In defense of only one (more or less) fixed origin story for the main character.
Buttercheese
Member Posts: 3,766
Time and time again have I heard people mention how happy they are that the Dragon Age: Origins and Pillars of Eternities of the RPG world feature the option to choose from a selection of background stories for your main character.
Honestly, I am not a fan of this concept.
For some reason, I managed to replay the entire BG series more than a dozen times by now, with fundamentally different Player Characters. With DA:O and PoE I managed only one single full playthrough with each so far. Not for lack of trying, mind you.
Of course, the reasons for that are not wholy to blame on the origin stories, but I think they make for the main portion.
Let me elaborate.
In BG (and also Planescape: Torment, for that matter), you have one fixed origin story.
You are an orphaned child of a dead god raised by an old wizard and harper by the name of Gorion in a huge-ass library and castle south of the town of Baldur's Gate. You grew up secluded from the outside world, unknowing of your own heritage. Safe for some minor details (i.e. small-child-you stealing Khelben Blackstaff's cloak once) the rest is left up to the player's imagination and choice.
Imo, this is an ingenius set-up.
Since your character didn't choose that life of their own, pretty much any personality/race/gender/etc. (safe for age) can be written onto them without breaking/ changing the game/plot. Yet still, the entire game calls back to this origin on a multitude of occassions. You are Gorion's ward but you get to choose who Gorion's ward is.
In comparision, safe for some rather arbitrary dialogue options in PoE, the origin of your choice makes pretty much no difference. You are just A Dude™ who just happened to be there (which is also one of the things that always ruined the roleplaying bits of the Elder Scrolls games for me). Beyond anything that happens during the actual game, the Watcher has no notable agency, safe for what happens within the player's imagination. But honestly, the game didn't manage to stimulate my imagination in that direction. I was always just A Dude™, trying to find the plot.
Even worse, PoE does this twice, by letting you choose the background story of the Watcher's past life through some dialogue options which honestly felt like they made zero difference (wether or not they make an actual difference is irrelevant, what's important is that I as a player feel like it made one).
Then you have DA:O trying a different approach with the name giving origin stories. Depending on how fast you play, the first hour or so of the game will be fundamentally different from the rest of the game, depending on which race/class combination you choose during character creation. You can be a dwarven princess who gets caught up in some War of the Roses style political coup, a lower class elven townsman who's arranged marriage goes horribly wrong, a locked up mage who ... you get the idea.
These origin stories are awesome. But they imo don't make that much difference in the rest of the game, safe for some very specific quests (i.e. if you are a dwarven noble the return to Orzammar is gonna be different). This is of course hardly the fault of the origin stories themselves, but rather of the considerably way more linear story progression when compared to a BG2, for example. The main problem here is, that it's "quantity over quality", to a gegree (also the engine, there is this whole thing going on with more cinematic-y 3D games taking away a lot of the imagination, but I digress).
Don't get me wrong, the quality of the origin stories is great. But there are too many to make the impact on the main story that they imo deserve. DA:I made a step in the right direction imo, giving race and class of the Inquisitor more perceived weight in the story (I said perceived weight. Again, wether or not it's actually more weighty in the story is irrelevant and I honestly can't tell) but that game has a whole lot of other problems, so lets move on.
Now, there is also DA2. DA2 has one fixed origin story, pretty much the opposite of what the other DAs do, but that one goes too far and is too restrictive. The problem here is, that Hawke as a character is too pre-defined in personality. The wiggle room isn't big enough and you can only play Hawke as three different archetypes, which immensely hurts the replay value, but BioWare learned their lesson (I think) so moving on.
A thing that is super important to me in RPGs is that I have to feel like the character I choose to play makes a difference in the story of the game. So when I have to choose between one more or less fixed origin story and complete freedom to choose my own background that has zero impact on the game, I will always pick the former, because it idially means a more tightly written narrative, as evident in BG (specifically BG2) and PS:T (though I wish PS:T would at least had let me choose the sex of the Nameless One, otherwise I think the set up of the story is a stroke of genius).
