The Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread

[Xor]

It's been a while since I dared to read anything from the cesspit of masturbation and insane fanboyism that is the Bioware forums. And people call the Codex an awful forum. At least our crazies are put up on display and ridiculed.

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

One of the reasons you don't see games designed that way anymore is because of availability of information. It used to be that only a minority of users would know enough to check usenet or find some backwater HTML website for detailed information about a game. Does anyone else remember how crap search engines were before Google came along? Nowadays we have people posting walkthroughs on gamefaqs days after a new game is released, with a plethora of internet forums and reddit all easily searchable for any information one might need to overcome a challenge. It's no wonder adventure games are dead when their main gimmick - solving obtuse puzzles - can be overcome with a single search.

That's not the only reason you don't see encounters like that anymore, of course. The advent of 3D action-oriented gameplay has a lot to do with it too. And combat revolving around twitch reflexes and button mashing is more engaging to the average person than something slower and more strategic. But I do think ease of access to information has a lot to do with why developers don't put very many puzzles that involve thinking into games anymore, when finding the answer is trivial. And because it's not done very often, we have an entire generation of gamers who never dealt with that kind of gameplay, and they get frustrated whenever they come across it, so developers are further discouraged from doing it. Just one more element of the decline.

Also, trolls are a bad example because they tell you how to kill them right in the manual.

 

[dryan]

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

I suspected as much, but I let my assburgerism get the best of me.

 

[DollarSign]

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.

ORLY? Tell me, how many "unique" monsters did BG have, besides trolls and vampire? And the trolls/vampires were a pretty cheap gimmick, considering the game vomited loads of elemental arrows/wooden stakes in the exact same location.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

ORLY? Tell me, how many "unique" monsters did BG have

Creature HP XP Notes
Ankheg 52 975 Acid spit
Bandit 8 65
Black Talon Bandit 16 240 Arrows of Ice
Battle Horror 64 4000
Black Bear 25 175
Brown Bear 41 420
Cave Bear 50 650
Mountain Bear 60 900
Polar Bear 66 900
Greater Basilisk 78 7000 Petrification
Lesser Basilisk 45 1400 Petrification
Ashirukuru 30 2000 Backstab, invisibility at will
Carrion Crawler 22 420 Paralyzation
Cat 1 1
Chicken 1 1
Crypt Crawler 32 420 Paralyzation
Cow 6 0
Demonknight 125 5000 Arcane spells, magic resistance
Blink Dog 32 270
War Dog 17 65
Wild Dog 9 35
Doom Guard 64 2000
Doomsayer 78 4000 Magic +to hit, magic resistance
Greater Doppleganger 78 4000 Arcane spells, immune to sleep and charm
Lesser Doppleganger 31 420 Immune to sleep and charm
Ettercap 40 650 Poison, sets traps
Fission Slime 65 3000 Acid, immune to weapons, only vulnerable to fire
Flesh Golem 40 2000 Magic +to hit, magic resistance
Flind 19 200
Ghast 29 650 Paralyzation, disease
Ghoul 15 175 Paralyzation
Greater Ghoul 49 1000 Paralyzation, disease
Gibberling 8 35
Diseased Gibberling 4 35
Gnoll 15 35
Gnoll Elite 18 65
Gnoll Slasher 18 65
Gnoll Veteran 20 65
Gray Ooze 25 120
Green Slime 16 65 Instant death
Half-ogre 20 270
Hamadryad (Charm person, dimension door) 9 950
Helmed Horror 40 2000
Hobgoblin 8 35
Hobgoblin Elite 16 95
Horse 10 0
Invisible Stalker (Invisible, magic resistance) 64 3000
Kobold 4 7
Kobold Commando (Arrows of Fire) 7 35
Mustard Jelly (Acid, magic resistance, causes slowness, magic weapons to hit) 65 2000
Nereid (Instant death) 32 5000
Nymph (Dimension door, priest spells, magic resistance) 24 2000
Ochre Jelly (Acid) 41 270
Ogre 30 270
Ogre Berserker 40 650
Ogre Mage (Mage spells) 39 650
Ogrillon 19 75
Phoenix Guard (Explode into fireballs on dying, "resurrection") 35 100
Rat 1 1 Revenant (Magic weapons to hit, immune to charm) 64 3000
Sirine (Mage spells) 49 2000
Sirine Queen (Mage spells) 75 6000
Skeleton (Immune to mind control spells) 8 65
Skeleton Warrior (Magic weapons to hit, magic resistance) 84 4000
Spider, Astral Phase (Poison, teleportation) 85 4000
Spider, Giant (Poison) 35 450
Spider, Huge (Poison) 18 270
Spider, Phase (Poison, teleportation) 44 1400
Spider, Sword 45 2000
Spider, Wraith (Poison) 27 1400
Squirrel 1 1
Succubus, Captive (Mage spells, drain Dexterity and Constitution, can become Ethereal) 50 3000
Tanar'ri (Death gaze, Vampiric Touch, immune to non-magical weapons) 130 16000
Tasloi 8 35
Werewolf (Immune to normal weapons) 35 420-1700
Werewolf, Greater (Magic resistant, need special weapons to hit, regenerates) 75 420-2200
Wolf 24 65
Wolf, Dire 33 125
Wolf, Dread 33 650
Wolf, Vampiric (Paralyze, magic weapons to hit) 50 2000
Wolf, Winter (Frost breath) 45 975
Wolf, Worg 26 120
Wolfwere (Immune to normal weapons, magic resistance) 41 1400-1800
Wolfwere, Greater (Need special weapons to hit, magic resistance) 70 8000
Wyvern (Poison stinger) 63 1400
Wyvern, Baby (Poison stinger) 30 450
Wyvern, Greater (Poison stinger) 92 5000
Xvart 8 15 Zombie 16 65

