(no subject)
You know the old LARP maxim, "Don't talk about your character"? If you don't, you should. If you do, I'm going to break it. Except, it's not a LARP character...
I've just completed Dragon Age (on t'360). Judging from my achievements history, I started playing it early last November and got frustrated with my first character (a Dalish Elf) within about a week. That's a shame in itself, because I'd got a reasonable character idea based around that origin - and I'd managed to overcome my deep contempt for anything Wood Elf-like. But yeah, the combat system and controls were irritating me, I was playing on Hard so I wasn't going anywhere fast (my own fault, but previous Bioware RPGs were always pretty easy) and the character wasn't immensely compelling.
Shortly thereafter, I restarted as a Human Noble, and this was a character I quickly got into. The origin story is nicely written to set you up as the young, good-natured and slightly mischievous second son of a proud (if not over-powerful) noble house, before taking it all away in fire and blood and betrayal. I can dig that. Already I had this idea of duty and redemption forming, the last son of Highever living as an outcast with the dream of someday coming home. He was a "good" character, not because of some personal moral drive but because all he had left was that dream, the ideal he'd be raised to aspire to. After the battle at Ostagar and the loss of his brother, the reality that he was the last of the Couslands sank in and he became ever more committed to that ideal.
So he rides off to Redcliffe, flits back and forth between there and the Circle and saves everyone, then goes and finds Andraste's ashes and really saves everyone. He gets a bit flirty with Morrigan, because I always enjoy the evil girls more (and hey, Claudia Black) but somehow the thing with Leilana makes more sense. Plus, once I have Wynne acting as healing mage and Leilana as rogue, Morrigan doesn't make it back into the character party.
At some point, something (probably the frustrating combat) convinces me to put Dragon Age down and do something more rewarding, like play the frak out of Assassin's Creed 2 or finally do that Halo 3/ODST/Reach combo I'd always planned. Anyhow, it got shelved and didn't re-emerge till a couple of days ago, when I decided I'd actually finish the damn thing.
I'm still having troubling getting settled with the game. The combat system is still frustrating, far more so than with any other Bioware RPG. I remember quitting the game in annoyance at one point, sitting at the title screen for a minute before the demo sequence comes on and thinking "Boy, I wish I was playing that game." There's moments when it all runs smoothly, I've finely tuned the party and it's kicking ass, then suddenly something changes (usually the type of mob, or possibly just someone levels up) and it all falls to pieces. It got the point that I had to complete the boss fight on Easy (I feel dirty just thinking about it) just so I could find out what happens to the character.
But that in itself is the point; over the last few days (particularly today) the story that has evolved around the character, as a consequence of his actions, has really got me invested in what happens. Some of it is emergent properties, part of the natural human pattern-finding that joins together dots and tells a story out of it, and some is the very well constructed plot engine that drives the whole game. And so I was inclined to see it through to the end, despite the frustrations.
It all seemed to be progressing normally; I picked the game back up on the way to Orzammar, where the American-accented Dwarves live. I completed that, spent a bunch of time with Oghren, destroyed the Anvil of the Void and got Lord Harrowmont installed on the throne, because it seemed The Right Thing To Do. Shortly thereafter I got my first sense of when The Right Thing is Not So Clear, when Morrigan tells me that her mother, Flemeth, plans to possess her body as a means to eternal life. When I go to kill Flemeth in self-defense (clearly), Morrigan's mother suggests (but without being terribly clear) that this is all a lie. In the end, I let Flemeth go, because it seemed The Right Thing To Do, but even my other party members were pretty confused.
By this point, I was spending most of my time in a party with Wynne, Leilana and Alistair. The only other character plots I'd got access to were Leilana's and Alistair's, and along with Wynne occasionally nipping in some extra dialogue, they were the only one's I spent time talking to. I also focussed more on getting their equipment up to scratch, even levelling Alistair in a particular way to let him where a specific suit of Knight-Commander armour so he could go round being all Templery at people. He didn't much like being a Templer, but with his Templer plate and my Grey Warden plate, we looked badass. Heck, it was ages before I relented and stopped using the family heirloom sword and shield, despite them being sub-par for the equipment I could be using.
