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The Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread

treave

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 6, 2008
Messages
11,370
Codex 2012
The best that I can make of the reception to this game is that people who care a lot about the story and characters either liked it or at least found a lot to enjoy, and the people who care more about gameplay and strategy came away bewildered that anyone could possibly have fun with such a thing.

No, I can't exactly agree with that. I'm a huge storyfag, I can trudge through horribad gameplay for the sake of story, and still DAI managed to come off as less interesting than Dragon Age 2.

People who like the particular type of character Bioware specializes in and don't mind an offensively boring main plot found a lot to enjoy, but those people will like anything Bioware puts out as long as (and only as long as) their pet preferences are catered to. Don't lump all storyfags in together with them. If you want to draw lines between those who liked the game and those who don't, use their reception to this scene as a benchmark:

 

Xorazm

Cipher
Joined
Jan 22, 2015
Messages
106
The best that I can make of the reception to this game is that people who care a lot about the story and characters either liked it or at least found a lot to enjoy, and the people who care more about gameplay and strategy came away bewildered that anyone could possibly have fun with such a thing.

No, I can't exactly agree with that. I'm a huge storyfag, I can trudge through horribad gameplay for the sake of story, and still DAI managed to come off as less interesting than Dragon Age 2.

Yeah, that's the part that bewilders me the most. Once I saw how they watered down the gameplay and turned the story into another painfully generic fantasy save everything story, starring YOU as Green Stigmata Jesus, I was sure everyone would hate it - particularly when I got to that godawful musical number (for fucks' sake, one of the lyrics is One day soon, the dawn will come ...THAT IS LITERALLY TOMORROW YOU DIPSHITS IT'S NOT EVEN POSSIBLE TO HAVE A DAY WITHOUT A DAWN oh look now I'm bleeding out of both ears).

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that only story people can possibly enjoy the game, rather than all story people will enjoy the game, since there must be at least some fans of RPG narratives who don't insist on being pandered to like a third grader. I thought that Dragon Age 2 for all it's faults had a far more interesting story, which at least tried to break from traditions in a few way. I read comments from people saying things things like "Oh, but the politics are so complex!" and all I can think of is "Come on, admit it. You don't give a shit about Orlesian politics or whatever makes Iron Bull cry at night, you want to imagine yourself as the infallible Green Stigmata Jesus saving the world for the four billionth fucking time and you know it."
 

Xorazm

Cipher
Joined
Jan 22, 2015
Messages
106
Also, for your collective edification, here are some quotes from a recent reddit thread discussing Inquisition. I can't link it because they have fairly strict rules about brigading, but this might provide a bit of .....insight into the mentality of people who love this game:

>>"Why do so many people absolutely hate the fact that the gameplay is less about pausing the game and planning out every move as opposed to just being able to wreak havoc? Like good god I want to be able to hold my own without too much fuss in a normal fight, so that means the gameplay I like is "watered down" right?

>>"I personally consider things like art direction and variety to be substance."

>>"It sounds like the vast majority of your criticisms involve the combat system. For me, that is the smallest, most insignificant aspect of a Dragon Age game (or any RPG for that matter). The combat in RPGs has been awful for decades, and nobody cares, because the rest of the game is strong."

>>"Ultimately I'm not sure why everyone is using the MMO comparison as an exclusively negative description."

>>"An RPG with no effort at all in stories or characterization is...well, what's the point?"

>> [In response to someone pointing out how third person action combat with a restricted view is a stable of MMOs] - "I mean, so is Dark Souls."

>> "I'm with you! As I read through everyone's complaints I find that I agree with them, but I'm still really enjoying the game. I'm almost not even sure why. I don't love the combat, the story, the character customization, or even the story. I've noticed a fair amount of graphical glitches and have found myself pretty frustrated by the tactical view. But, despite all that, I still look forward to playing it whenever I get a chance."
 