I'm sure this list is by no means comprehensive either... (but you can fuck off if I'm wasting my time on an idiot such as yourself to edit it down to a list of all those that specifically match your request, do it yourself you lazy dumbfuck)

 

[DollarSign]

ORLY? Tell me, how many "unique" monsters did BG have

I'm sure this list is by no means comprehensive either... (but you can fuck off if I'm wasting my time on an idiot such as yourself to edit it down to a list of all those that specifically match your request, do it yourself you lazy dumbfuck)

So, you have not the slightest idea how many unique monsters BG had, don't know what 'uniqueness' entails, are unable to answer the question, and decided to hide behind a wall of copy-pasted text and edgy retardation like an utter moron. Good job sucking dick and being butthurt about it. Not a single one of these monsters require "unique methods" to kill, aside from trolls and vampires. Some have various resistances - whoop-die-doo, so do monsters in DAI and most RPGs. They're not speshul or unique - they're just monsters. DAI also has a bunch of different monsters - some dive into the ground and knock you off your feet if you're not careful, others cover themselves with shields, others shoot beams of frost rays continuously, others create unpassable walls and trap you in them, etc.

And since I've recently been made aware that I'm dealing with a bunch of histrionic manchildren who can't read, no, that wasn't me defending DAI or dissing holy sacred BG. It was just me responding to a stupid shitflinging device who made fallacious statements, derived false conclusions, and then got publiclly roasted like a little bitch. But please, feel free to drown me in more copy-pasted walls'o'text. In before shitflinger starts whining "omg you said unique monsters that means how many different types of monsters and not how many monsters that require speshul methods to kill".

 

[Infinitron]

Oh, Liberal, it's you. It all makes sense now.

 

[DollarSign]

It's drog, liberal, chefe, andhaira, and lots of other people, depending on where your paranoia strikes you.

 

[DragoFireheart]

It's drog, liberal, chefe, andhaira, and lots of other people, depending on where your paranoia strikes you.

Drog in the Dick.
Liberal in the Labia minora.
Chefe in the Clitoris
Andhaira in the Ass.

 

[undecaf]

I can never understand how these threads constantly and unhindedly expand when the game at hand is just shit. Not even shit in a hilarious way, but just that dull brown stuff that's frogotten as soon as the toilet is flushed.

 

[donkeymong]

Gaxkxang and the Rockwraith werent unique monsters??Or dogs that used overwhelm?

 

[DraQ]

On the other 999 hands not only are all the characters crap but the whole let's push sexuality and SJW in everyone's faces in a very stupid manner (because Bioware can't do smart) isn't actually all that good for the LGBT message. Don't want to be stereotyped? Then don't fucking approve of something that only has stereotypes- and dumb ones at that.

Vivec being bisexual/hermaphrodite/whatever-it's-complicated actually has a purpose in the narrative beyond SJW!trans- and of course having way better writing helps. What's more Morrowind is more than a decade old- back when having LGBT characters wasn't all that popular. So why the flying fuck wasn't Bethesda praised for its inclusiveness back then when it was actually something special and exceptional for the time?

