The Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread

[SwiftCrack]

Don't forget the last supper night of sex.

 

[msxyz]

It will be interesting to see how much will sell The Witcher 3 and what it will be its main audience: RPG fans or people brought in by the hype and the flashy graphics?

I also believe that excessive watering down of a genre past a certain point will bring diminishing sales, not a wider audience because each 'aspect' that would make a core group interested gets an half assed implementation generating backlash rather than appreciation, last Bioware games being the perfect example.

 

[Shadenuat]

check the babe running on my awesome rig

I made my PC out of wood and vodka bottles

Spoiler

And no, I don't have a 4 quad core and I can actually run it with normal graffix but it freezes due to direct x issues (or cause I have dual core, but you can see that "you can't run it if you don't have 4 cores" is actually a lie; strip the game of some light shafts and modern effects, add compatibility to some old rigs and it's your DA:O/DA2

hey, they said if you could run DA2 you should be able to run this!

 

[Cyberarmy]

check the babe running on my awesome rig

Tis like ye'olde adventure games, only much more worse...

 

[Shadenuat]

check the babe running on my awesome rig

Tis like ye'olde adventure games, only much more worse...

 

[Lhynn]

Indoctrination would solve all issues with the ending, by making them not really happen. But the game had more problems other than the shitty ending. It suffered from linear gameplay, small locations and a whole bunch of etcs.

 

[RK47]

nice playstation 1 , russian man.

 

[Merlkir]

Yeah, it looks like the "oldschool" Skyrim filters :D

 

[Zed]

i got the tits scene with cassandra and now it feels like i beat the game

like, what else is there?

this game needs some tits DLC

 

[Cyberarmy]

i got the tits scene with cassandra and now it feels like i beat the game

like, what else is there?

this game needs some tits DLC

You can try to get Sera's tits.
...

If ye feel like torturing yerself.

 

[msxyz]

i got the tits scene with cassandra and now it feels like i beat the game

like, what else is there?

this game needs some tits DLC

fuck tits, I want moar transgender romances.

...and animal sex too!

 

[dryan]

I still can't find the motivation to play it. Since this game was unlocked for thieves on saturday, I must have played a total of 1 hour. I alt+tab out of it and then forget to come back and resume playing.

 

[Slow James]

ME3 was pretty heavily shaped by ME2, though. Krogan golden ending: Not accessible if you'd been a conservative research-deleting dick in ME2. Quarian+Geth golden ending: needed at least both Tali and Legion alive from ME2, and Legion was the hardest companion to get loyalty from (because of bad design, I freely admit).

each of those only differed in a single cutscene, but it was a -powerful- cutscene. undermined completely by the ending that asserted that the game'd been about a theme it never had been, of course, and Shep not being able to say 'wait a minute, all you need to do is shout at robots to make them and meatpeople be friends.' but leaving aside the anemic ending, ME3 put some real production cost into rewarding playing well in the previous games with better outcomes in the third.

Bioware is capable of some great moments. if you didn't have an emotion at Mordin's several deaths in ME3, I'm pretty sure you're not human. that they don't turn those great moments into great franchises is a mystery--is it budget constraints? is it that they just luck into genius fleetingly? no real way to know. but it's a mistake to say they can't do anything right. they just can't do -enough- right, and their scope is so triple A epic that they can't keep things subdued and concise enough only to use the bits they do get right.

To tangentially respond to this... I don't think Bioware's method of dealing with the Save Import C&C is a matter of not trying. Or even of sinking serious resources into it.

However, tying such a cinematic approach to their games means for them to have different environments, let alone different world states, is entirely non-feasible. They just can't do it.

In terms of translating big moments into good franchises... I don't know. I agree that the Tuchanka scenes with Mordin definitely hit the feelz buttons and, in some sense, made a good circle with the entire genophage story arc. Completely overshadowed by the derp of the ending, which pretty much made very choice and conflict in the entire trilogy pointless retroactively, but that's a different topic I suppose.

One part of that could be different writers, for instance. Mac Walters was head writer for all of ME3, but Patrick Weekes wrote Mordin as a character and most of the Tuchanka section. Then again, Weekes also wrote Iron "Ride the" Bull, so who can really say?

At this point, I would say the Imports are a failed experiment. They were put in with ME after they openly declared the series was designed as a trilogy, without much plan on how to really handle or execute them. And they were added into DA because the ME team had included it and they said "sure? Why not? It's not like this PC-focused, tactical combat party based RPG will win Game of the Year or anything and become a viable series, amirite?"

The fact that DA:O was thought to be a dud by the EA execs and that ME was the future of Bioware is funny to me. And explains why they haven't been able to make a decent DA game ever since - they completely misunderstand why the game was such a surprise success and have ripped out nearly all of the talent who made the game special and replaced it with people who are "veteran Bioware employees" but have zero idea how to make an RPG that even is in the ballpark of being "a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate."

EDIT: Didn't realize I forgot to wrap up my ramble.