1451

Seeker
In My Safe Space
Joined
Jan 1, 2011
Messages
1,368
This is why I left reddit never to return again. Not only the inanity reigns freely there but it is also rewarded through brofists upvotes.
 

Crevice tab

Savant
Joined
Jul 4, 2013
Messages
224
>> "I'm with you! As I read through everyone's complaints I find that I agree with them, but I'm still really enjoying the game. I'm almost not even sure why. I don't love the combat, the story, the character customization, or even the story. I've noticed a fair amount of graphical glitches and have found myself pretty frustrated by the tactical view. But, despite all that, I still look forward to playing it whenever I get a chance."

DA:I is shit but I'm finding that I rather like shit.......

Ah, Reddit. Never change.
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
>> "I'm with you! As I read through everyone's complaints I find that I agree with them, but I'm still really enjoying the game. I'm almost not even sure why. I don't love the combat, the story, the character customization, or even the story. I've noticed a fair amount of graphical glitches and have found myself pretty frustrated by the tactical view. But, despite all that, I still look forward to playing it whenever I get a chance."

DA:I is shit but I'm finding that I rather like shit.......

Ah, Reddit. Never change.

Schizophrenia at it's finest?
 

Caim

Arcane
Joined
Aug 1, 2013
Messages
15,460
Location
Dutchland
If Reddit closed down tomorrow and everyone posting on it died with it, nothing of value would be lost.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
FYI it would be a lot harder for me to find sources of pics in the TITS thread without Reddit
 

Bleed the Man

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 30, 2013
Messages
655
Location
Spain
Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
http://forum.bioware.com/topic/544002-i-am-crying/

Literally, over Solas. Has never happened to me with a game before. It is too much like real life, too close; I have heard those words and have fallen to my knees pleading. All regrets and sacrifice and things not said. It is so real and so sad but can you let me change it please? Just a patch where I can follow and find him and things can be different; I will pay anything you ask. I can't change my actions and choices in real life but in that imaginary place I can. You are such a good writer and all your choices are beautiful, but please. I go there to pretend.


Ohhhh...:desu:


...

These people creep me out to no end.
 

Crevice tab

Savant
Joined
Jul 4, 2013
Messages
224
Schizophrenia at it's finest?

Or almost unbelievable amounts of bad taste.

If Reddit closed down tomorrow and everyone posting on it died with it, nothing of value would be lost.

If you think that about Reddit then what about this?

http://forum.bioware.com/topic/544002-i-am-crying/
Literally, over Solas. Has never happened to me with a game before. It is too much like real life, too close; I have heard those words and have fallen to my knees pleading. All regrets and sacrifice and things not said. It is so real and so sad but can you let me change it please? Just a patch where I can follow and find him and things can be different; I will pay anything you ask. I can't change my actions and choices in real life but in that imaginary place I can. You are such a good writer and all your choices are beautiful, but please. I go there to pretend.
 
Last edited:

dryan

Arcane
Joined
Jan 14, 2014
Messages
1,443
This is why I left reddit never to return again. Not only the inanity reigns freely there but it is also rewarded through brofists upvotes.

Just like the Codex you mean.
There are differences between Reddit's and Codex's systems that deeply affect the content of the posts.
First of all, Codex brofists or lack thereof don't have the ability to hide/show comments. Reddit voting directly affects visibility, which promotes "safe commenting" practices: people will avoid disagreeing for fear of getting downvoted, it's better to post whatever is that subreddit's acceptable view. Which leads to segregated communities where everyone agrees with everyone all the time and the occasional disagreement is quickly hidden or deleted.
Second, the amount of Codex brofists you have doesn't affect how often you can post, but your Reddit karma may limit your posting ability if it gets low enough. Which is specially silly, considering you will get plenty of downvotes if you disagree with a lot of people, which is exactly when you would need to post more often in order to make your point and hopefully convince them. Which is another factor that fosters those segregated subreddits.
This leads to a lot of Reddit meta drama. They have communities which are on complete opposite ends of a spectrum, that keep linking to each others' content, making fun of each other inside their own little bubbles, but never being able to hold a honest debate.
I don't know if the people who designed Reddit really believed that their userbase would abide by the "don't downvote if you disagree, downvote only if it's offtopic" thing, but if they did they're very naive.
 

