Project Eternity - Orgins

[Ulquiorra]

Yeah... but this not convince me .. bethesda "Starts" of the game where allways weak to me .. only skyrim and in some way morrowind has al least little reasnble begginning ..

 

I simply not think that cmy character was born in some dungeon and at age of 19 he/she decided to go outside or "Gods seded me here so i can fo thru main story"

[Osvir]

^You don't know any Elder Scroll story at all do you? There is tons of story in both the introduction of the video (the reason to why you are in your dungeon) and there is an incentive for you to embark on this Quest. You were put in the cell (much like Corvo), in the midst of Tamriel's demise. You are contacted by a higher being, or a woman who has taken a higher form, who helps you to begin your embarking on your Quest.

Thinking about it, Arena and Dishonored has somewhat the same pacing (Somewhat!) and it is extremely rewarding (I'm sitting with pen and paper and documenting Quests, Characters, Kingdoms, Maps, Rumors, Lore etc. etc.). Anyways, sorry, de-railing the topic.

In Arena you start off in the Dungeon as whatever you choose, but when you've finished the Dungeon you start off at your "destination".

Dragon Age: Origins plays instead with the idea of starting as someone (Like ToEE) and then you embark on the rather linear Quest (don't know if ToEE is linear though). It is a bottle-neck and uninteresting, whichever Origin I chose I'll always end up walking the "One Path".

In Arena you instead start off on the "One Path" (The Event) but as you finish it (The Event) you are sent to your Original City, and from there you can treck towards the first Main Quest. Of course, Arena would have been way more interesting if there were more Quests to do (and less Chore stuff). I'm not advocating the game (which I could, but that's irrelevant). I'm advocating the the Conceptual Idea of the Origins, used in Arena.

[Lephys]

I kind of like the idea of actually filling it in as you go. In other words, you'd always start at the same spot with every character you make. Perhaps it's some hub-location you got sent to, and so all of the possible places you came from lead here anyway (to whatever supernatural "event" you witness to kinda get things rolling in the P:E storyline, from the updates/wikia). Anywho, How you got there is, as far as the game is concerned, pointless, UNTIL it needs to know.

 

So, you, the player, are controlling your character about, and BOOM! Something crazy happens, and fighting breaks out (simplistic example), and someone says something like "Hey, can you hold your own in combat? We're going to need to fight our way out of here! They'll break through that door soon enough." And that's when you're presented with pertinent dialogue options that simultaneously CHOOSE your background (regarding your capability to fight/the situation at hand, in general) AND inform the other person of it. You know, like "I used to have to defend the herds from wolves, and the occasional brigand, so maybe I won't be com-PLETE-ly useless...", or "I've been surviving the streets on my own since I was 10... this is barely worse than a rainy day for me." Etc.

 

Anywho, the only difference is that you're choosing what happened in the past, rather than choosing it PRIOR to it happening, then playing through it (and/or 5-20 other little "background" segments, a la Dragon Age). The game still takes that into account throughout the rest of the playthrough (and you even get whatever background bonuses when you pick it.) The only difference is the picking. And it doesn't have to happen all at once. Clever design/writing can have you in a handful of scenarios with wildly branching options that cover the application of all possible backgrounds/bonuses. You could even possibly get your starting equipment somehow. Maybe people in a market are slain, and you manage to hide from the oncoming assault (perhaps even frantically locking yourself inside the nearest building, as suggested in the dialogue examples above), only to emerge where there are now freely "stealable" weapons. Maybe when you pick your "How well can you handle yourself?" option for your combatty background, you can grab whichever starting gear you'd like from the market stall debris (Like a staff and padded armor, or a 2-handed sword and plate, etc.). It would, of course, be piddly, basic equipment, valuable more for it's function (over nothing) than the price it would fetch at another market.

 

*shrug*. That could be pretty awesome, if it's worked in so well it just seems like you're playing through a story, and your character was already different from the start, and you simply didn't know your own character's background until you had him divulge it to others when the situation demanded it.

