The Dragon Age: Inquisition Thread

[drae]

As for party based RPGs tho I'm afraid after DAI crashes and burns commercially we're permanently stuck with the isometric view.

Word from inside Bioware is the game is exceeding expectations and they expect it to even pass Origins lifetime sales. Which means more than 6-7 million. So I doubt Inquisitions is going to fail financially.

Also it looks like the fans are very happy with the game and this will contribute to it selling for a while.

 

[Lilura]

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote about wizards, dragons and elves and yet his books are filled with huge amounts of philosophy and depth.

Much of the one thousand pages in LotR is given over to boring descriptions of the environment. It seems he had to describe every last tree, rock and cloud in the sky. The lore was deep by virtue of the languages, so I think you mean philology not philosophy.

 

[drae]

Much of the one thousand pages in LotR is given over to boring descriptions of the environment. It seems he had to describe every last tree, rock and cloud in the sky. The lore was deep by virtue of the languages, so I think you mean philology not philosophy.

Yeah, he wasn't writing a story but building a mythology of Britain. He wouldn't be allowed to get away with that shit today though, but there weren't exactly a whole lot of fantasy printed back then.

There wasn't really a whole lot of philosophy in his works. Languages yes, tons of world-building (lots of people say far TOO much) but not philosophy.

 

[Crevice tab]

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote about wizards, dragons and elves and yet his books are filled with huge amounts of philosophy and depth.

Much of the one thousand pages in LotR is given over to boring descriptions of the environment. It seems he had to describe every last tree, rock and cloud in the sky. The lore was deep by virtue of the languages, so I think you mean philology not philosophy.

I agree that the philosophical discourse took too little of the text but Tolkien did have a few fundamental principles which he espoused in his works mainly about the corrupting nature of power and pride and the values of humility, mercy and simple living. Not exactly spectacular or original but his works always have a philosophical and moral core which gives some semblance of order, meaning and coherence to the hundreds of pages on environment.

 

[cvv]

Tolkien is an exception, his idea of wizards and magic was way more "grown-up", for the lack of a better word, than any other fantasy since. I wish more fantasy writers took a page from his book, literally. For example I found the way he described the "magic" of the three elvish rings beautiful and imaginative precisely because it wasn't anything tangible, no stupid D&D artifacts shooting fireballs and magic missiles.

Spoiler

EDIT: Oh I remember another book with an interesting magic system, The Braided Path trilogy by Chris Wooding. It's quite an obscure YA dark fantasy I read a while back but I still remember it for its very original fantasy tropes.

 

[Lilura]

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote about wizards, dragons and elves and yet his books are filled with huge amounts of philosophy and depth.

Much of the one thousand pages in LotR is given over to boring descriptions of the environment. It seems he had to describe every last tree, rock and cloud in the sky. The lore was deep by virtue of the languages, so I think you mean philology not philosophy.

I agree that the philosophical discourse took too little of the text but Tolkien did have a few fundamental principles which he espoused in his works mainly about the corrupting nature of power and pride and the values of humility, mercy and simple living. Not exactly spectacular or original but his works always have a philosophical and moral core which gives some semblance of order, meaning and coherence to the hundreds of pages on environment.

Overall it's pretty much Catholic, nothing new to see there.

Tolkien is an exception, his idea of wizards and magic was way more "grown-up", for the lack of a better word, than any other fantasy since. I wish more fantasy writers took a page from his book, literally. For example I found the way he described the "magic" of the three elvish rings beautiful and imaginative precisely because it wasn't anything tangible, no stupid artifacts shooting lasers and magic missiles.

You wouldn't know it by watching the Jackson films, though.

 

[Crevice tab]

Overall it's pretty much Catholic, nothing new to see there.

I don't expect it to be new- I expect it to be there. Utterly bland enemies and plotlines that don't tell anything are only excusable if you have great combat or distinguish yourself in some other utterly unprecedented way. As long as the combat is as boring as watching paint dry then I fully expect the writing to save the day or at least remove the boredom for at least one playthorugh. As it is Bioware can't even write a halfway decent villain- it's always god driven mad by the blight, statue that induces madness, mad wizard etc. They can't even be bothered to give the antagonist some sort of personality beyond being utterly bonkers nor any motivation beyond lol destruction and lol power (unlike Sauron who was a master plotter able to charm millennia old elves and entire countries despite them knowing his identity).

At one point things stop being lazy writing and gets into shitting on your customers territory.

I can say I'm glad I didn't buy DAI- only borrowing a copy for a couple of days was more than enough to lower my faith in mankind even further.

Tolkien is an exception, his idea of wizards and magic was way more "grown-up", for the lack of a better word, than any other fantasy since. I wish more fantasy writers took a page from his book, literally. For example I found the way he described the "magic" of the three elvish rings beautiful and imaginative precisely because it wasn't anything tangible, no stupid artifacts shooting lasers and magic missiles.

You wouldn't know it by watching the Jackson films, though.

Jackson's films are the equivalent of AAA+ games for the movie industry.
Actually with the Hobbit being even worse than LOTR we can safely say that the isn't limited to gaming.