Xorazm

Cipher
Joined
Jan 22, 2015
Messages
106
Oh my sweet lord, scroll down in that thread for more crazy:

[IMG said:
http://lvlt.forum.bioware.com/public/style_emoticons/default/laugh.png[/IMG]



I considered visiting a mental institution after I fell in love with a blonde, pixelated elf named Sera. There was a point there where I thought about her all of the time, couldn't wait to come home from work just so I could go into her room at the pub, angle the camera just right so I could stare at her as she stood there, deep in thought.



What little heart I have actually broke on the first PT where I failed to romance her. On the second PT I went against the grain of my beliefs and looked for a wiki romance dating guide for tips on how to get with her. Oh.... the shame. I swear I put more effort into her than I ever have with girls in real life... looking for every opportunity for approval gain. Reloading to earlier saves if I ever got one slight disapproval... basing every decision around her and what she would want.



Now... if the Sera romance was like Solas's aka tragic ending... I probably would have gotten depressed too. I completely understand the girls on here and their attachment to Solas.



In all BW games I've played I had never actually "felt" anything for my romance options...
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
Oh my sweet lord, scroll down in that thread for more crazy:

[IMG said:
http://lvlt.forum.bioware.com/public/style_emoticons/default/laugh.png[/IMG]



I considered visiting a mental institution after I fell in love with a blonde, pixelated elf named Sera. There was a point there where I thought about her all of the time, couldn't wait to come home from work just so I could go into her room at the pub, angle the camera just right so I could stare at her as she stood there, deep in thought.



What little heart I have actually broke on the first PT where I failed to romance her. On the second PT I went against the grain of my beliefs and looked for a wiki romance dating guide for tips on how to get with her. Oh.... the shame. I swear I put more effort into her than I ever have with girls in real life... looking for every opportunity for approval gain. Reloading to earlier saves if I ever got one slight disapproval... basing every decision around her and what she would want.



Now... if the Sera romance was like Solas's aka tragic ending... I probably would have gotten depressed too. I completely understand the girls on here and their attachment to Solas.



In all BW games I've played I had never actually "felt" anything for my romance options...

Where did these lunatics escape from?
 

Kem0sabe

Arcane
Joined
Mar 7, 2011
Messages
13,076
Location
Azores Islands
There are differences between Reddit's and Codex's systems that deeply affect the content of the posts.
First of all, Codex brofists or lack thereof don't have the ability to hide/show comments. Reddit voting directly affects visibility, which promotes "safe commenting" practices: people will avoid disagreeing for fear of getting downvoted, it's better to post whatever is that subreddit's acceptable view. Which leads to segregated communities where everyone agrees with everyone all the time and the occasional disagreement is quickly hidden or deleted.
Second, the amount of Codex brofists you have doesn't affect how often you can post, but your Reddit karma may limit your posting ability if it gets low enough. Which is specially silly, considering you will get plenty of downvotes if you disagree with a lot of people, which is exactly when you would need to post more often in order to make your point and hopefully convince them. Which is another factor that fosters those segregated subreddits.
This leads to a lot of Reddit meta drama. They have communities which are on complete opposite ends of a spectrum, that keep linking to each others' content, making fun of each other inside their own little bubbles, but never being able to hold a honest debate.
I don't know if the people who designed Reddit really believed that their userbase would abide by the "don't downvote if you disagree, downvote only if it's offtopic" thing, but if they did they're very naive.
I was being clever and not at all serious with my comment :)
 

racofer

Thread Incliner
Joined
Apr 5, 2008
Messages
25,573
Location
Your ignore list.
Oh my sweet lord, scroll down in that thread for more crazy:

[IMG said:
http://lvlt.forum.bioware.com/public/style_emoticons/default/laugh.png[/IMG]



I considered visiting a mental institution after I fell in love with a blonde, pixelated elf named Sera. There was a point there where I thought about her all of the time, couldn't wait to come home from work just so I could go into her room at the pub, angle the camera just right so I could stare at her as she stood there, deep in thought.



