I figured out why I enjoy Dragon Age so much compared to other games that I enjoy but don't get so invested in.
It's the fact that there are people around, who stick around, who have their own personalities and motivations, so I'm invested in their fake lives.
It's like with a novel - I read them for the characters first, the action/plot second. So to find a video game where I'm as invested with the characters as I am with a novel is really cool.
In typical me fashion, I've mostly made my company (you get three people on top of your own character) all of the "good" characters. This doesn't mean the other characters are evil, they're just more pragmatic, less sympathetic to others, etc.
What I really like is how your group will have conversations as you run around, interacting with each other. Some of them are pretty funny, especially when two of them really dislike each other. You can have conversations with people and choose the dialogue, and the responses you choose affects how they react, positively or negatively.
Another thing that I think is pretty funny is that you can have relationships with those companions. Yes, romantic ones. I know, right? Weird. But what is really good is that you can have straight relationships or gay relationships. And only with specific people - some swing one way, some both ways, which is like the real world, so you can choose whether to have a relationship or not.
And if you do choose, the other characters will talk to you about it. They are apparently all gossips.
Anyway, so I'm at the final battle part, and like a good novel, I don't want it to end yet. I don't even know if there might be some people who die, or what happens after, and I'm all PLEASE DON'T KILL OFF (person), because George R.R. Martin has made me paranoid about characters I like being killed off (Martin seems to have a thing for killing off the characters I like, and letting the ones I wish would die... the way the ones I like do live for forever. I want Daenerys to die, damnit, she annoys the hell out of me).
I still need to get back into Dragon Age. It really does seem like a good game.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on characters over plot btw. Most of the books/stories I really enjoy are character driven rather than plot driven. I can't read or watch anything where I don't like the main character.
At one point I tried watching the older Wuthering Heights movie, but I couldn't stand either Heathcliff or Catherine, so I turned it off. They both seemed like horrible people and I just couldn't care a whiff about them.
Yeah, I can't read books where I don't have anyone I like to care about. I mean, if you're reading about someone who the author, in theory, wants you to worry about, and yet you're thinking "Wow, I totally don't care if everyone we've encountered dies a horrible death," why would you ever care about whether or not they save the world?
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