Freedom doesn't mean it's a better RPG. Good, tight writing does.
A computer game doesn't feature the luxury of letting the DM tailor the narrative to the needs of the players (yet!),
so some of that freedom has to be sacrificed for the sake of story telling.
I believe the key is to a good origin story in an RPG is to find the golden middle way between freedom, restriction and impact on the main narrative. Leaning too far into one direction is hurtful for the game.
Honestly, I am not a fan of this concept.
For some reason, I managed to replay the entire BG series more than a dozen times by now, with fundamentally different Player Characters. With DA:O and PoE I managed only one single full playthrough with each so far. Not for lack of trying, mind you.
Of course, the reasons for that are not wholy to blame on the origin stories, but I think they make for the main portion.
Let me elaborate.
In BG (and also Planescape: Torment, for that matter), you have one fixed origin story.
You are an orphaned child of a dead god raised by an old wizard and harper by the name of Gorion in a huge-ass library and castle south of the town of Baldur's Gate. You grew up secluded from the outside world, unknowing of your own heritage. Safe for some minor details (i.e. small-child-you stealing Khelben Blackstaff's cloak once) the rest is left up to the player's imagination and choice.
Imo, this is an ingenius set-up.
Since your character didn't choose that life of their own, pretty much any personality/race/gender/etc. (safe for age) can be written onto them without breaking/ changing the game/plot. Yet still, the entire game calls back to this origin on a multitude of occassions. You are Gorion's ward but you get to choose who Gorion's ward is.
In comparision, safe for some rather arbitrary dialogue options in PoE, the origin of your choice makes pretty much no difference. You are just A Dude™ who just happened to be there (which is also one of the things that always ruined the roleplaying bits of the Elder Scrolls games for me). Beyond anything that happens during the actual game, the Watcher has no notable agency, safe for what happens within the player's imagination. But honestly, the game didn't manage to stimulate my imagination in that direction. I was always just A Dude™, trying to find the plot.
Even worse, PoE does this twice, by letting you choose the background story of the Watcher's past life through some dialogue options which honestly felt like they made zero difference (wether or not they make an actual difference is irrelevant, what's important is that I as a player feel like it made one).
Then you have DA:O trying a different approach with the name giving origin stories. Depending on how fast you play, the first hour or so of the game will be fundamentally different from the rest of the game, depending on which race/class combination you choose during character creation. You can be a dwarven princess who gets caught up in some War of the Roses style political coup, a lower class elven townsman who's arranged marriage goes horribly wrong, a locked up mage who ... you get the idea.
These origin stories are awesome. But they imo don't make that much difference in the rest of the game, safe for some very specific quests (i.e. if you are a dwarven noble the return to Orzammar is gonna be different). This is of course hardly the fault of the origin stories themselves, but rather of the considerably way more linear story progression when compared to a BG2, for example. The main problem here is, that it's "quantity over quality", to a gegree (also the engine, there is this whole thing going on with more cinematic-y 3D games taking away a lot of the imagination, but I digress).
Don't get me wrong, the quality of the origin stories is great. But there are too many to make the impact on the main story that they imo deserve. DA:I made a step in the right direction imo, giving race and class of the Inquisitor more perceived weight in the story (I said perceived weight. Again, wether or not it's actually more weighty in the story is irrelevant and I honestly can't tell) but that game has a whole lot of other problems, so lets move on.
Now, there is also DA2. DA2 has one fixed origin story, pretty much the opposite of what the other DAs do, but that one goes too far and is too restrictive. The problem here is, that Hawke as a character is too pre-defined in personality. The wiggle room isn't big enough and you can only play Hawke as three different archetypes, which immensely hurts the replay value, but BioWare learned their lesson (I think) so moving on.
