The Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread

[Morality Games]

Oh definitely, if they do some kind of import that means nothing will actually matter. That's been their MO since this whole fucking save import shit began. "Bioware games are known for their choices... which never fucking matter! Hooray!" Meanwhile games like New Vegas have actual fucking C&C but no one notices because it doesn't carry-over and then get ignored by a sequel. Fucking maddening.

In the end though, like Inquisition, I would probably just play on default canon and not really worry about it. Their plots are dumb anyway.

"shrug" In fairness, even P&P modules make those kind of concessions. The butterfly effect of cosmically significant decisions must necessarily occur in the distant future, long after the core narratives of a franchise come to an end. I'm sure choosing Control Shepard will matter in 50,000 years, but it can't matter in the "age of discovery" where all the Mass Effect campaigns will take place.

Not that I'm defending Bioware. The fact is that amplifying the significance of C&C has an is tethered around how interactive the game is. In a game like Bloodlines or Deus Ex, there are multiple solutions to a problem that result in vaguely different outcomes; this integrates your choices and their consequences to the core gameplay.

The basic formula is that even cosmically significant choices decline in importance the further the narrative proceeds from the moment of decision, but resurface in relevance in that they provide the key to resolving a problem that touches the main player and their friends/allies/party in some way -- wherever the player has the most emotional investment.

One problem with Bioware is that they make Action RPGs. The core gameplay isn't very interactive and doesn't support multiple approaches to problem solving, so there is no way to make the player "live" the significance of their choices in a way that feels truly relevant. You'll either be fighting, fighting less, or not fighting.

 

[DalekFlay]

Hey, I never said the idea was perfectly executed. I completely agree that the rewards for the war table stuff are very lackluster. Honestly I just do them because I like feeling involved with the agents and reading the little story resolutions.

Like I said pages ago, it's a good idea with bad execution, which is typical of Bioware. They should have had the war room use resources you found in the field from doing quests or finding rare items, and then its rewards should have been more important.

 

[Jaesun]

BioWare/EA don't want to "inconvenience" Johnny Consoletard...

 

[DalekFlay]

"shrug" In fairness, even P&P modules make those kind of concessions. The butterfly effect of cosmically significant decisions must necessarily occur in the distant future, long after the core narratives of a franchise come to an end.

Not that I'm defending Bioware. The fact is that amplifying the significance of C&C has an is tethered around how interactive the game is. In a game like Bloodlines or Deus Ex, there are multiple solutions to the same outcome; this integrates your choices and their consequences to the core gameplay.

The basic formula is that even cosmically significant choices decline in importance the further the narrative proceeds from the moment of decision, but resurface in relevance in that they provide the key to resolving a problem that touches the main player and their friends/allies/party in some way -- wherever the player has the most emotional investment.

Gameplay style is definitely important, and Bioware make cinematic movie-games more than actual gameplay-focused fuck-around RPGs. You're absolutely right. However another big issue is that by focusing on carrying the story forward and using your same save, you limit the reactivity each game can have within itself. You can't kill Liara in ME1 for funsies because she's an important character in their trilogy movie. You can't shoot the Illusive Man in the head as soon as you seem him and forgo Cerberus questlines because hey that's the story and he's important in the next game too! Also the next game can't do whatever the fuck it wants because it has to worry about choices the player made two games ago. "Oh we can't have the god baby actually matter because some players might not have chosen to do the god baby storyline."

Bioware sell the save import as your choices mattering more, but it actually limits your choices and freedom to what they can work with in the next game. If they picked a canon for each game like, say, Fallout does, then they could have more choices and freedom in each game and better sequel storylines picked from the best options.

 

[dryan]

Playing it right now. It's way too heavy for my toaster. It took a good two minutes just to load character creation. Let's see how it fares in the actual game.

Loading times are terrible, even on an SSD. Some engine issue.

I should probably close the several browser tabs that I have open right now (especially on FF which is a memory hog) to increase performance, but I have too short an attention span to dedicate it all to the game.

