Dragon Age II, Act 2: EA Much?

[GandALF]

http://sfdebris.com/videos/games/dragonage2b.php

The thing is though, in alot of ways the player character is actually an extremely bizarre demigod who runs around accruing vast amounts of power and wealth for incomprehensible motives while the NPCs do their "doesn't look like anything to me" thing.

It's part of why the light/dark side stuff doesn't work in KOTOR/TOR, the player character isn't subject to mortal morality, Vader and the Emperor aren't roleplaying as the villains, they gave into temptation because they're vulnerable in ways that a player character isn't. It's also why the romances are always reduced to "we'll bang ok?" Once Revan turns back into an "NPC" in his novel, then he SUDDENLY has to do his Jedi duty and leave his wife and son behind and eventually falls due to the pressure of being in Vitiate's prison, not because he wanted to see the dark side ending.

Because of that, another one of the big differences between other media and and these sorts of RPGs is that the suspension of disbelief requires convincing the player to ignore these reality breaking things. Or alternatively they can try to incorporate this weirdness into their lore like how in the Elder Scrolls there's reports of people having "false" memories from where Talos did the the meta-magical equivalent of loading an old game save and changing events or how millions of mortal crewmen die in battles between their inscrutable immortal spaceship captains in EVE Online.

[hammerofglass]

Honestly I've never seen Bioware player characters as player avatars like other RPGs have. They have too much of their own personality for that; the Spirit Monk and Warden are the only real exceptions. You're more like a minor deity making sure events proceed to a preferred outcome and keeping these lunatics alive until they're no longer needed. It's not a story you're immersed in, it's a story you're guiding down certain routes and which is frequently presented somewhat abstractly (for instance the romances hopefully consist of more than two or three short conversations and having sex once in-universe).

In DA2 specifically I always saw it as the character you're actually playing being Varrik in the interrogation room spinning a yarn where the audience already knows the major plot beats.

[ORCACommander]

Its also why the faceless, voiceless protagonist has been such a big crutch of the industry. its a never ending black hole of effort to flesh out characters and plot to immerse a character than to make them a faceless projection of the player

[SpacePaladin]

Chuck's comment on the detective bit reminds me of this comic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dj-9g07Rtk