it's at a point where you say "I'm not okay with this" then put it as another weighted mark as to whether or not you're still up for buying and playing the game, since my expectation would be for you to eventually have a breaking point of having too many things that are not acceptable, and weighing them against the things that you want/like about the game come release. It's your duty as a responsible consumer to do so.
At this point, continuing on with whether or not Leliana's situation is a retcon, realistic, appropriate, or any of those things is mostly beside the point at this stage. Leliana is still alive in DA2. If this creates a dissonance with the setting for you, you can choose to rationalize it or hold it against us. But Leliana will still be alive in the game setting. Sorry.
My rationalization? Whatever presence that imbues the ashes with their power had an unexpected event on Leliana. So she was effectively killed, but for reasons unknown, she didn't remain that way. The alternative is playing through future games with cognitive dissonance and letting this continue to aggravate me.
The codex entry is updated to say she's dead for one
If your preference is to suggest that the Codex say something else to make it clear she might still be alive, then I disagree.
and I find it odd that the Warden wouldn't make sure she's dead esp
since so many darkspawn (esp Ogres) can get up again after only seeming
to have taken fatal wounds (see Ogre entry). I would expect "making
sure" of death would be Grey Warden SOP.
So it's an example that perhaps the Warden isn't as much your character as you've historically convinced yourself to believe?
You're allowed to have this perspective, which is fine, but it's hardly compelling evidence that Leliana must be definitively dead.
The *only* one that really exists, as far as I'm concerned, is the deathblows. But given that it's excruciatingly easy for me to realize "Hah! I can totally see how that was overlooked during development." In other words, it's a bug/mistake.
If you'd like, we could have put something in to ensure that Deathblows simply could not happen against her. I don't actually know if any of that infrastructure exists or not, so I don't know the full scale of work that would need to be done to ensure this. My question, however, would still be "What would you be comfortable cutting out of Dragon Age: Origins to ensure that this deathblow can never happen to Leliana?"
EDIT: Just as a note:
(or more accurately Lelianna chooses to commit suicide)
This statement is fundamentally and unequivocally inaccurate. FWIW.
Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 05 juillet 2013 - 11:12 .
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