Game News Dragon Age III News From Edmonton Comic Expo

[Modron]

One level in Dragon Age 3 is as big as all of the levels in Dragon Age 2". Not sure if I understand this quote. Are they going for open area exploration? It's built on the Battlefield 3 engine after all.

I d so hard at this, seeing as how, aside from Kirkwall, DA2 had like 3 levels.

Considering the development schedule, the developer, and the Engine, they are probably going to go the KotOR 1 route and produce large areas by having everything really fucking long corridors, with exception to the first city hub area, god I can't really see how some of the codex can be fans of KotOR 1 other than through rose tinted glasses because the game does not really hold up through one play-through let alone repeated play-throughs.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Some concept art, dunno if it's been posted here already: http://blog.bioware.com/2012/10/20/first-look-dragon-age-iii-inquisition-concept-art/

 

[Whisky]

If it comes out for Next-Gen platforms, chances are it could be better. For the sake of having bigger levels at least.

I'm sure that is what we thought would happen to games this generation.

 

[Sul]

Some concept art, dunno if it's been posted here already: http://blog.bioware.com/2012/10/20/first-look-dragon-age-iii-inquisition-concept-art/

Hmm, seems like their are going to Anderfels and Hunterhorn Mountains. At least the setting shows promise.
And I'm pretty sure it's not going to be true open world like TES, just large areas connected by corridors like Kingdoms of Amalur or World of Warcraft. Bioware don't have the skill, experience and guts to try something that lies on the opposite end of their level design spectrum.

If it comes out for Next-Gen platforms, chances are it could be better. For the sake of having bigger levels at least.

I'm sure that is what we thought would happen to games this generation.

Pretty much. As the tech to make games evolves their development budget also gets bigger. If anything a new gen means that games will become more dumbed down.

 

[Bulba]

EA is facing some real economic problems have you been so bussy picking lice out of your ass to hear about it? They want to cash in on Bioware as much as possible to balance the ods in their favor, they even revived Medal of Honor to try to comepete with Call of Duty since Battlefield is not enough for their problems right now.

That's a common misconception. If you look at EA loses through the years they are much bigger than the cash outflow, that means that their loss was mostly paper (not real cash outflow, but from depreciation, amortization, accretion and most importantly impairment, that functions more like a tax shield rather than a real loss ). In 2009 they had 1.6 billion and now at the end of 2012 they have one billion. EA has plenty of franchises that people like and buy. I would personally play NFS on my portable and almost all teens like sports (EA makes a shitload of sports games without any decent competition).

Did they cash in on Bioware. Probably not, but it was the fault of Bio and Tortanic and not the fault of EA. But you cannot say that Bio made games except for TOR were making loss. Three million of copies sold would roughly translate to $ 120 million at $ 40 bucks per copy (a guess:+ DLC's -packaging, shipping) and I kinda doubt that making and marketing each of these games cost that much ME123, DA12.

Now about DA3. I predict that it will be a semi flop as Bio will continue to loose "harcore" crowd in favor of sandbox Oblivion fans as this game will be in the middle. Still full of expensive cut scenes, but with some sand box elements. Bio can easily replicated dead world of one-liners that we saw in Oblivion and still ad the romances, hearfire, horses to please their crowd and attract a part of new crowd. If Beth taught us anything it's that there are no unimplemented features only lack of imagination.

If they will go with DA4 I think they will make an immense profit as it will be much more sand box, but with less cut scenes and we all know that POPAMOLE sandbox is a dream come true.

Amortisation does not come out of nothing, you know. They are an it company and will need to work on the good pcs and not some 7 year old shit so they can't just stop buying them. They make financial investment in assets, use them for 3-5 years (amortisation period of a pcs) and after that they are near uselless... can't even sell them for 20% of their original value. Also when they do sell them at the profit to their declared value, they have to show it and pay taxes.
Also they don't make 40 bucks of each sale - don't forget all the middlemen there. I bet that they make way less than 20.

 

[Mother Russia]

PapaEA does it again.

Good bye Bioware.