A thing that is super important to me in RPGs is that I have to feel like the character I choose to play makes a difference in the story of the game. So when I have to choose between one more or less fixed origin story and complete freedom to choose my own background that has zero impact on the game, I will always pick the former, because it idially means a more tightly written narrative, as evident in BG (specifically BG2) and PS:T (though I wish PS:T would at least had let me choose the sex of the Nameless One, otherwise I think the set up of the story is a stroke of genius).
Freedom doesn't mean it's a better RPG. Good, tight writing does.
A computer game doesn't feature the luxury of letting the DM tailor the narrative to the needs of the players (yet!),
so some of that freedom has to be sacrificed for the sake of story telling.
I believe the key is to a good origin story in an RPG is to find the golden middle way between freedom, restriction and impact on the main narrative. Leaning too far into one direction is hurtful for the game.
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Comments
KOTOR II.
KOTOR II had the deceptively simple yet utterly brilliant idea of defining a LOT of your character's backstory, including some quite specific events, but then let you explain and defend (or not defend) why your character did these things, and what they think about those events and their aftermath now. It allowed you to define a character and their viewpoints and history deeply, while still tying them into the overall plot.
It was so brilliant, and I don't know why nothing else has ever really copied it. PS:T could I guess be considered a similar predecessor, but it is its own thing, a bit too spoilery to really discuss in detail.
Personally, I don't really care for BG's origin story because I feel no connection to any of it. Your character's defined personality in Candlekeep is actually quite jarring if you're not playing good-aligned (Imoen makes no sense, many of your responses to people in Candlekeep make no sense, even Gorion makes no sense), or even just playing someone who isn't within a fairly narrow personality band. That's part of the reason Imoen's never grabbed me as a character (that and she basically isn't a character past her opening lines), obviously other people's mileage may vary. It's too specific to really make mine, yet too vague to be really interesting. Also the timeline makes absolutely no sense if charname is, for instance, an elf.
DA:O's opening turned me off the entire game, but that's because I played City Elf and Bioware's use of rape-for-cheap-pathos was really, really not my cup of tea. And then neither was Duncan. I don't think the very idea of multiple origins stories is necessarily flawed, though I think you're correct in that a lot is taken away from them when they're all but irrelevant to the story proper (they did sometimes come up in DA:O, of course, some more than others).
BG may have a fixed origin story (born in candlekeep, raised by gorion) but it seems to balance tactics, story and character freedom, while there are many rpgs who don't and you end up being just "a guy".
You have a great narrative/ story, challenging & tactical gameplay with statistical character progression (though I wanna personally slap anyone who thinks that this is what defines an RPG) and most importantly you have actual, literal roleplay. And the best part is, if you don't want one of these, you can easily avert/ignore them via the game options or handy cheats.
Sure, there are other games who may do specific aspects better, but BG manages to keep this apparently very hard to achieve balance. Lesser games would fall into the "neither fish nor meat" or "master of none" category but somehow BG doesn't.
Also, I will never stop pointing out how ingenius the narrative setup to motivate a vast amout of differing player characters to follow the plot in the BG series. I loathe games that don't give my character an actual reason to pursue the plot that goes beyond "because it's a videogame, you are supossed to do this". Forcing the player character to act is such a simple tool, yet it is rarely utilised (with the exception of the prophecy, of course, a trope ToB is sadly reduced to).
Pillars of Eternity's approach was basically to give you a new (universal) origin after you reach the strange machine in Cilant Lîs. You become awakened, with all the pros and cons that that entails. Ultimately you learn that you are now also a Watcher - which is MUCH more relevant to the story so the game focuses on that. This is understandable considering that the game is all about souls, past lives and the Wheel of Berath - who your parents were and who you were while growing up hardly matters given the perspective of multiple lifetimes.
PoE's approach is clumsy, but it works. The problem is that the game lacks story value, engaging companions and just the general ambience of the bioware games or even NWN2:MotB - Obsidian's own crowning glory of BG-esque strategy game storytelling.
