On the Aging of Dragons
The greatest strength of fantasy (a category that includes science fiction) — and it’s greatest weakness– is that it takes people with recognizably human characteristics and puts them in extreme and alien circumstances. The rules change according to the whim of the author. In the Dresden series, for instance, a wizard can create flame in an enclosed area– but the heat from it will leak out onto anything nearby according to the normal calculus of a deferential equation. In the Riftwar saga, however, Pug can toss around fireballs all day without toasting marshmallows a few feet from the flame. The trick, therefore, is to find a character to whom the rules can be explained, so that the author can fill in their audience.
We see this in non fantasy stories all the time, in fact. It’s no coincidence that so very many cop movies have a rookie cop and a days-from-retirement veteran. One person to explain the rules, and the other to be explained to. Also: culture clash is comedy gold.
Which brings me to video games. Characters in Role Playing Games (RPGs) are, just as the name implies, playing a role. We inhabit a character who has a position within and defined by the world. The problem is that our characters have names, histories, families– if they’re real people they have everything real people ought to have. Unfortunately we players have just begun the game. We don’t know the 15-50 years of back story that our character has developed.We don’t know the history they would have learned as a child the prejudice they would have imbibed with the milk of their infanthood. We are, in short, a stranger in a society we ought to know.
There are a few solutions to this problem. The most cliche is to simple give the character amnesia. It’s the perfect excuse for not knowing who their best friend is– and also gives the player an immediate goal that coincides with the character’s motivation. Another interesting way to do this is the same “fish out of water” technique I mentioned in the cop example. Commander Sheppard can’t know every alien race because the galaxy is vast and humanity is new. The Vault Dweller is fresh from a vault. All ties are cut in an alien environment.
And then there’s Hawke. Hawke is the main character from Dragon Age 2. Your Avatar in that world. The iconic image, is of course female*, though you can also play a male version of Hawke. Hawke is a different sort of person than any other I’ve inhabited. She has a mother. A brother. She has history we don’t know about. At all.
We do meet her as she’s running from everything she’s ever known, and on the way to a land that loves her not. This would almost be the classic piscis ex aqua situation, except…
In the second part of the first act, Hawke is given a choice about who to work for in the coming year. That year exists solely as a cut-scene. She develops new relationships and strengthens older ones, all without player input and without player knowledge of what is happening. Mechanically, we are led to assume that our Hawke is continuing in the direction we have pointed her, but it does lead to an odd disconnect between what the character knows, and what the player is able to learn.
One more interesting thing that Dragon Age 2 does that is worth mentioning:
In most any body of literature, we know what the hypothesis is, and thus when the story is over. A scientific paper will state this up front, along the lines of “we thought X was true, did some testing, and we were right!** the proof follows”. A work of fiction is a bit different, but generally within the first chapter we know what the goal is: “win the Trojan war”, “found Rome”, “Marry Romeo/Juliet”, “rescue the princess from the 8th castle”.*** This is utterly unlike real life. In real life, we simply do not know when our story is over. Mythologically, people who do learn this information go mad– but the fact that it’s mere mythology sort of proves the point.
In Dragon Age, the conflict takes a long time to develop. I’m 3hrs into the story, and I don’t know what Hawke needs to do yet. I’ve got a couple quests I can do, so I do them. I’m basically killing time within the story until it develops more. In this sort of aimless day to day existence, I am playing Hawke very much like an actual refugee might behave. I don’t know what to do with Hawke, and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. But both of us know that she can’t just lay down and do nothing. This is a perfect marriage of character and player motivations.
Dragon Age 2 so far as managed to do something I’ve never seen a game do before, and do it in a way that I find intriguing. I’m not actually sure if this was the intended direction for the game, but I hope it was. Bioware has done something unique. I can’t wait to get back to Kirkwall.
*Suck it, Bioware Marketing.
** I can haz tenure now?
*** Yes, I did just compare Mario to the Iliad? why?
