Interesting. And, following what others, namely,Torgette and vertigomez, have said, I would like to add a few things to my above opinion.
Originally, I was not going to bring up Mass Effect, seeing as this is a Dragon Age dicussion, but it is relevant, as far as character background and its effects on gameplay itself are concerned. As Torgette has mentioned, there are ripples your background selection makes on the entire gameplay. It also gives the character context within the universe and themselves, and provides you, the player, with certain base information that serves as reference points when you are making your decisions regarding certain issues. For example, would a Colonist/War Hero Shepard make the same decision about freeing the Rachni Queen as the Earthborn/Ruthless? Would it make sense for a person who has had certain prior experiences in their life to take a certain route? I present to you, fellow forumites, that this is how to balance character background and player agency well - this is what we need more of and I dearly, dearly hope that the background choice remains something that is available with Mass Effect Next (and, just maybe, even gets implemented into Dragon Age Next).
Furthermore, the mention of family that vertigomez made was definitely right on the money. Again, giving the player character context can provide "reference material", if you will, that the player can use in order to determine character behavior. For example, given her origins (har har), my Cousland Warden, although generally mild-mannered and sweet (and sometimes angry, because she decidedly did NOT want to become a Grey Warden and wanted precisely nothing to have to do with them), always, ALWAYS went the angry/I WILL MURDER EVERYTHING YOU ARE route whenever it came to talking about or dealing with Arl Howe or in issues pertaining to her family.
What I am trying to say in this long-winded manner is that, if some you perhaps got the impression from my previous post that I was anti-player choice, that was very decidedly not what I was trying to get across. I am not saying that player agency is bad; player agency is wonderful - it is, to a large extent, why a lot of us play BioWare games in the first place. But extending player agency to the point that it precludes and eliminates the existence of any pre-determined characteristics on the ground of "we will not include this because this is not what the player personally chose" seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bath water. As evidenced by the examples I brought up, player agency is used to its best when exercised with regards to certain reference points, with regards to certain cntext. Yes, these reference points and context would have to be pre-established and entirely outside the players (but entirely inside the developers) domain of control, but the difference here is between giving a kid a box of legos to play with and giving that kid the raw materials that legos are made out of, expect them to manufacture the legos and then play with them. This, I think, is why so many people have an issue with the Inquisitor and find the character lacking in depth.
And since I did bring up Shepard and this is an "I enjoy the Inquisitor" thread, I want to say one more thing. As much as I loved the character of Shepard, the Pragon/Renegade system was rather restrictive when it came to the personality. Even if I did feel like, given the situation, a, say, Renegade option was the appropriate human reponse that would also make sense in context with the background of my character, I very rarely took it due to being worried that my Paragon/Renegade ratio gets messed up and I will lose some important red text/blue text options and mess up key plot points. Hawke and the personalities also did this and I do not necessarily care for the forced dynamic.
The Inquisitor, on the other hand, felt unrestricted in this regard. Her personality could literally be anything at any given time. Yes, it can be argued that this makes the character sound schizophrenic at times, but I was so happy that I could be nice to my friends, angry at my enemies, sassy and snarky when levity was required, determined when it was not, and weary when I could afford to let my guard down and admit that there is a very tired person behind that glowing hand. This is something I think the Inquisitor did perfectly - balancing personality and player agency. Also, as someone has mentioned, expressing your views on yourself as the Herald and belief having effect on dialogue was pretty great also.
The more I think about, the more it seems to me that the Inquisitor was done just right when it comes to little touches like this. It is just that in the broad strokes, in the bigger and more fundametal aspects of character origin and context, the Inquisitor is lacking.
Retour en haut