 

[Cynic]

DA:O
Pros

1. Nice sized world to explore
2. Some Origins were pretty good
3. Some quests were quite well done (elves and Werewolves)
4. Best (while flawed) modern iteration of RTwP combat (much better than its closest relative, NWN2)
5. Ability to zoom the camera out to overhead view, while limited, did help in making the fights more interesting
6. Concept of the "Black City" was quite cool, shame they didn't explore it further (this is what I thought the series' main plot line should have been about)
7. Liked the expansion story line concept of normally unintelligent monsters becoming "sentient" (even though it's played out it was still kind of cool)

Cons

1. Combat was ruined by trash mobs and far too many exploitable abilities
2. The above wouldn't be so bad but there was far too much combat to ignore it
3. Tedious, broken combat of which there is a lot of means I'm not going to replay the game
4. Annoying NPCs (normal Bioware shit)
5. "The Mother" in the expansion was a poorly explained rehashed piece of crap
6. Combat in the expansion got even more derpier
7. While there were SOME C&C they were extremely minor and not implemented well enough, probably because of fear of casual rage

*disclaimer I played the game only on Nightmare, don't know how you could cope with the tedium on any other difficulty level.
Now, this what I honestly feel about DA:O. It was not a bad game, but it was flawed. I had fun, I played it once, I'll never play it again.
DA2 on the other hand, I cancelled my pre order after playing the demo. Pirated it when it came out, and quit and uninstalled shortly after getting to Kirkwall. I could not take it. If they are the same game, why is this so? I'll tell you why;

DA2
Cons

1. Art style went from tolerably uninspired to what the fuck is this retarded bullshit
2. Did not continue ANYthing from Origins story wise which really did piss me off as there were SOME things in DA:O that could have been done quite well if worked on and expanded
3. No Origins
4. Forced you to play as fully voiced douchebag
5. Combat became a cluster fuck of monumental proportions. Shitty engine was not built for fast paced "action style" combat, looked like absolute trash. Mobs teleported in from fucking no where to pad out the fights which were already boring as fuck, no overhead view meant that I'm stuck with the shittiest PoV for this kind of game, same problems from first game were not fixed but in fact made worse
6. NPCs were fucking HORRID, WAY worse than DA:O. Intolerable.
7. Stuck in the same fucking place for the whole game
8. Assets reused ad naseum giving no variety to environments
9. Absolutely devoid of any kind of sense of exploration or discovery due to these
10. ME style dialog wheel which was and always has been and always will be shit
11. Took the Bioware smarmy hacky fan fic style of writing/characters to intolerable levels of bullshit

Fuck that's all I can think of now but there are probably heaps more. Anyone saying they are the same game is plain wrong. They are drastically different. The whole style and approach to DA2 was different and it was a shift in all the wrong directions.

My prediction is that DA3 will be total shit. They just can't make good games anymore, whatever soul they had for that kind of development was extinguished long ago.

 

[attackfighter]

Best (while flawed) modern iteration of RTwP combat (much better than its closest relative, NWN2)
Ability to zoom the camera out to overhead view, while limited, did help in making the fights more interesting

Those things should be taken for granted. The fact that Bioware didn't fuck up here isn't a positive. Also if you're contrasting differences between DA1 and 2 they shouldn't be there... DA2 combat is exactly the same, just flashier and speeded up, and as far as I remember DA2 allowed you to mess around with the camera, too.

Your DA2 list is full of nitpicks, redundancies and lies. For instance, you nitpick that the main character is fully voiced... despite the fact that everyone else is too. The art style is retarded in either game, just in slightly different ways*. DA2 in fact DID continue storylines from DA1 - for example, the gay BDSM elf Zeveran has a quest for you, and some of your other former companions make cameos as well (I think Alistair and Liliana show up as King and Queen at the end or something). These are some of the errors you make in judging DA2.

*

 

[LivingOne]

"One level in Dragon Age 3 is as big as all of the levels in Dragon Age 2".

I'm predicting a Witcher-style level design again,here.

They make a huge level but it's gonna be pretty simplicistic in its design(a plain with houses,trash mobs,some cave,probably invisible walls too slapped on top).Everyone,however,praises it because competition is just making the usual corridor crap.This way they keep their design popamole-friendly as their audience doesn't have to think much when exploring and they get 'hurrcore kool-kredits' because they made the level BiG!!!1!

Too bad that many good levels also being big is a consequence of them having lots of intresting stuff in them(traps,puzzles,altenate paths,secrets,etc.).Not the cause.

Oh and I also predict lots of backtrakking.BW/EA's not gonna spend money on a lot of 'big levels'.

 

[Roguey]

Mass Effect 2:
Platform X360
Global 2.93m
Platform PS3
Global 1.20m

Mass Effect 3:
Platform X360
Global 2.50m
Platform PS3
Global 0.96m

I have no idea what kind of point you're trying to make. ME2 didn't have those numbers in its first year of release. This just shows that ME3 is selling faster.

