CHARACTERS - DAY ONE: Morrigan
角色——第一天：莫瑞甘

Morrigan's original appearance in DAO. I can't help but look back on this and balk at the old graphics, but at the time I was *enamoured*.
莫瑞甘在起源中的形象。我现在回顾起来，忍不住对旧画面感到震惊，但当时我是很迷恋的。
（这种粗体是对图片的解释，后面不再赘述，顺便吐槽下贴吧发帖功能还是这么简陋……颜色都只能改红色）


Morrigan began, waaaay back, as a bit of Morgan le Fey (hence the Dark Ritual) mixed with Delirium from Sandman. The Delirium elements subsided into more of a weird cadence of speech as my idea of Morrigan solidified - more cynical, wanting to connect but unable to. 🧵
莫瑞甘的最初最初来源于一点“摩根勒菲”（因此有了“黑暗仪式”）和一点《睡魔》中的“谵妄”。而随着我对莫瑞甘的构思逐渐成型，“谵妄”的元素逐渐淡化，更多地体现在一种奇怪的抑扬顿挫的说话节奏上——更加愤世嫉俗，渴望与人建立联系却无法做到。
Originally, we were looking for a Middle Eastern actress to play her, as Shoreh Aghdashloo was slated to play Flemeth and we wanted a similar sounding voice -- but it was a real struggle, and then Shoreh unfortunately had to drop out to do a movie. So suddenly we had nobody for either character!
Then, one day, Caroline (our VO Director) comes in with a recording sent by a rep for Claudia Black - who hadn't done game VO back then but wanted to get into it.
起初，我们想找一位中东演员来饰演她。因为肖赫·阿格达什卢原本要为弗莱梅斯配音，而我们希望两人的声音听起来有些相似。然而找起来非常困难。然后不幸的是，肖赫又因为要出演一部电影而退出了。于是我们突然之间两个角色都没有候选人了！
后来有一天，我们的配音导演卡罗琳带来了一段克劳迪娅·布莱克的经纪人发来的录音。克劳迪娅当时还没有参与过游戏配音，但她想试一试。
And it was Claudia doing a slow *beat poet* rendition of Baby Got Back. I kid you not. I was already a fan, so I lost my goddamn mind.
(Yes, I still have the recording. No, you cannot have it.)
那段录音里，克劳迪娅用一种缓慢的“垮掉派诗人”风格朗诵了《Baby Got Back》。我绝不是在开玩笑。我本来就是她的粉丝，听完后直接失了智了。
【beat poet：beat应该是指披头士吧？我查了下，感觉翻译成垮掉派诗人应该没问题】
（是的，我还留着那段录音。不，不能给你们。）
Naturally, we jumped on that immediately. As I recall, this was met with resistance from higher up - they had this image of Morrigan as young, like 18 years old (no idea where this came from) and complained that Claudia sounded "too old".
Them: "She sounds like she smokes three packs a day!"
Me: "That's what I like about her!"
自然的，我们立刻决定用她。我记得当时高层对此有些反对——他们对莫瑞甘有个既定形象，认为她应该很年轻，大概18岁（不知道这个想法从哪来的），并抱怨说克劳迪娅的声音听起来“太老了”。
他们说：“她听起来像是一天抽三包烟！”
我说：“这正是我喜欢她的地方！”

Some of the first art we put out for Morrigan. I remember seeing this and asking "why does she look so YOUNG?" - that's when I learned how parts of the team thought she was, like, 18. The idea persisted for some time.
这是我们为莫瑞甘设计的草图之一。我记得当时我看到时问：“为什么她看起来这么年轻？”后来才知道，团队里有部分人以为她大概只有18岁。这种想法之后还持续了一段时间。

The DAI version of Morrigan - so awesome.
DAI版本的莫瑞甘，太棒了。
Caroline and I were determined, so we pushed ahead. We had to agree to get Claudia to sound "younger", which I was dubious about. The first two sessions we asked her to pitch her voice up and it was AWFUL.
Claudia had to focus on sounding "right" instead of acting. So Caroline and I did the sneaky thing, and on the third session we asked her to just... act. Use her natural voice. We loved her performance so much we had the feeling that the team would love it too and forget their nonsense. They did.
卡罗琳和我很坚定，坚持要她，但我们不得不同意让克劳迪娅的声音听起来更“年轻”，对此我不是很有把握。头两次录音，我们让她把声音调高一些，结果非常糟糕。
克劳迪娅不得不专注于让声音听起来“正确”而不是表演本身。于是卡罗琳和我动了小心思，到了第三次录音时就让她……随意发挥。用她的自然声音表演。我们太喜欢她的表现了，因此感觉团队肯定也会爱上她的表演并忘记之前那些无谓的提议。果然，他们接受了。
My best memory of Claudia was when we first met. I'd been flown down to LA for the initial sessions to help the major DAO actors find the character "voice" and, boy, was I nervous. It didn't help that I was a huge fanboy of Claudia's and she was going to be the *first* of all the actors I'd talk to.
Caroline gave me a list of rules for "how to talk to a celebrity" - top of the list: DO NOT COMPARE THEM TO OTHER ACTORS.
我对克劳迪娅最深刻的记忆是我们第一次见面的时候。我飞到洛杉矶，负责帮助DAO的主要配音演员找到角色的“声音”，而我紧张地不得了。更糟糕的是，我是克劳迪娅的超级粉丝，而她是我要交谈的第一个演员。卡罗琳给了我一张“如何与名人交谈”的规则清单——其中的第一条是：绝对不要把他们和其他演员比较。
So I meet Claudia, and I'm sweating. I think: I'll start from the beginning, right?
"Well, when I started writing Morrigan, the voice in my head was Helena Bonham Carter..."
Claudia gives me a look and tilts her head. "So what you're saying is... I'm a very cheap version of Helena Bonham Carter."
I'm mortified. I melt. I gasp and stutter and she lets me implode for maybe 30 seconds before she throws her head back and LAUGHS. So wicked. I love her instantly and forever.
于是，我见到了克劳迪娅，紧张得满头大汗。我心想：从头说起总没错吧？
“嗯，当我开始写莫瑞甘的时候，脑海中的声音是海伦娜·伯翰·卡特……”
克劳迪娅看着我，歪了歪头：“所以你是说……我是海伦娜·伯翰·卡特的廉价替代品。”
我羞得简直要崩溃了，开始语无伦次、结结巴巴。她看着我崩溃了大约30秒，然后仰头大笑。太邪恶了！我瞬间就爱上了她，永远爱上了！
For the next several days, whenever she's in the booth and I make a comment to Caroline - which she can't hear, because the booth is sound-proof - she'd say "Oh, does he want it more like Helena?"And I'd melt into the desk in renewed mortification and she'd LAUGH. This is Claudia in a nutshell.
接下来的几天里，每当她在录音棚里，而我对卡罗琳发表意见时（她听不见，因为录音棚是隔音的），她就会说：“噢，他是不是想让我表演地更像海伦娜？”我就会又一次钻进桌子里羞愧得要命，而她则哈哈大笑。简而言之，这就是克劳迪娅。
Morrigan became a real touchstone for me, the heart of DAO. Way beyond her initial inspirations. Some said "she's just an ice queen" like some I'd written (Viconia, Bastila, etc.) but such categories are very reductive, I find. She had a voice I could instantly slip into, every time, without fail.
The problem, after DAO was said and done, was with how we were going to honour the Dark Ritual going forward... or, more to the point, how we *weren't* going to honour it. I wasn't willing to let her go, however, so I had to figure it out.
BUT... that's a story for another day. ❤️
莫瑞甘对我来说成为了一个真正的试金石，整个《起源》的核心，远远跳出了她最初的灵感来源。有人说“她只是一个冰山美人”，就像我之前写过的一些角色（比如维科尼亚、巴丝蒂拉等），但我觉得这种分类太过简单粗暴了。莫瑞甘有一种我能立即沉浸去的声音，毫无例外。问题在于，《起源》结束后，我们如何处理“黑暗仪式”的后续……或者更确切地说，问题在于我们不会去延续它。然而，我不愿意放手，所以我必须找到解决办法。不过……这是另一天的故事了。❤️

I remember pleading with the artists: "If we put her in the Orlais plot, can we give her a dress?! PLEASE PLEASE" It almost didn't happen.
我还记得恳求过艺术团队：“如果我们把她放进奥莱依的剧情线里，可以让她穿上礼服吗？！拜托拜托！”差点就没实现。
CORRECTION:
A friend reminds me that the beat poet recording Claudia did was "Smack That" and NOT "Baby Got Back", and now I need to go give it another listen just because I can. 😀
更正：
一位朋友提醒我，克劳迪娅的那段录音实际上是《Smack That》，而不是《Baby Got Back》。现在我需要再去听一遍。就因为我能听到。😀

