Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[NecroLord]

Remember how there is an entire country of frenchmen, who are all wearing ridiculous masks, all the time, and who openly pride themselves on treachery and disloyalty?

Orlais?
Yeah, I never understood their weird cultural motif of wearing masks.
Presumably invented by Bioware to make them more interesting? It just makes them more dumb.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Remember how there is an entire country of frenchmen, who are all wearing ridiculous masks, all the time, and who openly pride themselves on treachery and disloyalty?

Orlais?
Yeah, I never understood their weird cultural motif of wearing masks.
Presumably invented by Bioware to make them more interesting? It just makes them more dumb.

Probably invented by Bioware to make fewer animated faces.

 

[Child of Malkav]

This will be ultra shit.
Origins had no sequels.
This has to be the series with the greatest amount of wasted potential, there's no way.

 

[Ryzer]

This will be ultra shit.
Origins had no sequels.
This has to be the series with the greatest amount of wasted potential, there's no way.

Origins needed better ruleset, more spells and turn-based combat. Somewhat too hard for Bioware to figure that out.

 

[Cael]

Dude, the tactical camera was fucked and was too close to the battlefield to actually give you proper situational orientation. DAI failed in every of its aspects as an action rpg, tactical party rpg and as a semi-open world rpg.

I watched a video Let's Play of it. The camera was so bad, the guy never knew where his toon was. The number of times his toon backflipped off a cliff was hilarious. Utter failure of camera.

 

[Cael]

This will be ultra shit.
Origins had no sequels.
This has to be the series with the greatest amount of wasted potential, there's no way.

One of. Fallout Tactics was a bigger wasted potential.

 

[Morgoth]

Origin's combat was dogshit. Inquisition was a drag.

DA2 was still the "best" of the trilogy because at least it didn't try so hard to waste my goddamn time.

 

[Ryzer]

Origin's combat was dogshit. Inquisition was a drag.

DA2 was still the "best" of the trilogy because at least it didn't try so hard to waste my goddamn time.

Bullshit, Origins allows positioning your party accordingly and control your spells in the way you want as well as fully control party's AI in the way you decide, it's just that the real-time with pause is really not thrilling. It also suffers from poor-made encounter design.
Whereas Dragon age 2 is a shitty brainless beat-em up where you smash the buttons until shit dies.

 

[Nikanuur]

They don't even know who they are anymore. Their games used to have a few distinctive traits that set them apart from their competitors. Even if some of those traits were controversial, they helped to shape their identity as a company. This sounds as generic as an Ubisoft game.

It's nice to read such recognition, even after so many years.

 

[Semiurge]

The romances have been incredibly cringe since Origins. Interacting with the characters in a romantic fashion is literally something that makes you instinctively look over your shoulder to make sure no-one is seeing what you see - the love interest's face up close like in some deviant romance simulator, delivering corny lines in an attempt to stir an emotional response.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Romances and companions are a waste of resources. The equivalent of literally burning money. And time. And effort.

 

[A horse of course]

Even the kind of degenerate who plays nuBioware or Larian shit won't care once ES6 hits

 

[Harthwain]

Dragon Age Inquisition is by far the best game in the series. People unfairly shit on it as action just because you had to press a button for each attack, but its mechanics were very similar to DA:O and there were a great deal of options for strategy--more than there were in DA:O.

It had shit controls.

I had to turn off friendly fire, because it was impossible for mages to use spells and not damage allies in the process. Team control was impossible, because instead of the somewhat sensible Origins UI we got some kind of shitty console one. Good luck doing any kind of strategy with that. As a result it was only playable as a shitty third-person action game. Barely.

Dragon Age: Origins is the best game in the series and that isn't setting the bar very high.

 

[gurugeorge]

Even the kind of degenerate who plays nuBioware or Larian shit won't care once ES6 hits

lol, is that one of those Vocaroo things?

 

[Dycedarg]

Even the kind of degenerate who plays nuBioware or Larian shit won't care once ES6 hits

I think they're too busy playing Assassin's Creed.

 

[Nikanuur]

I don't know... I like furr, eehrm..., I mean, I watch tentac... eehhhggrhm, what I meant to say is, I like woman friendly porn as much as the next guy, but I always felt that sex in RPGs is just out of place. Like having a 2-ounce over-sweetened cake delivered instead of that extra-large pizza mexicana you ordered so you could close the curtains, lock the door, and rewatch all of Aliens throughout the night.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I don't know... I like furr, eehrm..., I mean, I watch tentac... eehhhggrhm, what I meant to say is, I like woman friendly porn as much as the next guy, but I always felt that sex in RPGs is just out of place. Like having a 2-ounce over-sweetened cake delivered instead of that extra-large pizza mexicana you ordered so you could close the curtains and rewatch all of Aliens throughout the night.

