I actually think it's refreshing to look at a storyline that DOESN'T involve the end of the world, it's become far too cliché. At the end of the day we're trying to portray real people that deal with real problems, and some of them simply don't involve trying to stop megalomaniacal maniac XVI from trying to take over the world or destroy it. It's an effort to make the storytelling more personal. I loathed the overarching plot in Dragon Age Origins, simply because i couldn't bring myself to care about the Darkspawn or the Dragon-Demon-Thing. All i'd been told is that they like to troll about the place and kill stuff for the lulz. Then i'm taken to a battle i've only just heard about and start killing shit because i was told by an even more arbitrary character than the one that recruited me in the first place, and here's the kicker, they both get killed off within the first hour or less. The darkspawn don't even move out of Lothering, so the whole time i'm stomping around Ferelden trying to gather an army for some sort of last stand, the Darkspawn sit contently in their little Lothering without even bothering to move out or attack anyone. I greatly failed to see any sense of urgency and why i should even care about a blight that barely moved. The mooks and the big bad itself were so horribly generic that it made saving the world a really pointless cliché. I wanted to learn more about this noble house i am apparantly the only surviving member of, i want to learn about my character's life in the mage tower for however many years, about what life is like as a noble dwarf, or how an underground commoner dwarf feels in his first experience outside. I want to know how someone who's been brought up in alienages deals with his first experience outside in a multicultural world and likewise for the reclusive Dalish. Instead, i was another cardboard cutout hero going after another cardboard cutout villain.
