56 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

No. No. No. I would play Skyrim if I wanted for my background to be ambiguous.

What if I want my background to be ambiguous, and have a vaguely adequate combat system?

BioWare has long bounced back and forth between ambiguous and set backgrounds.

BG & BG2 - set background

NWN - ambiguous background

KotOR - managed to do both

JE - set background

DAO - choose among backgrounds of varying ambiguity

ME, ME2, & ME3 - set background

DA2 - set background

DAI - ambiguous background

There's hardly a BioWare standard here.

[DragonAgeLegend]

Delusion. I don't think there's even a scripting function to ask for what soundset the PC is using.

LOL, thought so. 

[Giantdeathrobot]

That's mostly a problem for the Human, City Elf, and Mage origins. It's true that those inevitably assume that your character is young. The Dwarf Noble just needs to be between his 2 brothers (whose age is harder to determine), the Dwarf Commoner just needs to be older than his sister which gives you an about 10 year window, and the Dalish could be of a relatively variable age.

 

It's an advantage of more blank slate characters with less detailed backgrounds like the Inquisitor, or like the Courier in Fallout: New Vegas. One of my Inquisitor is 24 years old, the other is 42, and both make perfect sense.

[Krypplingz]

-snip-

the Dwarf Commoner just needs to be older than his sister which gives you an about 10 year window, 

-snip-

The Dwarf Commoner is younger than his/her sister. 

Spoiler

I can't stand what he makes you do. I never thought my little brother would keep us fed by beating old men for their debts. / I hate what he makes you do. Believe me, I did not intend for my little sister to become a thug. 

 

But yeah. They Origins can also feel a bit limiting when it comes to your wardens color scheme, but I suppose they get around it by almost always having one parent missing and/or dead and having the Couslands both have gray hair. 

[actionhero112]

It's not really a fault with the origin story mechanic persay, just the stories they were telling in that specific game. 

 

It would be very easy to contruct an origin story where age is irrelevant.

 

So I disagree. That's not a weakness with origin stories. 

[GoldenGail3]

What if I want my background to be ambiguous, and have a vaguely adequate combat system?
BioWare has long bounced back and forth between ambiguous and set backgrounds.
BG & BG2 - set background
NWN - ambiguous background
KotOR - managed to do both
JE - set background
DAO - choose among backgrounds of varying ambiguity
ME, ME2, & ME3 - set background
DA2 - set background
DAI - ambiguous background
There's hardly a BioWare standard here.

Yeah, but notice how DAO is among those who's unique? I like Skyrim becuase i feel it's okay to do what they did, they did a good job on making it ambiguous. And DAO is what started DA, so I feel if they should continue on with DA in that style Instead of wannabe Skyrim and Witchers. Becuase they ain't DA, and they shouldn't be.

[Sylvius the Mad]

That's mostly a problem for the Human, City Elf, and Mage origins.

I don't think the Mage origin fixes the Warden's age at all. It's established that the Warden learns and advances quickly in the Circle, but not the age at which he was brought to the Circle.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Yeah, but notice how DAO is among those who's unique? I like Skyrim becuase i feel it's okay to do what they did, they did a good job on making it ambiguous. And DAO is what started DA, so I feel if they should continue on with DA in that style Instead of wannabe Skyrim and Witchers. Becuase they ain't DA, and they shouldn't be.

As long as they avoid the fixed background, I'll be happy.

But I want all games to do that. I wish we'd been able to play ME3 with a new character if Shepard died in ME2.

[BraveVesperia]

Personally, I'd prefer them to go the ME route, where you get to set a couple of key backstory points to establish a history, but leaving it open enough for people to RP into.

Regarding age, ME is the most restricted. I liked having a selectable backstory though, with some kind of detailed early life and significant event. It really helped me get a feel for each Shep's personality and mindset.

[Tidus]

In DA:O you can make a older looking warden by adjusting the facial and complexion  settings to appear older-at least in their 20/30s.

 

Beware they won't be any where near the stick model beauties that most gamers likes to create with mods...They will look like your average  person..

[Andraste_Reborn]

In DA:O you can make a older looking warden by adjusting the facial and complexion  settings to appear older-at least in their 20/30s.

You can make your PC look fifty with the right character creation options, but the game still behaves as if you're twenty or so.

[Cobra's_back]

I don't think so.  Origins in the style of a DAO may not come back, but some form of background specific prologue, even if much reduced in scope, isn't out of the question.  They could help introduce the new physical setting, acclimating the player to Tevinter for instance.

That makes sense and would really fit the hero that needs to save the world theme of DA4.

[Cobra's_back]

I don't think the Mage origin fixes the Warden's age at all. It's established that the Warden learns and advances quickly in the Circle, but not the age at which he was brought to the Circle.

Unless you are female, and then Cullen has the hots for you. Your buddy the blood mage does claim he should have been tested before you.

[Giantdeathrobot]

The Dwarf Commoner is younger than his/her sister. 

Spoiler

I can't stand what he makes you do. I never thought my little brother would keep us fed by beating old men for their debts. / I hate what he makes you do. Believe me, I did not intend for my little sister to become a thug. 

 

But yeah. They Origins can also feel a bit limiting when it comes to your wardens color scheme, but I suppose they get around it by almost always having one parent missing and/or dead and having the Couslands both have gray hair. 

