Well in The Idiot we get introduced to Myshkin already on the train with next to no introduction. His background unravels as the story builds up. And boy do we get key characters in the first 20 minutes. In Nine princes in Amber we meet Corwin in the ER with next to no understandning of who he is, where he comes from and only vague feeling that someone is out to kill him. And he has to fight for his life shortly. I wouldn't presume to call neither Dostojevski nor Zelazny amateurs. There are numerous examples of protagonists likewise thrown into the heat of the action. It is one way of starting of a story. Not the only way. In Lotr we get a rather lengthy introduction that is interesting but I remember it was a slog to ge through as a kid.
I don't see how walking around in the temple before the blackout would help the story in any meaningful way since apart from Cory and Justinia none of thosde people will figure in the coming story. But that is my opinion ;-)
I'm not saying a story can't start with action and be well done, just that IMO DA:I didn't do a good job of it. It's also very possible to introduce a group of people in quick succession and still have the characters be memorable and distinct, again I'm saying DA:I didn't do a good job of it. An example of a good way to introduce a group in my opinion would be to have those characters as an already established and tight knight group that have connections and chemistry with each other. Example: a special forces unit, a bandit group, a heist group, etc...and then have all of those characters relevant to the story, interacting with it, showing their strengths and weaknesses and their relationships with each other. DA:I felt like a collection of random people with no reason to care about each other and most of the time they didn't interact with the plot. The game relied heavily on people already knowing who Cassandra, Leliana, Cullen, Varric, Morrigan, Gaspard, Celine, Briala, Fiona, etc...were rather than giving them the kind of care and attention I would hope for.
I'm not defending this because I like headcanon just there are many thousands of people who die each day and I do not know them, they might as well not exisist, and yet when they die I can feel sympathy. And furthermore the Inquisitor, who shares the world with these people whether they know them or not, could also feel sympathy over the fact that a lot of people in their world no longer exisist. Or they can have the entire opposite reaction because the game lets you. In fact I believe one of the options there is to 'remain silent'
There's a difference between real people dying and fictional characters that were never even written dying. Using "well in real life you would care" is a cheap excuse for lazy writing IMO. It's like when they relied on the fact that a real person would be horrified at seeing a child die to make Shepard traumatized for the entire game at seeing the vent boy die or when they relied on the fact that a real person would be sad that their sibling died when they killed off Bethany/Carver 10 minutes into the game rather than establish a strong relationship first. I felt much more anger and loss at the death of Rose in Fable 2 than either of those examples and the reason is that the writers made me care before they killed her. They actually had you experience your life as a poor and homeless child trying to survive and your sister being the only one you have, trying to look out for you as best she can before you're tricked and she's murdered. BioWare should be able to do a better job than Lionhead Studios...
Hmm, all I can see is "distant" relatives for the human, and a few other spies for the Dwarf. So not anyone you knew personally.
The Qunari doesn't mention having a company with you. You do work for one, but it looks like it was just you who was on that particular job. A non-mage human only has distant relatives there - not ones they personally knew. A circle mage probably wouldn't know people there, because it was a meeting between the leaders, they only would have known the younger mages who didn't go.
And yes it would be a traumatic experience, but you are ignoring the fact that it is a major plot point that you don't remember the trauma. They are not going to show you everyone getting turned to ash zombies status and then say "we just showed you how traumatic this is - now pretend you don't remember it because your character doesn't!".
I was definitely not on board with the whole amnesia thing in the first place. It's so overused and really seems like a crutch. They could have been clever about it and written things in a way that you saw everything but didn't understand what was really going on. Getting the anchor could have been subtle and only noticed on a second playthrough, or the memory loss could have only been a small portion of time ex: you get to see and explore the conclave, meet people, find out what's going on, hear Justinia give a speech about peace between mages and templars and then retire to her quarters temporarily. The story could have taken us to wander a little out of bounds, somewhere we shouldn't be (for something mundane like more wine) and when we were about to go back we see a dead guard and then another and another. The building starts to shake and you can see magic and fire ripping and tearing at you as things start to crumble (they've started the ritual). At the end of the trail is the room with the divine. We hear her voice "somebody help me," we start to run, stumbling forward against the destruction and are shown scenes of what's happening outside: people dying, being crushed by debris, swallowed up by earthquakes, torn apart or burnt up by magic and it keeps getting worse. Then it's back to us as we open the door and there's a blinding light which starts the memory loss. The normal intro could start from there. That's what I would have preferred.