On an unrelated note: Shame on Bioware's lack of "inclusivity" for not offering decent hair options for an African-American nigquisitor. Also, the skin color options are very disappointing, I wanted to give my mage Ethiopian black skin, but the best I can do is a little darker than Obama.

 

[Morality Games]

Gameplay style is definitely important, and Bioware make cinematic movie-games more than actual gameplay-focused fuck-around RPGs. You're absolutely right. However another big issue is that by focusing on carrying the story forward and using your same save, you limit the reactivity each game can have within itself. You can't kill Liara in ME1 for funsies because she's an important character in their trilogy movie. You can't shoot the Illusive Man in the head as soon as you seem him and forgo Cerberus questlines because hey that's the story and he's important in the next game too! Also the next game can't do whatever the fuck it wants because it has to worry about choices the player made two games ago. "Oh we can't have the god baby actually matter because some players might not have chosen to do the god baby storyline."

Bioware sell the save import as your choices mattering more, but it actually limits your choices and freedom to what they can work with in the next game. If they picked a canon for each game like, say, Fallout does, then they could have more choices and freedom in each game and better sequel storylines picked from the best options.

After Dragon Age: Inquisition, I'm not entirely convinced it matters. The one silver lining in that game is that they seem to have gotten serious about honoring past choices. Its not perfect and I can't say it is superior to the Fallout method, but it plays much better than it did in the past.

If they had made a game that was 60% less open world filler, it is nearly unimaginable the quality of game they could have made along those lines.

 

[Slow James]

There are certainly other ways to go about it, and I'd like to see other ideas tried in games to come, but again, I'm glad they tried something.

As for using quest completions as timers instead of a real time clock, I actually thought of that, but discarded the idea as worse, because then you introduce a really stupid metagame. I'll 'save' this side quest because I know I can complete it quickly, oh no I did a quest when I didn't have war table counters running, lots of stupid bullshit like this. The way it is now, I can concentrate on doing quests because I want to do them, and skip quests I don't want to do, and let the war table agents go do their own thing in their own time, and have a cool debriefing waiting for me (maybe) next time I'm back at base.

Except the much more likely way to handle it is "I'm going to bed - queue up the most amount of long War Table quests as possible, then return in the morning and, magically, with zero time passing in the game world, I've got all of these tasks complete."

It doesn't have to be quests, I suppose, but the timer should have SOME in-game relevance. Otherwise it is open to just as much metagaming as what you are worried about in the first place.

But they give out chump change. We're talking rewards of 30-60 influence after 45 minutes to 12 hours when you need 15000 to get another perk. This does not make them feel valuable. It makes them feel petty.

Hey, I never said the idea was perfectly executed. I completely agree that the rewards for the war table stuff are very lackluster. Honestly I just do them because I like feeling involved with the agents and reading the little story resolutions.[/QUOTE]

The Influence-as-a-reward thing is poorly done. It is Mass Effect's EMS all over again, just in a more game-y method.

If the tasks tied to actually ACCOMPLISHING something, that would be one thing. But to gain this meta-point of Influence which ultimately has zero effect on much of anything other than other meta-point leveling mechanics, it becomes hollow. The entire point of gathering and giving orders to this powerful organization... is to get speech perks? Wow, I am blown away.



Lots of potential, terrible implementation.

 

[Slow James]

Gameplay style is definitely important, and Bioware make cinematic movie-games more than actual gameplay-focused fuck-around RPGs. You're absolutely right. However another big issue is that by focusing on carrying the story forward and using your same save, you limit the reactivity each game can have within itself. You can't kill Liara in ME1 for funsies because she's an important character in their trilogy movie. You can't shoot the Illusive Man in the head as soon as you seem him and forgo Cerberus questlines because hey that's the story and he's important in the next game too! Also the next game can't do whatever the fuck it wants because it has to worry about choices the player made two games ago. "Oh we can't have the god baby actually matter because some players might not have chosen to do the god baby storyline."

