CHARACTERS - Day Eight: Dorian角色 - 第八天:多利安涉及同性恋内容,不喜请跳过Dorian, as he appeared in-game. This was the work of U Ri So, a character artist from Korea who'd just started at the time - Dorian and Cullen were her first big tasks, and boy oh boy did she knock it out of the park.多里安在游戏中的形象。这是韩国角色美术家U Ri So的作品,她刚加入团队时,承担的第一个重要任务就是多利安和卡伦的设计,而她的表现大家都知道的,堪称惊艳。Now this is a fun one. It's no big secret I have a lot of feelings about Dorian, not least of which because he was my first (and only) gay male companion. There's a lot more to him than that, of course (as there should be), and it was quite a trip. So let's go!
现在轮到这个有趣的角色了。众所周知,我对多利安有着深厚的感情,不仅仅因为他是我笔下第一个(也是唯一一个)男同性恋队友。他的故事远不止这一点(理所当然),整个创作过程是个奇妙的体验。那么,让我们开始吧!
Now, DAI is a story all its own, but I'm sticking to the characters. In this case, back at the beginning, the writers were going to try something new: we were going to let the artists take a more active role in the companion creation process.
Why? Because not doing so had caused a lot of problems.
DAI的开发也是能自成一个故事,但今天我们只聊角色。这一次,编剧团队尝试了一种新方式——让美术团队扮演一个更主动的角色参与到队友的设计中。
为什么要这么做?因为之前的方式造成了不少问题。
See, here's the thing: writers and artists speak two different languages. When talking about characters, we talk about their story. Who they are. What they want. We'd write up these briefs, huge and full of information... but it was never the information the artists needed. They wanted visual cues.
事情是这样的,编剧和美术说的完全是两种不同的语言。谈到角色时,我们会谈他们的故事,他们是谁,他们想要什么。我们会长篇大论角色的简介……但这从来就不是美术团队需要的信息。他们想要的是视觉上的线索。
I don't mean describing their appearance. Sure, we'd usually provide that, especially if there was a story case to be made, but often the artists vetoed us on appearance stuff anyhow so meh.
No, I mean they looked for visual language while we tended to only talk about who the characters *were*.
我不是指外貌描述。我们当然通常会提供外貌描述,尤其是和剧情相关的部分,但美术往往会直接否决我们的建议,所以这并不是重点。
他们真正需要的是视觉语言,而我们习惯于只谈角色的内核。
What would happen is they'd hone in on something visual in our write-up not intended to be a focus. The first write-up for Anders in DA2, for instance, mentioned he was "haggard" after his journey... and the first concept we got was this pale, shriveled man.
"What... is this?"
"YOU SAID HAGGARD!"
?
这样一来,美术往往会在我们的简介中抓住一些本不该成为重点的视觉信息。就拿DA2中的安德斯来说,首版简介提到他在旅途后感到“疲惫不堪”……然后第一版概念设计给我们呈现了一个苍白枯槁的人。
“这是什么鬼?”
“你说他‘疲惫不堪’啊!”
?
That was the other trick: sometimes when we DID try to be more descriptive, we had to be extra cautious because the words could be interpreted very differently. You encounter this recording VO, too. A VO note says "hysterical" and you *meant* "really upset" but the actor read "scream like a banshee"
另外,当我们尝试用更具体的语言时,又得格外小心,因为用词可能被完全不同地解读。录制配音时也会有类似问题。你在备注里写“歇斯底里”,其实意思是“非常沮丧”,结果演员理解成“像女妖一样尖叫”。
Thus this caused problems, like I said. The artists would struggle, sometimes conjuring details just to give the character *something* but which would change the character... and, to us, the character was created. Done. We were already invested, probably already writing them.
Something had to give.
所以就像我说的一样,之前的方式导致了这些问题。美术团队也很挣扎,有时候他们会自行添加细节来找给角色赋予某种视觉特点,而导致改变这个角色……而对我们编剧来说,这个角色已经创造出来了,定型了,我们甚至可能已经开始写剧本了。
有些东西不得不放弃。
So this time we wrote a bunch of character briefs - but short. One paragraph. We stuck to vibes and the *emotions* we wanted the concepts to evoke. And we didn't name them. They got titles like "Slick Con Man" or "Ice Queen", so we wouldn't get too attached. Then we handed these off to the artists.