CHARACTERS - DAY TWO: Kieran
角色——第二天：基兰

（图片高糊的问题问DG哈，我只是复制他的图2333）
Ah, Kieran. So dapper! I had a moment of "but what if the Warden wasn't, you know..." because he's SO white, but the artists just went "shhhh shhhh it's maaaagic" and I had to admit they were correct. This whole sequence had already stretched the limits of our resources and then some.
啊，基兰。多么干净利落！
当时我还有过“如果守护者不是那个，呃……”的犹豫阶段，因为他看起来太白了。不过美术团队直接说：“嘘嘘嘘，这一切都是魔——法——”我不得不承认他们是对的。整个剧情序列已经把我们的资源用到了极限，还超出了预算。
(Technically this is an addendum to yesterday, but I make the rules here so nyah!)
Heading into DAI, I had a bite-sized problem on my hands. I knew Morrigan would feature. I also knew we were importing previous choices. So now I had to contend with: the Old God Baby. 🧵
（严格来说，这算是昨天的补充内容，但这里我说了算，所以——哼！）【一把年纪了还卖萌】
进入《审判》时，我手头有个小问题。我知道莫瑞甘会登场，也知道我们会导入之前的选择。所以，现在我得面对一个问题：古神孩子。🧵
Here's the thing about honouring previous game choices, from a design perspective: it's a sucker's game. What many fans picture, when you mention it, is divergent *plot* -- the story changes path based on those major choices. How exciting! But you will never be able to deliver divergent plot.
谈到尊重玩家在前作中的选择，从设计角度来说，这是个巨坑。很多玩家听到这个概念时，脑海中浮现的是分叉的剧情——故事根据重大选择而改变改变。多么激动人心啊！但你永远不可能做到完全分叉的剧情。
You can deliver flavour differences (usually in the form of divergent dialogue), character swaps (character X appears instead of Y), and extra content (such as a side quest) -- but plot branching, particularly the critical path? It's a question of resources, and there's never enough to go around.
你可以做到“细节差异”（通常表现为不同的对话）、“角色替换”（角色X代替Y）以及“额外内容”（比如一段支线任务），但关键剧情的分支？这是资源问题，它总是不够用。
"Here Lies the Abyss" in DAI was about as good as it gets, and even that was a far cry from how I originally pictured it (hello last-minute insert of Stroud when a DAO Warden import got cut).
《审判》中的“深渊在此”任务【灰卫主线】已经是最好的尝试了，但即便如此，它也远不如我最初设想的那样（比如，由于砍掉了DAO主角的导入，最后临时加入了斯特劳德）。
The Old God Baby was one of the main choices from DAO -- Morrigan has a baby? With the Archdemon's soul?! Most DAO players who flagged that choice surely expected *monumental* consequences. World-shaking consequences! And we talked about it. We did. There were, like, three different designs of the DAI ending where OGB Kieran could cause complete divergence: new path, cutscenes, the whole nine yards.
古神孩子是《起源》中的主要选择之一——莫瑞甘生了个孩子？还带着大恶魔的灵魂？大多数在DAO中做出这个选择的玩家肯定期待着深远的后果，震撼世界的后果！而我们确实讨论过。有三种不同的用于《审判》结局的设计方案，在其中古神孩子基兰能够引发完全不同的走向：全新的路线、全新的过场动画、全新的所有东西。

Ah, yes, the (awkwardly animated) Dark Ritual scene. Why didn't we just fade to black? Or move the camera to look at the fireplace or something? I'll never know.
啊，对，那个（演出尴尬的）黑暗仪式场景。
为什么我们没有直接渐黑画面？或者把镜头转向壁炉之类的地方？我永远不会知道答案。
But it wasn't going to happen. It was a decision from *two games ago* that only a small minority (hello telemetry) would even choose. To the rest, they probably neither knew about it nor cared... so how many resources could you invest? To do what? Set up an even bigger divergence for the NEXT game?
但这不可能实现。这是一个来自两代游戏之前的选择，而且只有少数玩家（根据遥测数据）才选择。对其他玩家来说，他们可能既不了解也不在乎……那么你能投入多少资源呢？要做什么？为下一代游戏设置一个更大的分歧？
The other writers acknowledged my anxiety with a grim nod every time it came up, but they had no solutions. Finally, I realized there WAS a solution, and that was changing how I thought about the choice: don't make it about Kieran. The players don't know him, never have. Make it about Morrigan.
每次提到这个问题，其他编剧都会点头表示理解，但谁都没有解决方案。最终，我意识到确实有个解决办法，那就是改变看待这个选择的方式：不要让它围绕基兰展开。玩家对基兰不了解，从未接触过他。让这一切围绕莫瑞甘展开。
Thus began a feverish three days where I wrote probably the most complicated scene of my career: Morrigan's reckoning with Flemeth in DAI and the fallout after. Three different versions (OGB Kieran, non-OGB Kieran, and no Kieran), each with branching for other choices (like the Well of Sorrows). 🤪
于是，我开始了三天疯狂的创作，写出了我职业生涯中最复杂的一个场景：《审判》中莫瑞甘与弗莱玛斯的对峙，以及随后的连锁反应。有三个不同的版本（神孩子基兰、非神孩子基兰、没有基兰），每个版本还要因为其它选择产生分支（比如悲伤之井）。🤪

The Old God soul is transferred! Only appears in one of the three versions, but such a magical moment.
古神灵魂被转移了！只在三版本之一出现，但真是个充满魔法感的瞬间。
I did it all at once. There was no other way to wrap my head around the complexity of it. It was also a tough sell to the team, considering the amount of cinematics work, but they agreed we had to do *something*. And still it felt... underwhelming, insofar as divergence goes. But it was also good.
我一次性写完了所有版本。除此之外，没有其它方式能让我理清其中的复杂性。考虑到这需要大量的过场动画工作，向团队争取资源时并不容易，但他们同意我们必须做点什么。尽管如此，最终的结果在分支程度上还是显得有点……平淡、有限。但它仍然是好的。
I remember when I first spoke with Claudia, about how this was Morrigan's story. This was about how motherhood had changed her, how she'd grown up. Claudia got a bit teary-eyed. It was a journey she was familiar with, she said. Her first son, Odin, had been born in 2005 not long after DAO came out.
我记得第一次和克劳迪娅聊这个场景时，我告诉她，这其实是关于莫瑞甘的。这是关于她如何因为母亲身份而改变，关于她如何成长的场景。克劳迪娅听后有些动容。她说这段旅程她也感同身受。她的第一个儿子奥丁在2005年出生，不久后DAO也推出了【2009】。
And, man, she killed with that performance! Kate, too, but I'll get to her later. Claudia dug down, and that scene where Morrigan tells Flemeth she'll never be the mother Flemeth was to her? That came from someplace very raw. It was devastating to witness in the booth. There were tears all around.
而且，天啊，她的表现太棒了！凯特【弗莱玛斯的VA】也是，不过她我稍后再谈。克劳迪娅挖掘出自己深处的情感。莫瑞甘对弗莱玛斯说“我永远不会成为你那样的母亲”的场景，完全来自她内心最深的地方。录制时，录音棚里的所有人都被震撼得热泪盈眶。
Not long after, Claudia called and asked if maybe - just maybe - Odin could play Kieran? He was a bit young (not yet 5, then), but it felt... right? We agreed. Claudia was in the booth, gently coaching him through his lines, and I think that was the first moment I felt I'd done the right thing. 😎
没过多久，克劳迪娅打电话问我们，奥丁能不能——也许——饰演基兰？他当时还很小（不到5岁），但这感觉……很对？我们同意了。在录音棚里，克劳迪娅温柔地指导他念台词。我想，那是我第一次感到自己做出了正确的决定。😎

CHARACTERS - DAY THREE: Flemeth
角色——第三天：弗莱玛斯

Ahhh the original version of Flemeth's appearance, after we'd cut her unique model. I almost forgot that this is what it looked like. Bah, it's fine. Shapeshifter, right? We'll ignore that shapeshifters don't change into other human appearances - Flemeth is special.
啊啊这是弗莱玛斯最初的形象，是在我们砍掉她的独特模型后做出的设计。我差点忘了她当时看起来是这样的。唉，没关系。反正她是个变形师，对吧？我们就忽略变形师其实不能变成其他人类形态这件事好了——弗莱玛斯是特别的。
I have a type. I admit it. There are certain wells I can return to repeatedly and always find something new to explore. One of them is older female characters. Mike used to rib me about it. Consider Wynne. Meredith. Genevieve. And, of course, the biggie: Flemeth.
总有一些角色类型，我可以反复回到它们身上，并每次都能挖掘出新的东西来。其中一个就是年长的女性角色。迈克【Mike Laidlaw, 生软已离职的老员工，DA的前创意总监】过去经常拿这个打趣我。比如说温妮、梅瑞迪斯、吉纳维芙【应该是说小说《召礼》的角色】，当然，还有最重要的——弗莱玛斯。
Why are they a type? I... don't know, honestly. I guess I have a feeling that older men fade, they strive to regain their youth or establish a legacy and we've seen that story a thousand times, but older women? They become free to become something new. I guess I see so many possibilities in that.
为什么她们是一个类型？说实话，我也不知道。也许我觉得，年长的男性形象已经不那么有趣了【这里fade应该是淡出的意思】，他们努力重拾青春或建立遗产的这类故事我们已经见过无数遍了。而年长的女性呢？她们反而变得自由，可以成为全新的自己。我觉得这样有无限的可能性。
I had a conception of who Flemeth was, and why, right from the very start. Her creation went hand in hand with Morrigan, as a being whose thirst for retribution hundreds of years ago attracted an entity (slight confession: I didn't know Mythal specifically, at the time, "an elven god" was enough).
I also knew where Morrigan was right and very wrong about her. Misconceptions of the truth are built into DA's foundation, and they were fundamental to this mother-daughter relationship I was building.
从一开始，我就有对弗莱玛斯的清晰构想——她是谁，以及为什么成为了这样的人。她的塑造与莫瑞甘是并行的，是一个百年前因为对复仇的渴望而吸引了某个存在的角色（小小的坦白一下：当时我还没具体到米索尔的程度，“某个精灵神”就够用了）。
我也清楚，莫瑞甘对她的看法哪些是对的，哪些是错的。对真相的误解是《龙腾世纪》的基石之一，而这些误解对我想要构建的母女关系至关重要。
Like many seeds I'd put in the world, however, I had no idea whether I'd ever get to explore it. Knowing that she was a character of possible future importance, if not a major player in DAO, I wasn't much surprised when she was one of the first cuts the art team made in terms of getting a unique appearance. Thus the "batty old woman" players met in DAO. Not as hard a cut as the Qunari, though.
然而，就像许多我在这个世界中埋下的种子一样，我不知道自己是否有机会去探索它们。在DAO中，由于弗莱玛斯是属于在未来可能成为重要人物的角色，而非主要角色，所以我毫不意外她是艺术团队最先几个砍掉独特外观设计的角色之一。因此玩家在DAO中遇到的是“疯癫的老女人”版本的弗莱玛斯。不过还是库纳利人被砍得最多。
Going into DA2, I wanted both Morrigan and Flemeth, but we could only have one. So I picked Flemeth. This was the game where she really got to come into her own.
I remember the art team coming and asking if it was OK if she got a new model, as it'd be a retcon of sorts. I didn't care. I wanted it.
到了DA2，我希望莫瑞甘和弗莱玛斯都能登场，但我们只能有一个。所以我选了弗莱玛斯。这是她真正展现自我的一作。我记得艺术团队来问我，是否可以给弗莱玛斯一个新模型，好像这是某种形式的重制一样。我毫不犹豫。当然可以，我太想要这个了。

