Let's just say that I didn't like him fusing with Justice at all. At least in Awakening he was more likeable. His personality just got screwed over in DA 2.
What I thought was odd was getting to the end of the game and the templars asking me what I wanted to do with Anders as he was one of my people.
I'd spoken to Anders about 10 years ago, helping him out briefly in exchange for a map of the deep roads. My only other contact with him had been about 6 years before when he asked for my help, but wouldn't say why he needed it, so I turned him down.
Because of this inconsistency I'm not really a fan of the whole method where everyone is in my party but sit's around at home because I can only take 2-3 with me at a time. I much prefer the Baldurs Gate method of actually having to choose a party.
But that would mean Bioware needing to write enough material that you don't feel shortchanged if you don't see every party interaction.
Won't play DA2 cause I've only heard bad things about it.
Grow a sack and man up dude! Don't take everyone else's word for things. Borrow it from a friend - play it and make your own decisions. I loved it and although the storyline wasn't as good as DAO it had better graphics, more lively characters, and I even thought the gameplay as good as the first game if not quite as "tactical."
@karnor00 I think the assumption is supposed to be that the PC and Anders are friends in between those years, but I can understand not being able to grow an attachment to the characters since you don't get much time with them.
This is likely do to the game being a rushed product, compared to a game like Mass Effect 2, DA2 has a lot less interaction with party members.
I romanced Andy the first time through and used him for much of the game, and that probably contributed to his endgame feeling very natural rather than poorly-developed.
That definitely happened with me and pirate lady, I hung around with Varric and Anders but I had zero interest in her, so I understand how DA2 can fail in making the player invested in the party.
Of course I also think pirate lady is an atrocious character, but that might be getting off topic.
For example, Isabella leaves permanently if her friendship/rivalry isn't beyond a certain threshold, which is likely to happen if you totally ignore her.
@Iecerint yeah but the problem is I was happy to see her go.
How is that a problem? It's one of the fundamental strengths of BioWare RPGs: you build the party you want, and if you don't like a particular NPC, you don't have to use them. I never took Jacob Taylor on a single mission except his loyalty quest in ME2, but I put Shale in every single party I ever had in DA:O, etc. If you're not invested in certain characters, you're under no obligation to pursue their personal storylines (which isn't to say their relevance to the overall plot is necessarily negated - whether you like him or not, Alistair is still the king's bastard son in DA:O).
@shawne I see your point, but I feel that Isabella was a poorly developed character, as opposed to Jacob, who was a well rounded character, just not a favorite.
Plenty of people didn't like Alistair, and that is fine, but he was a strong character so I wouldn't object to his plot importance.
Jacob was pretty boring and terrible IMPO. He was basically a poorly-realized foil to Miranda early on, and he became totally unnecessary once Jack was introduced and took his MirandaFoil place. And his romance was a truly terrible thing to behold.
@shawne I see your point, but I feel that Isabella was a poorly developed character, as opposed to Jacob, who was a well rounded character, just not a favorite.
Here's the problem I have with that evaluation: you've indicated that she left your party at the end of Act 2, which means that not only did you not see how her story ultimately unfolded, but you didn't have her in your party or speak to her in any real capacity (since that's one way to build a relationship towards Rivalry or Friendship; she'd have stuck around either way). How can you argue she's a poorly developed character when you didn't bother to follow her development in the first place?
As for Jacob, he's a textbook flat character, in that he undergoes no significant change even after his loyalty quest. Practically every other squadmate is changed by the end of the game: Tali does a lot of growing up after her father's death, Grunt establishes his own identity, Miranda is able to admit that she's not perfect, etc. But Jacob just keeps on being Jacob.
@shawne far as I know I tried to do all the Isabella stuff, I am guessing she didn't come back because I was mad at her for taking the Qunari macguffin (and really why wouldn't I be?). The rivalry/friendship thing was a neat mechanic but I think between me and Isabella it didn't work out, too much neutrality I guess, I hope DA3 continues to improve on the relations between characters, it was a step up from DA:O but I still took issue with it.
