So the ending for Dragon Age 2 – structured within a frame narrative, no less – is actually set up at the end of Act I and the Deep Roads expedition. Hawke and his companions find a lyrium idol that induces some sort of madness (don’t they all) and it ends up being responsible for betrayal and death.

And then, with the exception of the great wealth you amass in Act II, it’s put aside and tucked into a little drawer.

We certainly get hints of it through Varric’s personal quest and the swift escalation of Knight-Commander Meredith from kind-of-nuts zealot dictator to batshit crazy… zealot dictator. But the idol itself magically reappears, forged into Meredith’s sword, and is a very convenient excuse for her being completely off her rocker.

Now, if I missed something in sidequests along the way, feel free to correct me. I became complacent about them toward the end since I wanted to finish the main plot. But if the actual support of this plot device was entirely developed through sidequests in Acts II and III then it’s still a failure to me.

My issue with the ending (and keep in mind I sided with the mages and was playing a rogue; your mileage may vary) is this: Why should I care? Yeah, she’s a menace. But if Anders hadn’t forced my hand I probably wouldn’t have made a choice. In fact, I was tempted to side with the Templars just because of how pissed I was at Anders. Game mechanics – specifically knowing I’d have to kill him and would then have no healer – made my choice for me, but I found Anders’ particular means of conflict resolution far more compelling.

In fact, I’d prefer it if the game ended there.

Now, that’s not to say I wouldn’t want some alterations. But the entire struggle in this game is seen in Anders’ character progression. Oppression, fear, vengeance, doubt. The road to hell really is paved with good intentions. Why not use what’s already there?

What I propose is a complete restructure of the final hour of the game, starting from the point Anders blows up the Chantry. At this point, the Big Bad becomes Justice/Vengeance. And why shouldn’t it? This is a threat to the Mages, Templars, the city of Kirkwall, and – being that it exists in Anders – it’s something Hawke is invested in.

After the Chantry incident, Hawke can choose to allow Anders to be taken into custody or fight his way out and help him escape. If the latter, it’s sure to be quite the battle. I’d expect the First Enchanter would not turn on Hawke even though Anders is essentially running the name of mages through the mud, so that leaves the Templars. Tone it down a bit, but make it still wave-dependent.

Now, Vengeance – being a demon – wouldn’t be sated by Meredith’s death and it would certainly reel against being imprisoned. You see what I’m getting at here. Vengeance as the end boss of Dragon Age 2, but maybe with a twist. After all, how do you separate him from Anders? Do you even bother?

One thing I missed from DA1 was the ability to portion out your teammates at the final battle. It’s also something I absolutely loved in ME2. They have this great Friend/Rival system in DA2, so let’s use it! One final mission that involves all of your companions as you try to save or destroy Anders. Everybody has cards they can play and wheels they can grease, but how effective they are depends on their Friendship/Rivalry score.

But what will become of this blog? Well, it’ll still stay personal. I’ll keep folks updated on my own writing and other such shenanigans related to my business. This site will be sticking around, of course, and likely moving to a domain and a dedicated server toward the beginning of the year.

More to be posted soon when the blog goes live!

Okay, let’s be honest. I finished the first draft of the outline. And yes, it was a struggle at times to force myself to write it out and really decide what happens from point A to point B, but I’m much happier with the structural foundation of the story now. I feel like regardless, I have a path to follow. I know what to write, and I can spend these last few days tweaking the outline instead of tweaking entire chapters later.

At present, it’s a 5,000 word document of notes and outline points. There’s actually – and I swear I didn’t plan it this way – 100 phases even. Zette’s phase outline is broken into 250 word chunks, which would be unfortunate for me as that would only be 25,000 words. However, I’m anticipating wordier phases than that because some were fairly general and covered larger bits of events. There’s 20-21 chapters currently, I anticipate each running 3,000-5,000 words, which will be more than enough.

However, I’ve still got some stuff to add, I think. I’ll review it again tomorrow and see if I need to, but I think there should be at least one more chapter – if not two – in the middle someplace. Not for the sake of word count, because in my mind a story is as long as it needs to be and no longer. But to set up some things that happen a little later in the book.

And then… there’s the ending. It leaves everybody in a bit of a lurch. Very little is resolved. And yes, this is meant to be part one of three, but I’m a little torn on how to handle this. Some of the questions posed at the beginning of the book are answered, which is ideal for an ending. But it’s raising many more questions, and I’m not sure if that’s going to fly.

What do you guys think? Have we been too strict to define the fact that a series book still needs to stand on its own and tidy up its smaller plots? Is there room for a ‘one huge story in three installments’?

Well, ten years and hard-drives full of incomplete stories later, I have to ask myself what’s going on. Why can’t I finish anything? Sometimes it’s a problem of motivation, but more often than not it’s that I just get stuck somewhere in the middle. I almost always know how I want a story to begin and how I want it to end, but getting between those two goal posts is the hard part.