I remember when the artists brought me the concept for DA2's revamp of Flemeth. I was in love immediately. Hair horns? God yes. I'll do whatever I need to in order to explain this, thank you.
我还记得当美术团队带来DA2里弗莱玛斯新造型的概念图时，我一眼就爱上了。角状发型？天啊，太棒了。我愿意做任何需要的调整来解释这一设计，谢谢。
I honestly don't remember whether Kate Mulgrew was cast before or after Claudia. After, I think? All I recall is that Cab came into my office one day and asked if Kate might be a good fit.
Asked me, the dyed-in-the-wool Trekkie who had stuck with Voyager even through the admittedly lean years?
The squeal I made was un-manly. Cab took that as a "yes". 😅
说实话，我已经记不清是凯特·穆格鲁【弗莱玛斯VA】是在克劳迪娅·布莱克【莫瑞甘VA】之前先定下的，还是后定下的了。可能是之后吧？我只记得有一天，卡布走进我办公室问：“你觉得凯特合适吗？”
问我一个《星际迷航》的铁杆粉丝，一个在《航海家号》最萧条的时期也坚持看完的人？我的尖叫毫无男人的体面可言。卡布把那理解为同意了。😅
I didn't get to talk to Kate until DA2, however. Schedules being what they were, we had a tight window to record Flemeth... so I had to write all her scenes before almost anything else in DA2 was written, before I even had a team! Ack!
It was OK, though, for the most part. I knew where I wanted to take her, and a big part of it was going to explain her transition - to set her up for the future. So I whipped up a script in, like, two days and off we went. Kate was a marvel in the booth. She adored Flemeth and you could really tell.
不过，我直到DA2时才第一次和凯特交谈。因为时间安排的问题，我们录制弗莱玛斯的时间非常紧张……所以我不得不在几乎任何其他内容都还没开始编写之前写完她的所有场景，那时甚至我还没一个完整的写作团队！呃！
但没关系。大部分情况下，我知道自己要带她走向何方，其中很重要的一点是解释她的转变，为未来做铺垫。所以我在，大概两天之内写完了剧本，然后就开始了录制。凯特在录音棚的表现令人惊叹，她非常喜爱弗莱玛斯这个角色，而你真的能感受到这一点。
I didn't get to meet Kate in person, however, until DAI. This came pretty late in its development, compared to when we recorded her for DA2, and we flew down to Virginia (to accommodate her schedule - she was writing her memoir at the time, I think) for a single session. It was going to be *tight*.
I was a mess. I was finally going to meet Captain Janeway... and yes yes, I know she's also more than that. But come ON.
When we sat down, I figured I'd have to talk her through the character all over again. It'd been years since that one session at the start of DA2, right? And even more since DAO.
But, no. Kate remembered Flemeth perfectly.
我直到DAI才有机会亲自见到凯特。相比起DA2的最开始时录制，DAI是在开发的后期。为了配合她的时间安排，我们飞到了弗吉尼亚（她当时好像在写回忆录），只为一场录制。时间很紧张。
我心如乱麻，终于要见到珍妮薇舰长【《星际迷航：航海家号》的角色】了……是的，是的，我知道她不止于此。但拜托，这可是珍妮薇啊！
当我们坐下来时，我以为我需要重新向她讲解角色。毕竟DA2的那场录音已经过去好几年了，对DAO来说就更久了。
但并没有，凯特记得弗莱玛斯的一切。
I remember sitting there as she told me how much she loved the character, how rare it was to get one with so much texture and possibility. She called out my writing - my writing! - and waxed poetic about how she viewed Flemeth's arc. I... I was floored. 🫠
我记得她坐在那里告诉我，她有多爱这个角色，觉得能扮演弗莱玛斯这样的复杂的充满可能性的角色机会很少。她甚至称赞了我的写作。我的写作！她还滔滔不绝地谈论她对弗莱玛斯角色曲线的理解。我……我彻底被震撼了。🫠
Then we began recording. One issue that quickly reared its head was how Caroline had to speed through the lines if we hoped to finish. Kate was a trooper, and most takes she'd get it in one (which is rare), but I was alarmed because we weren't giving Kate time to read the VO comments on each line.
I brought it up, as there were some lines (so much sarcasm) that required nuance - Kate was getting them, oddly, but I was worried.
"Oh, it's fine," Kate said. "I read the comments as we go."
"How could you? We're going so fast!"
"I'm a speed reader."
Oh. OK, then. That certainly explained it. 😁
然后我们开始录制。很快出现了一个问题——为了能赶时间完成录制，卡罗琳需要快速阅读台词。凯特很敬业，大部分情况下一条就过（这很少见），但我还是担心她没有时间阅读每句台词的旁注。
我提出了这个问题，因为有些台词（尤其是那些充满讽刺意味的）需要一些微妙的感觉——凯特基本都拿捏到了，但我还是不安。
“哦，没事，”凯特说，“我一边录一边读旁注。”
“你怎么做到的？我们录得这么快！”
“我读得很快。”
哦，好吧，那确实解释得通。😁

（超5000字只能分开= =，我1L白写楼层了）

Look at that outfit. LOOK AT IT. This is where Morrigan gets it from, clearly. "Watch me serve, daughter, but know you will never do it QUITE as well!"
看看这身装束。看！莫瑞甘显然继承了她母亲的风范。“看看我如何惊艳全场，女儿，但请记住，你永远做不到像我一样完美！”
We got to the confrontation scene with Morrigan and she nailed it. Over and over. More than once, Caroline would make a call and, before I could even interject and say "no, Kate had it right, actually" Kate would explain exactly why she did it that way and why it worked for Flemeth. I was in love.
She did the "I will see her avenged!" section all in one go. I got chills. Then we got to the final scene.
然后我们录制到对峙莫瑞甘的场景，她表现得太出色了。一遍又一遍。卡罗琳叫停的很多时候，我刚要插话说“其实凯特那样演是对的”，凯特就已经解释了她为什么那么演，以及为什么那样对弗莱玛斯是合适的。我完全折服了。
她一次性过了那段“我会为她复仇！”的场景。我全身起了鸡皮疙瘩。接着我们录到了最后个场景。
You know the one. With Solas.
It was this beautiful moment. She took it somewhere quiet and sad... and when she got to that last line, we all felt it: Flemeth was dead. Everyone was in tears.
你知道是哪一场，没错就是和索拉斯的那场。
那是一段美妙的时刻。她演得安静而又悲伤……当她说出那句最后的台词时，我们所有人都感受到了——弗莱玛斯死了。所有人都哭了。

（像这种没有注释的图片是我找的）
I suppose I could talk more about the process. How she started off aligned with Morrigan's original Delirium inspiration, but I didn't pull back her loopy way of talking as much (bet you wondered).
I still don't know why it was so easy to slip into her voice, but I'm grateful I got the chance. ❤️
我想我还可以多谈谈这个过程，比如她最初受莫瑞甘灵感中“荒诞”部分的影响，但我没有刻意去掉她那种奇怪的说话方式（你可能也好奇过）。
我至今仍不知道为什么我能如此轻松地沉入她的声音中，但我很感激能有这个机会。❤️

CHARACTERS - DAY FOUR: Alistair
角色——第四天：阿历斯泰尔

Original flavour Alistair, in DAO. Always with the eyebrow.
DAO中原汁原味的阿历斯泰尔，总是带着他那标志性的眉毛。
Ah, Alistair. Depending on who you ask, he's the adorable woobie with the biggest heart or the irritating, over-used man-child. Yes, he is indeed all of those things. Good characters have flaws to go with their virtues. Ugly spots. That is literally their humanity.
啊，阿历斯泰尔。根据玩家的不同看法，他可能是那个可爱又心怀大爱的小棉袄，也可能是那个烦人的、已是陈词滥调的巨婴。是的，他确实是这些特质的结合体。优秀的角色有优点也会有缺点。一些“不完美”。这些正是他们作为人类的象征。
He was a bit of a bear to write, at the outset. James (Ohlen, the first creative director on DAO) had this idea he needed to be a grizzled Warden veteran - older, distrusting.
Everyone hated him instantly. I call this the Carth Onasi Problem, and suggested to James that maybe I try something else.
My observation says that the characters who are generally liked the most are the supportive ones. Enthusiastic. Funny? Sometimes, sure, but that's *not* required.
一开始，他其实很难写。詹姆斯（詹姆斯·欧伦，DAO第一任创意总监）当时觉得他需要是一个头发发白、经验丰富的灰卫老兵——年长、戒备心强。结果所有人都立刻讨厌这个角色。我称之为“卡斯·奥纳西问题”【《星战：旧共和国》的角色，我没玩过，但应该是发生了什么造成了大家的PTSD】，于是我建议詹姆斯让我试试其他的方向。
根据我的观察，通常最受欢迎的角色往往是支持型角色。他们热情，偶尔带点幽默感？当然，但幽默并不是必要条件。

We don't talk about DA2 Alistair.
不提DA2的他。【笑死】
I need to digress. See, at the time James had this (regrettable) period where he believed everything could be derived from a formula.
He even sold this idea to the founders, Ray and Greg. Google 'BioWare formula'. Anyway, how this relates is because James thought the DAO cast needed a Minsc: a comedy character who would become super popular and, ideally, the icon of DA.
这里稍微跑个题。当时，詹姆斯正处在一个（遗憾的）阶段，他觉得一切都可以通过公式得出。他甚至说服了BioWare的创始人雷和格雷格采纳这一想法。你可以搜搜“BioWare公式”。
【给大家节省点时间，但我不知道是不是就是这个2333】

