Post by Hrungr on Nov 25, 2024 0:30:56 GMT
David Gaider @davidgaider.bsky.social
CHARACTERS - DAY SIX: Fenris
Now, DA2 is a story all on its own but I'm not going to go there other than to sum it up as "we had just over a year and a half to make this". It's why I only wrote one follower, Fenris, and although it'll make his fans mad: I probably shouldn't have.
Let me explain.
The way we'd approach making the followers is brainstorming a list of concepts covering first the array of gameplay classes (and sub-classes) and then making sure they each have some skin in the game when it came to the story's conflicts - ideally having characters on both sides of the major ones.
Why? You can't make a player care about the world, but you can make them care about characters who care about the world. It's the easiest way to provide hooks into a conflict, outside of it knocking on the player's door. Heck, it's probably better than that. Players will burn the world for approval.
After that, we'd decide things like romances/sexuality. Then the writers would pick who they'd write.
I always let my writers pick first. I figured they do their best work when it's something they're inspired to write... and they got so few chances at ownership, I wanted to give it whenever I could
It's why I (reluctantly) let Patrick wrest Cole from my grasp in DAI, a character I'd created in Asunder. It's also why I let Jennifer take Anders in DA2, who I'd started in Awakening.
In this instance, it meant I was left with the angry elven warrior character who nobody else appeared to want.
It should have been my first clue that something was up. The second was how the artists had zero clue what to do with him. The art concepts were all over the place - from mages to crows to... well, even weirder. No matter how hard I tried to explain the idea, the artists simply didn't seem to get it
Does this mean he was a bad character? Not exactly. Just an idea that probably deserved some re-examining. You can tell when an idea has a certain spark, and part of that is being easy to communicate. Sadly, there wasn't time for any re-examining even if it'd occurred to me. And it didn't, not yet.
If it had, if I had time, maybe I'd have re-booted him as a templar. Someone pro-templar rather than anti-mage, who could give a personal hook into Meredith and give the templars some badly-needed humanity.
But this falls into the shoulda-woulda-coulda category. I had a follower to write. Quickly.
I struggled, at first. It was hard to get away from "Fenris hates everything, all the time". It felt very one-note, and I didn't know where to take him. My third clue, I guess.
I also wasn't sure if I was the right person to write a former slave. I did know that couldn't be the center of his story.
I did know trauma, however. How it can eat you up. How the hate and resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. How it can infect your relationships.
Fenris's trauma isn't my trauma, obviously, but here I dipped into a more personal part of myself than I'd ever done before.
It gave me the center of his story I was missing, but wow was it uncomfortable. In a good way, maybe. I likely wouldn't have, if I hadn't been so desperate. In a way, I think DA2 had some of our best writing *because* of the timeline. It was raw, with little time to sand down the interesting parts.
I wouldn't have done the "Fenris doesn't talk to you for three years" thing if I'd known we were going to cut all the reactivity initially planned for the time jumps. When that call was made, I campaigned to cut the jumps to a year, but there was no time for the revisions it'd need. So, um. Awkward.
I used to get asked where the name came from, and I... don't remember? Obviously it's derived from Fenrir, but I don't recall why we picked that. Someone pointed at Fenris the Feared from Joe Abercrombie's books... and I did read them, so maybe the name lodged in my head? Wouldn't be the first time.
Casting Fenris turned out to be easy. He was the first time I requested a specific VA and got him. (The other times were Merrill and then Solas, my two "I want these specific Welsh actors, please".)
Why? OK, if you must know, I'd played a bit of Final Fantasy XII. I heard Balthier. "Yes, that." 😅
And Gideon Emery was a delight, as it turned out. Consummate professional, and that lovely gravel in his voice... good god. Bite the knuckles. There was a struggle to find the voice at the outset where I did my best not to say "just pls do Balthier" but he found Fenris on his own and it was amazing.
Overall, Fenris turned out better than he had any right to, considering the rocky start. He had a lot of soul, a vulnerability forged by pain that struck a chord with a lot of players, and I'm glad.
Do I regret anything? Probably having him live in a corpse-filled mansion that would never update.
That's a hindsight thing, though, as again the cut to reactivity over the time jumps came late. Outside of that, maybe letting the player give him back to Danarius? Poor shock value and a waste of resources because almost nobody took the option. Good evil options are ones that are tempting to take.
And the lyrium tattoos. Interesting concept, but they're probably why you'll never see Fenris in a future DA. He requires a custom body, and the tattoos make that expensive.