For me Jacob was an example of the "good" side of Cerberus, there to kind of make Shepard's decision to work for them in a more reasonable context, like Shepard he had red tape issues with the Alliance that he felt impeded his ability to do his job, so he took a risk on Cerberus. Does he have much purpose beyond that? No. But where Jacob at least had a role Isabella's is apparently to be gratuitous sex appeal.
It might help me if you told me what you see in her, I do like DA2, flaws and all, but she always bored me, which is bad because she is supposed to be one of the more important party members.
The key to understanding Isabela is this: she starts out stranded in Kirkwall, with all her schemes geared towards getting/buying/stealing a ship and getting the hell out. But if you befriend her, she'll stay. Like Zevran in DA:O, she's all about casual sex and not getting attached, and like Zevran, she'll get attached despite herself, because she can't help it.
You can see it most clearly in the relationship she develops with Aveline: they start off genuinely hating each other, but even though they're using the same insults ten years later, the tone is completely different. That's what sets her apart from Jacob: in his case, what you see is what you get, but the more you talk with Isabela and take her with you on missions, the more you'll realize that she's deliberately trying to stay "safe" by keeping you at arm's length, until she finally decides to trust you.
Okay that makes sense, but in that same vein I think there is a reason Zev was a completely optional character.
Both Isabela (sorry I have been misspelling it the whole time) and Zevran have divisive characteristics, for example I had a friend who reasonably didn't trust Zevran and killed him, with Isabela I don't really trust her either, but I am forced to help with her mess.
I understand that is a perfectly valid direction to go with the story, but I wish they had spent more time on developing her then, and maybe not making her breasts and ass triple in size in between games.
It's just low how Bioware 'had' to sex up several female characters in their recent games. It happened to Ashley in ME 3 ('she needed to be sexier!'), EDI in ME 3 was just ridiculous, and now also Isabela, whose original design wasn't half bad. I think that a company previously renowned for its brilliant story telling resorting to sex up characters just to appeal to the audience is a sign something's definitely going wrong.
I think there's a substantial difference between characters who look sexy and characters who are nothing beyond sexy. There's a lot more to Ashley, EDI and Isabela than just their looks.
@shawne: Maybe. But what was wrong with their original designs, then? Does Ashley really have to look like a Barbie doll to be just as interesting as a character she was in previous games? Same with Isabela.
Maybe not a barbiedoll, but she had massive D-cups built into her Battle Armour, which was just...weird. Likewise for EDI, I would've appreciated a gender-neutral looking robot with a female voice (to confuse Joker) more than the naked supermodel/supermodel in a catsuit look that she's currently sporting (again, with some impressive mammaries).
I don't mind some sexy ladies in my games (just like I don't mind some attractive gents) but I do mind it when it's put in there just to be sexy without any logic behind it (like female armour that's usually filled with giant gaps or only-female lust daemons).
@Drugar: Except that there is logic behind EDI's appearance - the body she's using belongs to a Cerberus infiltrator, designed to be attractive/seductive in order to access sensitive information. Isabela dresses provocatively because it's part of how she controls her crew.
As for Ashley, in what world is this considered "massive D-cups"?
I'm not saying there isn't a problem in mainstream gaming when it comes to representing women - because as you pointed out, there is - but I think we need to be a bit careful and attentive to detail before making broad declarations about cases that don't necessarily fit the bill.
@shawne: Both explanations for EDI and Isabela sound like something Bioware/EA would come up with to hide the blatant sexual appeal, which was obviously intended. Come on, just one glance at both women's design says enough. It's like saying 'We didn't intentionally make them look sexy, but they look sexy none the less! Have some cat suit DLC!'. Sex sells.
@shawne: Both explanations for EDI and Isabela sound like something Bioware/EA would come up with to hide the blatant sexual appeal, which was obviously intended. Come on, just one glance at both women's design says enough. It's like saying 'We didn't intentionally make them look sexy, but they look sexy none the less! Have some cat suit DLC!'. Sex sells.
These explanations are in the game. The fact that you don't want to acknowledge them in order to sustain your point is your own concern. Isabela and EDI are both designed to be attractive, yes, but they're not exploitative, and there's considerably more to their characters than just physical appeal. If you can't make the distinction between sexy characters and sex objects, you might want to try educating yourself on the subject (the PAX 2011 "What Women Want From Female Characters" panel is a good start) before continuing this discussion.