【1.英雄过着舒适的生活；2.家园受到攻击，他们认识的人死亡；3.英雄遇到一男一女人类，可恋爱；4.英雄加入一个组织意图阻止一个恐怖的威胁；很少有人喜欢这个组织；5.英雄到处召集强大的战士；6.然后英雄需要做队友任务确保忠诚（以及一些亲密行为）；7.亲密行为（和谐）；8.超级最终大战，充满了悬念和动作（队友可能会死）；9.欢乐战后，但会模棱两可地留下续作悬念）】
这和阿历斯泰尔的关系在于，詹姆斯认为DAO的团队需要一个像明斯克【《博德之门》角色】那样的角色——一个超级受欢迎的喜剧人，并且最好能下成为DAO的标志人物。
"Isn't that Alistair?" you ask. "Arguable," I say, "but no."
James had me to up a huge list of 'comedic archetypes' and I wrote some possible dialogue for each one. Then he had the team vote. The winning archetype? The Buffoon - like Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin.
James was pleased. I was not. "The problem," I said, "is I don't find the Buffoon funny." 😅
“那不就是阿历斯泰尔吗？”你可能会问。
“也许可以这么说，”我会说，“但又不完全是。”
詹姆斯让我列出一大堆“喜剧原型”，然后为每种原型写了一些可能的对白。然后他让团队投票，最终胜出的原型是“小丑型”——类似荷马·辛普森【《辛普森一家》】或彼得·格里芬【《居家男人》】。
詹姆斯对此感到满意，我却不是很买账。
“问题是，”我说，“我不觉得‘小丑’这种角色好笑。” 😅


"But you're a professional."
"Sure, I *can* write him... but comedy isn't science. I need to find him funny. If I write him, the only comedy I'll mine is where he makes fun of himself."
James took that on board and then passed the character onto someone else. The result? Oghren.
I rest my case.
“但你是个专业作家。”
“是的，我当然可以写，但喜剧不是科学。我需要觉得他好笑。如果我来写这个角色，他唯一的笑点就会是自嘲。”
詹姆斯采纳了我的意见，将这个角色转交给了其他编剧。最终的结果？欧格伦（or奥根）。
我想这已经说明问题了。
So back to the supportive character: that was my thought for a new Alistair. It was a special case, after all - the DAO PC was thrust into a terrible situation. They needed someone who had their back. A bud. A *likeable* bud.
回到支持型角色，这是我对新阿历斯泰尔的想法。毕竟这是一个特殊的情景——DAO主角被推入了一个糟糕的境地。他们需要有人支持自己，一个可以信赖的伙伴，一个讨人喜欢的伙伴。

I actually really appreciate the artists took the time to give Alistair a unique appearance in DAI. Probably my favourite version of him.
我其实非常感谢艺术团队花时间在DAI里给他做了个独特外观。这可能是我最喜欢的版本。
I was watching Buffy at the time, and my thoughts drifted towards Xander.
Now, I know Joss Whedon is persona non grata these days, but this was 2006, OK? I was watching Buffy and thought, "man, Xander is such a wasted character" and considered how to fix him. Then I realized this might work for Alistair.
Plus, I wanted to see if I could replicate the Whedon vocal patter.
当时我在看《吸血鬼猎人巴菲》，就不禁地联想到了赞德。
现在，虽然乔斯·韦登【《芭菲》的创作者】如今名声不佳，但这说的是2006年的事，好吗？我在看《巴菲》时心想：“赞德真是个被浪费了潜力的角色”，于是考虑如何改造他。然后我意识到这可能适合阿历斯泰尔。此外，我也想试试能否模仿韦登式的台词风格。

That was the new Alistair: a more useful and likeable yet equally dorky version of Xander. We had very strict rules in DA about language: no modern speech styles, colloquialisms, any words that came into use in our world after 1900 got severe side eye... but Alistair? Alistair got a blanket pass.
于是，新的阿历斯泰尔诞生了：一个更有用、更讨喜，同时又一样呆萌的赞德版本。在《龙腾世纪》的创作中，我们对语言有非常严格的规则：不允许使用现代的说话风格、俚语，任何在1900年后才出现的词汇都会被严格审查……但阿历斯泰尔？阿历斯泰尔得到了“免检资格”。
Was it great that the lead writer's leading man got to break the rules? I guess not, but it's my opinion that you can break those kinds of rules - selectively, in small doses. Too much and you break the illusion.
And it worked. Alistair was an instant hit. Not just with the team, but with the fans.
主编剧的主打角色可以破坏规则是不是有点不公平？也许是的，但我觉得，这种规则是可以打破的——选择性地，少量地去打破。如果太多，就会破坏那种幻想感。而且这一切都奏效了。阿历斯泰尔立即受到了团队和粉丝的喜爱。
Confession time?
Yes, I knew Goldanna wasn't meant to be Alistair's mother. But neither was Fiona, originally.
I think fans caught wind of some revisionism at work, and OK it's true. I had a more Arthurian idea for his birth but I stopped liking it... yet not soon enough to go back and make edits.
坦白时间到？
是的，我知道苟丹娜本就不该是阿历斯泰尔的母亲。但最初也不是菲奥娜。
【DG这里把苟丹娜记成他妈了，其实游戏里是姐姐，但不影响，只是说错了名字】
我想粉丝们察觉到了一些设定上的修改，确实没错。我原本有一个更接近亚瑟王故事的构想作为他的身世，但后来我不喜欢这个想法了……但改动得有些太晚，无法回头修改其它内容。
Should I have just left it be, left Goldanna as his mother? Maybe. It was one of those writer things I just couldn't let go of and I probably could have used someone to sit me down and go "Gaider, please. Just stop."
I still like Fiona, and where I took it. But I probably shouldn't have gone there.
我是否应该就让苟丹娜作为他的母亲？或许吧。这是那种作家自己放不下的执念，但我可能确实需要有人坐下来对我说：“盖德，够了，别再改了。”我依然喜欢菲奥娜，以及后来她在故事中的发展。但可能我当时不应该那么执着。
Casting Alistair was SUCH a chore. He required a weird mix of devilish charm, but with enough sincerity and adorkableness it didn't come off as smarmy.
Every audition went full smarm... until Steve Valentine up and appeared out of nowhere. In the midst of a batch of audition files, there he was.
为阿历斯泰尔挑选配音演员真是个苦差事。他需要一种奇妙的平衡——既要带点调皮的魅力，同时又要足够真诚和呆萌，不能让人觉得阿谀奉承。
而每一次试音都带着一种油腻感，直到史蒂夫·瓦伦丁突然出现在我们眼前。在一堆试音文件中，他的表现脱颖而出。
We brought Steve in "just to try out", and he pulled it off. Even the "frog time" line, which (seriously) nobody else could. And when he got to the romantic lines, Steve's voice turned into pure butter without, again, sliding into "oh, he's slightly creepy". Both Caroline and I were sold.
我们让史蒂夫来试一试，而他完美地诠释了这个角色。连“青蛙时间”那句台词【第一次和莫瑞甘见面时的一句台词】都说得游刃有余。说真的，这句谁都说不顺。到了浪漫情节时，史蒂夫的声音仿佛化成了黄油，却完全没有那种“啊，他有点变态”的感觉。卡罗琳和我都被打动了。
And he was so gloriously easy to write. It's a well I'd probably return to... a bit too often, maybe? Maric, then Anders in Awakening, and then Alistair kept popping up in future games and the comics because, yes, he was pretty much the breakout comedy character of DA.
Which still makes me happy. 😁
而且写他的台词简直太轻松了。这可能是我太频繁回归的一种创作模式了？玛瑞克【囧a爹】、之后的《觉醒》里的安德斯【觉醒分囧】、还有阿历斯泰尔自己都不断出现在后续的游戏和漫画中，因为是的，他基本上成了《龙腾世纪》的一个突破型喜剧角色。
而这一点至今仍让我感到高兴。😁
CORRECTION: Goldanna was someone Alistair thought was his *sister*, and her mother his mother.
Look, it was almost twenty years ago, OK? 😅
纠正：苟丹娜是阿历斯泰尔以为的姐姐，而她的母亲是阿历斯泰尔以为的母亲。
听着，这都快二十年前的事了，好吗？😅
【体谅体谅老人家】

