Information Dragon Age 3 Plot Synopsis and Companions Leaked?

[Jack]

Instead of the blood strip being across the PC's nose, it'll be over one eye.

What was the deal with the facial blood in DA2 anyway? I never got it (playing the game might help, but...).

Why would you assume that there are any thought behind it? There isn't and it's never explained in the game. The art department at Bioware just channeled the Awesome™ and did their thing, but the writers just kinda forgot about it.

 

[Mastermind]

From the bioware thread:

*If* it's real, it would most likely be information gathered for marketing purposes, to have an idea of what appeals to consumers, and what to focus on when they finally do announce the game.

I just hope that they have a more inclusive marketing campaign, this time around. I knew from the moment I saw Marketing!Garrett Hawke, that I would not be playing that particular character, so I was pretty disenfranchised for quite a while, not to mention how interviews with the devs seemed to put down DA:O in favor of the newer game.

 

[Roguey]

I agree with the first bolded part. If you're going to make a RPG written mostly by women you might as well make it for women.

 

[sea]

Dragon Age has a cool setting and they wasted the absolute most boring parts of it on the first 2 games. Assuming they don't want to do the exact same shit all over again, I imagine this could mean at least some mild incline over the last game.

 

[GreyViper]

To early to say, but I wouldn't put it past EA to muck up this one up to, worse then DA2 I mean. Anyway any bets about how many DLCs this one will have?

 

[Szioul]

To early to say, but I wouldn't put it past EA to muck up this one up to, worse then DA2 I mean. Anyway any bets about how many DLCs this one will have?

10 planned. Only manage to release maximum of 4, before getting shut down.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

From the bioware thread:

*If* it's real, it would most likely be information gathered for marketing purposes, to have an idea of what appeals to consumers, and what to focus on when they finally do announce the game.

I just hope that they have a more inclusive marketing campaign, this time around. I knew from the moment I saw Marketing!Garrett Hawke, that I would not be playing that particular character, so I was pretty disenfranchised for quite a while, not to mention how interviews with the devs seemed to put down DA:O in favor of the newer game.

No one talks like this. I thought "drones" was just a nickname, but...

 

[Azrael the cat]

I recently read an article on Wing Commander 3 and comparing to the end of Mass Effect 3 - both considered cutting edge cinematic style games at the time, both with companions, (though dialogue in WC3 was generally limited to orders, conversations in the between-flight bar, and the taunts you'd get from your enemy pilots). Both gamers had a series of choices - though WC 3 had a far more stark difference in outcome.

Now I'm going to completely spoil WC3 because the game is almost 20 years old. Compare this to what you'd get in a Bioware story. Your most loyal companion - one of the enemy but raised with humans and a proven hero in human ranks gets taunted constantly by his squadmates, and you stick up for him - only to find at the end, he's been programmed (without his knowledge) to be a FUCKING SLEEPER AGENT the whole time (THE RACIST BASTARDS WERE RIGHT FOR ONCE!), where, upon hearing the enemy broadcast a certain frequency, his programming kicks in and he destroys earth's defences. Your choices are not at all foreshadowed, but they lead to one of 3 scenarios: (1) You (played by Mark Hamill, by the way) fly down a narrow passageway and drop a genocidal bomb (don't get me wrong - Mark Hamill is the man you want for those kind of shenanigans, whether as Skywalker OR the Joker) WHILE FUCKING CLOAKED. Let me repeat that: WHILE CLOAKED. Thus proving to the enemy (who are Klingon-esque honour-fighters) that you really are the dishonourable race come to destroy all before them.

Or you can end up being called back to defend earth in a battle that is made to be literably unwinnable. When you eventually lose to the comically oversized enemy force, you can either stare in defiance or kneel and beg for your life. If you defy them 'just do it you scum' or words to that effect, you actually get the 'good guy' ending - you are honoured as the enemy's greatest opponent, executed with honour, to be sung about and written about in legends for centuries to come. If you kneel and beg you predictably get laughed at and beheaded.