I might consider Isabela or EDI problematic if they were the only female characters in their respective games, or if every female character in the game looked like them. Thankfully, that is not the case, as each game has a variety of important female characters who do not exude the same kind of sex appeal as Isabela/EDI.
@shawne: Please watch your tone, as it's getting quite confrontational. I'm here to have a discussion, not a quarrel. I just don't see how EDI needs to be designed attractively to 'get access to sensitive information'. There are other, maybe even better ways to get this information without dressing like that. Like, having good hacking skills. Or knowing your sources. Or having contacts. Manipulation behind the scene. Could be anything. A particular suit doesn't always have to fit the bill. Now, as for Isabela, you say she dresses like this as it's part of her controlling her crew. I just don't see why. Isn't charisma and good leadership more of an important factor to keep your crew in check? I didn't see Davy Jones dres himself in a tutu to be able to keep his crew under control in Pirates of the Caribbean. Of course, dressing is part of what kind of message you want to direct to others, and Isabela might indicate with her clothes she's open-minded and knows what she wants. But this message could just as well have been achieved by any other outfit expressing some degree of leadership. I thought DA:O's Isabela's outfit told me much more about her mindset than it does with DA 2's Isabela. But that might just be me.
Just so you know, the Davy Jones thing was more of a joke. Actually, Elisabeth Swan's outfit in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie is a much better example. She certainly was wearing more than DA 2 Isabela, and still looked both feminine, attractive AND charismatic in it.
I'm pretty sure what @Kitteh_On_A_Cloud is getting at (and feel free to correct me) is that it was a deliberate and, to a certain degree, unnecessary effort on the parts of the developers to make EDI, Ashley and Isabela sexually attractive to a male player. Whether they have in-universe reasons is largely irrelevant to this, because these reasons were designed as a justification for the design choices (or vice versa). These are not real people who have selected to dress in a certain way, they are characters that have been designed a certain way.
I mean, sure you could design a game with 15 female characters with detailed backstories elaborating numerous good and plot critical reasons why they're all walking around in skimpy over-sexualised lingerie, but this doesn't change the fact that it was done as a deliberate effort by the developers and did not have to be that way to begin with. I mean, its better than them just being 3/4 naked for no plot reason, but you have to ask yourself why they felt it was necessary to design them that way to begin with. You can argue until the cows come home that the reason EDI is in a sexy robot body was because she took it from a sexy Cerberus infiltration robot, but at some point the developers sat down and decided they were going to put EDI in a sexy robot body and not the body of a YMIR mech. This was a design decision, and as such it is not innocent and is open to critique. (Ashley didn't really have any reason at all for her redesign, and it kind of felt a bit like character assassination.)
Now, personally, I loved Isabela's (re)design in DA2. I though it was a good visual cue about her personality, much like Aveline's was about hers and Merril's was about hers. Yes, it was (over)sexualised, but I felt that it was balanced well by the other female characters' designs, and fit the personality she has and is trying to convey to others. The costumes in DA2 were very much designed as visual representations of what the characters were like, and I felt the three female party members were all well-designed in this area (as were the others, and most of Hawke's outfits). This is not to say that a different design for Isabela wouldn't have been equally as good, but I ultimately see no problems specifically with the one that was chosen (though I do see problems with it as a microcosm of the representation of female characters in video games in general).
But then I am one of the 6 people who loved DA2 despite its faults.
Comments
I'd spoken to Anders about 10 years ago, helping him out briefly in exchange for a map of the deep roads. My only other contact with him had been about 6 years before when he asked for my help, but wouldn't say why he needed it, so I turned him down.
Because of this inconsistency I'm not really a fan of the whole method where everyone is in my party but sit's around at home because I can only take 2-3 with me at a time. I much prefer the Baldurs Gate method of actually having to choose a party.
But that would mean Bioware needing to write enough material that you don't feel shortchanged if you don't see every party interaction.
This is likely do to the game being a rushed product, compared to a game like Mass Effect 2, DA2 has a lot less interaction with party members.