CHARACTERS - DAY FIVE: Zevran
角色——第五天：泽弗兰

（DG没有给泽弗兰配任何图，所以都是我找的咳咳）
I was going to skip over Zevran, honestly, as I felt like I didn't have a lot to tell in the way of stories about him... but I know he still has some (ardent) fans. Plus, on reflection, I thought maybe I DO have a few things to say. 😅
Sooo we'll see how this goes.
老实说，我本来想跳过泽弗兰，因为我感觉自己对他的幕后故事没有太多可说的……不过我知道他仍然有一些（非常狂热的）粉丝。再仔细想想，也许我确实有一些值得分享的东西。😅
所以，让我们看看能聊点什么吧。
Zevran came along much later in the DAO process, as we were trying to round out the cast of party members. Alistair and Morrigan were well underway (as "main" characters, they were concepted very early) and I'd just started to consider who our Rogue followers might be when... things changed, a bit.
泽弗兰是在DAO的制作后期才加入的角色，当时我们正在努力完善队伍成员的阵容。阿历斯泰尔和莫瑞甘已经基本定型（作为“主要”角色，他们的概念在很早期就确定了），而我刚刚开始考虑盗贼队友的设计时……事情稍微发生了一些变化。
See, BioWare had released a game not long beforehand called Jade Empire. It had included some same-sex options in its romances - not obscured like the way Juhani's "romance" had been hinted at in KotOR, but explicit. To this day, I have no idea who on the Jade Empire team was behind it, or why.
More to the point, the same-sex options had received a lot of attention and praise - almost universal praise, in fact. In 2005, everyone was just pleasantly surprised.
事情是这样的，BioWare在那不久之前推出了一款叫做《翡翠帝国》的游戏，其中包含了一些同性恋情选项——不像《旧共和国武士》中朱哈妮的“恋情”那样只是隐晦暗示，而是明确的同性恋情。至今，我都不知道《翡翠帝国》的团队中是谁决定这么做的，也不知道他们为什么这么做。最重要的是，这些同性选项收获了大量关注和几乎一致的好评。那时还是2005年，大家对此还感到意外和惊喜。
And I don't recall if I went to James and asked about it or if he came to me to suggest DAO should include it. The latter, I think.
You might ask "Aren't you gay, Dave? Weren't you already pushing for this?" And the answer to that is, emphatically, "no, not at all".
而且我也不记得是我主动找詹姆斯谈起这个，还是他来建议我们在DAO中加入同性恋情。我想应该是后者。你可能会问：“戴夫，你不是同性恋吗？难道你没主动去推动这件事？” 答案是：“不，完全没有。”
It might seem odd looking through the lens of 2024, but there was no talk of 'representation' or 'diversity'. Not at any level where we were aware of it, anyhow.
Today, fans argue about how MUCH representation to include and whether it's done well enough... the idea that, less than twenty years ago, it being included *at all* was very much in doubt feels so far away.
从现在2024年来看，这可能显得有些奇怪，但当时没有人谈论“代表性”或“多样性”——至少据我们所了解的层面上没有。而如今，粉丝们争论的是应该加入多少代表性，以及是否做得够好……而在不到二十年前，是否应该加入这样内容还是一个未知数。和那时候感觉太不一样了。
But, back then, I'd always assumed my private life and my work in games would never meet.
So I think it was James who brought it up, because I remember being startled. Pleasantly so, of course. Now I had to look at our two rogues and figure out how this would apply. I sketched out the female of the two (who was taken on by Sheryl Chee) and then looked at the male - he who became Zevran.
不过，当时我一直认为，我的私人生活和游戏工作永远不会有交集。所以，我觉得应该是詹姆斯提出的，因为我记得自己当时感到很惊讶。当然，是一种愉快的惊讶。于是我开始审视我们的两个盗贼角色，思考这种设计应该如何体现。我勾勒了女性盗贼的轮廓（后来由Sheryl Chee负责）【当然说的是蕾莉安娜】，接着转向了男性盗贼——他最终成了泽弗兰。
I'd been reading about the CIA and one thing that stuck with me was how they'd (allegedly) recruit gay men as assassins because they rarely had familial ties.
Zevran wasn't going to be gay (bisexuality wasn't a question of representation, but a cost-benefit compromise) but that was the inspiration.
当时，我正在看一些关于中情局的资料，其中有一点给我留下了深刻印象——他们（据称）会招募男同性恋做杀手，因为这些人往往没有家庭纽带。
泽弗兰并没有被设计成同性恋（双性恋化是个折衷方案，因为它既能减少成本，又能增加受众覆盖面），但这成为了他的灵感来源。
Then there was the question of how "flamboyantly" I was writing this character, whether that might be too stereotypical? I don't remember how it arose, but I had too many "flamboyant" friends to do anything other than double down. This character was gonna be Zorro the goddamn Gay Blade, that's what.
So that's how Zevran happened. Fun, a bit nihilistic, maybe a bit too overtly flirty for today's audience but very confidently *sexual*. Everything I'm not, so I'll admit it was an interesting exploration to dig down and find that voice somewhere inside. He was the anti-Alistair, and I needed that.
然后就有了一个问题——他应该有多“张扬”？是否会显得太过刻板印象化？我已经不记得这个问题是怎么出来的，但我有太多张扬的朋友，所以我就坚持下去了。这角色就该像“粉雄佐罗”一样。【应该是说一样风骚】
这就是泽弗兰的诞生过程：有趣，有点虚无主义，也许对今天的观众来说太过露骨，但却是一种非常自信的性感。他和我完全不一样，所以我承认挖掘内心深处去找到这种声音是个有趣的尝试。他是阿历斯泰尔的反面，而我正需要这样的角色。

Casting him was difficult. Caroline always tried to go for authentic accents, when we could, but for some reason this was getting us nowhere.
I think back, and I suspect it's because I hadn't yet learned the lesson to not use terms in casting descriptions I thought were universal... but were not.
给泽弗兰选演员是件难事【看下来选演员都是难事，笑死】。卡罗琳一直想尽量让角色的口音真实，但不知为何这次进展得非常不顺利。
回想起来，我怀疑是因为我还没学到一个教训，那就是不要在演员描述中使用我以为是普遍认可的但实际上并不是的那些术语。
What do I mean by that? Well, there was one write-up that said "drow elf". Now, I know what a drow elf is. It wasn't even important to the description, but the director saw the word "elf", and you know what we got back?
A Keebler elf. Like a leprachaun, high and sweet and cutsie. Can you imagine?
这是什么意思？好吧，比如我曾经的某个描述中写了“卓尔精灵”。我知道卓尔精灵是什么。但那甚至和角色描述的关系都不大，而导演看到了“精灵”这个词，你猜猜我们收到了什么？
一个Keebler小精灵，像是妖精，要有高亢甜美又幼稚的声音，你能想象吗？

In this case, I think it was the use of the word "assassin". Combine that with the sorts of roles many Hispanic actors in LA probably are asked to play, and all the auditions we were getting were 150% dark, mean, and gritty. 🫠
So we widened the casting call a bit, and this led us to Jon Curry.
在泽弗兰的案例中，我怀疑问题出在“刺客”这个词上。再加上许多在洛杉矶的西班牙裔演员可能经常被要求扮演类似的角色，我们收到的试音是150%的“黑暗、冷酷、坚毅”。🫠
于是我们扩大了试音范围，这才找到了乔恩·库里。
【以免某些人不知道，他也是审判中的美音判官】

I knew Jon wasn't Hispanic, but what I wasn't prepared for when I flew down to meet the DAO actors was that he's this extremely tall, extremely Nordic looking dude who just happened to do the most amazing Antonio Banderas impression. Watching THAT man channel Zevran was... more than a bit surreal. 😅
And he had fun with it. As soon as we gave him the go ahead to play the fun and flirtiness to the hilt, that's exactly what he did.
我知道乔恩并不是西班牙裔，但当我飞去见DAO的演员时，我没想到的是，他是个非常高挑、极具北欧风貌的男人，却恰好能完美模仿安东尼奥·班德拉斯【西班牙演员】的口音。看着这样一个人演绎泽弗兰，真的有点超现实。😅
而且他玩得非常开心。我们给他开绿灯，让他尽情展现这种张扬、调情的性格，他就做到了淋漓尽致。
Over the few days where we found Zevran's voice, it totally supplied me with something I could hold in my head when I went back to Edmonton and finished writing him.
在我们找到泽弗兰的声音的那几天，他完全成了我的灵感来源。带着这份灵感，我回到埃德蒙顿完成了他的写作。
Zevran was funny enough that the fans liked him. The only part of the reception I thought odd was the occasional comment by a male player who felt "tricked" into having sex with Zevran.
泽弗兰足够有趣，赢得了玩家的喜爱。收到的反响中有一点我觉得奇怪的是，有些男性玩家觉得“被骗了”。
"You mean... that part where he invites you to his tent for a sensual massage?"
"Yes! I was expecting a massage!"
"He literally says the massage is sensual."
"Well he wasn't clear enough!"
“你是说……泽弗兰邀请你去帐篷里享受一次性感按摩的那段？”
“对！我以为只是按摩！”
“他确实字面上说到了按摩是性感的。”
“那他说得不够清楚！”
This is where I first came to the conclusion that a certain number of our players just don't know how to people. And that maybe an adjustment to the way we approached the messaging (or massaging lol) of romance was in order.
于是，我初次得出了一个结论——我们的一些玩家真的不知道怎么与人交流。或许我们需要调整一下恋爱选项的设计方式（或者按摩选项，哈哈）。
If I could go back, would I change anything?
Maybe I'd remind the systems team Zevran should really be able to pick a lock. And maybe not allow him to die. We had no idea we'd need to import these choices into the future - we kinda thought DAO was "one and done". Not so much, as it turned out. 😁
如果可以回到过去，我会改变什么呢？
也许我会提醒系统团队，泽弗兰真的需要会开锁。也许不该能让他死。我们完全没意识到这些选择需要导入未来的游戏中，当时我们还以为DAO是“一次性”的游戏……事实证明，并不是这样。😁

