Playing the Third Ryder Sibling

Randomly this thread reminded me of this song, it kinda fits xD.



Edit*: Song starts at around 00.42 & for ease as its a long song, the Lyrics.

But Scott/Sara wouldn't both be in the game in the latter scenario because one would be left in the Milky Way, thus there'd still be two siblings in Andromeda and the dynamic wouldn't change at all other than there being an extra reference or two in regards to the family and friends they all left behind.

The setup for Scott and Sara is no different than Shepard; both of which are officially John and Jane Shepard before you change their names. The only difference here is that no one vocally spoke John and Jane in ME1-3 while they'll vocalize Scott and Sara.

You chose Shepard's background and then you dictated their personality through gameplay; same with the Ryder's in Andromeda. Same as what they did with Hawke. Same as what they did with the Inquisitor (sans name of course). Similar enough to what players could do with Geralt. Similar to what people could do with Adam Jensen or what's his face from Alpha Protocol.

Bioware isn't doing anything different from what they've done before or what everyone else has done and has been declared acceptable by fans.

You did not encounter default appearance Jane Shepard as you played a M!Shepard, or default appearance John Shepard as you played F!Shepard.

I'm not understanding how anything you said is relevant or can refute anything I said.

I like the third Ryder head canon more. It is obviously an AU approach. I feel that the moment I rename and customize the appearance of Sara or Scott I am doing it regardless. At any rate, as odd as it sounds, it lets me not get hanged up on the "but the protagonist in this game is essentially fixed" issue, and I like that.

Yeah, every playthrough is AU anyway, doesn't matter if you have additional sibling or not

Because it makes it hard to talk about either character, since their predetermined personality is only valid if you aren't playing as them. It limits the discussions you can have about those characters, because technically neither of them have a canon personality, or both, or both but not at the same time depending on how you look at it.

People like to look at various scenarios and discuss what characters feel about the various events that happen, why they say certain things, do certain things, how aspects of their personalities inform those behaviours at critical moments etc. That is a whole lot more difficult to do with the Ryder twins. For them to take up 2 team slots for characters with potentially blank slate personalities is rather annoying thing to many people.

For starters, I mentioned nothing about headcanon. That's the OP's deal. On the blank slate issue, both are potentially blank slates. Only one will actually become that, but both have the potential to be that before you choose.

So how can you have a conversation about character motivations that won't apply to 50% of people's playthroughs at any one time? Such conversations will get terribly bogged down in 'Well, that doesn't applt to my playthrough, because it didn't happen' etc. And if the gender split ratio is more slanted towards say Scott Ryder, that will slant the conversations towards the predetermined personality of Sara etc, which ups the potential for frustration even more.

Plus, if you think people can be completely impartial and seperate out potential behaviour from predetermined behaviour, then you are being very naive. Yes, it *should* be as easy as saying its a different reality, the other versions and their attitudes, actions don;t apply, but that isn't how it works in practice.

Just look at Until Dawn and the number of people who trashed Ashley because under a specific set of circumstances, she could cause a beloved character to be killed. It didn't have to happen, and you needed to work quite hard to actually make it happen, but because it *could^ happen, people took against the character mightily as 'proof' of her character being scheming, crazy etc. Despite that not being the case in all other cases.

It will promote cases of people looking for indicators that a certain character *is* this way, despite how you choose to play them. And if you don't believe me, just take a look at how people reacted to Hawke's behaviour in DA:I. It didn't matter how many times it was drilled into their skulls that Hawke's behavior was completely out of character from the one that many of made in DA2. Because it fit *their* opinion of what Hawke was like, stubborn posters insisted that it was completely in character, because of this, that and the other reasons, despite the fact that nothing in the game can legislate for how you played your own version of Hawke. You decided what she did, what she thought about blood magic etc etc And no 'well after she saw in Kirkwall, she would think ill of it etc etc' will convince you otherwise if you didn't play your Hawke that way.

Trust me, this has the potential to be a grave error.