I'm hammering on the relationship mechanics, because for the first time in an roleplaying, it had consequences for playing an character playing the way you wanted and not only making decision with your Avatar.
I don't agree at all on that one. I'd even say the contrary is true. I could play a lot of RPGs how I wanted in the past (although I usually don't want to become the PC myself). Just think about Elder Scrolls or Fallout for what you describe here...
And which consequences do you mean? I don't think consequences of whatever sort were one of DOS' best elements...
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This is a real difference, I think and one, which helped the game. Of course you had to use your imagination to give them all the depth you want, but well, that's why they were blankslate heroes and that's why it's still A GAME. You can argue if there was a real connection between the hunters and their companions, okay, but the relationship between the hunters was alright. But of course it could be even better and I hope this will be the case in D:OS 2.
It was not alright because there was ZERO emotion involved. The two source hunters were just two more or less numbers-based robots who only acted according to their mathematical foundations. They had zero sense of real characters for me and I never felt(!) that they had any meaningful relationship or connection throughout the game.
And I don't agree at all that it's my job to give characters depth and to fill blank slates (and I have actually a hard time in doing so...). That's the job of the game designer in a story-driven RPG, at least in the way I see them fit. But then again, that's maybe where we fundamentaly disagree with each other, based on how we want to play the game. It's the same old TES vs. Bioware discussion, whether you want to BE the hero (and fill the blanks with your own personality) or whether you want to experience a great narrative with well written characters, stories and reletionsship, GUIDING your PC throughout the experience. You want the game to be like TES, I want it to be like a Bioware game. Sadly, there is no way that we can have both I'm afraid...
(And I'm actually pretty sure that DOS 2 will be much more to your liking than to mine. I think it will pretty much suck on the same level DOS 1 sucked in relation to the narrative experience I wish to have, offering a blank slate type of game instead).