CHARACTERS - DAY SIX: Fenris
角色——第六天：芬里斯

In-game image of Fenris from Dragon Age 2.
I'd objected strenuously to the art team's plan at changing the elves to a more "distinctive" appearance. Not that I opposed the idea in theory, but I thought they ended up looking too alien, and according to the lore elves were generally considered attractive. The art team mocked and dismissed me (quite literally, I'm afraid) and the rest of the team had bigger battles to fight. For Fenris, at least, he reached a point of being kinda sexy despite the change... so not all bad, I guess?
DA2中芬里斯的形象
我曾强烈反对艺术团队将精灵的外貌改得更加“与众不同”的计划。不是说我理论上反对这个主意，而是说我觉得他们最后的设计看起来太过异类。而根据游戏设定，精灵通常被认为是很有吸引力的种族。艺术团队嘲笑并无视了我的意见（很直接地，没有拐弯抹角），而小组中的其他人当时有更重要的东西要争取。不过至少，对芬里斯而言，最终效果还算不错——他变得有点性感了，这也不算太糟，对吧？
Now, DA2 is a story all on its own but I'm not going to go there other than to sum it up as "we had just over a year and a half to make this". It's why I only wrote one follower, Fenris, and although it'll make his fans mad: I probably shouldn't have.
Let me explain.
DA2本身的制作过程就可以写成一个单独的故事，但我就不多说了，简单总结就是——“我们只有一年半多一点的时间来完成这款游戏。” 这也是为什么我只写了一个队友——芬里斯。而尽管这可能让他的粉丝生气，但我老实说，我可能不该写他。
让我解释一下。
The way we'd approach making the followers is brainstorming a list of concepts covering first the array of gameplay classes (and sub-classes) and then making sure they each have some skin in the game when it came to the story's conflicts - ideally having characters on both sides of the major ones.
Why? You can't make a player care about the world, but you can make them care about characters who care about the world. It's the easiest way to provide hooks into a conflict, outside of it knocking on the player's door. Heck, it's probably better than that. Players will burn the world for approval.
我们设计队友的方法是，首先列出一系列覆盖所有游戏职业（及其分支）的概念，然后确保这些角色能够与游戏剧情的主要冲突相关——理想情况下，他们在这些冲突中应该处于对立的立场。
为什么？因为玩家们可能对游戏世界本身毫不在乎，但他们会在意那些在乎这个世界的角色。这是除了直接把冲突怼到玩家脸上外，最简单的能为冲突提供情感纽带的方式。哼，可能比那更好。玩家甚至会为了博得角色的好感而愿意烧毁整个世界。
After that, we'd decide things like romances/sexuality. Then the writers would pick who they'd write.
I always let my writers pick first. I figured they do their best work when it's something they're inspired to write... and they got so few chances at ownership, I wanted to give it whenever I could
接下来，我们会决定像是恋爱选项和性取向之类的事情，然后由编剧挑选自己想写的角色。
我总是让我的编剧们先选。因为我觉得，他们写感兴趣的角色时表现会更出色。而且他们很少有机会能真正地拥有某个角色，我希望能尽可能地给予他们这种机会。
It's why I (reluctantly) let Patrick wrest Cole from my grasp in DAI, a character I'd created in Asunder. It's also why I let Jennifer take Anders in DA2, who I'd started in Awakening.
In this instance, it meant I was left with the angry elven warrior character who nobody else appeared to want.
这也是为什么我（勉强地）让帕特里克【Patrick Weekes】从我手里“抢走”了DAI中科尔——一个我在小说《决裂》中创造的角色。同样的，这也是为什么我让詹妮弗【Jennifer Hepler】接手了DA2中的安德斯——我在《觉醒》中创作的。
而在DA2的情况下，给我剩下的正是没人想要的那位愤怒的精灵战士。
It should have been my first clue that something was up. The second was how the artists had zero clue what to do with him. The art concepts were all over the place - from mages to crows to... well, even weirder. No matter how hard I tried to explain the idea, the artists simply didn't seem to get it
Does this mean he was a bad character? Not exactly. Just an idea that probably deserved some re-examining. You can tell when an idea has a certain spark, and part of that is being easy to communicate. Sadly, there wasn't time for any re-examining even if it'd occurred to me. And it didn't, not yet.
这应该是我发现不对的第一个线索。第二个线索是，艺术团队完全不知道该怎么处理他。他的艺术概念天马行空，从法师到暗鸦到甚至更奇怪的东西上。无论我怎么解释这个角色，艺术团队似乎就是不明白。
这是否意味着他是个糟糕的角色？不完全是。只是意味着他是一个可能需要重新审视的角色。一个好角色的标志之一是它能容易地被传达，而芬里斯显然不符合这个标准。不幸的是，即使我意识到了这个问题，我们也没有时间重新审视角色。更别说我当时根本就没意识到了。
If it had, if I had time, maybe I'd have re-booted him as a templar. Someone pro-templar rather than anti-mage, who could give a personal hook into Meredith and give the templars some badly-needed humanity.
But this falls into the shoulda-woulda-coulda category. I had a follower to write. Quickly.
如果我意识到了，并且还有时间，也许我会把他改造成一个圣殿骑士——一个支持圣殿骑士阵营而不是单纯反法师的角色。这样他可以与梅瑞迪斯建立直接的联系，也能给圣殿骑士阵营增添一些非常需要的人性刻画。
不过这些都只是“应该做但没做”的设想。我手上有一个队友要写，而且必须快速写完。
I struggled, at first. It was hard to get away from "Fenris hates everything, all the time". It felt very one-note, and I didn't know where to take him. My third clue, I guess.
I also wasn't sure if I was the right person to write a former slave. I did know that couldn't be the center of his story.
最初我很挣扎，感觉他就是个“永远愤怒”的角色，情感太单一，我不知道该如何发展。这应该是我的第三个线索。
此外，我也不确定自己是否是写一个前奴隶的合适人选。我只清楚这个身份并不能成为他故事的核心。
I did know trauma, however. How it can eat you up. How the hate and resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. How it can infect your relationships.
Fenris's trauma isn't my trauma, obviously, but here I dipped into a more personal part of myself than I'd ever done before. It gave me the center of his story I was missing, but wow was it uncomfortable. In a good way, maybe. I likely wouldn't have, if I hadn't been so desperate. In a way, I think DA2 had some of our best writing *because* of the timeline. It was raw, with little time to sand down the interesting parts.
但我对创伤很有体会——它是如何吞噬你的；它是如何让你心中的仇恨和怨念像毒药一样折磨你，让你期待着另一个人的死亡；它是如何影响你的人际关系的。
当然，芬里斯的创伤并不是我的创伤，但我确实是第一次从自己更私人的经历中汲取灵感，填补了他故事的空白。这让我感到非常不适，但也许是件好事。说实话，如果不是被时间压力逼到绝望，我可能不会这么做。某种程度上，DA2的时限反而让我们的一些写作变得更好，因为它生猛而未经打磨。
I wouldn't have done the "Fenris doesn't talk to you for three years" thing if I'd known we were going to cut all the reactivity initially planned for the time jumps. When that call was made, I campaigned to cut the jumps to a year, but there was no time for the revisions it'd need. So, um. Awkward.
不过，如果当时我就知道后来我们会因为跳时间而砍掉中间所有的角色互动的话，我肯定不会让芬里斯“三年不和你说话”的。当这个决定被做出时，我极力建议把时间跳跃缩短为一年，但为此要进行的改动所需要的时间已经没有了。所以，嗯，很尴尬。
I used to get asked where the name came from, and I... don't remember? Obviously it's derived from Fenrir, but I don't recall why we picked that. Someone pointed at Fenris the Feared from Joe Abercrombie's books... and I did read them, so maybe the name lodged in my head? Wouldn't be the first time.
至于他的名字由来，我曾被问过很多次，但我已经不记得了。很显然是来源于芬里尔，但具体为什么选这个名字我也说不上来。有人提到乔·阿伯克隆比小说中的“恐惧芬里斯”，我确实读过那些书，所以这个名字可能是潜意识里冒出来的？这也不会是第一次发生这种事了。

Casting Fenris turned out to be easy. He was the first time I requested a specific VA and got him. (The other times were Merrill and then Solas, my two "I want these specific Welsh actors, please".)
Why? OK, if you must know, I'd played a bit of Final Fantasy XII. I heard Balthier. "Yes, that." 😅
芬里斯的选角倒是很顺利【终于有个顺利的】。这是我第一次点名要某个配音演员并且真的得到了他。（另两次是梅丽尔和索拉斯，我的两回“求求了，我特想要这些威尔士演员来演。”）
为什么？好吧，如果你一定要知道的话……我玩过一些《最终幻想12》。当我听到巴尔弗雷亚的声音时，我就想：“对，就是这个。” 😅

And Gideon Emery was a delight, as it turned out. Consummate professional, and that lovely gravel in his voice... good god. Bite the knuckles. There was a struggle to find the voice at the outset where I did my best not to say "just pls do Balthier" but he found Fenris on his own and it was amazing.
事实证明吉迪恩·埃默里真的很棒。他是个非常完美的专业人士，他那低沉沙哑的声音……天哪，简直想咬手指【笑死】。他一开始也在努力去找角色的声音，与其同时我拼命忍住没直接说“就巴尔弗雷亚”。但他最终找到了属于芬里斯自己的声音，效果非常棒。
Overall, Fenris turned out better than he had any right to, considering the rocky start. He had a lot of soul, a vulnerability forged by pain that struck a chord with a lot of players, and I'm glad.
总的来说，考虑到起步有多困难，芬里斯最终的呈现效果比预期好得多。他的灵魂和痛苦淬炼出的脆弱打动了许多玩家，我对此感到很欣慰。
Do I regret anything? Probably having him live in a corpse-filled mansion that would never update.
That's a hindsight thing, though, as again the cut to reactivity over the time jumps came late. Outside of that, maybe letting the player give him back to Danarius? Poor shock value and a waste of resources because almost nobody took the option. Good evil options are ones that are tempting to take.
我后悔过什么吗？大概是让他住在那个堆满尸体、永远不会更新的宅邸里吧。
不过这是事后诸葛亮，因为时间跳跃，互动被砍掉的决定是在后期才做出的。除此之外，也许我不该让玩家有机会把他送回达奈留斯身边？这个选项非常缺乏吸引力，几乎没人选择，资源被浪费了。好的邪恶选项应该是那种让人有点想去尝试的。

A screenshot from one of the DA2 conversation scenes with Fenris, in the mansion he occupies during the game. He did a lot of drinking. I got accused, at one point, of glorifying alcoholism? I mean... I don't know if Fenris was an alcoholic, but if he was the bitterness of these scenes certainly doesn't feel like glorification to me.
DA2中芬里斯在对话场景的截图，背景是他居住的那座宅邸。他喝了很多酒。我有一次甚至被指责是在美化酗酒。呃……我并不确定芬里斯是不是个酒鬼，但如果是，那些苦涩的场景显然对我来说没有任何“美化”的感觉。
And the lyrium tattoos. Interesting concept, but they're probably why you'll never see Fenris in a future DA. He requires a custom body, and the tattoos make that expensive.
It's why I put Fenris in my 4th DA novel - the cancelled one. Don't fret, though. He died in it, so this way he lives on. 😉
还有他的歌晶纹身。虽然概念很有趣，但可能正是它让你不会在未来的《龙腾世纪》中再见到他了。他需要定制的角色模型，而纹身又让制作成本非常高昂。
这也是为什么我把芬里斯写进了我不写了的第四本《龙腾世纪》小说中。不过别为不写了而苦恼哈。他在那本书里死了，没写完所以他现在还能继续活在大家的心里。😉

A piece of unused concept art for Fenris: bare-chested, quilted armor on the legs, giant sword on the back. I was looking through the Fenris concept art pieces online and saw this and thought "hey, this one actually looks pretty good... if you ignore the DA2 elves-are-barefoot thing". I want to say maybe this was a piece done for the cancelled expansion, for a potential Fenris model update?
一张未使用的芬里斯概念图：他赤裸上身，穿着缝制的护腿，背着一把巨剑。我在网上翻看芬里斯的概念图时看到这一张，心想：“嘿，这个其实看起来还不错……只要忽略DA2里精灵一律光脚的设定就好。” 我想这可能是为被取消的扩展包设计的芬里斯模型更新？

