Morrigan Disapproves (of Your Shenanigans)

Initially, I thought I hated Dragon Age because of genre shock. I'm just not into dark fantasy; it's not my thing. I read the first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire because my BFF wouldn't shut up about them, and frankly, I was unimpressed. That same BFF adores Dragon Age, so I figured correlation=causation and I hated DA because I hate dark fantasy.

But as I've been playing DA for the second time, I've realized that's not the case. Okay, it's part of it. But the real reason I hate DA is because of Approval. This is kind of weird, considering that Influence was one of my favorite parts of Knights of the Old Republic II, which you may recall is my Favorite Game Ever. Influence and Approval are pretty much the same thing, right?

Wrong, actually.




In KOTORII's Influence system, the more influence you had over a party NPC, the more their internal alignment shifted to conform to yours. In DA's Approval system, the more approval a party NPC has for you, the more you've shifted your internal alignment to conform to theirs. I still consider manipulating KOTORII's Disciple from the goodiest goody-two-shoes who ever two-shoed into a mirror of my bitter Dark Jedi Exile to be the crowning achievement of my gaming career. In contrast, Alistair sticking to the massive holes in his morality despite being stupidly in love with my female Cousland was an incredible disappointment. She executed a man whose surrender she had accepted, utterly destroying her personal honor and any credibility of the honor of her family, all to keep her boyfriend from abandoning her*. Dark fantasy at its finest? Maybe. I suppose you could consider a game that manipulates the player to that degree to be an unequivocal success, but I just about walked away from it permanently at that point because the characters were acting like morality meters rather than people. Interesting, in a genre that crows about gray morality, how black-and-white everyone was about their own internal scales.

Okay, so how would I do it? Well, given infinite time and resources, I'd have the game extrapolate a multi-point moral system for the PC based on the player's choices as the game progresses. Ideally these would be based on the core themes of the game. DA has several issues for what could be considered for moral debate: mages vs. templars, for instance. Consistently expressing an opinion toward one side or the other of an issue would push you toward that end of that particular scale**. Maybe there would be a compassion vs. practicality scale based on whether you agreed to complete petty side quests, or agreed to complete them but demanded rewards, or dismissed them because you have to save the world and don't have time. There's a lot of possibility here. Every party NPC would have their own position on these scales. As the player gains influence with these NPCs, their positions shift to conform to the player's. Maybe the NPC's position is even easier to change on some issues than on others--Lelliana might stick to her guns on compassion vs. practicality, but would be open to discussion on mages vs. templars.

As for actually gaining influence, nominal influence would be gained through the usual manner of making choices that support an NPC's positions. The gifts system could stay; though I'm not overly fond of it***, it serves a purpose. The important place to gain influence would be when you did something particularly contrary to an NPC's position on an issue. Dialogue with that NPC would open, and you would be able to try and convince them that your position was correct. This is fairly standard, but it could be enhanced a little by making each NPC particularly vulnerable to specific kinds of arguments. Lelliana might be particularly susceptible to emotional appeals, while Sten would be swayed by demonstrations of command, and Morrigan would understand logic. They might also be turned off by the wrong kind of argument--Sten might respond positively to "[Command] It is not for you to understand, but to obey," but Morrigan sure wouldn't! The types of argument available could be based on the PC's stats, or even on their morality position. A PC who regularly slaughtered children would have a hard time making a convincing emotional appeal based on starving orphans, for example. Particularly egregious differences of opinion might require multiple checks, but success would be rewarded with influence gain--even though the inciting action was against that NPC's values.

If I really wanted to be ambitious, I'd even have the NPCs' attitudes toward one another change. Alistair and Morrigan have vastly different moral positions, right? But as the player gains influence over them, bringing them both closer to the PC's alignment, they'd also start to have more in common. Gaining enough influence to change the views of one NPC might inspire admiration (and further influence) from another NPC. Maybe there could be elaborate three-way conversations where, instead of simply being a vehicle for siding with one over the other and gaining influence, the point would be to bring the NPCs closer together! Maybe there would be awesome special attacks unlocked as certain combinations of NPCs overcame prejudices and learned to work as a team!

That's the sort of game I'd like to play, a game where the NPCs behave like actual people with whom I'm forming a bond, not sets of criteria for me to meet. DA is not there yet.



* I had the last laugh, though: she proceeded to land the killing blow on the Archdemon herself, regaining her honor through sacrifice and leaving Alistair a broken, friendless husk. Boy howdy, I am still bitter about that playthrough.

** Heck, it doesn't even need to be a linear scale! It could be a polygon of opinion!

** Side note: I've always had this fantasy about a game where upgrading or downgrading a party NPC's equipment affects influence. So buying that really expensive sword and giving it to Alistair would make him happy, but taking it away without replacing it with something even better would leave him miffed. I can see this making annoying and finicky inventory management even more annoying and finicky, though.