It's why I put Fenris in my 4th DA novel - the cancelled one. Don't fret, though. He died in it, so this way he lives on. 😉
CHARACTERS - DAY SIX: Fenris
Now, DA2 is a story all on its own but I'm not going to go there other than to sum it up as "we had just over a year and a half to make this". It's why I only wrote one follower, Fenris, and although it'll make his fans mad: I probably shouldn't have.
Let me explain.
The way we'd approach making the followers is brainstorming a list of concepts covering first the array of gameplay classes (and sub-classes) and then making sure they each have some skin in the game when it came to the story's conflicts - ideally having characters on both sides of the major ones.
Why? You can't make a player care about the world, but you can make them care about characters who care about the world. It's the easiest way to provide hooks into a conflict, outside of it knocking on the player's door. Heck, it's probably better than that. Players will burn the world for approval.
After that, we'd decide things like romances/sexuality. Then the writers would pick who they'd write.
I always let my writers pick first. I figured they do their best work when it's something they're inspired to write... and they got so few chances at ownership, I wanted to give it whenever I could
It's why I (reluctantly) let Patrick wrest Cole from my grasp in DAI, a character I'd created in Asunder. It's also why I let Jennifer take Anders in DA2, who I'd started in Awakening.
In this instance, it meant I was left with the angry elven warrior character who nobody else appeared to want.
It should have been my first clue that something was up. The second was how the artists had zero clue what to do with him. The art concepts were all over the place - from mages to crows to... well, even weirder. No matter how hard I tried to explain the idea, the artists simply didn't seem to get it
Does this mean he was a bad character? Not exactly. Just an idea that probably deserved some re-examining. You can tell when an idea has a certain spark, and part of that is being easy to communicate. Sadly, there wasn't time for any re-examining even if it'd occurred to me. And it didn't, not yet.
If it had, if I had time, maybe I'd have re-booted him as a templar. Someone pro-templar rather than anti-mage, who could give a personal hook into Meredith and give the templars some badly-needed humanity.
But this falls into the shoulda-woulda-coulda category. I had a follower to write. Quickly.
I struggled, at first. It was hard to get away from "Fenris hates everything, all the time". It felt very one-note, and I didn't know where to take him. My third clue, I guess.
I also wasn't sure if I was the right person to write a former slave. I did know that couldn't be the center of his story.
I did know trauma, however. How it can eat you up. How the hate and resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. How it can infect your relationships.
Fenris's trauma isn't my trauma, obviously, but here I dipped into a more personal part of myself than I'd ever done before.
It gave me the center of his story I was missing, but wow was it uncomfortable. In a good way, maybe. I likely wouldn't have, if I hadn't been so desperate. In a way, I think DA2 had some of our best writing *because* of the timeline. It was raw, with little time to sand down the interesting parts.
I wouldn't have done the "Fenris doesn't talk to you for three years" thing if I'd known we were going to cut all the reactivity initially planned for the time jumps. When that call was made, I campaigned to cut the jumps to a year, but there was no time for the revisions it'd need. So, um. Awkward.
I used to get asked where the name came from, and I... don't remember? Obviously it's derived from Fenrir, but I don't recall why we picked that. Someone pointed at Fenris the Feared from Joe Abercrombie's books... and I did read them, so maybe the name lodged in my head? Wouldn't be the first time.
Casting Fenris turned out to be easy. He was the first time I requested a specific VA and got him. (The other times were Merrill and then Solas, my two "I want these specific Welsh actors, please".)
Why? OK, if you must know, I'd played a bit of Final Fantasy XII. I heard Balthier. "Yes, that." 😅
And Gideon Emery was a delight, as it turned out. Consummate professional, and that lovely gravel in his voice... good god. Bite the knuckles. There was a struggle to find the voice at the outset where I did my best not to say "just pls do Balthier" but he found Fenris on his own and it was amazing.
Overall, Fenris turned out better than he had any right to, considering the rocky start. He had a lot of soul, a vulnerability forged by pain that struck a chord with a lot of players, and I'm glad.
Do I regret anything? Probably having him live in a corpse-filled mansion that would never update.
That's a hindsight thing, though, as again the cut to reactivity over the time jumps came late. Outside of that, maybe letting the player give him back to Danarius? Poor shock value and a waste of resources because almost nobody took the option. Good evil options are ones that are tempting to take.
And the lyrium tattoos. Interesting concept, but they're probably why you'll never see Fenris in a future DA. He requires a custom body, and the tattoos make that expensive.
It's why I put Fenris in my 4th DA novel - the cancelled one. Don't fret, though. He died in it, so this way he lives on. 😉