I'm an author and I can't fathom counting the times I've wandered onto a forum thread about a games' story, only to see people talking about the plot. It's something that is uniquely depressing to someone in my field, where you spend weeks using various skills in order to tell a good story--plot is the shinny object you use to distract a child. For that reason I very much respect you for saying this, which I too find myself constantly saying, "I've mentioned this before, but I want to reiterate an important point regarding narrative: 'Story' is more than just 'plot.'" Aside from that, nice article. Feels like you had a lot to say. I wish you could write something longer.
@Derek_Brown DA:O has flaws. So? Does that have any kind of impact on the flaws DA:2 has? Does that make the flaws in DA:2 okay? Should we not talk about the things that DA:2 does worse than DA:O, because Origins has flaws? Do we need to acknowledge everything DA:2 does better than DA:O every time we talk about the game, regardless of whether or not that impact is greater than the impact of the things it does worse?
@Technologodoom The interview in question is here: http://www.1up.com/features/dragon-age-2-afterthoughts?pager.offset=4 To give you a sum up of the answer. Yes, it's a fair critique. We did it to so that we could do so much more. We just had such unique and interesting dungeons that people noticed, we didn't expect it. He later says it would be one of, the key thing, he would change about the game. That and the pace (which I certainly agree with. They tried to not mimic origins so much that they forgot to set up the bloody characters and story). So, it was a typical bull. Now, Shaun could have seen that, and adapted his question to get a more solid answer. But he didn't. And to give you another heads up, he did recycle questions anyway, it's impossible not to and using that as an excuse for not asking something 'tough' is dishonest.
@Texasgoldrush As I said, the little growth that Hawke has ends at the end of Act I. At which point the 'active player' that he becomes ends all growth--little and unemotional as it was. You don't understand personal conflict if you think that his conflict becomes a conflict of the nature of conflict. A personal conflict is one that resides in yourself. So you can have a conflict with the nature of conflict if you have a personal stake in the act of conflict and it's implications. Hawke does not have that. So what you said is, to be frank, bull. You want to read how this is really done, see Winter's Bone. You want to see it, read Gran Torino.
@TexasGoldRush No personal character growth. No Personal conflict. Seriously dude, quote mining doesn't work when you're talking to the person you're mining. And that can be said over and over to everything else you said to me.
@TexasGoldRush "The only thing DAO characters do is talk about their history and do one small weak sidequest. I perfer SHOWING rather than TELLING.....DAII shows, DAO tells." You misunderstand 'Show don't Tell.' You can still write something out and show it. It would be telling if someone said, I'm aggressive/racist in their story and the writer was trying to get across the beating of someone. It would still be showing if you wrote about how that same person beat someone who was black/white etc.
@TexasGoldRush "A dark frame story about how a character, not defeats a great evil, but lived during and played parts in a start of a huge conflict. Instead of saving the world, it tells a far more personal tale I have not seen since Planescape Torment." Yes, this 'has' a frame narrative. Except, it doesn't use it like a frame narrative. Any portion of frame-narration is just, narration. Only once was a substantive use of a technique found only in a frame-narrative used, and it wasn't substantive. The frame-narrative was a gimmick used to sell the game, and had NO impact on the story. This game is 'dark' in a way that nearly all games are dark. You do defeat a great evil. This game does nothing to flesh out how the champion lived in this time. There is no personal story. The Wants Needs and Desires of the Champion end after Act I, and that's it. It degenerates--not as if the WND's played any part in the story anyway, or had a story tied to them--into DA:O's Orzammar arc after that. The hero doesn't actually play a part in the conflict. At least any more than any other hero does. And again, this isn't personal, at all. No character growth, no movement, no conflict, no resolution, personal story. One quest, taken right from a famous novel, is all there is. And it's meaningless. This game is just as broad as Origins, just done worse. What does this mean? This game isn't different than anything else. They say it is, and you bought that.
@Sunio You should read The Ecapist interview. It's like watching a softball game. He's one of their questions (though I don't debate the extreme softness of gamespot) "The crafting system in Dragon Age II is a lot more simple than the first game, almost deceptively, but it still rewards exploring the countryside or the back alleys of Kirkwall. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys devised the crafting system?"
@ Texasgoldrush "God, gamers are so used to hero defeats evil stories that they cannot fully grasp DAII's unique story...its a shame" What unique story are you talking about.
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