 

Could have sworn the Commoner was older. Well, that means it limits your options since Rita (that's her name, right?) doesn't seem very old.

 

@ Sylvius: People act is if you were a prodigy of sorts. Jowan seems to think he should have been tested already, and he seems to be 25 max. It doesn't fix the Warden's age, sure, but it seems improbable that they would be older than that.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Unless you are female, and then Cullen has the hots for you. Your buddy the blood mage does claim he should have been tested before you.

Jowan seems to think that he's been at the Circle longer, not that he's older.

You could have been an apostate who was brought to the Circle in your 40s.

And Cullen might like older women.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Could have sworn the Commoner was older. Well, that means it limits your options since Rita (that's her name, right?) doesn't seem very old.

@ Sylvius: People act is if you were a prodigy of sorts. Jowan seems to think he should have been tested already, and he seems to be 25 max. It doesn't fix the Warden's age, sure, but it seems improbable that they would be older than that.

My first Warden was 51 years old. I thought it worked well.

Jowan's confidence could be based on delusions of grandeur (which would fit with the rest of his plot arc).

[BansheeOwnage]

If they were to give us the option of choosing an age, they would still need to reshape the entire game so as to make all dialogs, cutscenes and other events when there's interaction with our PC to correspond to our age.

 

The company would never spend resources on doing something as expensive and time consuming as this. Bioware would do what companies traditionally do and record at most three different ways that all the content in the game can play -probably for a teenager, a young adult and a middle-aged person-, no matter what age you picked. 

That's a bit of hyperbole. They wouldn't need to "reshape the entire game" to do it, only a few scenes here and there would be slightly different, like how they currently treat race or gender. Also, wouldn't choosing between three age groups be better than not choosing? It's not like each group is a certain age, but a fairly wide range of them.

[BSpud]

they developed DA Origins as a one-off game that was never intended to have a sequel (or a series).

 

Where does this notion come from?

[Sunnie]

Where does this notion come from?

It was explained by Gaider in one (maybe 2) of his public interviews. Might have been in the interview he did with Capone666.

[BSpud]

IIRC, they were prepared for the game to not make enough money to have sequels. They very much hoped it would do well enough to do so, however (the devs because of creative reasons, and the publisher because franchises are a huge commodity). Gaider didn't write all that lore/backstory to just have one game. Still, I see that "DAO was supposed to be a one-shot" thing almost as often as I do "Hawke was supposed to be DA's Shepard post-DAII," and as far as I can discern it's nothing but fan speculation that's starting to morph into Conventional Wisdom™.

[The Night Haunter]

DA was always intended to be a series. That's why so much of DA is left open ended by DAO/DAA. Who is Flemeth? Eluvians? Where did the Darkspawn really come from?

 

Look at ME - in the trilogy it answers every question we had about the scenario provided (we know where the Reapers come from, why they do what they do, some of previous cycles attempts to stop them, how cerberus started, how the council got started, racial divides even between the 'older' races like Asari and Salarians. That game was intended to be a trilogy and they played the story in typical trilogy fashion, by the end of the 3rd all questions about the past were answered and only the future is left open ended.

DA was obviously meant to be a series as well. Before Origins was even done Gaider had plans for I believe 2 more games (high level ideas, not super specifics). Just because they were prepared for DAO to not do well enough to be continued doesn't mean they didn't want it (or have plans for it) to continue on.

 

 

Anyway: on Topic: I have no problems with DAOs origins having limited age ranges (the Human Noble is most obvious culprit as it is incredibly unlikely that the son/daughter of the 2nd/3rd most powerful family in Ferelden would be unmarried in his late 30s. He has heirs to produce after all (even if he himself is not the primary heir). Dalish I'd consider on similar ground because the low population of Dalish elves would put pressure on them to marry and make little elf babies, so a 40 year old Dalish Elf seems a bit of a stretch (but not impossible). Dwarves on the other hand are wide open. You see plenty of Dwarven Nobles that remain unmarried (since marriages are primarily political affairs and producing children can occur pre-marriage with no social stigma at all), so Dwarf noble is set to be anything. Commoner is a little bit more restricted but he could be anywhere too without too much hand-waving. City Elf you are in an arrangement marriage at the very beginning so it seems fairly set at anywhere from 18-35. Mage is wide open, as your pre-circle life never, ever comes up in the game you can basically be a hedge wizard who was caught be templars when he was 40 and still be perfectly fine.

Regardless I have no issues even if an Origin explicitly states a character is 25 years old. Age isn't a terribly important factor to my roleplaying experience, but ambiguous is always better in this instance as there are people who do care.

[BansheeOwnage]

Where does this notion come from?

It wasn't intended to be stand-alone, and neither was it made to have a sequel. They tried to make something that could work with either outcome.

[Sunnie]

Here's the part where Gaider talks about the ending and why we got the epilogues (starts @ 44:17, other relevant @ 47:48).

He clearly says that they didn't know if they would get another game, which is why they tried to wrap things up for players like the end of movies that did the same thing.

 

[BSpud]

Yeah, but that's different from "never intended to have a sequel or a series."

[Regan_Cousland]

It's not a big deal, really. I love Origins' origins like everyone else here. I would have simply liked to play as a human noble, or a city elf, who isn't a child. 

 

The only way you can do that is if you hum obnoxiously through their respective origins or mutter, "Not listening, noooot listen-ING!" Sera-style throughout. lol