When I first designed Winter, she was planned to be an Institute play-through. I did then and I still do regard the Institute as somewhat evil, or at least very selfish, so I sought a rigid and cold look. As it was 2015, I was heavily inspired by the ongoing Game of Thrones, so I modeled the character’s look after the Others.
The silver hair, the snowflakes on her face, the blue eyes (which were the iciest blue first), and even her name, ‘Winter’ was part of it. I tried to create her husband reminiscent of Jon Snow as well (and I failed miserably, creating the most soft and golden hearted character I ever did in the process).
Then, almost five years later I downloaded a mod that came with the ‘Dragonstone’ hairstyle. I tried it on her, and heck... am I the only one seeing any similarity? (Probably.)
But it made me remember the origins of this character and how wildly different it went down than imagined.
I originally wanted her to enter the Institute at some point, and to leave the whole Wasteland behind without a second thought when she reunited with her son. I was waiting for the right moment to backstab the Minutemen idea and join the Boogeymen.
I’m a casual gamer, a scaredy-cat if you will. In Skyrim I didn’t face Alduin until level 70-80-ish, and the first play through of Winter I only went to Fort Hagen at level 41. I took my sweet time building settlements (a feature I really love!) and I gradually, forgot my original idea of her ‘cruelty’ and pending betrayal.
Also, when I heard the voice of the characters, how hurt, scared, angry or sympathetic she was and seeing her emotions in dialogue camera... it did something to me.
Winter overgrew me. She lead her own damn life. She never stole. She never murdered. Instead, she collected toys for Winter. She was around to help everyone. Like... everyone. She made friends.
I realized she won. She was a goody two shoes and I wasn’t about to change that.
Her involvement with the Railroad was purely a gameplay effect for me first, but I realized I cared. They were right, fundamentally, even if their methods leave something to be desired.
Her involvement with the Brotherhood was for gameplay reasons too, and I only decided to support the BoS because I wanted to see Liberty Prime in action. Yes, that’s it, and because I wanted her to date Danse and didn’t know there was an option to abandon Maxson’s cause at a certain point. But by that point, she was so heavily involved, I could not erase that.
Instead... I started to write her story. It was horrible at first, and I had awful plans. It was supposed to be more of a crackfic at first, but again, the story decided to write itself. At least in my head, as there’s not much of it published sadly. (I’m doing my best to scrape the story together sentence by sentence. I’ll get there I promise)
Then I realized... This character could potentially do so much more. She has a good speech skill, a vision of the future and some personal advantages to rely on.
My writing was crap and I still try to live up to the promise that Winter is. I’ll get you there baby, please hang on!
Which takes me back to... well, Daenerys. She was my favourite of the whole show for so long, and even though I saw the signs, I thought they will be there to build up her character, to make her realize how badly she could screw up, but I always thought she’d be the one to sit on the damned Iron Throne, or at least, she’d survived.
There’s not too much other similarities between Therka and Dany, but I wanted to say that Daenerys was some kind of an idol I had when designing Winter and I still try to keep those good qualities.
Winter is a good ten years older, and has lot less responsibility, so I think she’ll turn out just fine.