Preview A Wight By Any Other Name....

[sirfink]

Why is no one capable of making unique worlds like Morrowind's Tamriel any more?

They're capable, they're just not willing. Face it: the majority of games these days are geared towards console douchebags. Gothy, metally, rap music? Check! Tattooed, pierced, spikey-haired chicks with big tits? Check! Awesome "fatality" moves? Check! Sit back and watch the 15-year-old wiggers line up to buy the shit out it.

 

[Secretninja]

Cookie cutter fantasy is probably the right word.

At least cookies are tasty

They are only limited by their imagination, talent, intelligence, and motivation.

Seems to be very limiting factors

 

[Volourn]

"The game they could have made-- realistic aesthetic, low magic, adult-- could have been very interesting."

They never aimed to make that. If people on the Codex and elswewhere were actually intelligent enough to read and hear what BIO actually wrote and said; they would know this.

DA - more or less - is exactly what it was intended to be all along. Tools.

And, it will no doubt be a better RPG than either BG.

 

[Bloodeyes]

I think the codex should stop reporting on mainstream RPGs. We don't have reports on the Madden games, which would be about as relevant to us as Bioware news. They're not making games we want to play, so why are we wasting time talking about them, giving free publicity to these pieces of crap?

 

[Chefe]

Because we like to dwell in depression.

 

[Rhalle]

They never aimed to make that.

They most certainly did.

Go to the DA forum archives and read the posts before information on the game went black-- say, the stuff from 2004 and a few years after that.

 

[Data4]

Alright, time for an exercise in creativity. Barring the easy answer "Don't do fantasy", if you were consulted to make an original fantasy-themed RPG, what would you suggest as something new and refreshing for creatures? What about overall plot?

I'm not defending DA, but when I see complaints (valid though they may be) about how this or that feature is unoriginal, I get curious as to what would be original by your standards.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Devouring corpse
Arcane horror

Jesus Christ.

It reminds me of monsters' names in Diablo 2... which were randomly generated.

Reminds me of D&D monster names. Terrorshade. Shadowfiend. Fiendshadow. Darkplopper. Nightwing. Spacetoad.

 

[spacemoose]

spacemoose.

 

[Chefe]

Nightwing was a DnD baddie?

 

[Naked Ninja]

I quite like that the demons all appear to be manifestations of Sin, Lust, Pride, Gluttony.

I wonder, are the demons independantly created, or do they somehow arise from the emotions or actions of mankind? What is the veil? Sounds like the warp in Warhammer.

DA demons sound kind of like Banes in SoW. They're a sort of psychic imprint, a strong enough emotion imprinted on the mana in an area creates a magical entity, a manifestation of Pain, or Hate, or something. Which cannot be killed like a traditional "monster", it just reforms. The imprint needs to be cleansed from the mana in the area. Until it does is affects people's minds, inspiring the emotion if embodies.

Anyway, I like the DA demons, they appear to have a consistent theme and implmenetation. I hope they avoid DnD's "let's throw in everything up to and including a kitchen sink demon!". A focused design is a sign of design competence.

 

[circ]

Was that sarcasm?

 

[Azrael the cat]

Well I'll give them credit for something. Something I thought to be impossible. They've actually inspired me to reinstall Mass Effect.

 

[Azrael the cat]

"The game they could have made-- realistic aesthetic, low magic, adult-- could have been very interesting."

They never aimed to make that. If people on the Codex and elswewhere were actually intelligent enough to read and hear what BIO actually wrote and said; they would know this.

DA - more or less - is exactly what it was intended to be all along. Tools.

.

Come on, Volourn, they've been throwing the words 'dark' and 'gritty' around like the Marquis de Sade doing a rental ad. You can't blame people for thinking that they were referring to the game rather than the state of D. Gaider's underwear.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Devouring corpse
Arcane horror

Jesus Christ.

No, he's a boss monster they're announcing later.

 

[Volourn]

"You can't blame people for thinking that they were referring to the game rather than the state of D. Gaider's underwear."

L0LZ

Anyways, sure, they used the words, but anyone who actually paid attenntion to what they were actually writing when they went indepth would know that the game wouldn't be, say, as 'low fantasy' as the Codex or those who actually like low fantasy would want.

People, like normal, just read the hype words and took it to mean exactly what they think they should mean.

What is low fantasy? What is low magic? What is dark? What is adult? This stuff can mean so many degrees of things it's not even funny.

I would not be surprised that most of BIO's vision of DA hasn't changed; but the perception of what BIO was actually trying to make was skewed by what people *thought* they were making.