At first I was a bit confused as to why your companions would want to stop a world-ending war (the usual threat in rpgs, especially bioware's) just to fuck, but then again real life examples mirror these attitudes (the baby boom of the 40s). There's also the case of nurses and doctors, it's not a stereotype, they really are horndogs because the proximity of death brings out the most base fight or flight instincts out of human beings.

Combat is not a priority of Bioware. The only decent combat design they ever made was found in the early D&D games because they had something to prove, but as they went along it became clear that narrative was the thing people were buying their games for. When a Bioware player wants help with their game, they want to know if they're going to be fucked by the C&C of their actions, or which romance is the best. "I can't beat X" is never an issue, even though a lot of people play on Nightmare.

 

[mediocrepoet]

At first I was a bit confused as to why your companions would want to stop a world-ending war (the usual threat in rpgs, especially bioware's) just to fuck, but then again real life examples mirror these attitudes (the baby boom of the 40s). There's also the case of nurses and doctors, it's not a stereotype, they really are horndogs because the proximity of death brings out the most base fight or flight instincts out of human beings.

It's also a great way to deal with stress.

Not that that's why the average land whale that Bioware caters to wants it in there, or why it's included, but it's at least kinda/sorta realistic.

 

[Delterius]

Presumably invented by Bioware

bioware invented masquerades?!

 

[Tyranicon]

Romances and companions are a waste of resources. The equivalent of literally burning money. And time. And effort.

Both could be of interest if they were made realistically, rather than being self-insert soapboxing for whatever the fad du jour is for developers.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Both could be of interest if they were made realistically

How would you do both realistically? Genuinely curious.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

The only realistic romance I've seen in a videogame is FF4's relationship between Rosa and Cecil. For just one tiny detail. In the intro, Cecil is all gloomy because of his role in the kingdom, and then Rosa walks in and says something to the effect of "If you want someone to talk to, I'm here. I know you are sad and it worries me. You know I love you".

That's the only thing I've seen from a videogame romance that actually mirrors interactions that people actually have in real relationships.

 

[Tyranicon]

Both could be of interest if they were made realistically

How would you do both realistically? Genuinely curious.

Writing believable characters/romances is at the same time very easy and very hard.

On the easy end, take a few basic fiction writing classes and drop all your personal beliefs and biases at the door. Writing is an act of creation, and the writer must create something different from themselves.

This same principle is why writing characters can be very hard, because a lot of writers are opposed to creating characters not only very different in personality, but also diametrically opposed to their beliefs.

Romance is just an extension of your characters. But I think this is a hard one because I don't think most modern writers have any conception of what a normal relationship is outside of movies.


TL;DR: Take some writing classes taught by people who know what they're talking about. Read lots of books. Get more life experience. Have more sex, it's good for you.

 

[Zeriel]

Both could be of interest if they were made realistically

How would you do both realistically? Genuinely curious.

Writing believable characters/romances is at the same time very easy and very hard.

On the easy end, take a few basic fiction writing classes and drop all your personal beliefs and biases at the door. Writing is an act of creation, and the writer must create something different from themselves.

This same principle is why writing characters can be very hard, because a lot of writers are opposed to creating characters not only very different in personality, but also diametrically opposed to their beliefs.

Romance is just an extension of your characters. But I think this is a hard one because I don't think most modern writers have any conception of what a normal relationship is outside of movies.


TL;DR: Take some writing classes taught by people who know what they're talking about. Read lots of books. Get more life experience. Have more sex, it's good for you.

This is true, but also... it kind of ignores the fact that the point of fiction is often not to replicate reality. It's to entertain. You may personally disagree, but most people are actually not looking for maximally realistic events in fiction. The way people speak in a book or even a movie is totally different from how they speak in real life, etc. It's an influence, not the gestalt.

 

[Tyranicon]

This is true, but also... it kind of ignores the fact that the point of fiction is often not to replicate reality. It's to entertain. You may personally disagree, but most people are actually not looking for maximally realistic events in fiction. The way people speak in a book or even a movie is totally different from how they speak in real life, etc. It's an influence, not the gestalt.

I don't disagree at all, fiction is fiction. By "realistic" I mean writing in a way that sustains suspension of disbelief.

When all your characters are zany tropes flavored only by their sexuality and modern political statements, then I roll my eyes and move onto something else.

Every Dragon Age game besides possibly Origins has had a Critical Role-esque cast of "memorable" characters. But these characters are forgetable, 2d papermen, compared to, say, the much more memorable and diverse cast of PS:T.

Even the Mass Effect roster was leagues better than DA.