What little heart I have actually broke on the first PT where I failed to romance her. On the second PT I went against the grain of my beliefs and looked for a wiki romance dating guide for tips on how to get with her. Oh.... the shame. I swear I put more effort into her than I ever have with girls in real life... looking for every opportunity for approval gain. Reloading to earlier saves if I ever got one slight disapproval... basing every decision around her and what she would want.



Now... if the Sera romance was like Solas's aka tragic ending... I probably would have gotten depressed too. I completely understand the girls on here and their attachment to Solas.



In all BW games I've played I had never actually "felt" anything for my romance options...
LzeyTW3.gif
 

Caim

Arcane
Joined
Aug 1, 2013
Messages
15,460
Location
Dutchland
You know what? Bioware should keep doing its thing. It generates so much lulz it would be a shame if they stopped.

FYI it would be a lot harder for me to find sources of pics in the TITS thread without Reddit
We all need to make sacrifices for the greater good.
 
Self-Ejected

IncendiaryDevice

Self-Ejected
Village Idiot
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
7,407
There isn't much to discuss when it comes to the combat system. It's very similar to DA2, with some polish here and there. Enemies have more health and don't spawn out of nowhere except from fade rifts, where it actually makes sense. Even then you only ever get two waves of enemies from those. There is also limited level scaling, from what I understand - areas have a minimum and maximum level, and things will scale to your party's level based on those caps. Combat difficulty seemed to depend heavily on my build - there were a few points where the game started getting hard and I'd respec my characters, and then it would be easier. Until near the end I found an incredibly broken build with the reaver specialty and suddenly combat became trivial.

I do want to spotlight what they call the tactical camera. It's an excellent idea - the camera zooms out and you're able to give orders to your characters RTS style, with the ability to queue multiple instructions. It's exactly the sort of thing I would love to have in a party based RTWP game. Unfortunately, like with so many other things Bioware has attempted, the execution is horribly botched. You can only zoom out a short way in tactical view, so you can almost never see enough of the battlefield and have to move the camera around. The controls in tactical view are horrible. And sometimes the AI will get bored halfway through executing your instructions and go back to what they were doing. Still, the feature itself is a great idea, so I do have to give them some credit for trying.


>>"It sounds like the vast majority of your criticisms involve the combat system. For me, that is the smallest, most insignificant aspect of a Dragon Age game (or any RPG for that matter). The combat in RPGs has been awful for decades, and nobody cares, because the rest of the game is strong."

What has caused this modern :decline: with regards to combat is that people have lost site of what it was that made older RPG's combat complex and interesting.

For combat to be "hard" it doesn't necessarily mean it has to be difficult to drop the monster, that isn't what the complexity of monsters and encounters means. Take Trolls for instance in the old Infinity Engine D&D games. They were trash mobs in the main for the experienced player, but for someone new to the series they generated no end of hilarious threads entitled "how do you kill these Trolls, it's driving me nuts, they just stay at "Almost Dead" and there's nothing I can do - PLEEZE HELP"

So the complexity and interest of the Troll was the unique method by which you have to deal with it in combat, not anything to do with how "hard" they were. This involved many RPG aspects, in that you had to have taken the time to speak to the NPC which tells you how to defeat them (useful NPCs), you had to ensure your resources were sufficient to carry the items required to do the job (useful inventory system), elsewise you had to ensure there were characters in your party who were specialised in the weapons/spells which could do the job (useful character distinction and relevance), all of which helped make the RPG a most interesting place to inhabit.