CHARACTERS - Day Seven: Shale
角色——第七天：夏尔

A screenshot from the Stone Prisoner DLC, showing Shale in front of one of the buildings in her initial quest area.
DLC《石囚者》一张截图，展示了夏尔站在她初始任务区域的一座建筑前。
Oops! I realized I'd moved on from DAO but missed one of the companions I'd written. Which checks out, honestly, because I almost didn't write Shale and, even after I'd written her, she almost didn't happen anyhow. Then she did. Prepare yourself for... PIGEON QUEST. 🦤
糟糕！我发现自己已经开始讲DAO之后的内容，但漏掉了一个我写的队友。不过其实还挺合理的，因为我差点就没写夏尔。而且即使写了，她也差点没能真正出现在游戏里。不过既然她还是成功出现了，那就准备好迎接……鸽子任务吧。🦤
So... I'm wracking my brain, but I don't recall how Shale began. I have this vague memory of us wanting a "weird" party member who didn't conform to the normal classes (this was back when Dog didn't need to be in the party), and I think my mind drifted to an old indie comic character named Concrete.
Now, your reaction to that is probably "who?" That's OK. When I explain that HK-47 in KotOR was inspired by an old Canadian TV show called the Littlest Hobo I get the same perplexed response. 😅
嗯……我绞尽脑汁也想不起来夏尔最初是怎么来的。我模模糊糊记得，我们当时想要一个“奇怪”的不属于常规职业分类的队友（那时候狗还不需要占队友格），我觉得我的思绪可能飘到了一个老独立漫画角色上，叫做Concrete。
你可能会问：“谁？” 这没关系。当我解释说《星战：旧共和国武士》中的HK-47灵感来源于一部叫《小流浪狗》的加拿大老电视剧时，人们也总会有同样困惑的反应。😅【看来是暴露年龄系列】

In short: Concrete was just a regular dude. Who happened to also be a walking hulk of rock. Cue hi-jinx.
The problem here is I don't remember whether the Concrete thing was part of the original inspiration or something I thought of at the point when I started writing the character.
Because I didn't, at first. That was later. Shale was initially taken on by Jay Turner, then one of our junior writers.
简单来说，Concrete就是个普通人，只不过他碰巧是一块会走路的巨大岩石。然后各种闹剧就开始了。
【hi-jinx：energetic and excited behaviour in which people do funny things or play tricks on someone。像是做有趣的事或捉弄别人之类的充满活力的行为。🤔我这里意译了】
问题是，我记不清这是不是最初的灵感来源，还是我后来开始写这个角色时才想到的。因为最开始我并没有写夏尔。她最初是由我们的一位初级编剧杰·特纳负责的。
Jay had an idea to make Shale more of a robot, an emotionless automoton killer... think HK-47, but without the layer of sarcasm. I was leery, and told Jay he'd have to be very careful. "Emotionless" can very quickly turn into "boring", after all, unless you're VERY careful. But Jay was determined.
Sigh. This was a fail on my part, as his lead. There's been a couple of times in my career when I've let a junior convince me with their enthusiasm to take on something my experience said they shouldn't. And then watch their confidence crumble despite every effort I made to reassure them it was OK.
杰的想法是让夏尔更像一个机器，一个没有感情的杀戮机器……有点像是HK-47，但没有那层喜欢讽刺的外衣。我当时有点担心，并告诉杰他需要非常小心。毕竟“没有感情”很容易变成“无趣”，除非你非常小心地处理。但杰决心尝试。
唉，这是我的失误。作为他的领导，我不该让这种情况发生。在我的职业生涯中，有几次类似的情况——我被新人编剧的热情说服，让他们接手一些我凭经验知道他们不该接的，然后无论我如何安抚他们都无济于事，只能目睹着他们的信心崩塌。
This was one of those times. Jay, no idea if you'll read this but: I'm sorry. Even an experienced writer would have found that a daunting challenge. Tonia, my other Big Fail on a similar situation in DAI: I'm sorry. Both times, I should have known. You did your best, but I set you up to fail. 😔
这就是其中一次。杰，我不知道你会不会看到这些内容，但是对不起。即使是有经验的编剧，也会觉得这个挑战非常艰巨。另一个类似情况发生在DAI中，托尼亚，我也对不起你。两次我都应该意识到。你们已经尽力了，但我却让你们失败了。😔
Jay did his best, and this version of Shale was certainly interesting... but, when he was done, it was one of those peer reviews where every writer had that look of "I'm REALLY sorry to say this..."
It felt flat. Jay tried numerous revisions, but the issue wasn't his ability - it was the concept.
杰尽了全力，这个版本的夏尔也确实很有趣……但完成后，当进行同行评审时，每位编剧的表情都像在说：“我真的很抱歉……”
整体感觉很平淡。杰尝试了无数次修改，但问题并不是他的能力，而是这个概念本身。
I only allowed my writers a certain number of tries before I take it away. This hearkens back to an earlier time at Bio when writers would hack away at something that wasn't working 6, 7, 8 times or more until finally their soul was dust. Mike Laidlaw can attest. Revision isn't always the answer.
So I moved (a much relieved, I think) Jay onto something else, and the question arose: what do we do with Shale? Do we cut it? It was already very late.
当时我给每位编剧的尝试次数是有限的，因为在BioWare早期，我们有过编剧反复修改一个内容6、7、8次无果，直到失去全部的希望。迈克·莱德劳可以作证——修改并不总是答案。
所以我决定将（我想，松了一口气的）杰调到别的项目上，而问题是，夏尔怎么办？我们要砍掉她吗？但这时开发周期已经非常晚了。

Then Shale dropped in my lap. I don't remember if it was me refusing to let it go or maybe Brent (Knowles, Creative Director) giving it to me.
I suspect it was the latter, because I recall being a bit bitter about the whole thing. WHAT am I going to do with this character? At the time, they'd moved me out of the writers pit to instead be in a big office with the other leads. I had this corner desk by a window (yay) with an awful view (ugh)
然后，夏尔落到了我手里。我记不清是我自己坚持不放，还是创意总监布伦特·诺尔斯把她交给我的。
我猜是后者，因为我记得自己对整个事情感到有点五味陈杂。我该拿这个角色怎么办？当时，我被从编剧办公室调到与其他领导一起的大办公室里。我在一个有窗户（耶）的角落，但风景很糟糕（呃）。
What was so awful about it? It looked out onto the neighbouring roof, where there was only an HVAC unit to see. In the winter, pigeons would gather around it. They pooped all over everything - there was this alcove around the access door, right? The pigeons roosted there and it was POOP FAUCET city.
Not only that, the pigeons used the HVAC like some kind of sex den. Angry, ugly pigeon sex. The only respite was when a hawk would appear and the pigeons scattered. Then I'd get maybe a day when there was a single pigeon corpse, like an exploded ball of down, to act as a scarecrow. Good days, those.
糟糕在哪呢？它对着隔壁楼顶，唯一能看到的是一台HVAC【暖通空调】。冬天，鸽子会聚在那儿，到处拉屎——通道门的周围不是有个内凹吗？那里满是鸽子窝，简直像个“粪便喷泉”城市。
更糟的是，鸽子把HVAC当作某种性爱巢穴。愤怒、丑陋的鸽子交配场景。唯一的安慰是当一只鹰出现时鸽子们会四散而逃。然后我可以享受大概一天，只需面对一具像爆炸的绒毛球的鸽子尸体，像是稻草人。那真是好日子。

A row of pigeons, up close to the camera with HVAC system in the background. Staring with their beady little demon eyes. My eternal nightmare.
一排鸽子近照，背景是HVAC系统。它们用那闪烁的小恶魔般的眼睛直勾勾地盯着你。这就是我永恒的噩梦。【还专门P个图，笑死】
What does any of this have to do with Shale? Well, there's me, staring out the window trying desperately to think what I'm going to do. But I CAN'T stare out the window because, gross. But what else am I going to stare at while I think? It was making me furious. I hated those pigeons SO SO MUCH.
And then it hit me: Shale is basically an animated statue, right? Something that pigeons are rather notorious for also gathering on?
这一切和夏尔有什么关系？我盯着窗外，拼命思考自己该怎么办。但我不能盯着窗外，因为太恶心了。但我还能盯着什么呢？这让我非常愤怒。我太太太讨厌这些鸽子了！
然后我灵光一闪——夏尔基本上就是一个会动的雕像，对吧？而雕像正是出名的鸽子喜欢聚集的地方？
And so I wrote. I wrote like the angry, angry wind. I had zero time to do this so it was basically me vomiting all my annoyance at everything into a single character.
于是，我开始写，像咆哮的风一样。我几乎没有时间仔细雕琢，只是把对一切的愤怒倾泻到这个角色中。
Not that it helped much. There was a battle going on over Shale - first, as I recall, it was the art team. They were going to make every doorway in the game EXTRA HUGE because they were worried that Shale was too large and might clip. So, yes, let's alter the whole world to fix that. Good idea. 🙃
Eventually, they compromised by making Shale smaller. Sten-sized. Or Brent went Akira mode, but I don't really know. This was a battle happening above my level.
但这并没有太大帮助。围绕夏尔的争论仍在继续，首先是艺术团队担心夏尔太大，可能会在游戏里穿过门框时发生穿模，所以他们提议让游戏中的每个门框都变得超级大……没错，让我们改变整个世界只为了她。好主意。🙃【second在哪里？】
最终，他们妥协了，让夏尔变得更小到Sten一样的体型。或者可能是布伦特进入了阿基拉模式【我也不知道这是什么】，但我真的不知道。那不是我能知道的。
Yet Shale got cut anyhow. There wasn't time to do her abilities and we were short on cinematics time. There was never enough time on DAO.
"Oh well," I thought. "That's that." I did what I could, but cut content is almost never resurrected. The idea was floated of making Shale into a DLC but I scoffed. Yeah, right!
然而，夏尔最终还是被砍掉了。我们没有时间设计她的技能，而过场动画的制作时间也很紧张。在DAO的开发中，从来都感觉时间不够用。
“唉，”我想，“就这样吧。” 我已经尽力了，而被砍掉的内容几乎不可能复活。有人提出将夏尔变成DLC，我当时冷笑了一下。耶，可能性好大！
But... it happened. That's why the "almost" is there. Enough of the team liked Shale they made it happen this one time.
This meant I could finish up the writing once we'd more or less wrapped DAO, and the rest of the team (cinematics, in particular, who were pressed the hardest for time) could move onto the Shale DLC once they were ready.
但是……它真的实现了。这也是为什么我说“差点”被砍。团队里有足够多的人喜欢夏尔，所以他们破例让它成真了这一次。
这意味着，在我们基本完成DAO的主线内容后，我可以继续完成夏尔的剧本写作，而其他团队（尤其是负责过场动画的团队，他们时间最为紧张）可以在准备好后就开始夏尔的DLC制作。
It was supposed to come out well after release, but you know. Shenanigans.
This particular shenanigan was EA deciding to sit on the finished DAO a few months in order to delay the release. Why? Again, not my level. To get closer to Christmas, maybe, or maybe for sim ship.
It did mean Shale ended up being ready for release day. Unexpected confluence of events, honestly.
原本，这个DLC计划是在游戏发布后很久才上线，但你懂的，总会有些意外情况。
这次的意外情况是EA决定推迟已经完成的DAO的发布几个月。为什么？这也不是我能知道的。可能是为了靠近圣诞节发售，也可能是为了同步全球发行。
但这确实让夏尔赶上了首发日。真是出乎意料的事情交汇在了一起。
Cue some fans getting upset that "cut content" was sold to them separately, which... fair, I guess? The alternative would have been that Shale was simply cut, period, and it just worked out this way but... yes, fair. This was back when DLC was the main beef of hardcore gamers. Oh, the good old days.
然后，一些粉丝对被砍掉的内容还要单独作为DLC售卖感到不满……这种反应也算合理，对吧？但如果没有这样的机缘巧合，夏尔就真的被砍掉了。尽管如此，我理解玩家的愤怒，那时候DLC可是硬核玩家的头号痛点【为啥】。噢，曾经的美好时光啊。
Overall? I have a soft spot for Shale. She has no soft spot for anyone, being... you know... made of rock. It's why I put her in Asunder, and why she was also going to be in the - apparently now notorious for its Fenris murder - cancelled fourth DA novel.
Also, if you're a pigeon fan: not sorry. 😇
总体来说？我对夏尔有点心软，而她对任何人都不心软，因为……你知道的……她是石头做的。【老头冷笑话】这也是为什么我在小说《决裂》中加入了她，以及为什么她原本会出现在那本“很显然现在因会写死芬里斯而已经臭名昭著的”被取消的第四本DA小说中。
另外，如果你是个鸽子爱好者：不好意思，我并不觉得抱歉。😇