There is no 'good' option, only the realities of war. Walzer, often held up as the leading late-20th century theorist on just war theory (then seen as pro-aggression, but a bit of a leftie work these days as Iraq wouldn't come close to justification on his grounds) used to make a distinction between the late-war allied attacks on civillians (yes, we all know Hiroshima, but the deaths were actually far greater during the firebombing of Dresden and Stuttguart). He condemns those because the war was won by then, and as an attack upon civillians it didn't even speed up the location of the concentration camps. But there were TWO sets of attacks by the British on German civillians: when France fell, the US neutral (and likely to be caught up in the east for years even if it did enter) and Russia having not yet stopped the German advance, Britain basically had air superiority and morale to fight off a war machine that could crush them in a straight fight. So for all the bitching about 'the German blitz' of London, the Brits started it. They knew that their civillians were (a) on a morale 'high' due to Churchill's speeches, (b) that they had the best intelligence (constructing a fake airfield full of paper-mache fighter-planes in a day to delay german air attacks until the Brits could train enough pilots to have air superiority was fucking brilliant) and (c) their subways gave them ready-made bomb-shelters. So they launched an unthinkable crime - a deliberate attack on an undefended civillian populace, using a weapon chosen purely for fear rather than effectiveness (white phosphorous, so that people died from the fire rather than the explosions) to terrify the fuck out of the Germans.

The standard line they teach in military school is Walzer's - that the 2nd attacks were justified, but the early-war firebombing of citizens was an abomination. My classes, however, consistently argue the opposite - that this wasn't a was between a superpower and a tiny nation, but a war where mass death is inevitable, and where nations must be seen as a whole (i.e. citizens have a duty to mount a coup or to defect to neutral countries if they opposed the war). In any event, it's amazing the difference in approach over the years. Wing Commander 3 took war for what it is - deadly and nobody ends up being able to pick the honourable option ALL the time and still win. Bioware would never have the balls to do that.

 

[waywardOne]

Dragon Age has a cool setting

Generic fantasyland with edgy riffs (oooh, elves are oppressed) stolen from sources they hoped we didn't know about?

 

[Rivmusique]

The inquisitor...mmm sounds far better than warden,champion or commander

after reading that and looking at a few other ideas the devs have cooked up, I'm completely convinced dragon age 3 will not only redeem bioware, it will rebirth the company as one of the greats

Well there you have it. Name the main character inquisitor, all past failures are forgiven. Bioware is back!

 

[l3loodAngel]

1. Dragon Age has a cool setting and they wasted the absolute most boring parts of it on the first 2 games. Assuming they don't want to do the exact same shit all over again, 2. I imagine this could mean at least some mild incline over the last game.

1. DA had the most boring and generic setting ever. They took the same beaten to death races like elves, dwarfs and added nothing. To spice the shit they added Qunari, the other breed of human in DA:O. They have two warring factions fighting for influence the Mages and templars. And on top of that the leader of the dark spawn army is a Dragon. YaY!

Now compare that to Planescape, Fallout, Warhammer 40K, LOR, Cyberpunk or even vanilla D&D setting. They are not an indie studio, they don't lack resources ergo they lack talent.

2. Incline won't happen, because CEO's of EA don't play games. They keep buying companies and searching for games that can be frequently made, are easy to make and sell well. NBA, NFL, FIFA, Sims, NFS... The thing is that RPGs are neither easy to make, neither cheap. So this game is probably the last for Bio.

 

[sea]

1. DA had the most boring and generic setting ever. They took the same beaten to death races like elves, dwarfs and added nothing. To spice the shit they added Qunari, the other breed of human in DA:O. They have two warring factions fighting for influence the Mages and templars. And on top of that the leader of the dark spawn army is a Dragon. YaY!

Generic, yes. But boring? Well, arguably - but I think that a lot of the places, like Orlais (tons of political backstabbing, assassins, etc.), Tevinter (magocracy ruling with an iron fist and still clinging to their minority religious ideas), or Par Vollen (tropical island chain inhabited by extremist Muslim-type society with an entirely different outlook on the world) have good potential for expansion and are generally way more interesting than, say, Ferelden.

There's also all the stuff with the Maker, the Black City, the history behind Andraste, etc. It's a bit basic, but again, it has a lot of room for expansion. The real problem isn't the setting or the lore, it's BioWare's inability (fear?) to actually address the more interesting stuff directly... maybe they think it remains more compelling if they don't touch it and it remains eternally a mystery.

Now compare that to Planescape, Fallout, Warhammer 40K, LOR, Cyberpunk or even vanilla D&D setting. They are not an indie studio, they don't lack resources ergo they lack talent.

2. Incline won't happen, because CEO's of EA don't play games. They keep buying companies and searching for games that can be frequently made, are easy to make and sell well. NBA, NFL, FIFA, Sims, NFS... The thing is that RPGs are neither easy to make, neither cheap. So this game is probably the last for Bio.[/quote]

 

[l3loodAngel]

1. DA had the most boring and generic setting ever. They took the same beaten to death races like elves, dwarfs and added nothing. To spice the shit they added Qunari, the other breed of human in DA:O. They have two warring factions fighting for influence the Mages and templars. And on top of that the leader of the dark spawn army is a Dragon. YaY!

