Dragon Age: Inquisition Pre-Release Thread

[Roguey]

Are you implying The Witcher is colorful?

Yes.

TW2 has some vibrant areas I will grant you but overall both games are standard fantasy brown.

Nuh uh.

 

[Zeriel]

Don't see how TW2 is at all "brown". It's basically a very-pretty rendition of mostly real-world environments. Some places are forest, some places are arid (say, the siege area), but it is nothing like Morrowind's uniform palette.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Don't see how TW2 is at all "brown". It's basically a very-pretty rendition of mostly real-world environments. Some places are forest, some places are arid (say, the siege area), but it is nothing like Morrowind's uniform palette.

TW2 had a lot of variety, from the opening Castle town, to the forest, bogs, Dwarven hold to the shitty endgame area.

Only thing that i found missing was an area with heavy snow and a desert. Bioware has zero artistic sensibility, they always go with the easier development path instead of the almost OCD design from CDproject.

 

[Rahdulan]

Don't see how TW2 is at all "brown". It's basically a very-pretty rendition of mostly real-world environments. Some places are forest, some places are arid (say, the siege area), but it is nothing like Morrowind's uniform palette.

TW2 had a lot of variety, from the opening Castle town, to the forest, bogs, Dwarven hold to the shitty endgame area.

Only thing that i found missing was an area with heavy snow and a desert. Bioware has zero artistic sensibility, they always go with the easier development path instead of the almost OCD design from CDproject.

I'm pretty sure someone over at CDPR has a fetish for rocks.

 

[DalekFlay]

Yes, that is very pretty and vibrant. It is also standard forest brown and green. DA2 tried to be much more unrealistic, animated, colorful. The assassin DLC looked like something out of Pixar. Not saying I need that but I respect it trying to be different.

 

[Rahdulan]

Yes, that is very pretty and vibrant. It is also standard forest brown and green. DA2 tried to be much more unrealistic, animated, colorful. The assassin DLC looked like something out of Pixar. Not saying I need that but I respect it trying to be different.

And failed at all of it in my opinion. I get what they were trying to do with the art style change, I even liked the Qunari re-design which actually gave them a recognizable silhouette instead of "big bronze people because we had limited art assets" of yore, but the overall vibe I got from DA2 when it visual presentation can be summarized in couple of words - half-assed and cheap looking. It honestly looks like a PS2 game utterly devoid of lighting at times, not to mention it wasn't really helped by its lack of locale variety.

 

[Delterius]

And that's actually one of the better screenshots. The Kirkwall proper is cleaner than a hospital.

 

[Infinitron]

They kind of overdid it with those murals, I felt.

"LOOK EVERYBODY! Funky looking murals! See, this game is STYLIZED!"

 

[DalekFlay]

I like that shot, from a design perspective. The technical part of the game is less what I was speaking about.

 

[Ulminati]

No promo code inside for a Qunari Handcannon. Will not buy.

This being Gaider, the Qunari handcannon is hidden in his pants.

 

[Kem0sabe]

I like the character designs in DA2, environments on the other hand... looked like Bioware simply didn´t give a shit about the game world.

 

[sea]

They kind of overdid it with those murals, I felt.

"LOOK EVERYBODY! Funky looking murals! See, this game is STYLIZED!"

Not to mention it'd be a pretty fucking shit place to live if you had paintings of starved, beaten slaves working in agony everywhere.

The worst part is the explanation they give... that the statues and murals are "to remember the city's history." Do they build statues and paint murals of lynch mobs and the KKK crucifying gay people in the US to "remember our past transgressions"? Do the Japanese build big brass nuclear explosions so they will never forget World War II?

 

[Zeriel]

They kind of overdid it with those murals, I felt.

"LOOK EVERYBODY! Funky looking murals! See, this game is STYLIZED!"

Not to mention it'd be a pretty fucking shit place to live if you had paintings of starved, beaten slaves working in agony everywhere.