It's like I've said along. BIO is making a BIO game. If you don't like BIO games you won't like DA. Period. And, vice versa... Unless youa r eone of the retards who actually are delusional to believe that BG is their pinacle. *bullshit*

 

[Angthoron]

Well, Volourn does have a point, instead of sprite chunks of meat flying in random directions we now can see brutal sword-penetrating action, 4.0 shader blood and sex that isn't described merely by a kilobyte of text.

That's improvement alright - improving the things most customers will notice first. Besides, you can't assemble a research team that would work on improving Gaider's writing skills!

 

[Shannow]

Devouring corpse
Arcane horror

Jesus Christ.

It reminds me of monsters' names in Diablo 2... which were randomly generated.

This.
and

Why is no one capable of making unique worlds like Morrowind's Tamriel any more?
Why does nobody care to do something unique, like evolved vampires (not named anything like "vampyreans", just plain old "vampires" BTW) from SR?

Why does "low fantasy" mean turning down the imagination, but leaving all the high-fantasy/heroic-fantasy crap intact? How can anyone even turn the imagination down if typical fantasy is devoid of inspiration?

Lastly, what the bloody fuck?

P.S. The most memorable wights to me are undead walking WMDs from Myth games anyway.

This.

That said, I don't mind "generic" I'd just like to see something different once in a while. The last game that comes to mind that actually used the potential of a fantasy world that doesn't follow our real world (medieval) rules is PS:T...

 

[thesheeep]

Hmm. I like them. But I don't mind generic settings at all.

All that is important to me is that everything in the setting/world actually has a reason and fits in well. And that seems to be the case here, no matter if half of it was ripped directly from DnD.

And to be perfectly honest, try inventing new undeads that do not remind you of DnD. Not that easy, I guess.

 

[BearBomber]

Why is no one capable of making unique worlds like Morrowind's Tamriel any more?
Why does nobody care to do something unique, like evolved vampires (not named anything like "vampyreans", just plain old "vampires" BTW) from SR?

Because it is a game, not an art, and in almost nothing creative has been made in your genre ever. Most of the game worlds are just copy pasta+gimmic like fantasy world but with sci-fi universe; post apocalipse, but with 50's feel; generic fantasy worlds, but with furries and roman empire; generic fantasy but in the age of steam;fantasy China etc. You can't blame Bioware, when even at the begining of the genre game worlds were just modified DnD worlds or Middle Earth. They didn't even made Hyborian age inspired world, or inspired by Gaiman's book, how can you expect anything new from them if they can't even copy anything new.

 

[Lesifoere]

Hmm. I like them. But I don't mind generic settings at all.

All that is important to me is that everything in the setting/world actually has a reason and fits in well. And that seems to be the case here, no matter if half of it was ripped directly from DnD.

And to be perfectly honest, try inventing new undeads that do not remind you of DnD. Not that easy, I guess.

Then why include undead at all? It's not mandatory, no more than dragons or elves or dwarves or medieval pseudo-Europe are.

 

[BearBomber]

Hmm. I like them. But I don't mind generic settings at all.

All that is important to me is that everything in the setting/world actually has a reason and fits in well. And that seems to be the case here, no matter if half of it was ripped directly from DnD.

And to be perfectly honest, try inventing new undeads that do not remind you of DnD. Not that easy, I guess.

Then why include undead at all? It's not mandatory, no more than dragons or elves or dwarves or medieval pseudo-Europe are.

Because audience wants it. If they were sick of that kind of thing they'd stop buing DnD, WoW subscriptions, fantasy games, MTG etc. How can you blame a developer for giving players exaclty what they want.

 

[thesheeep]

A fantasy RPG without undead? Hmmm... Quite possible, yeah.

But you have to include a lot of things people know, or else the mass will simply not buy it. Unfortunately. Even brillant reviews, etc. don't help there, as proven many times in the past.
Marketing does, but I just guess publishers won't accept titles with very unusual settings and then do that much marketing for them

 

[St. Toxic]

But you have to include a lot of things people know, or else the mass will simply not buy it.

Cool. What else can you pull out of your ass?

 

[aries202]

-ehm-

The Veil is, at least according to the Chantry, (your friendly :!: religiois institution in DA: Origins) a what separates the real life on Earth (Ferelden) from the life beyong the Veil, being named the Fade by the Chantry. People in Ferelden believe they go through the Veil when they die - into the Fade - to meet their loved ones. (if this is what really happens, nobody knows...)

However, from beyond the Veil comes all sorts of demons and bad things and spirits, ghosts and demons. Such demons will go from the Fade trough the Veil - possesing people - dead or not - and do damage...

The mage will be taunted through the Harrowing, tempted with the desires of one of the 7 deadly sins, it seems. And yes, the demons could well represent these deadlyn sins in the game.