Dgaider said:
Keep in mind, though, that Arcanum's and Daggerfall's backgrounds were just something you selected. They didn't change how the game started out, though they might have affected dialogue choices later on (in Arcanum, anyhow... I'm not sure about Daggerfall).
Just to point out, Daggerfall's backstories did even less. You could answer some questions in the beginning which were
supposed to affect your standings with different factions (like many things in Daggerfall, it was never fully implemented) and creatures. You also got a perk or two depending on the questions, and sometimes you could start out with a badass dagger. The backstory the game generated for you was nice to read, but didn't affect the game in any way. It really helped me to get into the character, and get a sense of where my guy was coming from.
Oh, and, Daggerfall had no dialogue choices to affect anyways.
Consider what it might have been like if you had been given a small selection of background options in Arcanum and, instead of starting after the zeppelin crash, you could begin play in other areas each with its own initial issues that you needed to deal with and slowly were inserted into the story from that point. Impossible? Not at all. From what I can remember, Arcanum had a sort of "chosen one" plot... you could just as easily be attacked whether you were aboard the zeppelin as anywhere else in the world, survive that attack, and enter things that way.
Trying to do it this way, though, is a hell of a lot of work.
The way Arcanum handled it, since it turned out there really was no such thing as a chosen one, it could have quite possibly worked out that you started out in Tarant or somewhere else, and you found about the Panarii and/or Gilbert Bates another way, and entered the story like that.
About the attacks, remember that you were targeted because you survived the Zepplin crash. And when you met up with the leader guy, he pulled off the hit because... I can't remember, but I do know it was nothing spectacular. So, hmm... now that I think about it again, I guess you
could have been targeted because of some other means.
The way the beginning felt kind of rushed, maybe Troika had planned to have multiple start locations? I mean, you get the ring and find out it belongs to Gilbert. That's pretty much it. The crash doesn't play a big part in the rest of the game, and when brought up it is quickly dismissed. Although there are a few side quests, if I recall, that you got because you were the only survivor (such as the newspaper ones).
At the other end of the scale, of course, is something like Icewind Dale. Your party could be nobles, peasants, whatever... the game doesn't consider that fact at all. You start off the game at the same place always and are simply faceless adventurers. Some people might prefer that, I suppose, and they simply won't get much out of this feature... but that's no reason not to try doing something different.
I liked Icewind Dale, but just selecting a couple avatars and pumping stats into them, then being dropped into the world wasn't very satisfying. I would have preferred if they had some backstory to them (although, in that case, they probably would have had to slim down the number of party members you could make). Wandering nameless heros are overplayed, outdated, and cliched. I'd prefer to be a peasant who gets sweped up into the world and slowly getting involved in its struggles and chosing my own side throught the course of the game, than be the Uber-Hero Chosen One who has to fight all evil and save the day no matter what for no reason other than "Evil is bad".
Nope. There's no amnesia, no discovery of anything that makes your origin untrue. You really, truly are whatever you selected. You are also not the Chosen One, there is no prophecy of any kind involved, and you have not been selected by the gods or by destiny to take the path you do (except in the larger sense by being the protaganist of the story, I suppose).
Thank God.
:D