Then, as the romance plot with Leilana progresses in the nonsensical way that Bioware romance dialogue does ("Your spilled guts make me feel welcome and accepted.") during our adventures in the Breciliand forests, a few things begin to click into place. This whole happy ending with the displaced Ferelden noble boy and his Orlesian wife reclaiming Highever and finding the home they've both, somehow, being looking for. It's twee, but it's a happy ending that fits the character, and that's what he's now working towards; the Blight's important and all, but that just got thrust on him, it's not a concept drilled into him since birth. So again, there's this character motivation that feeds into the decisions he makes going forwards. He's made friends with Alistair and Wynne, and how he wants the world to turn out is based, to some extent, on them.
And then it all starts to fall apart.
It really started with Zevran, when we finally made it to Denerim. Wandering around in the back alleys, looking for gangs of thugs hassling the locals, we finally get a second surprise visit from the Antivan Crows; 'cept this time, Zevran turns again and we have to put him down for good. I don't mind much, I never interacted with the character and he always seemed like a bisexual romance option built out of Puss in Boots from Shrek. In character, it all added up; he was simply a bad person, deceitful and backstabbing and his betrayal was - much like that of the Tyrannosaurus with the evil laugh - inevitable.
Then comes the showdown with Loghain. I've put some effort into this; found all the evidence I can, spoken to the Banns and Arls and mustered all the support there was to find, and negotiated a marriage between Alistair and Anora to build the best of all possible worlds. The Landsmeet is in our favour. Aedan duels Loghain - only winning by the skin of his teeth, which is clearly the best kind of winning - but agrees to let him live, because that's The Right Thing To Do.
And Alistair explodes.
He refuses to accept this; he demands to be made king specifically so that he can stop it. The marriage idea disappears in moments, and suddenly Alistair - who I would otherwise have supported, if it came to a choice between him and Anora - has made himself an impossible option. Persuasion is to no avail and by the end of it, Anora is on the throne, Alistair has left, never to return, and Loghain is a Grey Warden and in the party. My Party. Mine.
This, clearly, was the mother of all clusterfucks.
Aedan returns to the party camp to consummate the romance subplot before we head off to Redcliffe to begin the final mission (a comedic endeavour, thanks to Bioware's odd concept of sex-while-wearing-weird-underwear and waking-up-after-sex-wearing-full-plate, and coming out of the conversation animation to notice "Loghain Approves +2" still on the screen (*shudder*)). Then, at Redcliffe, the big reveal occurs - turns out that to kill the Archdemon and stop the Blight, one of the Grey Wardens must sacrifice themselves. Riedon says he's going to do it, but we know he's going to suck and die, right? He's only an NPC. Loghain could do it, but...but that's shirking duty. It would be his redemption, but it's not his job to do. Having built for the character this happy ending to tack onto the side of whatever pre-packaged outro I was expecting, I felt a certain sense of loss, the grim reality that doing The Right Thing often brings you Shitty Consequences. There's a brief moment of letting go as he talks to some of the other party members, though sadly none of the conversation options were "So yeah, I'm gonna have to die.". Then Morrigan makes the "have my baby and you get to live" offer, of the kind that is clearly too good to not be raising a demon baby, and Aedan has to say it clearly, then and there. He's taking the consequences. He really was going to be the last Cousland of Highever, and living up to the ideal meant letting go of the dream.
I like that. It's shitty for the character, but it's an enjoyable story that happened at all the right times to fit with the story and characterisations forming in my head.
And so they go, and there's the goodbye conversations, and telling Loghain to stay the hell away from the Archdemon because he wasn't getting out that easy. An irritating boss fight happens, but I eventually win and Aedan sacrifices himself to stop the Blight. And the outro is...pleasingly complete. We find that Aedan's brother survived Ostagar after all, and the family is restored. Leilana is dutifully mournful, writes a play about it and is spontaneously raised up by the Maker in typically mythological fashion. And Alistair...disappears, just like he promised.
In some ways, I'm just writing this because the way things turned out formed...an emergent character, a coherent person on top of the gaming time that's interesting and felt worth sharing, and because I think there are other characters and other stories out there worth telling around the same basic game.
I'm also mulling some ideas about fitting the story into the system of the game; making the sentimental more influential, like making family heirlooms be better swords/shields/et cetera by merit of the story inherent in them.
And I'm trying to tease out out the blocks, the beginnings, middles and endings that can form this kind of unplanned narrative, to see how that can be reapplied.
But mainly, I just wanted to put down, in fairly short order, the story of Aedan Cousland, whose life turned out all the ways he didn't intend but who can take pride in having done his duty and living up to the ideal.