Also lol @ anyone who thinks this is going to be open world. It's just going to have slightly larger areas-until-you-hit-a-loading-screen that's all.

 

[Volourn]

Dexter is full of shit with made up fukkin' numbers. :rollseyes:

 

[Infinitron]

Anybody who brofists Volourn should have a brofist automatically deducted from his own account

 

[Volourn]

IIRC, you've brofisted me before. L0L

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

How is it possible that certain people on the Codex actually like EA/Bioware?

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Some concept art, dunno if it's been posted here already: http://blog.bioware.com/2012/10/20/first-look-dragon-age-iii-inquisition-concept-art/

Only like 2137612 times for every generic fantasy game like that

 

[Cynic]

Codex without Volourn would be like DA:O without derp roads, you know it'd be less annoying but then you'd get rage withdrawal symptoms

 

[Darkforge]

Oh yeah, because just like the music industry, everyone knows anything that performs well at retail is a good game.....

for fuck's sake....

 

[commie]

How is it possible that certain people on the Codex actually like EA/Bioware?

Tread carefully newfag. Even the esteemed pink frilly knicker wearing serpent is a fan of not only Baldur's Gate games but also Mass Effect. Bioware and EA have not always sucked either. From the 80's and up to the late 90's EA were actually still funding(often grudgingly) a lot of incline.



(Edited to get rid of the 50 or so 'evens' in the original. Jebus!)

 

[Data4]

So... Fagon Age 3: Buttsecks, eh? No thanks. I liked the first one alright, but the second one was a kick to the balls. I'm not playing the part of the battered husband... or rather "domestic partner", since this is Bioware we're talking about.

 

[Jaesun]

How is it possible that certain people on the Codex actually like EA/Bioware?

Tread carefully newfag. Even the esteemed pink frilly knicker wearing serpent is a fan of not only Baldur's Gate games but even Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 (he HATED Call of Mass Duty Effect 3 though). Bioware and even EA have not always sucked either. From the 80's and even up to the late 90's EA were actually still funding(even if grudgingly) a lot of incline.

Fixed.

 

[Infinitron]

Yep. EA published System Shock 2, incredible as it may sound.

 

[commie]

Yep. EA published System Shock 2, incredible as it may sound.

As late as 1999 they were still funding uber hard core Flight Sims through their Jane's label too(Jane's F/A-18). While far from being blameless for the decline one can actually sympathise a bit with them as it wasn't their fault that people stopped buying old style RPG's, adventure games and simulators, forcing them and others to go popamole. Opening up the arcane world of PC gaming to the unwashed masses through Windows and the parallel mass adoption of the console was more to blame for being the catalyst for the decline. The financial ineptitude and/or greed of old style developers didn't help either. Most old gamers will remember the dubious sellouts of the early and mid 90's to companies desperate to cash in on the fad of 'digital entertainment' whereby respected companies whored themselves for ludicrous amounts to publishers who had no experience of PC gaming and which expected almost immediate returns on a scale that just was not possible at the time without making the product accessible to everyone. By the time the popamoles were perfected it was already too late for most of those companies as they had been stripped down already and were left with almost no resources to make the transition(look at the increasing amounts of crap made by well regarded companies during the late 90's). EA was just lucky that it was farsighted enough from the beginning to have diversified and prepared in advance for this. This doesn't absolve them for what they did in the last decade until now though. They have made more than enough to not need to stick exclusively with this model, and should have used their vast resources to making better games now for all tastes, not just better marketed ones for the slobbering hordes.

 

[DalekFlay]

Chances it will approach the potential seen in the flawed original: 0%.

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

How is it possible that certain people on the Codex actually like EA/Bioware?

Tread carefully newfag. Even the esteemed pink frilly knicker wearing serpent is a fan of not only Baldur's Gate games but also Mass Effect. Bioware and EA have not always sucked either. From the 80's and up to the late 90's EA were actually still funding(often grudgingly) a lot of incline.



(Edited to get rid of the 50 or so 'evens' in the original. Jebus!)

I know of Bioware's history. You're talking to a huge fan of the Baldur's Gate series.

 

[Cynic]

attackfighter bro I disagree with you, but rather than go on about it, can you please tell me why if they are the same game, DA2 caused so much rage while DA:O was mostly liked? I mean the number of people I see saying they fucking hated DA2 but loved DA:O is not small. How do you explain this? Also are you saying that This Is The New Shit marketing was any different to DA2 marketing?