SPOILERS
Arishok : RARGH that pirate lady friend of yours made me ANGRY!!!
Me : I haven't seen her in six years now...
Mages & Templars fight
Me : Calm down everyone, we can solve this peacefully!
Random Stranger : NOPE! *blows up church*
Varric : and so the story ends...
Me : sooo... a guy I never had in my party tells the story? Fantastic.
Of course I also think pirate lady is an atrocious character, but that might be getting off topic.
For example, Isabella leaves permanently if her friendship/rivalry isn't beyond a certain threshold, which is likely to happen if you totally ignore her.
Plenty of people didn't like Alistair, and that is fine, but he was a strong character so I wouldn't object to his plot importance.
As for Jacob, he's a textbook flat character, in that he undergoes no significant change even after his loyalty quest. Practically every other squadmate is changed by the end of the game: Tali does a lot of growing up after her father's death, Grunt establishes his own identity, Miranda is able to admit that she's not perfect, etc. But Jacob just keeps on being Jacob.
For me Jacob was an example of the "good" side of Cerberus, there to kind of make Shepard's decision to work for them in a more reasonable context, like Shepard he had red tape issues with the Alliance that he felt impeded his ability to do his job, so he took a risk on Cerberus. Does he have much purpose beyond that? No. But where Jacob at least had a role Isabella's is apparently to be gratuitous sex appeal.
It might help me if you told me what you see in her, I do like DA2, flaws and all, but she always bored me, which is bad because she is supposed to be one of the more important party members.
You can see it most clearly in the relationship she develops with Aveline: they start off genuinely hating each other, but even though they're using the same insults ten years later, the tone is completely different. That's what sets her apart from Jacob: in his case, what you see is what you get, but the more you talk with Isabela and take her with you on missions, the more you'll realize that she's deliberately trying to stay "safe" by keeping you at arm's length, until she finally decides to trust you.
Both Isabela (sorry I have been misspelling it the whole time) and Zevran have divisive characteristics, for example I had a friend who reasonably didn't trust Zevran and killed him, with Isabela I don't really trust her either, but I am forced to help with her mess.
I understand that is a perfectly valid direction to go with the story, but I wish they had spent more time on developing her then, and maybe not making her breasts and ass triple in size in between games.
I don't mind some sexy ladies in my games (just like I don't mind some attractive gents) but I do mind it when it's put in there just to be sexy without any logic behind it (like female armour that's usually filled with giant gaps or only-female lust daemons).
As for Ashley, in what world is this considered "massive D-cups"?
I'm not saying there isn't a problem in mainstream gaming when it comes to representing women - because as you pointed out, there is - but I think we need to be a bit careful and attentive to detail before making broad declarations about cases that don't necessarily fit the bill.
I mean, sure you could design a game with 15 female characters with detailed backstories elaborating numerous good and plot critical reasons why they're all walking around in skimpy over-sexualised lingerie, but this doesn't change the fact that it was done as a deliberate effort by the developers and did not have to be that way to begin with. I mean, its better than them just being 3/4 naked for no plot reason, but you have to ask yourself why they felt it was necessary to design them that way to begin with. You can argue until the cows come home that the reason EDI is in a sexy robot body was because she took it from a sexy Cerberus infiltration robot, but at some point the developers sat down and decided they were going to put EDI in a sexy robot body and not the body of a YMIR mech. This was a design decision, and as such it is not innocent and is open to critique. (Ashley didn't really have any reason at all for her redesign, and it kind of felt a bit like character assassination.)
Now, personally, I loved Isabela's (re)design in DA2. I though it was a good visual cue about her personality, much like Aveline's was about hers and Merril's was about hers. Yes, it was (over)sexualised, but I felt that it was balanced well by the other female characters' designs, and fit the personality she has and is trying to convey to others. The costumes in DA2 were very much designed as visual representations of what the characters were like, and I felt the three female party members were all well-designed in this area (as were the others, and most of Hawke's outfits). This is not to say that a different design for Isabela wouldn't have been equally as good, but I ultimately see no problems specifically with the one that was chosen (though I do see problems with it as a microcosm of the representation of female characters in video games in general).
But then I am one of the 6 people who loved DA2 despite its faults.