The worst part is the explanation they give... that the statues and murals are "to remember the city's history." Do they build statues and paint murals of lynch mobs and the KKK crucifying gay people in the US to "remember our past transgressions"? Do the Japanese build big brass nuclear explosions so they will never forget World War II?

I thought the implication was that the statues and murals were imperial-age propaganda pieces to keep people in line. i.e it'd be like if Nazi-era Germany had big murals showing jews getting gassed--a little absurd, but at least vaguely understandable if the hate/oppression reached a fever-pitch.

 

[Roguey]

I thought the implication was that the statues and murals were imperial-age propaganda pieces to keep people in line. i.e it'd be like if Nazi-era Germany had big murals showing jews getting gassed--a little absurd, but at least vaguely understandable if the hate/oppression reached a fever-pitch.

P much

The statues are not monuments to the suffering of slaves. Every inch and angle of the courtyard was designed by magisters bent on breaking the spirit of newcomers. Executions here took place daily, sometimes hourly, and corpses were hung from gibbets throughout the yard. New slaves trudging in from the docks saw what awaited them.

Naturally none of this stuff exists in Hightown.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

No sense detected. If you want to keep slaves from rioting, you need to make them believe their current lives are better than one they could possibly get through rebellion and what rebellion will cost them. Providing them with a daily reminder of how shitty their life is is the most biowarian idea in the glorious history of dumb ideas.

 

[aris]

That never gives you confidence, does it?

"Well, we sucked too bad to make good games in the past, but now we've miraculously changed! Honest!"

Isn't that precisely what everyone on the codex bet on with wasteland 2 and inexile, considering their trackrecord? Nobody shall accuse the codex of being consistent.

 

[Infinitron]

No sense detected. If you want to keep slaves from rioting, you need to make them believe their current lives are better than one they could possibly get through rebellion and what rebellion will cost them. Providing them with a daily reminder of how shitty their life is is the most biowarian idea in the glorious history of dumb ideas.

Yes, well, the magisters were overthrown.

 

[Roguey]

No sense detected. If you want to keep slaves from rioting, you need to make them believe their current lives are better than one they could possibly get through rebellion and what rebellion will cost them. Providing them with a daily reminder of how shitty their life is is the most biowarian idea in the glorious history of dumb ideas.

I wouldn't call demoralization Biowarian or nonsensical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

I wouldn't call demoralization Biowarian or nonsensical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

Not sure how that's relevant to slavery, but a week-long paid LARP with healthy, middle-class, white American volunteers? I had less fun at a summer camp when I was a kid.

Demoralization is effective as a short-term solution to an immediate problem, but:
1) In a society where slaves are the main work force, it just isn't economically viable, as productivity plummets.
2) Being born and raised in certain conditions makes them the norm. A public portrayal of said conditions in negative light doesn't serve to demoralize - they've already had their whole life to adjust - it only serves to breed the idea that it isn't the norm. But eh, how bad could that be?

 

[JarlFrank]

They kind of overdid it with those murals, I felt.

"LOOK EVERYBODY! Funky looking murals! See, this game is STYLIZED!"

Not to mention it'd be a pretty fucking shit place to live if you had paintings of starved, beaten slaves working in agony everywhere.

The worst part is the explanation they give... that the statues and murals are "to remember the city's history." Do they build statues and paint murals of lynch mobs and the KKK crucifying gay people in the US to "remember our past transgressions"? Do the Japanese build big brass nuclear explosions so they will never forget World War II?

The Germans build butt-ugly holocaust memorials in the middle of their capital city, so...

 

[Azrael the cat]

Don't see how TW2 is at all "brown". It's basically a very-pretty rendition of mostly real-world environments. Some places are forest, some places are arid (say, the siege area), but it is nothing like Morrowind's uniform palette.

TW2 had a lot of variety, from the opening Castle town, to the forest, bogs, Dwarven hold to the shitty endgame area.

