Dark And Troubled Past / BioWare

Jesus Christ, Bioware!

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• Dragon Age:
  • Every recruitable NPC in Dragon Age: Origins. In the order you usually meet them, they are: a royal bastard left at the local church to become a mage-hunting Knight Templar; mother is a legendary witch that intends to steal her body some time in the future; used to be an assassin-bard whose favoured method was the Honey Trap; killed all the inhabitants of a farmhouse after experiencing a big cultural no-no; turned into a golem some time ago and lost memories due to a very extensive And I Must Scream experience; an old lady who's really dead but kept alive by an inhabiting spirit; another assassin whose past may suck just as bad, if not worse, than the first one's; drunk whose wife left him to become a monster. Even the dog has a troubled past; the dog's original master ended up dying, and it reached you only by managing to escape the mass slaughter at Ostagar. Sometimes, you think your party should form a Country & Western band.
    • Dog's troubled past is averted if you play as the Human Noble, as s/he is Dog's original owner and survived. The Human Noble is also one of the only two possible player characters without a significantly dark and troubled past as well. The events of their origin story are horrible, to be sure (their family is betrayed and massacred by their closest friend), but it's indicated that the character's life up until that point has been largely peaceful and content.
  • Considering the entire story takes place in the past, let's add Dragon Age II companions to the list: a healer who's possessed by a demon due to his own anger; an ex-slave who's hunted by his previous master; an Elven mage whose own clan views her as a walking liability; a prince whose family was murdered; and the storyteller who witnesses it all. All of this is not including main character Hawke, who witnesses their siblings and mother die and is forced into war. The only one without a troubled past is Isabela, who seems to make light of even the worst situations.
    • Actually, Isabela was sold into marriage at an implied young age by her mother for a few silvers and a goat. Then Zevran was hired to kill him, and she inherited his ship and decided to become a pirate. Her stories about her past are the most fragmented of the party and generally consist of noodle incidents. Also, that relic she's looking for? She stole it from the Qunari. This actually comes back to bite the party in a serious way in Act 2.
  • Varric, the aforementioned storyteller and resident Meta Guy, lampshades this in a conversation with Blackwall in Dragon Age: Inquisition, actually namechecking this trope: "Let's talk about your dark and troubled past." He guesses "someone dear" to Blackwall, someone he couldn't save, "a grave error in judgment, causing too many deaths — I've known a couple of people like that", or betrayal. Blackwall denies all of these but it's later revealed that the third part is true.
• Knights of the Old Republic. Carth Onasi? Nice Guy, but has a truckload of paranoia issues. Not surprising when you find out that his Evil Mentor decided to defect to the Sith, and laid waste to Carth's homeworld. Carth was widowed in the attack, and he finds out later that while his son survived, the Sith are training him in the ways of the Force. Bastila? Well, it's a mild case, but the Jedi policy of child conscription and forcing them to cut all ties with their family and loved ones isn't pleasant. Mission may not consider her past all that troubled, but she is a teenager pretty much living on the streets of a Wretched Hive. Zaalbar? Exiled from his homeworld for flying into a rage and attacking his brother. Said brother was colluding with slavers to sell his fellow Wookiees into slavery. In his anger, Zaalbar broke the taboo about not using claws in a fight, which makes you less than an animal in Wookiee society. Juhani? Oh, where to begin? Her people were subject to genocide by the Mandalorians. Her parents fled but ended up on a Wretched Hive that hated "aliens" and openly discriminated against them. Her father became a drug addict and died in a Bar Brawl. Her mother starved to death because she was trying to feed her cub at the expense of herself, but was in debt to a loan shark, meaning Juhani was Made a Slave to pay it off. The Jedi freed her from slavery, and Juhani latched onto their Code and ideals hard. She dedicated herself to training and the Jedi way...until her master decides a good idea for a final test is to goad her into rage and trick the poor girl into thinking she killed her own master! Canderous and HK-47 certainly have dark and troubled pasts, but they're actually proud of the carnage trail they've left. And then, there's what The Reveal has to say about your Player Character.
  • The second game gets an even nastier bunch of people. Kreia? Well, she's been a Jedi Master and a Sith Lord. She was probably The Man Behind the Man for Revan. As much as she protests that she's neutral, it's obvious she hasn't given up the "Sith" part, aside from trying to setter it more towards Manipulative Bastard than Stupid Evil. You don't get much more dark and troubled than Atton Rand, either. Former Republic deserter, Jedi hunter, Sith torturer, Sith deserter, turned to smuggling, and was likely the guy trying to sell your Player Character to the Exchange. Visas is of a rare species who can see through the Force, and Darth Nihilus ate her homeworld and all life on it, sparing only her. She became his "apprentice," but in practice is more his slave and punching bag. Handmaiden is the shunned, Heroic Bastard daughter of an Echani general and a Jedi. Because her daddy cheated on his wife to produce her, her sisters treat her with contempt at best. Disciple? Well, under that naive persona, he's actually a spy for the Republic, enlisting in the Republic Navy because the Jedi shrugged and threw him away after the Mandalorian Wars didn't leave enough Jedi to train apprentices. Bao-Dur? Whew. Massive PTSD issues from creating and using the Mass Shadow Generator at Malachor. He literally threw a switch and killed thousands of allies and enemies alike. Hanharr? Well, we're dealing with Wookiees and slavery, but Hanharr was insane to begin with and slaughtered his whole village to keep them out of slaver hands. Mira? Well, her family was killed by Mandalorians, and the Mandos took her as a slave. She doesn't speak of her captors with too much rancor as they taught her how to fight and handle explosives (in Expanded Universe material, it explains that Mandalorians tend to "adopt" children of fallen foes that have potential to join their ranks). And your Player Character? Well, s/he left the Order to fight the Mandalorians, was the teacher that abandoned Disciple, fought in two of the nastiest battles in the War, ordered the use of the Mass Shadow Generator that made Bao-Dur's issues, was the only one of Revan's followers to walk away and try to go back to the Order, only to get slapped in the face and a sentence of Exile, left with absolutely nothing to show for all the sacrifice.
• Just about every single major character in Mass Effect has some sort of tragic backstory. Even Commander Shepard can be customized to have one — the Colonist background involves everyone in Shepard's home colony being massacred or taken by slavers, while the Earthborn background gives him or her a criminal history, and the Sole Survivor psychological profile involves Shepard losing everyone in his or her unit to a thresher maw attack.
  • By Mass Effect 2, the only characters who don't have such a background are Ashley and (maybe) Jacob.
• Neverwinter Nights: By the time you meet Aribeth in Neverwinter Nights Hordes of the Underdark, she has a very troubled past (including being executed for something that wasn't technically her fault). The character you play in that one technically doesn't know about it, even though you almost certainly played the first campaign beforehand. Casavir in the sequel has a stormy history with Neverwinter.
• The module-creating community has brought up several examples as well. Anera in the Shadowlords arc took a lot of crap from her family (the celestial side) for being too mortal and eventually entered into a relationship with a necromancer. It did not end well. Alex in The Bastard of Kosigan series has a very troubled one, dealing with the complications involved with being in love with the severely disfavored bastard, and her abortive relationship with Vlad. Pia in A Dance with Rogues has many regrets about her time as one of Vico's playthings.

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