This.

Face it, you probably won't sell the idea of wild gay buttsecks orgies to your typical cishet "oppressor" and it's unlikely they'll ever stop being the absolute majority of people.
At best they will be disinterested, but even a disinterested person can quickly learn to pasionately hate something if its shoved down their throat (I don't know, maybe it's different for gay people, but most people just don't appreciate that).
OTOH you have a decent chance at selling the idea of sexual orientation not really mattering IF you're smart about it and build your characters around something else than just gay buttsecks enthusiasm and let your audiences make up their opinions about them before they even learn about their orientation or even make the learning part completely optional and let this orientation stay in the background.

Case in point: Vivec.
Many players consider him awesome in at least some ways.
Many of the same players bludgeoned Fargoth into pulp the moment he suggested them becoming veeery close.
Draw your own conclusions.

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.

I approve of this train of thought.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

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...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... 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.

DAI also has a bunch of different monsters - some dive into the ground and knock you off your feet if you're not careful, others cover themselves with shields, others shoot beams of frost rays continuously, others create unpassable walls and trap you in them, etc.

Gaxkxang and the Rockwraith werent unique monsters??Or dogs that used overwhelm?

What you two aren't getting is the "whole" of my post. It's not just about the dropping of the enemy, it's about how the uniqueness of the enemy enables and requires the further integration of all the other RPGs mechanics and norms, such as inventory, useful NPCs, and character specialisations.

Yes, Dragon Age has a "smattering" of pixel-flare variety - but do you need any specialised knowledge to defeat them? No. Do you need to find out about or stock up for them from an NPC? No. Do you need to manage resources and space via an inventory system? No.

And what are the things most people are criticising about with regards to the Dragon Age evolution? Pointless gear in an unweildly and mostly useless inventory, boring traders and all other non-romanceable NPCs, dull as dishwater combat.

It doesn't matter if one guy has a big shield and another shoots fairy dust from their fingers if all your characters are equally efficient at killing them and their attack requires no further action beyond, at worst, a healing potion or a 5 second waiting time.

If you meet a mage in an old cRPG you have no idea what spell they are going to use unless you are familiar with the game, inside and out, in Dragon Age it doesn't matter what spell they use, it's all just equally banal fairy dust.

The fact that you don't "get" what I'm on about is the whole reason why the notion of is so prevalent. You either never had it in the first place or you've completely lost it.

 

[undecaf]

Normal people have moved on long ago.

Thought they would, the abnormal seem pretty vehement though.

 

[Delterius]

Normal people have moved on long ago.

Thought they would, the abnormal seem pretty vehement though.

Ever been to an asylum? There's a lot of crazy people posing as doctors there too.

 

[undecaf]

Normal people have moved on long ago.

Thought they would, the abnormal seem pretty vehement though.

Ever been to an asylum? There's a lot of crazy people posing as doctors there too.

I've been at a yatd but not in. Historically evaluating, or assuming, those more healthy woul avoid the shocks.

 

[Infinitron]

Codex review: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-review-dragon-age-inquisition.96838/

 

[DraQ]

Codex review: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-review-dragon-age-inquisition.96838/

disgonbgud

 

[Jaesun]

The review is actually really good.

 

[kris]

I can never understand how these threads constantly and unhindedly expand when the game at hand is just shit. Not even shit in a hilarious way, but just that dull brown stuff that's frogotten as soon as the toilet is flushed.

Its not interesting debating something which is good. People don't need to vent about it either or crack jokes.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

 

[Infinitron]

Another day, another GOTY: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...the-year-award-goes-to-dragon-age-inquisition

The Eurogamer writer seems eager to point out that Mordor got more rewards, though.

 

[Sykar]

Another day, another GOTY: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...the-year-award-goes-to-dragon-age-inquisition

The Eurogamer writer seems eager to point out that Mordor got more rewards, though.

I wonder who on Biowares stuff gives him the proper monetary blowjob. Or maybe he got something extra?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I wonder who on Biowares stuff gives him the proper monetary blowjob.

Welllllllllllllll.

 

[Sykar]

I wonder who on Biowares stuff gives him the proper monetary blowjob.

Welllllllllllllll.

That explains. A lot.

 

[Infinitron]

Dragon Age: Inquisition Used To Be A Way Different Game

Just a year before it came out, Dragon Age: Inquisition looked very different. And I'm not just talking about trivial things—UI changes, line tweaks—what we saw in 2013 was almost an entirely different game than what we saw last year.

