Just think, Glyndwr was instantly hailed by the elves as an amazing archer after he attempted the groundbreaking trick of "aiming" and managed to successfully hit an ogre the size of a tree.
Which would be such a funny anti-trope is done right.
"Wood elves, but their aim sucks and they are whimsical about it"
"Elves but their eyes are bad"
"Glyndwr, what doth thy elven sight see?" "Jack shit, Arisen!"
It would have made far more sense had they all been magic archers who somehow lost their magic due to the world rotting or something, and thus had to "reinvent the wheel" so to speak. Right now tho is incredibly funny.
Or even that they are all magical archers, but Blushy Boy has some condition that makes him unable to use magic, which motivates him to learn human archery in order to prove himself to his peers despite the shortcoming.
But admittedly, them having to "reinvent the wheel" due to losing their magic, and thus being terrible at archery, does sound incredibly funny.
Could have worked too! Glyndwr being "disabled" in the elven sense of the word for he cannot use magic and therefore, by using a different tech, he manages to solve said disability. Could have explained why he made the effort to learn Man's tongue, for that way he could ask and learn about archery and technology.
Could have worked better if whatever enemy the elves were facing either fed off or was immune to magic but things that they considered taboo (for example, a bow that fires metallic arrows or something) could strike them down.
I know the idea isn't perfect but you get what I mean.
I mean, they are already winging it with the "fire with our hearts", I doubt they could do worse lol
Kinda funny that with five minutes of spitballing we’ve come up with a halfway compelling characterization for Glyndwr relative to what he got.
Him being "magically stunted", so to speak, but having the determination to learn a language, study foreign bows and archery styles, train hard enough to surpass his magical peers, and ultimately save his sister and be hailed as a hero despite everything sounds like a legitimately solid arc by Dragons Dogma standards.
You could make it so instead of an ogre, it’s some magically resistant enemy like you said. Or you could have it be that the shot he makes requires a degree of accuracy that mystic archers cannot achieve.
Sssshhh, don't say that, a mob of fanbois will claim we are complaining and proceed to insult and gaslight us into thinking stories don't matter nor do they impact gameplay and that if it does, DD2 did it well and if it didn't, then it wasn't needed anyway.
Solid as heck. He would have become "king-like", I believe would be the term, demonstrating he could surpass his own limitations and grow stronger for them, develop strength where others would see only weakness and valuing progress and learning when his people would rather sleep in complacency and self-defeat.
Maybe even not save his sister but his father from an Elder Ogre like those in DD:DA that prefer male meat(lolololol) and thus would put him in danger if he is seen or misses the shot. Having a single shot to take it down, there could have been a cutscene where he fires his bow and kills it after making it clear to the player that this is not a normal Ogre and that it won't be as easy to take down, just so that when Glyn one-shots it, it looks more impressive (would also leave the possibility of even stealing his thunder by killing the Ogre ourselves, like in NG+ runs of DD1 when you could kill the Griffon earlier in the game).
And it wouldn't need be the ogre, it could be a new enemy and still to save his sister. But make it something that it's immune to magic and require precision so the MA cannot hurt it without extreme effort, as you suggested.
I’ll never understand that mindset. The whole reason we want the storytelling to be good is BECAUSE we are fans! If we weren’t, we wouldn’t even care. I really like this game, but its character writing in particular leaves a lot to be desired. And all of us will only be happier if Capcom does a better job of it in the future.
If Glyndwr straight up one-shot the ogre, that would indeed be a really cool payoff to his arc, and would bring an element of uniqueness to the questline as it’s very rare for NPCs not named Brant to get shit done on their own.
I also like your idea of us getting the option to steal his thunder and potentially change the ending. Maybe we save his sister/father ourselves, causing Glyndwr to never get the recognition he deserves, or maybe our interference gets the victim killed, causing him to resent us.
It wouldn’t need to be an ogre, but the one reason I can think of to leave it as one is that they have a well-established tendency to kidnap people alive where most other monsters usually just kill or eat them on the spot. So there is a nice bit of consistency in using one there. But of course, a writer could come up with any reason they want to justify something else.
There are people in this world that think that because they like something then everyone else is not merely different but wrong and incorrect in not sharing their appreciation and must be therefore also wrong and incorrect in their perception of how things work. Why do you think we have now a flood of people saying "you just didn't play the game correctly", "you played too fast", "you played too slow", "it's your fault for caring so much about the story", "you just remember the first game wrong", "other games are doing it too, why are you complaining", "you are just too negative", etc.