Bioware sell the save import as your choices mattering more, but it actually limits your choices and freedom to what they can work with in the next game. If they picked a canon for each game like, say, Fallout does, then they could have more choices and freedom in each game and better sequel storylines picked from the best options.

After Dragon Age: Inquisition, I'm not entirely convinced it matters. The one silver lining in that game is that they seem to have gotten serious about honoring past choices. Its not perfect and I can't say it is superior to the Fallout method, but it plays much better than it did in the past.

If they had made a game that was 60% less open world filler, it is nearly unimaginable the quality of game they could have made along those lines.

What kind of acknowledgement did they give past choices in DA:I? I only know of a few ones, but it mostly seems to say "yeah, your choices didn't mean squat." Choices such as the Dark Ritual, one of the most talked about "how are they going to handle this" choices of the series (and which resulted in "hey, Flemeth doubles up on gods to eat... whoop-dee-doo.")

 

[Slow James]

There aha alareaye been talk of using the exact same "DA Keep" mechanism for ME4, so I Have little doubt that it will be their method of resolving things.

Personally, I can't see them NOT picking a canon. Let's assume that Synthesis "wears off" or some bullshit like that... Control basically has an unbeatable army patrolling the galaxy, enforcing God Shephard justice. How could anything be a big enough threat that couldn't be just fixed with "giant Reaper police army?" Destroy could work pretty easily, but again - I think they will half ass it and act like they are respecting the Imports while, in reality, shitting on any type of consequence the choice was supposed to have.


Just like ALL Bioware Save Import choices.

Oh definitely, if they do some kind of import that means nothing will actually matter. That's been their MO since this whole fucking save import shit began. "Bioware games are known for their choices... which never fucking matter! Hooray!" Meanwhile games like New Vegas have actual fucking C&C but no one notices because it doesn't carry-over and then get ignored by a sequel. Fucking maddening.

In the end though, like Inquisition, I would probably just play on default canon and not really worry about it. Their plots are dumb anyway.

I like Fallout's method. Don't come in and kick the player's choice right in the nuts... but set canon wherever you want to.

NCR/Shady Sands, for instance. The NCR is a huge organization in the Fallout universe. Yet in FO1, you could wipe the entire town of Shady Sands out (the precursor to the NCR). Instead of never visiting a location ever again, they came in, hugged the big hariy monster of "we gave the player a choice in a prior game that hurts our story in a future one" and moved on.

Didn't ever recruit Harold in FO2? No worries - he traveled with the Chosen One in FO3. Wipe out the city of Shady Sands with the Raiders in FO1? Well, in the "real" world, the Vault Dweller was a hero and inspired the town to bring order to the Wastes.


I have zero problem with that. Because the FO games do a great job of offering choices, diverse choices, in each of their games. And they don't make any pretense about railroading all of these choices so that they don't matter (either in the current game or in a future one) because even when your choice is not respected in a sequel, you KNOW it. You aren't fed some bullshit line about "well, the player only THOUGHT they were making this choice, but in reality, things didn't play out the way they had intended" type of lip service we see in Bioware games. Which is fine for Bioware to do, except it results in them railroading choice in their PRESENT games because of their fear of mucking up the world for FUTURE games. Which is, to me, asinine.

 

[DeepOcean]

http://www.craveonline.com/gaming/a...duty-decline-nintendo-xbox-one-ps4-gta-v-halo

Hey guise, I think the lack of piracy had an effect on Dragon Age sales alright just... not exactly the way EA expected.

It’s hard to put a finger on what exactly caused this. Inquisition did have some marketing, and was a big topic among gamers during the month. Not charting doesn’t necessarily mean it sold poorly, and I’d guess that it hit somewhere around the 400,000 mark. However, most games earn the bulk of their sales during the first month, and Dragon: Age Inquisition didn’t even come close to the all-important one million milestone.

Inquisition sold around the same amount of units across five platforms as Dragon Age 2 did on three.