I got the feeling every time I watched it that it was some out of the way dungeon.
Why would we have access to the dungeon though? What would we be doing there in the first place?
Well, honestly seeing those charred bodies at the temple didn't make me feel sympathy, they looked like burnt mummies rather than people who had been alive less than a week ago. I don't know how they remained upright and their eyes glowing, it didn't seem realistic. If anything, I would compare it to if I went to Pompeii and saw the mummified bodies there rather than seeing individuals lying in the street. The first would be detached because it almost doesn't seem like they were real people at one point, the other would be horror at seeing so many people dead in the street.
It doesn't help that before we even get to the temple, we're looting nameless bodies for money on the mountain path. The people serve as resources rather than as individuals.
In Ostagar, we barely interact with Cailan and have no connection to him. Yet, in Return to Ostagar, it was emotionally moving for me to see his body strung up disrespectfully, and flashbacks to the doomed battle. The only time I remember feeling that level of emotional attachment in DAI was when Morrigan confronted Flemeth and offered herself up to save Kieran. Part of that was the excellent voice acting and cinematic shots showing the expressions, but also because I already had familiarity of these characters from the past two games. If I were a new player to the setting, this scene wouldn't have had nearly as much impact.
How did Wardens who had no reason to be at the Conclave and something looking like Corypheus manage to sneak the Divine to a secret location, surrounded by mages and templars who are on the alert due to the tensions at the conference? There's a lot of unanswered questions from the Conclave that we get to conveniently skip due to the beginning of the game.
I would have felt sympathy for those bodies if I'd known the people. As it is they may as well be statues. It's funny that I was thinking of the scene with Cailan's body in Return to Ostagar today and I agree with you. We didn't know him well but the game actually took the time to let us know him a little. When I told him about the elves' problems in the alienage he didn't shoe me away, he promised to go there personally when the blight was over and help your people. He treated every warden of every race as an equal. He had a good heart and a childlike enthusiasm, I genuinely liked him as a character even from that brief meeting and to see his body desecrated like that was hard. It just wouldn't have been anywhere near the same if it had been some nameless person we'd never met.
I don't see how not being introduced to characters before they're all unceremoniously annihilated somehow negates the tragedy of the event for either the character or the player. The people at the Conclave exist for the characters in the game as surely as any person from our world that we've never met exist for us.
In Star Wars, we don't see anyone who dies when Alderaan is blown up. Is it headcanon to acknowledge the tragedy of that event, either from a general standpoint or personally for Leia?
The conclave and the explosion were earth shattering events that start the game in motion and we don't even get to experience it in any way. Showing something makes it much more real and personal than just telling me about it afterward. Remember in DA:O when all of the gathered forces were marching to Denerim and you see this one guy in Redcliffe who's clearly just an average Joe, can't even afford armor beyond a leather helmet and you see his wife and child tearfully saying goodbye. When your party reaches Denerim you see that same guy on his knees being held by a darkspawn with this look of terror in his eyes and you're just a minute too late as the darkspawn slits his throat and tosses him on the ground. In this whole scene no one says a word but they didn't have to. It was a small moment with an unimportant character but it made me feel. Now compare it to DA:I where we are told a messenger of Josephine's is killed trying to warn Celine. It's just not on the same level at all. Even if you rely on "it's sad when people die in real life" rather than putting the effort in from a writing standpoint, in real life if you were being held hostage at a bank along with 20 other people and you saw the robbers only 10 feet away from you kick an elderly woman out of her wheelchair and shoot her 6 times would you feel the same level of emotion as if someone simply told you "there was a hostage situation at a bank yesterday and someone got killed?"
Kind of off topic but I'd always wondered about Leia's reaction to Alderaan being blown up. It seemed like such a mild reaction and she got over it so quickly (I'd be shrieking and crying and trying to kill Tarkin with my bare hands). I found out later that Carrie Fisher had asked George Lucas "do I know anyone on this planet?" and his reply at the time was something like "no, not really." All the pieces weren't put together until later I guess. In any case, we're not Leia and the movie doesn't even expect us to grieve over Alderaan.
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