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[SomeoneStoleMyName]

 (Slight spoiler I guess?)


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I killed Leliana in DA:O, but  Leliana's corpse seems to have been risen by a bloodmage and has been used to infiltrate the seekers of truth in DA:2. Its probably just an oversight or bug with the savegame import - but please remember the Leliana=DEAD flag in the planned DA:Keep tool

[David Gaider]

SomeoneStoleMyName wrote...
I killed Leliana in DA:O, but  Leliana's corpse seems to have been risen by a bloodmage and has been used to infiltrate the seekers of truth in DA:2. Its probably just an oversight or bug with the savegame import

Not a bug. It's intentional that she is still alive.

but please remember the Leliana=DEAD flag in the planned DA:Keep tool

The DA Keep will look for whether you killed her (or attempted to, if you prefer) in DAO, and DAI will react to that. It doesn't mean she's dead in DAI, your desire to kill her and (evidently) stomp on her corpse notwithstanding.

[David Gaider]

Killdren88 wrote...
Just remember David. Don't give the option to kill off companions unless you have ideas for them for future games. Otherwise people get butthurt.

Decisions are included because they affect the game they're in. They're not created specifically to carry into future games--we could have had no decisions carry over between games, and that still wouldn't affect their relevance to the game in which they appeared.

In this case, as I've said many times before, decisions from earlier games will have varying levels of impact in DAI. The decision to kill Leliana (which, incidentally, is not the decision you're offered, but rather a reaction to it) is not disregarded as it did happen and will be reacted to.

Is that not what some people wanted? Sure, obviously, but that doesn't change the fact that it still happened, and doesn't mean there still aren't other decisions which cause more divergent reactivity (including character deaths). If some want to harp on this particular piece of reactivity as if it unravels all reality, that's fine. I get why they want what they want--fans tend to want every decision they've made to cause completely divergent effects on the story, regardless of the feasibility of us doing so--but this is how it is.

[David Gaider]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
Things for Inquisition aren't hammered down on plot or choices and the game is less than a year out. You expect them to already have detailed plans about every fharacter for DA4 right now, when it may not come out in 5 years? Or a sequel not happen at all?

Indeed. Not to mention that, even though we do make plans for future games, plans change all the time. The plan for a game-in-progress generally goes through radical changes before it's done--never mind the plan we have for what follows. Most often these things change for reasons far beyond anything to do with writing.

Even if that weren't the case, decisions are made because they affect things now--we might have the opportunity to go "well, we may need that character in the future so maybe we should leave them alone", but if our biggest consideration was what we might need them for in potential future stories we would never have any decisions in the current game whatsoever. Which is not to say that we toss all decisions out the window, either--treating a few adjustments that need to be made as if they render void all the other permutations we do include is, in my opinion, a bit of an exaggeration for effect.

Which is kind of pointless to mention, I imagine, since many fans simply aren't going to care about our issues when it comes to writing and planning. They see "decisions will have impact on future games" and imagine that means every decision being treated equally and offering complete divergence--and anything short of that, as it affects what they personally want, to be inadequate...as of course we developers could do it if we just a) wrote more, and made a bigger game. Which is not untrue, even if it's unrealistic. But who said they have to be realistic?

You need to realize what the import system is - a very small, tiny way to reference past games. It will never be anything more. It CANNOT be anything more.

Some decisions will have larger effects, and thus are hardly "tiny" in their impact on scope, but perhaps that's accurate when used in comparison to the expectations of some. Either way, our first priority is to make this story and this game work... as it's always been. Which is really as far as this conversation can go.

Modifié par David Gaider, 10 décembre 2013 - 06:57 .

[David Gaider]

MKDAWUSS wrote...
But at the same time, shouldn't there also be a case of, "Well, this character might be dead in some stories, time to live with the consequences."?

Of course. There are many possibilities for DA2, for instance, that we tossed out simply because the benefits weren't worth the required story convolutions (or the alternative was just as good). Occasionally that's not going to be the case.

[David Gaider]

Fast Jimmy wrote...
That's what I meant by tiny. The Save Import can't create a different world for any choice. I say that not to belittle the work of anyone, but to try and put it in perspective for those fans who hear "choices import" and think that means the entire world will change. Compared to the world changing, a couple lines of dialogue or a cameo is tiny.

True. We can offer completely divergent plots, and in some cases (where the implications outside of that plot are limited in scope) that's actually a fine idea. If one's expectation runs to the overall story being completely different based on an imported choice, however, they're going to be disappointed. Which, you're right, is not to minimize the work involved to even make the player's individual timeline as consistent as possible (if not truly divergent), and probably why most games don't even attempt it.

Modifié par David Gaider, 10 décembre 2013 - 07:39 .

[David Gaider]

DonaldFwump wrote...
So hopefully people don't get some expectations in their head about an ending they want that may or may not happen based on what you've done in the game.

Endings are a little different, actually, and a good example of the push-pull between what's appropriate for this game and what's limiting on future games. An ending is where you should rightfully expect to see reactivity to earlier decisions in the game--like I said, the effect on the current game is why those decisions are there, and you'd be doing the current game a disservice if you limited their effects on the ending overmuch based on what might happen in the future (even if we attempt to plan around those eventualities as much as we can).

Expecting that those decisions would form the basis for how the next game world work, however, is not feasible. That's not even what the import system is meant to provide.

[David Gaider]

FreshIstay wrote...
It's always funny to watch David word his way out of the Leliana situation. "Hey we messed up with that one (and Zevran too)" would work well for me.

Zevran was indeed one we messed up on. He could appear in DA2 even if he was dead, as the result on an import bug--his plot shouldn't even happen if he died in DAO, and was scripted as such. It's not even a DA2 bug specifically, but rather a bug in DAO regarding how the info was recorded.

Same applies to the problems we had in Witch Hunt. Some people went into that plot and, despite all its alternate dialogue for the various permutations regarding how Morrigan could end DAO or who could be speaking with her (the Orlesian Warden, for instance), some players got the default dialogue because of how the info was recorded in DAO. Something we can't go and retroactively change.

...not without the DA Keep, anyhow. That's the reason for its existence.

Instead we get a carefully written soliloquy which, if you look between the lines, sums up to be "F you, we are doing this our way." Which is fine really, but let's not act like players shouldn't be disappointed by the fact that Character's (plural) who they had the option to kill arent dead. It would be nice to hear someone take responsibility for their own inconsistencies. Instead of "Hehe You thought You did, but you really didn't"

There's nothing carefully written about my response. I've said the same thing every time, and it's that this was done deliberately. I've never said people shouldn't be disappointed, since some obviously are--and that could happen with any plot point that didn't go where someone wanted it to. Some will exaggerate with regards to what this is, implying that DA offers no reactivity whatsoever or that death has no meaning in the setting... and that's fine, but we're certainly not going to apologize for taking the story where we feel it needs to go, if that's what you think we should be doing.

And I could repeat this ad infinitum, and there would still be people who will argue because they just want the story to be otherwise. Which, fair enough, but it's not happening. It does mean that the point of me repeating myself is a rather limited, so I should probably just stop.

Modifié par David Gaider, 10 décembre 2013 - 08:48 .