所以,这次我们换了一种方法,写了一些简短的角色简介,只有一段话。我们专注于描述想要传递的情感和概念。我们甚至没有给角色起名字,而用的是“滑头骗子”或者“冰冷女王”这样的标签,这样就不会太过留恋。然后我们把这些简介交给了美术团队。
And it worked nicely. The ones that just weren't inspiring we'd discard, no problem. The others had juice... and the artists felt free to play and offer lots of variations because we weren't set on anything yet. A lot of times, what they produced ended up inspiring US. It was a neat back-and-forth.
效果很好。那些不够吸引人的角色直接被淘汰,而那些有潜力的角色,美术团队可以自由地发挥。因为我们并没有设定任何东西,所以他们给我们提供了很多版本。很多时候,他们创造出来的东西反而在激发我们的灵感。这是一个非常好的正循环。
This is what led to Dorian, in fact. He came from a short write-up entitled "Rock Star Mage" and it really boiled down to "I'm cool and I know I'm cool, so take that you cretins".
And just like that, the first sketches (by Casper Konefal, I think? I bet I'm wrong) were all amazing. Instant fire.
多利安就是这种方法的结果。他的初版简介是“摇滚巨星法师”,最后真的发展到“我很酷,而且我知道自己很酷,所以你们这群蠢货都得认清这一点。”的地步。
初版的每一张草图(应该是卡斯帕·科内法尔画的?我不确定)都太棒了,瞬间点燃了我的热情。
Me: "He looks kind of like... Freddie Mercury?"
Him: "Is that bad?"
Me: "NO ARE YOU KIDDING THIS IS AMAZING"
Plus there was a monkey. Sadly, we had to lose the monkey.
There were iterations to come, but this was really where Dorian was born: Tevinter mage, noble, savant, and too cool for school.
我:“他看起来有点像……弗雷迪·默丘里?”
他:“这不好吗?”
我:“开什么玩笑,这太棒了!”
甚至草图中还有一只猴子。可惜的是,我们不得不舍弃掉它。
后来经过不断修改,最终的多利安成型了——一位出身高贵、才华横溢的塔文特法师,酷到不行。
One of the concept art variants of the "Rock Star Mage" which provided Dorian's initial inspiration. The one on the left was the first draft. The one on the right was the second draft with a few adjustments (bye monkey). There was more iterating after this, but you see where it was going - and it was so, so good.“摇滚明星法师”概念艺术的变体之一,提供了多里安的最初灵感。左边是初稿,右边是经过一些调整后的第二稿(拜,小猴)。在这之后还经历了更多的修改迭代,但从这里你可以看出大概的方向,那真的是非常、非常棒。When did he become gay? Not right away. Like I said elsewhere, we didn't talk romance and sexuality until after the concepts were more in place.
But as we were brainstorming about why this hot shot mage left Tevinter, the idea DID come up that maybe it was because he was gay. Not directly, however.
他什么时候变成同性恋的?反正不是从一开始。正如我之前提到的,我们通常不会在角色概念成型前讨论恋爱和性向。
但当我们讨论这个强大的法师为何离开塔文特时,“也许是因为他是同性恋”的想法确实出现了。但这并不会是直接原因。
Homophobia isn't really a thing in Thedas, after all, so at first blush I didn't think that could work. "Rich kid gets kicked out of the house for being gay" wasn't a trope I wanted to explore. But, then again, magister families in Tevinter are *obsessed* with the appearance of perfection, so...?
Any deviation from the "norm" is considered scandal-worthy. It said weakness. It said you couldn't control your house. Now... THAT had real promise. The writing pit discussed it a lot.
So I think it's fair to say that the gay fairy was already circling Dorian even before we got to the romance talk.
毕竟,塞达斯的社会并不存在同性恋歧视,所以一照面我并不觉得这个概念能成。“富家子因为是同性恋被赶出家门”并不是我们想要探索可能的设定。不过,塔文特的显贵家族对“完美形象”有着极度的执念,所以……?任何偏离“常规”的表现都会被视为丑闻。这不仅表现出家族的弱点,还说明你无法控制自己的家族。这……就有了很大的发挥空间。编剧组对此展开了激烈讨论。所以我觉得可以这么说,在我们讨论恋爱之前,多利安的身上已经有了同性恋的迹象。
A screenshot from one of the Dorian romance scenes, with Dorian resting his head on the player's shoulder. At the end game, I think? So cute. I think this was Sarah Hayward's cinematic work? She did such a great job, and was so committed to doing the translation of story to screen justice.多里安恋爱场景的一张截图。图中,多里安把头靠在玩家的肩膀上。这应该是游戏结尾的场景吧?真是太可爱了。这段应该是是莎拉·海沃德的作品?她做得是如此出色,对将故事完整翻译成画面表达这一点充满了热情和敬业精神。