I've just completed Dragon Age (on t'360). Judging from my achievements history, I started playing it early last November and got frustrated with my first character (a Dalish Elf) within about a week. That's a shame in itself, because I'd got a reasonable character idea based around that origin - and I'd managed to overcome my deep contempt for anything Wood Elf-like. But yeah, the combat system and controls were irritating me, I was playing on Hard so I wasn't going anywhere fast (my own fault, but previous Bioware RPGs were always pretty easy) and the character wasn't immensely compelling.
Shortly thereafter, I restarted as a Human Noble, and this was a character I quickly got into. The origin story is nicely written to set you up as the young, good-natured and slightly mischievous second son of a proud (if not over-powerful) noble house, before taking it all away in fire and blood and betrayal. I can dig that. Already I had this idea of duty and redemption forming, the last son of Highever living as an outcast with the dream of someday coming home. He was a "good" character, not because of some personal moral drive but because all he had left was that dream, the ideal he'd be raised to aspire to. After the battle at Ostagar and the loss of his brother, the reality that he was the last of the Couslands sank in and he became ever more committed to that ideal.
So he rides off to Redcliffe, flits back and forth between there and the Circle and saves everyone, then goes and finds Andraste's ashes and really saves everyone. He gets a bit flirty with Morrigan, because I always enjoy the evil girls more (and hey, Claudia Black) but somehow the thing with Leilana makes more sense. Plus, once I have Wynne acting as healing mage and Leilana as rogue, Morrigan doesn't make it back into the character party.
At some point, something (probably the frustrating combat) convinces me to put Dragon Age down and do something more rewarding, like play the frak out of Assassin's Creed 2 or finally do that Halo 3/ODST/Reach combo I'd always planned. Anyhow, it got shelved and didn't re-emerge till a couple of days ago, when I decided I'd actually finish the damn thing.
I'm still having troubling getting settled with the game. The combat system is still frustrating, far more so than with any other Bioware RPG. I remember quitting the game in annoyance at one point, sitting at the title screen for a minute before the demo sequence comes on and thinking "Boy, I wish I was playing that game." There's moments when it all runs smoothly, I've finely tuned the party and it's kicking ass, then suddenly something changes (usually the type of mob, or possibly just someone levels up) and it all falls to pieces. It got the point that I had to complete the boss fight on Easy (I feel dirty just thinking about it) just so I could find out what happens to the character.
But that in itself is the point; over the last few days (particularly today) the story that has evolved around the character, as a consequence of his actions, has really got me invested in what happens. Some of it is emergent properties, part of the natural human pattern-finding that joins together dots and tells a story out of it, and some is the very well constructed plot engine that drives the whole game. And so I was inclined to see it through to the end, despite the frustrations.
It all seemed to be progressing normally; I picked the game back up on the way to Orzammar, where the American-accented Dwarves live. I completed that, spent a bunch of time with Oghren, destroyed the Anvil of the Void and got Lord Harrowmont installed on the throne, because it seemed The Right Thing To Do. Shortly thereafter I got my first sense of when The Right Thing is Not So Clear, when Morrigan tells me that her mother, Flemeth, plans to possess her body as a means to eternal life. When I go to kill Flemeth in self-defense (clearly), Morrigan's mother suggests (but without being terribly clear) that this is all a lie. In the end, I let Flemeth go, because it seemed The Right Thing To Do, but even my other party members were pretty confused.
By this point, I was spending most of my time in a party with Wynne, Leilana and Alistair. The only other character plots I'd got access to were Leilana's and Alistair's, and along with Wynne occasionally nipping in some extra dialogue, they were the only one's I spent time talking to. I also focussed more on getting their equipment up to scratch, even levelling Alistair in a particular way to let him where a specific suit of Knight-Commander armour so he could go round being all Templery at people. He didn't much like being a Templer, but with his Templer plate and my Grey Warden plate, we looked badass. Heck, it was ages before I relented and stopped using the family heirloom sword and shield, despite them being sub-par for the equipment I could be using.