Dragon Age: Origins' approach is similar - you are now a Grey Warden, which is more relevant to the story than what you were previously, except that your race/background does matter in DA:O. I'm not sure what you mean in your post because you do face a lot of persecution for being a mage, for example, and being an elf does get you treated like a second class citizen in places like Denerim. It's just that you're also a Grey Warden, so people don't outright send templars after you or force you to go back into the alienage.
Your companions will also often comment on your background.
DA:O's approach was the best, IMO.
Obviously since the game makes it a point of contrast the brotherhood/solidarity of the Grey Wardens (who come from all races/backgrounds and who are repeatedly seen to stand for equality, if only against a common threat) with the petty politics of the rest of Ferelden (who are on the verge of getting wiped out by the Darkspawn because they'd rather concern themselves with issues like your race/where you were born/who your parents were/your social circle/etc) it's a bit counter-intuitive to suddenly include a situation where your origin DOES matter in the end, does it? That's a twist that I personally think very few people would appreciate.
DA:O could have been the precursor to the ultimate RPG strategy game.
I honestly do not see the value of making the origin story the defining feature of an RPG. It's also a matter of perspective, even for the games you give as an example - you can easily play PS:T or the BG games as someone who simply doesn't care much about your origins, and who finds it annoying that people bring it up all the time. In fact, people who played SoA before BG (and a LOT of people did) probably cared more about the present (ie, someone stole your sister-figure away and you must save her, then this guy somehow managed to steal your soul and you must take it back, and now you must follow him into hell - oh wow the game is done already?) more than your character's godly background/origins.
Sure your character had the occasional weird dream and a few nice innate abilities, but really how many people do you see gush about those particular details? No, you hear more about how cool Minsc or some other character was, or how badass a certain class or ability or combination is, or how epic some bossfights are.
Ultimately these people grew to love the BG games too even though they hardly had any idea who Gorion/Sarevok/Khalid/Dynaheir/etc were.
And it's not exactly a phenomenon exclusive to strategy RPG games. If we take a look at how games like ME:2 turned out, it's obvious that there are some factors much more important than your origin story. ME:2 was one of those games that could make even non-RPG gamers pause and think before making their decisions, and your background hardly mattered in that game. You often got a lot of "remember me?" or "remember what you did?" dialog, but the sheer depth of the story, the miniplots and the NPCs made the impact of those particular dialog secondary.
PoE: Except for the part where the game let's you choose a character background in the beginning. What is the point of giving you that choice if it (seemingly) doesn't matter? While playing I was expecting some throwbacks, but there was nothing.
DA:O: Oh, I am aware that there are some drastic differences. But for a game which markets itself on the different origin stories, dedicates it's entire prologue to it and literally has the word "origins" in the title it really doesn't utilise the different origin stories enough imo. Also, since you bring up race and class specific dialogue options, these are seperate from the origin story.
When I tried to replay the game (first I was a human circle mage, then a dwarven noble), after the origin story the game felt exactly the same again. It felt like it made no notable difference aside from NPCs adressing me differently, which made it jarring and eventually lead me to drop the game again. That is bad. As a developer you usually want the player to keep playing.
Also, again, because the way DA:O presents itself it leaves little up to the player's imagination, which is also restrictive in it's own way. People crave isometric style RPGs with limited visuals for more reasons than just purism and nostalgia. It's because these games give just the right amount of visual cues, if done well.
What BG does is giving the player a basic outline.
Enough to make it matter and not too much to make it restrictive.
The more or less frequent call backs make everything feel more organic.
Also, if people don't care about that stuff that is fine for them, but every well written character needs a background that shaped their personality. Wether or not that background is actually explored in the narrative is a different story (yay, puns). The origins of a character is what shape their motivations and personality and giving the player a starting point beyond "you are a dude and you are here for no apparent reason" is a super effective way to get them into character. And getting into character is a very important aspect of a role playing game.