 

[Prime Junta]

Oh ho ho, one hour? That's early-game stuff. I've been running into events that go for 4-6 hours, even one that went for twenty. Thank god you can work around it by changing your system clock.

Yeah, I just really and seriously can't even begin to understand the point of this mechanic.

The timer mechanic is to give the player the sense that he is not the one and only person in the entire organization who is actually doing anything. You give orders to a dood, and he says OK and goes to do it, and then later he comes back and says I did it. In the meantime, you are supposed to do other things, not just sit there and stare for 6 hours

Take out the timer and those support characters just become ATMs - push a button to instantly receive cash and influence. That would be much stupider. As to the people who cheat by resetting their clock - you know the dev console is right there, right? Why not just give yourself a billion influence and call it good? Seems weird to me.

Alternatively, they could just skip this idiotic feature altogether. Not every innovation is automatically good.

It ain't good, but without any timer the war room map quests would be even worse.

They could of course have hooked it to something else.

 

[Zombra]

Except the much more likely way to handle it is "I'm going to bed - queue up the most amount of long War Table quests as possible, then return in the morning and, magically, with zero time passing in the game world, I've got all of these tasks complete."

Who's to say that zero time passed in the game world? Is there a clock? Time doesn't only pass when your character is killing wolves. Again, that's the point: to establish that you are not the center of the universe.

It doesn't have to be quests, I suppose, but the timer should have SOME in-game relevance. Otherwise it is open to just as much metagaming as what you are worried about in the first place.

Except that the "go to bed" solution isn't metagaming ... it's clearly an intentional part of the design. The devs don't expect you to keep playing for 48 hours straight.

If the tasks tied to actually ACCOMPLISHING something, that would be one thing.

Well ... again ... tying them to your character's actions would defeat the purpose of having your agents be more than just extensions of the PC.

But to gain this meta-point of Influence which ultimately has zero effect on much of anything other than other meta-point leveling mechanics, it becomes hollow. The entire point of gathering and giving orders to this powerful organization... is to get speech perks? Wow, I am blown away.

We agree that the reward system doesn't feel right.

Lots of potential, terrible implementation.

Clearly some like it better than others.

 

[ZoddGuts]

Going into more detail about DA:I flopping, not making it into top 10 NPD Sales.

"Even then, Inquisition sold around the same amount of units across five platforms as Dragon Age 2 did on three."

http://www.craveonline.com/gaming/a...duty-decline-nintendo-xbox-one-ps4-gta-v-halo


So despite having a significant higher budget than DA2 did, more marketing and more consoles to be on, it still sold about the same as DA2. Not very impressive, EA/Bioware tried to market this as the next Skyrim in sales/popularity but failed miserably.

 

[Slow James]

http://www.craveonline.com/gaming/a...duty-decline-nintendo-xbox-one-ps4-gta-v-halo

Hey guise, I think the lack of piracy had an effect on Dragon Age sales alright just... not exactly the way EA expected.

It’s hard to put a finger on what exactly caused this. Inquisition did have some marketing, and was a big topic among gamers during the month. Not charting doesn’t necessarily mean it sold poorly, and I’d guess that it hit somewhere around the 400,000 mark. However, most games earn the bulk of their sales during the first month, and Dragon: Age Inquisition didn’t even come close to the all-important one million milestone.

Inquisition sold around the same amount of units across five platforms as Dragon Age 2 did on three.

Eh. November numbers aren't really all that relevant. The game came out at the tail-end of the month.

DECEMBER numbers? That's the real story. If this is a big Christmas title mover, it is tracking to be one of Bioware's best sellers. DA2 had a GREAT first two weeks for an RPG, it's just that the game itself was terrible and word of mouth halted the sales immediately. On the other hand, DA:O did much worse than DA2 its first two weeks, but word of mouth kept it selling for months of end at high levels.

Again, December will be the real story of DA:I and how successful it will be.

