“Another win, but who’s counting?” It’s the stupidest thing a person could say after a fight. No one. No one was counting. Including you, Kai, unless you think “another” is a numeral. Recognizing a win in no sense implies tallying anything. It doesn’t make sense. Stop saying it, man. Just stop saying it. In fact, unless you’ve got something useful to say, maybe don’t say anything at all?
For as long as I’ve played what I think we can sensibly call BioWare-like RPGs, this issue has driven me to distraction. Companion characters who feel the need to comment at the end of every battle, but say nothing of interest or worth, and then say it over and over and over again. Maybe it could not be a thing?
I love Avowed, I’ve been so fortunate to have had code for a couple of weeks before its release, but no deadline to finish it by—this has allowed me to really sink into it, to explore its sprawling Living Lands at my own pace, never pressured to reach a story beat. I spent the 25 to 30 hours the game is supposed to last reaching just its midpoint, and am still in no hurry. I suppose you could argue that I should be slightly more motivated to speed up given the scale and danger of the Dreamscourge, but I’m not able to live in denial of its spread being entirely beholden to my advancing the plot. The plague can wait, because I just saw what might be a hidden cave entrance and it could end up being a whole other dungeon to explore.
The catch is, I’ve survived a lot of battles, big and small, primarily skirmishes with Xaurips or spiders who are hanging out in the next valley I’m poking my nose into, defiantly fought entirely with my bow and arrow. And every single time, every single one of them, one of my two companions feels the need to comment on it. But each appears equipped with only two or three different things to say. So dear God, I’ve heard them all so many bloody times.
“Another glorious battle!” bellows Kai, my constant companion (I can no more leave him in camp than I could when he was in his Garrus incarnation in Mass Effect), following our killing a bunch of halfwits who couldn’t be talked out of trying to kill us. No, Kai, no it wasn’t. It was ignominious at best, and more realistically, fairly grotesque. His cheering in delight after I’ve been forced to slaughter some dumb-dumbs rebels who wouldn’t listen to calm reason makes me think there’s something really very wrong with him.
Far worse occurred with another companion after a significant story event that I shall not spoil. Let’s put it this way: everything she’s known and loved has just been destroyed, she’s distraught, and seconds later, on stumbling into a group of sentient toadstools or the like, she’s straight back to happily cheering me on and celebrating wins.
Or how about one companion discovered later on who, every single time she uses her “dispel” ability, says the same two things. “What, like it’s hard?” and “Child’s play.” Both things. Every time. And neither of them makes any sense in context.
Avowed deserves so much better than this! The game has fantastic writing throughout, with a really lovely group of chums to chat to, and banter between them all in camp is a real treat to stand still and listen to. So why, for the love of all things why, does each only have three things they say at the end of every fight?!
Given the verbose nature of Obsidian and BioWare’s RPGs, and how the voice actors must be spending days and days in the recording studio performing their billions of lines, why can’t they each just have a couple of dozen different post-fight lines to drop? It’d add, what, ten minutes to the recording time? And it’s not exactly a Herculean writing task. Watch, I’ll do some now:
- “Phew, glad we were able to put that lot down so quickly.”
- “Hey, I think you clipped my ear with one of your shots that time!”
- “Ha! They really thought they could beat us, didn’t they?”
- “I told my parents it was worth spending so much time practicing with this bow.”
- “Well, if they weren’t all dead, I think they’d have to admit they were impressed.”
That was a minute’s work, and no, none of them is particularly good, but then nor is any line any companion has ever said in any game in the same circumstances. They’re certainly up there with Marius telling me that he’s pulled his shoulder for the 786th time.
All of them would be deeply annoying the second time they were spoken, so you write 20, 30 of them per character, and have them tick off so they don’t repeat until they’ve all been said. Done. Problem solved. I fixed a 30-year-old bane of RPGs, and I don’t even know how to use C++.
There’s an even easier solution. Hold on tight. Don’t have them say anything at all! Nothing needs to be said! I just killed seven skeletons that were stood by that rock, because I wanted to go past that rock. It wasn’t a battle about which operas will be written, it was just a bit of busywork in a video game. It requires no comment. Silence does perfectly.
Heck, I’ll compromise! I’m that decent. How about they only say their silly lines after a named boss fight? There are plenty of those in Avowed, and they tend to feel like a more major event, even if they’re just ticking off a bounty. When I’ve won one of those, I feel like I’ve at least achieved something, so sure, let Kai declare it a glorious battle. Give him his moment.
This is absolutely not an Avowed issue, but an RPG games issue. But that doesn’t let it off the hook. Obsidian, when you make the inevitably (and deeply desired) Avowed 2, please, please, could you be the team to lead the way on changing this? Because the choice is doing this, or I will somehow arrange for your friends and families to respond, “Great work, you really ate some mouthfuls” every single time you have a meal for the rest of your lives.
.