Dragon Age II has an A plot and B plot, 'A' plot is about the Hawke family's struggle to make it in Kirkwald, 'B' plot is about the growing tensions between first the City and the Qunari then the Templar's and the Mages. 'A' plot requires character development because it's story about characters, 'B' plot doesn't, because it's a story about conflicting ideas, how your MC interacts with B plot should, if written well, be informed by his 'A' plot development.
I wouldn't say a story about characters necessarily needs character development. Unless by "story about characters" one specifically means "a story about how a person changes/hero's journey". Otherwise? Imo it should be on case-on-case basis (this character is forever changed by certain events, the other has stable personality and remains mostly the same).
I think we're talking about the difference between drama and melodrama, a melodrama is about empathetically connecting with a fatalistic narrative, drama is about a struggle against fate...I'm making that up, but it sounds good...right?
Hmm... I don't know? :P I was just using a popular/everyday definition of "drama", not a "proper" one. As in "a dramatic situation" or something along the lines. For the characters it might make sense in the context of the story (they really have been through a lot of bad stuff), but for the reader it's still "incessant drama" (no matter whether the emotional outbursts are realistic and grounded in backstories, they're still annoying to read through... unless someone enjoys that, I suppose).
Don't get me wrong, I like the dialogue system in DA II more because I saw a germ of something that could make the railroaded nature of Bioware conversations more mutable. Old RPGs were about blank slates that you project you're own roleplaying onto, they're cyphers, that's their strength and their weakness because it also means the world has to treat them as everything, which ends up meaning they lack any real depth. The modern RPG takes a middle route between fixed MC and a Cypher MC by making your character a limited number of states, you don't get to make them whatever you want but you also get more interesting interactions with a world that can be written around them more, like a refugee from Ferelden or a commander in the Terran Space Navy. I could really go on about this because it's very interesting to me but it's a little off topic now.
Yes, this is something I've thinking about a lot. The Protagonist Spectrum (as I call it). I'm actually planning a long post on it in the context of BG3, though it probably won't be soon, haha. (Procrastination...)