 

[crawlkill]

What kind of acknowledgement did they give past choices in DA:I? I only know of a few ones, but it mostly seems to say "yeah, your choices didn't mean squat." Choices such as the Dark Ritual, one of the most talked about "how are they going to handle this" choices of the series (and which resulted in "hey, Flemeth doubles up on gods to eat... whoop-dee-doo.")

there were some dwarves at the party who thought Branka was still alive in my worldstate. so there was that much. and my Warden was clearly still fucking Zevran and Hawke mentioned thingamy, what's his name, Fenris. datestates were retained.

as much as I love inter-game continuity, if it comes at the cost of intra-game reactivity, it's not worth it. if you wanna have savestate imports, you really need to be telling -just one story.- Dragon Age is very much three completely unrelated stories, so the savestates don't work. they worked pretty well in Mass Effect, I felt. I loved that I -couldn't- get the best ending for the krogans because I was an asshole once in ME2. and I loved that I could only get the best ending for the geth/quarians because I'd been good guy Shep back when. it doesn't take -much- to make that kind of thing feel powerful. it can be as simple as one differing cutscene or even just an in-game email that successfully makes you feel something.

it just takes -something.-

 

[Slow James]

there were some dwarves at the party who thought Branka was still alive in my worldstate. so there was that much. and my Warden was clearly still fucking Zevran and Hawke mentioned thingamy, what's his name, Fenris. datestates were retained.

as much as I love inter-game continuity, if it comes at the cost of intra-game reactivity, it's not worth it. if you wanna have savestate imports, you really need to be telling -just one story.- Dragon Age is very much three completely unrelated stories, so the savestates don't work. they worked pretty well in Mass Effect, I felt. I loved that I -couldn't- get the best ending for the krogans because I was an asshole once in ME2. and I loved that I could only get the best ending for the geth/quarians because I'd been good guy Shep back when. it doesn't take -much- to make that kind of thing feel powerful. it can be as simple as one differing cutscene or even just an in-game email that successfully makes you feel something.

it just takes -something.-

Meh. To me, that just shits on the Renegade choices. "Everything works out for the best unless you actually chose the Red choice." That doesn't sit well with me at all.

 

[dryan]

Wow, combat fucking sucks. There's no way I'm putting up with those long enemy health gauges on nightmare mode. Down to casual or normal it goes.
So far I like the music, and that's it.

 

[DalekFlay]

Eh. November numbers aren't really all that relevant. The game came out at the tail-end of the month.

DECEMBER numbers? That's the real story. If this is a big Christmas title mover, it is tracking to be one of Bioware's best sellers. DA2 had a GREAT first two weeks for an RPG, it's just that the game itself was terrible and word of mouth halted the sales immediately. On the other hand, DA:O did much worse than DA2 its first two weeks, but word of mouth kept it selling for months of end at high levels.

Again, December will be the real story of DA:I and how successful it will be.

Well, big games tend to sell a massive amount release week and then taper off. If DA:I sold 400,000 in its release week that's not a good sign. However I believe DA:O made up the bulk of its sales over a longer period, from good word of mouth, so perhaps DA:I can do the same and sell a few million over the holiday season. The word of mouth, outside of CRPG focused groups like ours, is pretty good, sadly. Even then though, it's surely a disappointment for EA.

 

[Morality Games]

What kind of acknowledgement did they give past choices in DA:I? I only know of a few ones, but it mostly seems to say "yeah, your choices didn't mean squat." Choices such as the Dark Ritual, one of the most talked about "how are they going to handle this" choices of the series (and which resulted in "hey, Flemeth doubles up on gods to eat... whoop-dee-doo.")