[Dream]

I've gotten to the point where I think this guy must be trolling. I've met people who could barely speak English and had better spelling.

[Brother Pain]

I really enjoyed the origins in DA:O and they really fit that game, as it was heavy on fairly linear story, and the origins gave you a decent hook without forcing you to play a particular character (eg. Shepard, Hawke) or force a completely cliché background on you (like BG, NWN, NWN2, and many many others).

For a much more free game, as it seems P:E will be, options like the backgrounds in Bloodlines and Arcanum would probably work better though.

[Osvir]

The Dream:
* Form your character through gameplay. Join a Faction to determine your Class. Do Quests to form your Class. Maybe you chose Priest at the Character Creation but by joining the Thieves Guild you:
A: Become a Priest/Thief, because "Trainers" or whatnot, or simply by joining the Thieves Guild makes your Priest more "Thief"-ish
B: Perhaps you'd only meet a set of Companions by choosing Faction path. For instance, do you meet Edair as a friend if you join the Thieves Guild, or does he face you off viewing you as an enemy of the state?
C: You instead chose to join the City Guard Faction, Edair & You face off the Thieves Guild together, but in turn -you- fight a Thief Guild companion you could've recruited.
D: Paths! Different paths, crossing each other but going on different journeys to the "Direction". "Chrono Trigger" in a sense, the Thief Guild path takes you to the "End Goal" but it is still different from going down the City Guard Guild.

The Budget/Realistic Dream?:
* I have no idea if it allows for it or if the above dream is even possible.

The Simple Method:
* Arcanum/TES, Cultural Backgrounds.

[Ulquiorra]

I've gotten to the point where I think this guy must be trolling. I've met people who could barely speak English and had better spelling.

 

Sory but only person trolling now is you. Your personal atack propably will tech me something. You guys also don't have perfect spelling and somethimes are very rude and im just tolarance about it .. a thing that you propably forgotten but you propably thing that you are perfect and only i have don't.

 

Bisides i generaly make a lot of mistakes when writhing even in my first language so please don't atack me more ...

[Barothmuk]

The origins in DA:O were fun but I vastly prefer the tabula rasa approach.

[Umberlin]

The Origins were one of the few worthwhile points of DA:O, and all of them getting shoehorned into the headache inducing at worst, boring and tiresome at best, greywarden storyline, was . . . sad, because any one of them was more interesting than that. You could be winding your way through Dwarven politics, and their intrigue, and it would be great - you'd be having all sorts of fun - and then the story would slam into a wall, the greywarden wall, and the rest of the game was agonizingly scraping your face along that wall. Logan was probably the only character in that bloody thing that was a saving grace, and he was entirely wasted on the horribly generic and cliche storyline.

 

As much as I can't stand DA2, at least it 'tried' to bring something other than 'evil sweeps the land' to the table. I hate saying it but DA2 was a better concept than DA:O, but like too many concepts . . .  had terrible implementation, it didn't follow through with the concept.

 

Anything, actually playing through DA:O's origins, it's a flavor thing, in a way, but a flavor thing that worked. Like Kaine (at the end of the last page)  I'm actually more in favor of Background traits you select, but, I need to stress that they should matter beyond simple statistical means. If we get to play through a background we choose, neat, but the important thing - at least for me - is the actual impact of a background trait in the overall story and gameplay. Your decisions should matter, even seemingly simple character creation choices.

 

Ever meet a person that saw you, or another person, creating a character in an RPG and go, "What's the point?" That's a good question, and the answer is that every single portion of character creation should have a point. The choices you make, ideally, from height and age to class and skillset to background and gender and so on . . . should all matter in some way. Who you are as a person, on the physical mental and spiritual levels all matter, at least to some extent, even if not in every single situation. In that light, to me at least, character creation is one of the most important points of a game, and, thus, coming back to 'origins' or 'background traits' these things are very important, in my mind, and should be handled with the weight, respect and intelligence thatt demands.

Edited February 1, 2013 by Umberlin