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。

CHARACTERS - Day Nine: Cassandra
角色——第九天：卡珊德拉

Head and shoulders shot of Cassandra, as she appeared in Dragon Age Inquisition. The character artists did such an amazing job translating her into the new engine.
卡珊德拉在审判中的半身照。角色艺术师们太棒了，将她成功地移植到了新引擎中。
This is the last of the (major) characters I wrote during my time on Dragon Age. I could go into others, and considered moving onto Stray Gods... but I feel like fewer would be interested, and I honestly can't keep up the pace. So let's make this the last, for now.
她是我在《龙腾世纪》期间创作的最后一位主要角色了。我本可以继续写其他次要角色，并考虑继续写《迷失神祇》的角色……但我感觉感兴趣的人会更少，而老实说我也保持不了这样一天一篇的节奏了。所以，这暂时就作为最后一篇吧。
So, yeah. Cassandra. We knew early on that Cassandra would come into DAI as a companion, along with Varric, that this was part of what DA2 set up for the sequel. Now, I'd written Cassandra's short scenes in DA2, yes, but I wasn't her writer for DAI. Initially, she was Jennifer Hepler's character.
所以，对，回到卡珊德拉。我们很早就知道，她和瓦里克会作为队友出现在DAI中，这是DA2
为续作设定好的剧情线索之一。是的，我确实写了DA2中卡珊德拉的短暂出场，但在DAI中，她并不是由我执笔的。最初，她是詹妮弗·赫普勒的角色。【2代的安德斯也是她写的】

A head and shoulders shot of Cassandra, in heavy armor, as she first appeared in DA2. I almost forgot she looked like this back then.
卡珊德拉身穿重甲第一次出现在DA2时的半身照。我差点都忘了她当初的样子了
By mid-project, in fact, Cassandra was more or less fully written. Jennifer did a great job - solid character, solid quest. The sticking point, it turned out, was her romance.
Now, to be fair, Jennifer told me straight up when we began that writing romance wasn't her forte, but she'd give it a go.
事实上到项目中期时，卡珊德拉的部分已经基本完成了。詹妮弗做得很棒——角色塑造扎实，任务线也很好。但她的浪漫线成了个棘手的问题。
老实说，詹妮弗一开始就告诉我，写浪漫剧情不是她的强项，但她愿意试一试。
The problem with the romance as she wrote it wasn't in its execution but more a clash between the character as Jennifer envisioned her and the requirements of her being a romance.
See, I mentioned previously that a romance arc inherently limits the kinds of stories you can tell with a companion.
问题不在于浪漫线本身的执行，而在于詹妮弗心中对角色的设想，与角色作为浪漫选项所需的特质之间发生了冲突。
正如我之前提到的，一个浪漫故事线在某种程度上会限制你能用一个伙伴角色讲述的故事类型。
Many responses I got can be summed up as "lol skill issue", but consider this: a companion romance isn't a fic you can just throw up on AO3. It's an investment of a lot of resources. If a companion has one, most of their resources need to be devoted to it - it's not "now let's ALSO add a romance".
很多人对这个观点的回应可以总结为“技术问题（笑）”。但请想想，一个伙伴的浪漫线不是你能随便扔到AO3上的同人文。这需要投入大量资源。如果一个伙伴有浪漫线，他们的大部分资源都必须倾注于它，而不是“现在让我们加个浪漫线吧”。
That means it needs to take priority in who they are as a character and their arc. What's more, they need to be *appealing* to a big chunk of the player base - or at least someone we can imagine being broadly appealing, anyway.
Thankfully, there are still many many stories this can accommodate. 😊
这意味着浪漫线需要优先于角色的特质及故事线。而且，浪漫选项还需要对玩家群体的很大一部分具有吸引力，或者至少得让我们认为会被广泛喜爱的人。
幸好的是，即便如此，仍然有很多类型的故事可以后期再兼容浪漫线😊。
This, however, wasn't one of those. Was Cassandra a fascinating character? Absolutely. Her romance, though...
Well, Jennifer DID warn me. She'd written Cassandra as a serious, self-righteous, pious woman who put the Inquisitor on a messianic pedestal. Romancing her meant changing her view of you.
然而，卡珊德拉并不属于其中之一。卡珊德拉是个迷人的角色吗？当然。但她的浪漫线呢……好吧，詹妮弗确实警告过我，她笔下的卡珊德拉是一个严肃的、自以为是的虔诚角色，把审判官视为救世主一般的存在。追求她，意味着改变她对你的看法。
You did this by being... pushy. Jennifer didn't mean it to, I'm sure, but sometimes it came off as, at best, negging. At worst, a bit harassy.
And Jennifer would have fixed it. This was a 1st draft, and the issues - while serious - were something a skilled writer like her could handle. No problem.
而为了达到这个效果，你得……靠强硬。詹妮弗肯定不是故意的，但有时这看起来，往好的说的，算是恶作剧式的打压，往坏的说，有点像骚扰。
当然，詹妮弗本来会改进的。这只是个初稿，这些问题虽然严重，但她是个优秀的编剧，以她的能力绝对能解决。毫无疑问。
Thing is, Jennifer left.
You may not remember, but this was around the time a bunch of GamerGate dudes decided Jennifer was somehow responsible for ALL of BioWare's faults. Oh, the power she wielded! She, a writer, could even command the combat Bio made! The result was a LOT of ugly harassment. 😞
但问题是，詹妮弗走了。
你们可能不记得了，当时有一帮“玩家门”家伙【2014年的事件，涉及性别战争及媒体控制舆论问题】跑来宣称，詹妮弗应该为生软的一切问题负责。哦，她权力好大啊！一个编剧居然能指挥生软的战斗设计！结果是她遭受了大量恶意骚扰。😞
Is this why she left? You'd have to ask her, but it undoubtedly didn't help. The important thing is, she left - and there was nobody as senior nor as superhumanly fast as her to take over any unfinished work.
This is where Patrick Weekes comes in: a solid, senior writer who could fill her shoes.
她是因此离开的吗？你得问她本人了，但这显然没起到正面的作用。重要的是，她走了，所以没有人能像她一样资深、又有超人般的速度来接手未完成的工作了。
这时帕特里克·威克斯来了。一个能承担起这个重任的靠谱资深编剧。
It was great timing - not only did Cassandra need a writer, I'd slowly fallen more and more behind. It was clear by that point that I'd never be able to write Dorian AND Cole AND Solas as planned. They needed to pick up two. And I let them choose the ones who interested them, like all my writers.
帕特里克的加入很及时，不仅因为卡珊德拉需要一个新的编剧，还因为我自己也逐渐感到力不从心。到了那个时候，我已经清楚自己绝对不可能同时写多利安和科尔和索拉斯这三个角色了。需要别人负担两个。而我就像对待所有编剧一样，也让他自行挑选感兴趣的角色。
Patrick taking Solas was no surprise, and while I had Big Plans for Solas in the future I knew at least he'd be in good hands. I was reeeeaaaally hoping Patrick would then pick Cassandra... but they wanted Cole. My baby. Who I created in Asunder.
I grumped, but Patrick clearly loved the character.
帕特里克选择了索拉斯，这并不意外。虽然我对索拉斯的未来有着宏大的计划，但我知道他至少会被好好对待。我是非常非常非常非常希望帕特里克能接手卡珊德拉的……但他选了我在《决裂》中创造的科尔。我的宝贝！
我哼哼唧唧的，但帕特里克显然很喜欢科尔这个角色。
They had ideas for Cole which... yeah yeah, sounded cool. Fiiine. 😅
Now I had to figure out what *I* was going to do with Cassandra. We couldn't move the romance to someone else, all the other female characters were well underway, and I didn't know the character well enough to fix her with tweaks.
他对科尔有自己的想法……好吧好吧，听起来还不错。好吧😅。
现在我得搞清楚怎么处理卡珊德拉了。我们不能把浪漫线转给别的女性角色了，她们的剧情都已经非常成型了，而我又不够了解卡珊德拉，无法通过小调整来完善她的浪漫线。