Dragon Age, or indeed many RPGs since Neverwinter Nights, have made the combat less interesting by removing the unique monsters and not making their new enemies in any way comparably interesting. There is nothing special about any of the monsters in any Dragon Age game, nothing at all, they are all just clumps of attack numbers having pixel wars with your lump of attack numbers. It's no wonder people want to just do away with it altogether, because there's already nothing left there to gauge any interest at all.

Take Spiders, for example. Here is one traditional monster which appears in both old and new with equal measure. The primary difference? In the old RPGs the unique function of the Spider was to poison you. In the new RPGs there isn't even a poison mechanic in the same way, the whole Heal Poison inventory item and character use has vanished, and, lo and behold, oh, who's shocked by this revelation, the combat is "less interesting". But it's more than that, because the combat is less interesting the whole game is less interesting, because you have weaker inventory, weaker character relevance and weaker NPC usefullness.

Bioware could make a living out of a niche of The Mills and Boon of video games, but there is no way anyone can argue that complex combat makes for a weaker cRPG, quite the reverse. Exactly how "complex" can you make narratives? Not very, it took Bioware 3 years to make a standard Mills and Boon narrative with virtually no C&C. Place any Dragon Age writing in a non-RPG environment and it would work equally well, Trolls and poisoning Spiders kinda really belong in an RPG. The writing that matters in RPGs is the quest design and character motivation, and Bioware just repeat the same character motivation over and over again, they add nothing new to it, ever. Their quest design gets worse with every game.

And these are the reasons why Dragon Age games are and always will be shit games of turd, but needless to say have some entertainment value beyond the concept of playing a game.
 

DragoFireheart

all caps, rainbow colors, SOMETHING.
Joined
Jun 16, 2007
Messages
23,731
Take Spiders, for example. Here is one traditional monster which appears in both old and new with equal measure. The primary difference? In the old RPGs the unique function of the Spider was to poison you. In the new RPGs there isn't even a poison mechanic in the same way, the whole Heal Poison inventory item and character use has vanished, and, lo and behold, oh, who's shocked by this revelation, the combat is "less interesting". But it's more than that, because the combat is less interesting the whole game is less interesting, because you have weaker inventory, weaker character relevance and weaker NPC usefullness.

And before that, they didn't just poison you, they paralyzed/immobilized you as well, be it with their venomous fangs or webs.
 
Self-Ejected

IncendiaryDevice

Self-Ejected
Village Idiot
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
7,407
Yes indeed, there were so many different uniquenessess in old RPGs that I forget myself even, webbing was another great way to add uniqueness to the paralized mechanic, aside from basic paralization.
 

Caim

Arcane
Joined
Aug 1, 2013
Messages
15,460
Location
Dutchland
Regarding the whole monster uniqueness thing: look at dragons and how they are used in Dragon Age and, say, Dark Souls.

In the former they land, do their attacks and just stand there like chumps as they are being cut up. In Dark Souls? Kalameet won't even bother to land and will just breath weapon your ass until you die (and often you won't survive two such attacks). The Hellkite will just breath weapon you and fly off if you get too close. The Gaping Dragon is not very smart due to its insanity but will still try to devour you with its chest vagina. Seath just makes himself immortal and first faces you in a room where you can't escape from, only to die to his attacks and wake up in a prison.

Think of it like this: if you're out flying one day doing dragon stuff, and you see Bronan and his Brobarians approach your lair, you don't land and fight them on the ground. You breath weapon their asses until they're broiled. They got a wizard with them? He dies first. Elf ranger? Turn Legolas into a Legowas. Cleric? It's hard to praise the sun when your arms have melted off. The paladin calls you a coward? Fuck that shit, drop a rock on him. You're a dragon, and they can all go suck your dick.
 

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