This is why PS:T has such a jarringly slow start (or at least part to the reason, there might be more to it).
Like, yeah, once you you managed to get your head into the game, it's amazing. But actually getting there is kinda hard imo. Especially because the setting is so alien.
I can't speak for Mass Effect and Knights of the old Repulic, since I haven't (really) played those.
The story of DA:O to DA:2 will forever remain one of the greatest tragedies in strategy RPG history.
PoE is kind of like the new BG, and if you remember the old, original BG it was kind of meh (you have to remember that it was competing against the likes of Final Fantasy 7/8 and Tales of Phantasia). What got everybody excited about it was that it was definitely a step in the right direction - it was the stepping stone for PST and BG2.
PST is really more of a once-every-few-decades happy accident of originality/story and gameplay mechanics, and you don't really go out of your way trying to make those as just move toward that general direction and hope you get lucky.
The Obsidian devs are still trying to rediscover that special formula that made the old infinity engine games great. I suppose it's kind of disheartening to know that we actually lost that formula in the first place, but at least we're working on it again.
Personally, I am of the strong opinion that the Baldur's Gate saga would have vastly *profited* from several origin stories. Or at least one with sublime variable changes for each race, class and alignment. The Temple of Elemental Evil for example did just that in puncto alignments: an good aligned party starts by saving an caravan. An evil one on the other hand are the ones attacking the very same. Such dynamic approaches feels very refreshing indeed when rolling new characters.
I can also think of ways of doing things like that for the Candlekeep origin. For example:
- Instead of Gorion picking up an newborn elf, it would make much more sense if it were a young elf child of delicate 50 years. Which should roughly translate to an 8-10 year old human child.
- Since half-orcs become adults at the age of 13, it doesn't make much sense for Gorion to wait until his Ward reaches 20. This is already 'middle aged' territory for those of orcish heritage. :V
- For the more primal classes like barbarians and rangers, it wouldn't be strange for getting exiled from Candlekeep. Instead they could still be on the starting map in some near forest cottage. That way they'd have a chance to actually train their profession and Gorion's protection would still be available.
But then again, this is purely my opinion.Also, the different player races all roughly age at the same speed, the difference is that the different racially dominated societies treat the official "coming-of-age" is at a different age. You know, like in the different human societies in the real world.
This table means little, especially the way the game handles the over all canon in which Red Wizards grow hair and Rashemi berserkers shave and have tattooed scalps. Even more ludicrous due to the fact that Charname is meant to be like 21ish years old in SoA, meaning that depending on the race the love interest would all be breaking some drastic age of consent "laws" (and people think the Jaheira romance is already 'problematic'.)
It is pretty clear to me that the game just assumes that Charname is either at least 20 years old (meaning they could easily be older) or that all races reach physical maturity at about the same speed. Canon is just a suggestion in this game.
Either way, the timeline doesn't add up no matter what race or class you play, so screw it all together.
There is no way to work around it without applying headcanons, which imo is a small problem, given how much the game stimulates the player's imagination already.
Alas, some players just lack said imagination, but I find it hard to believe that they are even remotely in the majority, given the nature of the game.
I don't think BG was seen as "meh".
I moved house in 1999, my sister gave me an old computer later that year. We only had consoles at the time, my children always bought the magazines for them.
BG kept on getting mentioned, kept on topping polls.
I've never played D&D and it was only through the recommendations in magazines (various) that made me go out and buy it.
It was a really big deal to go and buy my "first computer game" so I wanted a good one, so read reviews a lot.
Ended up getting the best.
That was how my friends would reply when I tried to get them into playing the original BG.
I remember game genres didn't matter so much as just actual games at the time (in the sense of getting a new game) simply because your options were much more limited, unlike these days where you can just pick a genre. It was a very different time for video games.
Anyway the original BG was a good game, but it was also competing against giants to truly stand out. It already had a devoted community even then though, including most of the fans of the older Fallout series. At the time the western RPG genre was also struggling badly.