And it is hard. If you’re putting love and care into your novel then guess what? It’s supposed to be hard. If you’re doing it right, it’s probably going to hurt a little. (That’s what she said joke not-withstanding) And I’ve realized – grudgingly – that this is what an outline does. It forces you to sit your butt down in a chair and plan out what’s going to happen to get your characters from point A to point B. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to ooze with genius symbolism or other such nonsense us writers think we’re positively brilliant for concocting on a whim.

Really, it just doesn’t happen that way. In no other artform does anyone expect a perfect rendition on a first pass. You don’t sculpt the minute details first, you lay out a slab of clay and mold it so that you have a guide for what you want to make. You don’t paint in the tiniest lines right off the bat, you layer down a background or a wash, usually after a loose sketch of some sort.

An outline is your loose sketch. It’s structural support. The foundation lent to this layered, complex building that will eventually become your novel. Without some sort of structure, it will fall one way or another. You may have the gusto to finish it while meandering along, and that’s great! But when you go back to edit the unruly beast, you’ll probably find yourself rewriting the majority of the book.

What’s less painful: A 1,000 word outline now, or a 100,000 word rewrite later?

That said, I am outlining for NaNo this year. I’m using the phase outline method, which so far has worked pretty well. I’m close to clearing 2,000 words in outline alone and I’m probably a quarter of the way through the plot. It’s getting harder, and I have to grit my teeth and slog through the middle sections, but that means less of a pause and certainly not a wall when I actually go to write.

So let’s hear it. Any other outline converts out there?

Quite excited to see the new toolset!

It’s something only a writer can understand, really. One moment you start writing and lose yourself in your work. Everything you write flows like a damned golden waterfall; immaculate. You look up and hours have passed, thousands of words now written. The next moment, it’s a chore just to keep yourself planted in the chair. Everything else – even things you’d normally put off – seems to be a better, less painful alternative. You’re not feeling it, and the words that do come out are certain crap.

But then in a month you go back and read what you wrote under both of those times and the Immaculate Prose now seems trite and cliched. And the absolute drivel you penned while in a comatose state? Well. You must have been having an out-of-body experience, because it’s damn good, and you sure as hell can’t remember writing it.

Everyone says that if you want to be a writer, you need to write and write daily. But as artists and the most caustic of critics, we condemn ourselves if we are not feeling ‘creative’, convinced we can write nothing under such duress. But we have to write. Even when we don’t want to do it, we have to. It’s the writer’s affliction, and it has absolutely nothing to do with creativity.

So the next morning you get up and drag yourself to the computer before anyone else is awake, remember this as you stare in agony at a blank screen: If you wait for ‘creativity’ to take hold, you may find yourself still staring at that screen a week, a month, or even a year later.

I was thinking perhaps Pushing Daisies, or if I’m feeling terribly ambitious and rather crazy, Battlestar Galactica, though that doesn’t have much time left. Love House, but not hip to medical jargon. Taking on a breakout hit like Heroes is just dangerous. Rome, again, favorite of mine but it’s canceled and there’s only so much you can do within the timeline of Roman history that was displayed. I admire the writing style on Gilmore Girls, but it’s a.) been off the air for a couple years and b.) difficult to pull off that snappy banter, though that’s the direction television seems to be taking. However, it allows the most leeway in terms of coming up with plot.

Does anyone know though, when you’re writing a spec should you be writing it for the current season, or an upcoming season? Or can you write it to slip into an earlier season? Because honestly, once Amy Sherman-Palladino left the show, it just wasn’t the same. At all.

Aside from the spec script, I’m planning on entering The People’s Pilot. Essentially it’s a high-profile contest to write a proposal for a new series. I’m in the process of formulating my Ties of Vengeance ideas into a one-hour drama series in the vein of Rome with several different character viewpoints all tied together by common and uncommon enemies. Quite a number of changes to be made of course, and I won’t be able to post it here, but anyone who has experience in this kind of thing and would be willing to read it, I’d be very grateful.

On a game-related note, I finally got my Xbox back after the disc drive kept scratching up my discs and making them unplayable. I ended up exchanging about 5 copies of Mass Effect alone, and then I just got a disc cleaner (which is nice, by the way – the MadCatz one – highly recommended) but the disc kept scratching up and erroring literally right before the final boss fight. I would clean it and put it back in, but the same thing happened. Fun stuff I tell ya! But they just gave me a whole new system and a month of free Xbox Live for my trouble. Of course now I need a bridge to actually play online, but that’s another matter.

In the wake of my console’s homecoming, I purchased Call of Duty 4. I had heard good things about the story, and so far I think it is quite interesting, though not as much as I was lead to believe. Still, for a true war-time FPS, the story is good, and the elements of storytelling are effective. I definitely love that you play as different soldiers and get different viewpoints. Right now I’m on Price’s flashback mission. Last time I tried it I got my throat ripped out by a dog.

I Wanna Kill Zombies and Aliens Together, by Girls Don’t Game author Monique.