At PAX Prime in early September of 2013, BioWare showed off a 30-minute demo of the newestDragon Age game. It was our first time really seeing it in action, and what we witnessed was spectacular: a big, beautiful RPG that tasked you with making important, tactical combat decisions like burning boats to prevent your enemies from escaping or smashing down a rickety bridge to take out the enemies standing on top of it.

What we actually got was something else entirely—Dragon Age: Inquisition did turn out to be a great RPG, but much of what we saw during that first preview session never actually made it into the game.1

This isn't that unusual. Game development is a messy process. Things change. But still, I thought it'd be interesting to go back through that old demo and dissect just how much they had to change—and cut—between September 2013 and November 2014.

Unfortunately, BioWare never released an official version of their presentation, so all we have is an off-camera recording, via YouTuber ShepardN7, separated into three main parts.

Here's part one of the video, which takes us through the region of Crestwood (demo starts at 2:00):


If you've played Dragon Age: Inquisition, you'll probably immediately notice that this doesn't look like Crestwood at all. In this video we see a vivid, thriving area filled with soldiers and castles; the Crestwood we got in Inquisition was gloomy, rainy, and infested with demons—at least until we completed a certain sidequest. But even after that, it didn't look much like the Crestwood in the video..

Aesthetics aren't the only major change here. In the PAX demo, the player got to make some big choices involving his army's movements, choosing whether to send the Inquisition to save Crestwood, have them stay with injured soldiers, or return everyone to a nearby keep. (Keeps were emphasized heavily in this incarnation of Dragon Age: Inquisition, as we'll see in a bit.)

The PAX demo also showed a timer bar called "Inquisition Keep Strength"—a visual representation of enemy forces attacking one of your keeps, which presumably would have a big influence on how quickly you had to complete missions and what decisions you could make. None of this is in the final game.2

There's more. "Sometimes we wanna test whether or not you come prepared," says Dragon Ageexecutive producer Mark Darrah in the demo presentation. He then shows off a section where the player must set some boats on fire to prevent enemy armies from escaping.

Of course, none of this happens in the actual game. Antivian Fire is real, but it's a combat grenade—you never use it to burn down boats. There's very little environmental interaction to the extent that was shown here.

Wouldn't this have been cool?

Part two of the demo, which starts with a boss battle and then takes you through more activities in Crestwood, also shows a whole bunch of stuff that just never appeared in the real game:

There are a lot of locations here that were either scrapped or used for different sections of the game, including a cut-scene that transitions into the aftermath of that decision the player made earlier in the demo. (He chose not to save Crestwood.)

One quick shot of the demo's save files reveal a couple of locations that also never actually made it into the main game—Nahashin Marshes and The Southern Desolation. (Frostback Pass isn't a thing either, but the main keep area of Haven is set in the Frostback Mountains, so those could be one and the same.)

Maybe that'll be DLC one day?3

Part three of the demo video is set in the Western Approach:


This entire segment—perhaps one of the coolest parts of the demo and a major selling point forDragon Age: Inquisition—is maybe the most jarring to watch today. In this section, Mark Darrah walks us through the invasion and capture of a keep in the Western Approach—which is a lot different than the keep capturing we saw in the final game.

As the demo player approaches the keep, Darrah notes that you can weaken enemy defenses by doing things like drawing out their troops or poisoning their wells. None of this actually shipped with the final version of the game, although in the Dragon Age we played, once you claim the keep you can get a quest called This Water Tastes Funny, in which your keep's well has been poisoned and you have to go find fresh water. Now we know who to blame for that.

During PAX, BioWare put an emphasis on environmental destruction: There's a section during combat where the player can spot archers on a rickety bridge, then take them out by smashing a ladder and knocking them all down.

But, no, we didn't get any of that in the final game. [UPDATE (5:44pm): Some readers point out that you actually can still smash the rickety bridge in that keep, which is a fun little easter egg. It's clear that environmental interaction in the final game isn't even close to what they originally imagined, though.]

Of course, games change in development all the time. It's fascinating to look at what Dragon Age: Inquisition once was, what the game BioWare debuted to the public could've been. We may never get to play some of this stuff... or we may eventually see it turn up in DLC. Either way, it's a small glimpse into the development of the game, and a reminder that what you see in a preview is often not what you get in the finished product.