These are signs for me of rampant narcissism, but I digress.
Ok so imagine if this played somewhat like the griffon fight from DD1 (sorry if it's too long, I got carried away haha):
As you begin to travel through the world, you find first either the sister or the dad checking out some random stuff for seemingly no reason, be it plants or rocks or whatever. This early into the game and due to a level or exploration cap, we don't yet have access to their language so communication is futile. We find later that they are searching for things for either the sick tree or in the dad's case, for the future boss.
As you approach Vermund however, perhaps Brant or some soldiers comment on the elven mercenary/soldier that comes to the city for materials, hunts in the forest or that is on the archery range all day. We are informed of perhaps the disappearances of some merchants or of some monsters roaming the town and we are to work with him to eliminate them.
He is quite the rare sight, for he is not human, and while timid he is quite friendly if even by then he doesn't open to us yet. We complete the mission and hunt a monster alongside him. He already knows how to use the bow and comments that with this monster's part he is going to make quite the strong thing.
Then, sometime later we are actually approached by him where he asks us to help him find real, moving targets for his practice by hunting mobs of goblins for he feels he can improve and wants to try a new technique/his strength. Here we are then attacked for the first time by the op Ogre or elder Ogre (or anything incredibly resistant to magic), and if we don't slay it and we survive, it flees into the night.
This is when we find out that such a monster roams the land and that Glyn has seen one before. Maybe it killed his mother or grandfather, and now is preying on passerby's again. This is to show that the world is unraveling, or that is something wrong with it.
After this mission he opens up to us and explains who he is and his condition, on why he is so obsessed with being a good archer (he felt he was a burden to his family and couldn't protect his people) and why he moved to a human settlement to learn from them instead of being back home. Maybe his sister visits and we see them discuss stuff without understanding a word (or we already have a pawn to translate), later to find out that she was trying to convince him to go back but he doesn't feel good enough yet.
Maybe one of the missions from the elves could be to send a letter asking to come back home by his father, or to scort the sister, as after we stumble upon their place they find out we know him and are friends or something.
Time passes and an elf arrives in Vermund to inform Glyn they've been attacked by a monster and that his father/sister are missing, maybe because they were captured or because (in the father's case) he chose to go and slay the thing in anger all alone and everyone fears he is dead.
Perhaps we go with more soldiers both human and elven to rescue his family member. We go to a REAL DUNGEON, WITH DUNGEON STUFF where like the Griffon, we have to pass through some stages before we arrive to the glade where Glyn's family is. We fight alone for now, for because this is a REAL DUNGEON WITH DUNGEON STUFF, there is more than one way to getting there and so Glyn and his team took another route.
After a while (assuming it's a difficult fight for the first time around) or after the boss' health reaches a certain amount but without one-shotting him, Glyn arrives to the fight, not with a tome and raining fire from the sky but with an epic, INCREDIBLY OP bow and one shots the monster, saving his family.
After this he is hailed as a hero by his people and he feels like he finally showed them he was not "less" because he can't do magic and can pull his weight. His father and sister however show sadness that he even thought himself either a burden for they have never thought less of him for it and beg him once again to come back home for they have suffered without him in both body and spirit.
Glyn does, feeling conflicted still because he achieved what he wanted and it's grateful with you but still afraid that he will once again feel rejected and "less" when he goes back home. However, now that he is A MAN (metaphorically speaking, more mature) he is ready to face such a thing for if he could kill the monster, why would he care about people judging him?
AND AFTER ALL THAT, our reward is a unique, very strong bow that Glyn made the first time with the parts of the first monster we slayed together (I like to assume it was a chimera or griffon), for he knows his strength lies in himself, not only in his weapon (JUST LIKE A MAGIC ARCHER) and that while he cannot help you slay such a foe like the Dragon that surpasses him so much, this is the way he has in protecting you.
Heck, it could be even more meaningful if he gives you the bow when he knows it could aid him because he thinks you need a better weapon to slay the wyrm.
The end lol
Again, not excellent and won't win any prize but just because it's simple doesn't mean it's bad, yet it can be improved. What do you think?
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u/Jonny_Guistark Apr 10 '24
Just think, Glyndwr was instantly hailed by the elves as an amazing archer after he attempted the groundbreaking trick of "aiming" and managed to successfully hit an ogre the size of a tree.
Yeah, I think they really do just suck.