It took PS:T/BG2 to really jumpstart the western RPG revival/renaissance of the late 90s/early 2000s. It was then that these types of games started pulling people away from even games like the original Diablo 2. Not like you couldn't play both, but after I got them to start playing BG2 many of my friends definitely played more BG2 than D2.
From Table 11 of the 2nd Edition PHB,
Race: Base Age + Variable
Dwarf: 40+5d6
Elf: 100+5d6
Gnome: 60+3d12
Half-elf: 15+1d6
Halfling: 20+3d4
Human: 15+1d4
The canonical BG timeline works for a human, half-elf, or halfling CHARNAME, but it doesn't work for a 2E dwarf, elf or gnome CHARNAME. An elf CHARNAME should still be a child when Gorion dies of old age.
Personally, I'm glad they ignored this inconsistency. The default solution probably would have been to lock CHARNAME into being a human.
I liked how 1st ed did things with race and class but for a 'set' background,(which I do like) I suppose it WAS done to make things a little more simple. Although, I imagine this age could have been taken into acct. with each and every race/class, but it would have been a little tougher. Maybe Gorion would have had to take CHARNAME into CK a set number of years ago, BUT having them each at their different race/class ages.
Just thinking aloud so to speak.
I like your suggestions here. Especially with alignments. I mean you know at least one of those guys in CK had know alignment at hand.
That said, the way it was done was probably the easiest as @AstroBryGuy mentioned. Maybe not the best, esp for those of us that put alot of stock in those race/age/class tables(at least in my PnP days), but hey, it works, and is a darn fine background regardless.
Always reminds me of the possibilities that exist in PnP compared to computer gaming.
Anyway, I work it all into my own CHARNAME's backgrounds as best I can.
Still, it would be an interesting and MAJOR new mod (if even possible).
Of course, you can always head-canon it yourself. Maybe the Bhaalspawn just mature quicker. I also always found it weird how almost everyone in Candlekeep refers to you as "child" or "kid". Even considering almost everyone in Candlekeep is an old fart, that is an unusual way to address a 20-year-old.
I really don't think PS:T had any effect on anything, though. Sure, it became a classic among RPG fans, but if I remember correctly it barely flipped at the time. It also has much more in common with the late 90's games like Fallout (not surprising given that they were produced by the same company) than with the wave of 00's style Biowarian RPGs that birthed from BG2's success.
THE TIMELINE DOESN'T ADD UP. CHARNAME ONLY LIVED A MAXIMUM OF TEN YEARS IN CANDLEKEEP, NOT TWENTY. THERE IS NO WAY GORION TOOK THEM IN AS A BABY.
The timeline is broken. It doesn't make sense.Bhaal died in 1358DR. Charname's mother died after him, presumably in the same year. BG starts in 1368DR.
That is ten years, not twenty. TEN. The opening narration is WRONG.
Is that really this hard to understand, Jesus Christ.
It's definitely not difficult to assume charname was also around a similar age rather than being a newborn baby, and that being a newborn (couple months old) baby would put their age at being ~10. Which is obviously not the case. If we assume the opening narration is correct and charname is ~20 years old, that does, indeed, leave around 10 years unaccounted for.
1. The Narrator was indeed right, I'll go with the flow
2. The background timeline of the saga was the mostly correct one
3. Both are completely wrong, I'll think up something entirely different
But either way you roll it:
"It is said that Bhaal foresaw his death during the Time of Troubles and came to Toril before the climactic event, mating with females of almost any species, not all of them humanoid."
So nothing is being really contradicted here. CHARNAME was simply sired ten years before Time of Troubles even happened.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/63900/spoilers-are-bhaalspawn-technically-tieflings
Is true, Tiefling's starting age is 17+2d4.
This is exactly the part I pointed out being wrong.
You (among others) ignored it.
Don't act like I am at fault here.
Thanks a bunch for ruining my thread. Bye.