Only thing that i found missing was an area with heavy snow and a desert. Bioware has zero artistic sensibility, they always go with the easier development path instead of the almost OCD design from CDproject.

Sad when you recollect how detailed the BG2 art was:-( Nothing original per se - very much 'standard fantasy town' for the most part - but it still holds up wonderfully against more recent games.

 

[Azrael the cat]

They kind of overdid it with those murals, I felt.

"LOOK EVERYBODY! Funky looking murals! See, this game is STYLIZED!"

Not to mention it'd be a pretty fucking shit place to live if you had paintings of starved, beaten slaves working in agony everywhere.

The worst part is the explanation they give... that the statues and murals are "to remember the city's history." Do they build statues and paint murals of lynch mobs and the KKK crucifying gay people in the US to "remember our past transgressions"? Do the Japanese build big brass nuclear explosions so they will never forget World War II?

The Germans build butt-ugly holocaust memorials in the middle of their capital city, so...

In Australia we celebrate the memory of our bloodiest military defeat (ANZAC day). Sadly it's become much more of a standard 'ra ra go the troops' event in recent years, but traditionally it was a wonderful cultural quirk in that by focussing on a terrible loss rather than a victory it gave things much more of an antiwar feeling, compared to the usual nationalism that tends to coopt remembrance memorials. That aspect of ANZAC day is something that Australians were really proud of (again, until it was redressed in military-can-do-no-wrong clothing during the Iraq war propaganda). I assume that many Germans feel the same way about their memorials.

Oh, and I take it you've never actually been to Japan. They're shit when it comes to remembering their torturing and massacring of Chinese and Australian PoWs, but there's memorials of the nuking of Hiroshima/Nagasaki all over the fucking place. Hiroshima is basically a giant war museum. Try actually visiting a place before you go on about what they do and don't have.

Actually, hell, I'll go on. We've certainly got memorials expressing our regret for the near-genocide of the aboriginies and the mass programs of removing aboriginal kids from their parents over here in Australia. I've seen equivalent memorials in New Zealand concerning how the British broke their treaties with the Maories after the Maories fought them to a draw (awesome historical military campaign btw - to my knowledge they were the only indigenous population to hold their own against a rifle-armed colonial power without having guns themselves, and they didn't even have a significant numbers advantage). I'd be fucking amazed if you couldn't find similar memorials expressing regret for slavery over in the US.

Memorials recording a culture's great losses and past moral wrongs are actually rather common, come to think of it.

 

[Lancehead]

Sad when you recollect how detailed the BG2 art was:-( Nothing original per se - very much 'standard fantasy town' for the most part - but it still holds up wonderfully against more recent games.

I'm hoping Project Eternity will be able to match BG2/IWD2's art. The screenshot they released is a good start.

 

[mikaelis]

They kind of overdid it with those murals, I felt.

"LOOK EVERYBODY! Funky looking murals! See, this game is STYLIZED!"

Not to mention it'd be a pretty fucking shit place to live if you had paintings of starved, beaten slaves working in agony everywhere.

The worst part is the explanation they give... that the statues and murals are "to remember the city's history." Do they build statues and paint murals of lynch mobs and the KKK crucifying gay people in the US to "remember our past transgressions"? Do the Japanese build big brass nuclear explosions so they will never forget World War II?

The Germans build butt-ugly holocaust memorials in the middle of their capital city, so...

Yeah, but Germany lost the war. If they won, holocaust would either be twisted and explained as necessity or completely omitted in the history.

Nowadays it has more to do with the guilt, shame and Jewish lobby etc.

Don't know how it relates to DA2 though. The game was so bland I hardly remember it or any "lore" behind it.

 

[Lagole Gon]

You guys are giving DA more serious attentions than it deserves.
I was going to post some disturbing Bioware fanart to change the atmosphere, but pornographic picture of Tali giving birth to an alien-human hybrid reminded me why I stopped lurking this shit.
Oh, sgc_meltdown, where art thou?