Whether they’re willing to admit it, I believe romance is a memorable element that everyone can appreciate in games – when it’s appropriate. It makes a story more compelling. No one is altruistic enough to want to save the world. But they will go to the ends of the earth (or the galaxy) to save the one they love.

That said, I’m not very happy with romance in games, in its current state. Open-ended games like Mass Effect don’t delve deep enough to scratch the surface of what makes love so dynamic and so magnetic to us, and linear games take love out of our hands and make it, in many cases, far more epic than most of us appreciate.

Tomorrow I will be having a meeting to discuss the plot and companions of a NWN2 project I am currently working on, which is yet to be announced. One of the topics on the agenda is the depth of companion romances, so I will likely be posting my thoughts here as well.

On that same topic, I also found an interview with Ray Muzyka about the future of romance and sex in Bioware games. Despite the whole Blair Witch shaky camera stuff, it’s an interesting mini-interview: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/03/10/bioware-talks-video-game-romance-in-the-post-sexbox-era/

Quantum Crisis

Genre: FPS/RPG

Theme: At what point does duty cross into complete lack of choice and individualism?

Story: You play as Adrian Trudeau, a young Captain of the Fleet sent to a remote island with a squadron of four soldiers under your command. Your orders:

1.) Find and secure the research specimens

2.) Retrieve any documentation

3.) Destroy the facility

Things do not go according to plan, however. You are forced to kill to complete your mission; merely an extension of your duty. And yet as you reach the research facility, you begin to realize that you have followed your orders directly into the pit of what promises to be eternal guilt.

Setting: Island jungle research facility. Assets include tunnel, huts, research bunker, supplies, ATV, helicopter, various furnishings and area items, foliage.

Characters: PC, four soldiers; marine class (allies), two soldiers (enemies), four researchers (enemies), six civilians (enemies).

Gameplay: First-person ‘slaughter’ shooting mixed with squad tactics. Single-player CTF mechanics: NPCs can alter your gameplay experience by claiming resources first. Story Integration: Playable ‘flashbacks’, narrative techniques woven into gameplay. ‘Leap’ mechanic: Relics from the facility will trigger intense bouts of emotion for the player that leap them into the lives of others.

Fallacy

Genre: Non-violent FPS

Theme: Propaganda and fear-mongering are dangerous tools in even the most well-intentioned hands.

Story: Paranoia has broken out in your small colony. Your people have been subjected to martial law after sabotage propagated against the civilian-based government. Such actions are threatening your way of life – the utopia you as a people have strived to achieve – and you, a reporter who has always maintained rather strong opinions, now find yourself a chief suspect. Now you must use the only tool in your arsenal – your camera – to get yourself off the hook and the subsequent chopping block. Will you search for the truth, or just make a convincing argument to put someone else in hot water?

Setting: Block of a rundown city, much like the Cylon-occupied Caprica in Battlestar Galactica. Assets include various buildings (no entry), vehicles, area items for flavor, propaganda materials.

Characters: PC, colony president, colony advisor, three prominent townsfolk, eight civilians, four soldiers.

Gameplay: First-person camera shooting to record certain actions. Choice-based mechanics: Player can search only for the true culprit, catch incriminating shots of innocent people, or go so far as to alter subjects and photos.

Unreliable

Genre: FPS

Theme: Sometimes the person you must trust the least is yourself.

Story: As one of the last remaining ‘pureblood’ humans, you were snatched up from a young age and brainwashed for use by the Galactic Civil Alliance as part of a project to create an unquestionable board of officials meant to represent all of humanity. But during the Rebellion you were freed from your prison, only to enter one that is far worse by comparison. Without the drugs to which your body has become acclimated, you are beginning to hallucinate. Not only can you not recognize friend from foe, but you’re not entirely sure what humanity really looks like anymore…

Setting: Interior of the experimental facility, now under siege by the Rebel Strike Force. Assets include animated lights, animated doors, animated lift, cameras, alarm systems, various area items for flavor.

Characters: PC, experiment facilitator, Rebel Strike Force Captain, five Rebels, five GCA soldiers, two security bots, one medic bot.

Gameplay: Standard ‘slaughter’ shooting when applicable. Literary technique: Unreliable Narrator. This technique greatly affects gameplay as the player can never be sure if what they’re seeing is reality or a hallucination from withdrawal. This encompasses not only enemies and setting, but also weapons.

However! I really quite loathe the execution. Maybe I’m just abnormal – I was raised around guys, my best friends are guys, and I’ve always been a huge tomboy – but how many of you play games like that? Liv Tyler’s long and girly sigh, Carrie’s cooing. Perhaps that’s a good image for younger girls to respond to – something very feminine. But for those of us who know that girls do play games, it doesn’t do much to dispel the myth that girls only play casual games, and in a very… girly way.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. I applaud Nintendo’s strides, but I would have loved to have seen some different direction on these commercials.