Then, as the romance plot with Leilana progresses in the nonsensical way that Bioware romance dialogue does ("Your spilled guts make me feel welcome and accepted.") during our adventures in the Breciliand forests, a few things begin to click into place. This whole happy ending with the displaced Ferelden noble boy and his Orlesian wife reclaiming Highever and finding the home they've both, somehow, being looking for. It's twee, but it's a happy ending that fits the character, and that's what he's now working towards; the Blight's important and all, but that just got thrust on him, it's not a concept drilled into him since birth. So again, there's this character motivation that feeds into the decisions he makes going forwards. He's made friends with Alistair and Wynne, and how he wants the world to turn out is based, to some extent, on them.
And then it all starts to fall apart.
It really started with Zevran, when we finally made it to Denerim. Wandering around in the back alleys, looking for gangs of thugs hassling the locals, we finally get a second surprise visit from the Antivan Crows; 'cept this time, Zevran turns again and we have to put him down for good. I don't mind much, I never interacted with the character and he always seemed like a bisexual romance option built out of Puss in Boots from Shrek. In character, it all added up; he was simply a bad person, deceitful and backstabbing and his betrayal was - much like that of the Tyrannosaurus with the evil laugh - inevitable.
Then comes the showdown with Loghain. I've put some effort into this; found all the evidence I can, spoken to the Banns and Arls and mustered all the support there was to find, and negotiated a marriage between Alistair and Anora to build the best of all possible worlds. The Landsmeet is in our favour. Aedan duels Loghain - only winning by the skin of his teeth, which is clearly the best kind of winning - but agrees to let him live, because that's The Right Thing To Do.
And Alistair explodes.
He refuses to accept this; he demands to be made king specifically so that he can stop it. The marriage idea disappears in moments, and suddenly Alistair - who I would otherwise have supported, if it came to a choice between him and Anora - has made himself an impossible option. Persuasion is to no avail and by the end of it, Anora is on the throne, Alistair has left, never to return, and Loghain is a Grey Warden and in the party. My Party. Mine.
This, clearly, was the mother of all clusterfucks.
Aedan returns to the party camp to consummate the romance subplot before we head off to Redcliffe to begin the final mission (a comedic endeavour, thanks to Bioware's odd concept of sex-while-wearing-weird-underwear and waking-up-after-sex-wearing-full-plate, and coming out of the conversation animation to notice "Loghain Approves +2" still on the screen (*shudder*)). Then, at Redcliffe, the big reveal occurs - turns out that to kill the Archdemon and stop the Blight, one of the Grey Wardens must sacrifice themselves. Riedon says he's going to do it, but we know he's going to suck and die, right? He's only an NPC. Loghain could do it, but...but that's shirking duty. It would be his redemption, but it's not his job to do. Having built for the character this happy ending to tack onto the side of whatever pre-packaged outro I was expecting, I felt a certain sense of loss, the grim reality that doing The Right Thing often brings you Shitty Consequences. There's a brief moment of letting go as he talks to some of the other party members, though sadly none of the conversation options were "So yeah, I'm gonna have to die.". Then Morrigan makes the "have my baby and you get to live" offer, of the kind that is clearly too good to not be raising a demon baby, and Aedan has to say it clearly, then and there. He's taking the consequences. He really was going to be the last Cousland of Highever, and living up to the ideal meant letting go of the dream.
I like that. It's shitty for the character, but it's an enjoyable story that happened at all the right times to fit with the story and characterisations forming in my head.
And so they go, and there's the goodbye conversations, and telling Loghain to stay the hell away from the Archdemon because he wasn't getting out that easy. An irritating boss fight happens, but I eventually win and Aedan sacrifices himself to stop the Blight. And the outro is...pleasingly complete. We find that Aedan's brother survived Ostagar after all, and the family is restored. Leilana is dutifully mournful, writes a play about it and is spontaneously raised up by the Maker in typically mythological fashion. And Alistair...disappears, just like he promised.
In some ways, I'm just writing this because the way things turned out formed...an emergent character, a coherent person on top of the gaming time that's interesting and felt worth sharing, and because I think there are other characters and other stories out there worth telling around the same basic game.
I'm also mulling some ideas about fitting the story into the system of the game; making the sentimental more influential, like making family heirlooms be better swords/shields/et cetera by merit of the story inherent in them.
And I'm trying to tease out out the blocks, the beginnings, middles and endings that can form this kind of unplanned narrative, to see how that can be reapplied.
But mainly, I just wanted to put down, in fairly short order, the story of Aedan Cousland, whose life turned out all the ways he didn't intend but who can take pride in having done his duty and living up to the ideal.