Generic, yes. But boring? Well, arguably - but I think that a lot of the places, like Orlais (tons of political backstabbing, assassins, etc.), Tevinter (magocracy ruling with an iron fist and still clinging to their minority religious ideas), or Par Vollen (tropical island chain inhabited by extremist Muslim-type society with an entirely different outlook on the world) have good potential for expansion and are generally way more interesting than, say, Ferelden.

That's not a setting, that's just ideas Hamburger threw around. You need a lot of quality writing to make something solid out of it, while Bio is unable to deliver it. It usually boils down to Leliana singing or Zevran romance. If there are no interesting factions and their interaction it just boils down to Fallout 3 like decisions: To blow a town for no reason or not to blow a town for no reason?

 

[waywardOne]

Well, arguably - but I think that a lot of the places, like Orlais (tons of political backstabbing, assassins, etc.), Tevinter (magocracy ruling with an iron fist and still clinging to their minority religious ideas), or Par Vollen (tropical island chain inhabited by extremist Muslim-type society with an entirely different outlook on the world) have good potential for expansion and are generally way more interesting than, say, Ferelden.

There's also all the stuff with the Maker, the Black City, the history behind Andraste, etc. It's a bit basic, but again, it has a lot of room for expansion. The real problem isn't the setting or the lore, it's BioWare's inability (fear?) to actually address the more interesting stuff directly... maybe they think it remains more compelling if they don't touch it and it remains eternally a mystery.

The reason the places you listed as interesting are interesting at all is because Bioware hasn't had a chance to flesh them out yet. It's easy for generic political overlays and hints of intrigue to look cool and deep, but that's all Bioware can do: tease. As soon as they put the story in any of those places, they'll fuck it up like they always do by forgetting/contradicting/retconning their own lore, adding in too much AWESOME, and filling the rest with teeny pandering cliches.

If I didn't know any better, one would think you'd never heard of DA2 or ME3. Bioware isn't in decline. They are declined.

 

[Shadenuat]

Some sort of fake, because Magister and qunari were long asked as joinable characters by fans. The qunari one is particularly stupid because qunari are a fairly religious folk.
On the other hand... EDI as walking sexbot was also asked by fans and drawn by them, and it was very stupid... but Bio did it.
I know it's stupid and not funny, but still:

I never asked for this.
Just finish BG remake and rest in pieces, Bioware. Pretty please. You become more embarrasing every day. I loved you...

 

[Zed]

Shadenuat
Bio isn't making the BG remake.
They're doing SWTOR content and Dragon Age 3. Probably working on tech or something for a new Mass Effect title as well.

 

[Shadenuat]

Overhaul Games are from Bioware are't they? I've meant Enhanced Edition.

 

[Mastermind]

1. DA had the most boring and generic setting ever. They took the same beaten to death races like elves, dwarfs and added nothing.

They turned elves into a bunch of useless pussies. That has to count for something. Even if it's just Witcher plagiarism.

 

[Achilles]

Nevertheless, I remain hopeful that DA3 will be a decent game.

Why?
I mean, DA 1 was a decent game, but DA2 was terrible.

What can I say, I managed to enjoy it. In fact I finished it three times with different characters. I feel slightly embarrassed by the fact but eh, I guess I have low standards

 

[Marsal]

Nevertheless, I remain hopeful that DA3 will be a decent game.

Why?
I mean, DA 1 was a decent game, but DA2 was terrible.

What can I say, I managed to enjoy it. In fact I finished it three times with different characters. I feel slightly embarrassed by the fact but eh, I guess I have low standards

Did you at least have the decency to acquire the game via alternative means?

 

[Achilles]

Did you at least have the decency to acquire the game via alternative means?

Karagounis is the man :D And yes, I didn't pay for it.

 

[Marsal]

And yes, I didn't pay for it.

Location: Greece

Spoiler

Spoiler

You walked right into that one

 

[1451]

If these are real I like them, I like them a lot. If only Orlais(fictional France) would be a region in the new game. Companions are mediocre but I hope they are romancable.

 

[Infinitron]

If these are real I like them, I like them a lot. If only Orlais(fictional France) would be a region in the new game. Companions are mediocre but I hope they are romancable.

 

[Ion Prothon II]

If these are real I like them, I like them a lot. If only Orlais(fictional France) would be a region in the new game. Companions are mediocre but I hope they are romancable.