A lot of atmospheric/cosmetic stuff through the War Board, brief encounters, and conversation references. Nothing too special, but it does add up to an impression. More than that:

Spoiler

Hawke's personality and more significantly whether Varric was friends with Hawke; if your Influence with Varric was low AND Varric was friends with Hawke, leaving Hawke in the Fade risked Varric leaving the party; if Influence is high, it results in Varric telling a sad story cue Baldur's Gate sad music remix -- squad-focused C&C of that complexity is what makes Planescape: Torment legendary, although I will concede Planescape applied the logic an entire squad and not just one companion -- also sparing Loghain back in DA:O allowed you to spare Alistair and Stroud while also saving Hawke (gained you a spare 'hero' to sacrifice) -- now, I think it would have been better to design the the encounter so that lacking a Warden companion from DA:O resulted in obligatory Hawke sacrifice no DA:I specifc choice allowed, but I'll take what I can get).

The Dark Ritual isn't handled quite as well, but I'm still turning the page to see what difference that soul makes to the one who has it.

 

[vonAchdorf]

So far I like the music, and that's it.

That's why I skipped the game and only bought the soundtrack.

 

[Slow James]

Well, big games tend to sell a massive amount release week and then taper off. If DA:I sold 400,000 in its release week that's not a good sign. However I believe DA:O made up the bulk of its sales over a longer period, from good word of mouth, so perhaps DA:I can do the same and sell a few million over the holiday season. Even then though, it's surely a disappointment for EA.

Thing is, that 400K units number is being mis-reported - that was for the United Kingdom only (which sold the same amount in the UK as DA2 the first week). The U.S. was rumored to have over half a million its first week as well.

That's the problem of just re-posting video game "journalism" articles that don't include links or sources.

 

[DalekFlay]

Thing is, that 400K units number is being mis-reported - that was for the United Kingdom only (which sold the same amount in the UK as DA2 the first week). The U.S. was rumored to have over half a million its first week as well.

That's the problem of just re-posting video game "journalism" articles that don't include links or sources.

Fair enough, good point.

Like I said a dozen pages ago though, anything less than 5 million or so sales at-or-near full price is a disappointment for this game. They doubled-down on development time, tried to be the first big RPG of the console generation like Oblivion was, went for the Skyrim audience and are plugging the game as hard as they can. Selling pretty much the same as Origins after all that would be a bummer for all involved, no matter what they end up saying in interviews about doing better than DA2 or whatever else.

 

[Drakron]

No, the problem is EA is hiding behind digital sales, there is no way to track those sales sinly only EA knows.

The fact its not telling its very much telling, if it was they would be issuing press releases about its commercial success because its a type of marketing pressure, you dont want to miss out on the GotY that sold 2 million copies in a month now do you?

Reason why they dont lie is because they have shareholders and someone can simply read the report, companies are known of trying to misinform by using "shipped" in a way its mistaken as "sold" to achieve the same effect.

Problem is DA:I is a typical EA blunder, it was sold on the worst season were its going against TWO AssCreeds and a Far Cry ... its competing with sales and we seen THOSE titles sale reports.

 

[Morality Games]

EA rarely says anything about digital sales.

I'm sure they'll be disappointed though, which putting aside my own butthurt they probably should. They utterly failed to translate the appeal of even late period decline Elder Scrolls games.

 

[Slow James]

Fair enough, good point.

Like I said a dozen pages ago though, anything less than 5 million or so sales at-or-near full price is a disappointment for this game. They doubled-down on development time, tried to be the first big RPG of the console generation like Oblivion was, went for the Skyrim audience and are plugging the game as hard as they can. Selling pretty much the same as Origins after all that would be a bummer for all involved, no matter what they end up saying in interviews about doing better than DA2 or whatever else.

DA:O sales would be acceptable - DA:O is still Bioware's second best selling game of all time. And it had a five year development time frame, much more than DA:I's three-and-a-half.

I'm just of a different mindset - the masses seem much more excited and engaged with DA:I than DA2. Heck, if the biggest backlash is against PC UI and bugs, it is honestly the smoothest Bioware game rollout in years. I'm predicting 5.5 million over 10 weeks, before the end of January. Bioware's best selling game to date - and that's from someone who feels they did nearly everything wrong they possibly could have.