Soulforged said:
So it's easy... And you don't find any problem with that? I believe that the plot is first and then one can begin to wonder about how one is going to solve trivial issues as the one you pointed.
I don't think it was
that graceful a solution, but it was quick and painless compared to what it could have been. Let's have a look at the problems we have here.
First off the bat, MotB's an epic level game. Your character starts off at level 18. Now, a level 18 character should require a substantial amount of backstory to fly... and when you consider how many character creation options you have, that backstory can get very specific. Writing a 'one-size-fits-all' premise for a freshly rolled Lv. 18 character can get very hard.
Taking the NWN2 OC PC's the obvious solution. The PC has adequate reason to be epic level, the backstory's already there, and all the people who played the OC won't feel burnt because they can't import their uber character. Also, marketing MotB as a follow-up to the OC gets you a bigger captive audience. Anyone who's invested that much time into the OC will just
have to find out what happens.
Besides, if you pull a Lv. 18 character out of nowhere, a lot of the people who bought the OC may feel cheated. They're probably attached to their PC. They'd expect
something for killing the King of Shadows and all that bollocks.
Unfortunately, the ending of the OC was extremely unhelpful. Everyone dies in a ruin collapse? Oh dear. If that hadn't happened, you could have just wrote something like:
"You were asleep in Crossroads Keep. When GHLUAGHLUAGLUGAHLUAGHAGG." Unfortunately, that's not possible without pulling a load of clumsy, anti-climactic and vaguely insulting exposition out of nowhere. Eg.
"Oh yeah, by the way? That big dramatic ending to the OC? It didn't really happen! hahahahahaha! pwned."
So what did the writers do? They played the MYSTARY card.
"You think you're dead? But no! You've woken up in a strange cavern! What's going on? Play on to find out!"
I think it was clever move, myself. Because of the OC's ending, you're gonna have to break the narrative at some point to make it fit, but the
last place you wanna do it is at the start, because that's just cheap. Play the MYSTARY card, draw the people in that way, let them get into MotB's storyline, so it takes the place of the OC in their brain... then they won't feel so burnt when you wheel out Ammon Jerro and The Founder near the climax to tie up the loose ends. Like, did I think the resolution was clumsy? Maybe, but at that time I was too concerned with Akachi the Betrayer to care about the OC.
Of course, all this could have been avoided had the MotB team not been so dogged in wanting to implement their little tale of Rashamen. They could have come up with something a little cleaner, but... hey, sometimes inspiration's just gotta ride. I'm glad they went through with it despite some of the narrative difficulties it threw up.
Well... long story short. Resolving the NWN2 OC and MotB was never going to be perfect. However, I'm not sure I could do a better job than the one Obsidian already implemented.
EDIT: Fixed some stupid wording.