Point being, Bioware can't deliver with the Save Import system. Maybe if they kept their same budget and scaled back their design to be that of a more indie project, then it could be possible, I suppose. But such a game would be insanely risky to finance, since the rule of thumb is "graphics and movie-games are the only way to make money" for the industry. I'm not convinced that is true, but then again I'm not willing to bet tens of millions of dollars on the idea, and neither is EA.

So the Save Imports will never be more than a slight head nod to prior games and the plot will introduce huge amounts of railroad tracks to explain why, not to mention cause the writers to be extra careful to never introduce a choice or option that will be problematic in any future title. Which is silly to me, honestly. Choice that makes the player feel like there is real consequence is one of the best ways to breathe life into stories, especially choices that don't have a clear "good/bad" dichotomy.

No one wants to make that kind of game series, apparently.

 

[DragoFireheart]

you have hopes for ME4?

Actually if there was better leadership over at Bioware they'd have a shot at it.

Was watching RK47 DA:I playthrough and before he updated to the anime patch and had a mental breakdown I noted there was writing potential among the pile of shit.

 

[pippin]

My problem with Bio's save import system is that only has effects in secondary narrative stuff. Remember how Wizardries let you start at different points of the world based on what you did on the previous game.

 

[Jaesun]

My problem with Bio's save import system is that only has effects in secondary narrative stuff. Remember how Wizardries let you start at different points of the world based on what you did on the previous game.

Are you *actually* expecting BioWare/EA to introduce meaningful chose and consequences based off of previous actions from the previous games?

 

[crawlkill]

My problem with Bio's save import system is that only has effects in secondary narrative stuff. Remember how Wizardries let you start at different points of the world based on what you did on the previous game.

Are you *actually* expecting BioWare/EA to introduce meaningful chose and consequences based off of previous actions from the previous games?

I still think being able to bring the quarians and geth together is pretty fuckin good. it doesn't have that much (...alright, any) overall narrative impact, but it's an excellent moment and it didn't have to be there. same with the fate of the Krogan, I was beating myself up over having deleted the genophage research in ME2, and feeling like I've made a bad decision and am now paying the price is a -good- thing in an RPG.

admittedly, neither actually fucking mattered. but I wouldn't call it completely illusiory, because it -seemed- like it mattered. not like in DAI, where none of the side bullshit even seemed to matter and, hey, it turned out it didn't matter.

 

[pippin]

My problem with Bio's save import system is that only has effects in secondary narrative stuff. Remember how Wizardries let you start at different points of the world based on what you did on the previous game.

Are you *actually* expecting BioWare/EA to introduce meaningful chose and consequences based off of previous actions from the previous games?

still, when you're making a 10-20gb game you should be able to do what 100mb games did. but that's just wishful thinking, sadly

 

[Jaesun]

BioWare/EA don't want to "inconvenience" Johnny Console Tard by missing out on special content.

 

[pippin]

Considering a large number of consoletards play DA or Skyrim numerous times and they always try to get everything there is to see in the game, I'd say it's more a thing of laziness and not having enough balls to do something truly innovative

 

[Bleed the Man]

Considering a large number of consoletards play DA or Skyrim numerous times and they always try to get everything there is to see in the game, I'd say it's more a thing of laziness and not having enough balls to do something truly innovative

Actually, a lot of Bethesda fans don't want any kind of content "gate". They want to be able to do every guild with one single character, hell, even having level 20 deathclaws at Quary Junction in New Vegas was not well recieved at all (it was seen as "railroading")

Don't know if that has changed, I won't visit the Bethesda formus again in my entire life. At least BSN is kind of amusing, Bethesda's is just infuriating.

 

[dryan]

Considering a large number of consoletards play DA or Skyrim numerous times and they always try to get everything there is to see in the game, I'd say it's more a thing of laziness and not having enough balls to do something truly innovative

You don't need to play Skyrim more than once in order to experience all content nor level up every skill to the maximum level. You can do it all in one playtrough.

 

[Peacefriend]

Hello, friends.

I registered just to ask - am I correct that this is the largest Dragon Age: Inquisition thread anywhere on the internet?

 

[crawlkill]

Considering a large number of consoletards play DA or Skyrim numerous times and they always try to get everything there is to see in the game, I'd say it's more a thing of laziness and not having enough balls to do something truly innovative

You don't need to play Skyrim more than once in order to experience all content nor level up every skill to the maximum level. You can do it all in one playtrough.

you can play Skyrim for twenty minutes and see essentially all of the unique content it has

 

[DalekFlay]

Actually, a lot of Bethesda fans don't want any kind of content "gate". They want to be able to do every guild with one single character, hell, even having level 20 deathclaws at Quary Junction in New Vegas was not well recieved at all (it was seen as "railroading")

Don't know if that has changed, I won't visit the Bethesda formus again in my entire life. At least BSN is kind of amusing, Bethesda's is just infuriating.

I am a New Vegas fanboy but I do think there is at least some merit to this complaint, to be fair. There is an appeal to being able to go in any direction right out of the gate. Even Morrowind let you do this, for the most part, and kept the tougher enemies and areas to a few focused patches of land and dungeons. I think there's a balance to strike where you can mostly wander around freely but certain areas are too high level. Skyrim tried this with elevation, most stuff up in the mountains was much tougher than ground-level.