 

[dryan]

Tolkien Age: Derailing

 

[Crevice tab]

Tolkien Age: Derailing

Well there's only so many ways you can write DAI is shit.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Tolkien Age: Derailing

Well there's only so many ways you can write DAI is shit.

Well Commissar was afraid after watching a few of Comrade RK-47 DAI videos that this is GAME OVER Moment but guess what Comrades and Trannies? Entered Titan Canyon and played 6 hours straight like in old good times. delivered; This is best moment in Wasteland 2 and heard that California will be even better ; So what are you all doing here discussing this POS faggots? Go play real games like Wasteland 2, read Tolkien books or talk to your kin or go find this special girl; Remember RK-47 sacrificed his sanity and got swallowed by warp for us all so we didn't played it and saved our souls. [Achievement Unlocked] Not played DAI.

 

[His Majesty]

Meanwhile massive butthurt on GameSpot for Inquisition losing out to Tolkien for GOTY.

 

[Ninjerk]

Meanwhile massive butthurt on GameSpot for Inquisition losing out to Tolkien for GOTY.

 

[crawlkill]

Tolkien is an exception, his idea of wizards and magic was way more "grown-up", for the lack of a better word, than any other fantasy since. I wish more fantasy writers took a page from his book, literally. For example I found the way he described the "magic" of the three elvish rings beautiful and imaginative precisely because it wasn't anything tangible, no stupid D&D artifacts shooting fireballs and magic missiles.

Spoiler

EDIT: Oh I remember another book with an interesting magic system, The Braided Path trilogy by Chris Wooding. It's quite an obscure YA dark fantasy I read a while back but I still remember it for its very original fantasy tropes.

no it wasn't. he believed in gods and angels and wrote a story about gods and angels. there was nothing adult about it. the apparent restraint is really just inconsistency; wizards can do whatever, but not all the time.

I discovered this hilarious decades-long debate between Tolkien fans about whether balrogs have wings or not, because at various points he describes them in various ways. the clincher on the argument was that balrogs are the essentialisation of Tolkienic inconsistency and mind-changing, and that at the -start- of the paragraph or two describing the balrog in Fellowship the balrog does indeed not have wings, but by the end of the description, it does.

Tolkien's only work of any value was The Hobbit, and that was because it celebrated its vignettey children's story nature. everything else was trash, as is the genre that imitates it.

 

[Azarkon]

No, that's going too far. Compared to what? What standard are you using here? Name me one single videogame that "explored cultural, religious and political tensions" in some truly meaningful way. There isn't one. PST is generally considered the "deepest", most mature videogame ever written and it's still just a superficial fairy tale compared to truly deep novels, movies or stage plays.

We have discussed this in some other thread. Videogames are still generally derpy and infantile, in the same way the first movies were. If you wanna explore the depths of philosophy you have to do it somewhere else. You wanna play videogames, especially the AAA ones? Then wizards, dragons and elves is all you're gonna get. The templars vs. mages subplot in DA2 is about as mature as it's gonna get in this industry. Put it another way - Bioware games are not bad because they're not "deep" enough.

PST was pretty well written. It was certainly not weaker than, say, your average Joss Whedon / Christopher Nolan, to use a few examples from screenwriting. But movies aren't primarily judged by their screenwriting, and the same goes for games. PST is an example I'd comfortably use to say that games already have deep writing. It's the rest of the game that I'm not comfortable using.

And no, there's no Tolstoy in video games, in the same way there's no Dickens in screenwriting. These are not literary mediums we're talking about. They're cinematic ones, at best, and in the case of video games, not even that.

 

[crawlkill]

No, that's going too far. Compared to what? What standard are you using here? Name me one single videogame that "explored cultural, religious and political tensions" in some truly meaningful way. There isn't one. PST is generally considered the "deepest", most mature videogame ever written and it's still just a superficial fairy tale compared to truly deep novels, movies or stage plays.

We have discussed this in some other thread. Videogames are still generally derpy and infantile, in the same way the first movies were. If you wanna explore the depths of philosophy you have to do it somewhere else. You wanna play videogames, especially the AAA ones? Then wizards, dragons and elves is all you're gonna get. The templars vs. mages subplot in DA2 is about as mature as it's gonna get in this industry. Put it another way - Bioware games are not bad because they're not "deep" enough.

PST was pretty well written. It was certainly not weaker than, say, your average Joss Whedon / Christopher Nolan, to use a few examples from screenwriting. But movies aren't primarily judged by their screenwriting, and the same goes for games. PST is an example I'd comfortably use to say that games already have deep writing. It's the rest of the game that I'm not comfortable using.

And no, there's no Tolstoy in video games, in the same way there's no Dickens in screenwriting. These are not literary mediums we're talking about. They're cinematic ones, at best, and in the case of video games, not even that.

visual and interactive media are better-suited to understated, implication-heavy storytelling. they don't have the space that a novel does. that said, there's absolutely no reason why the script of a game or a movie can't equal or exceed the script of a novel. it's just not where the development focus generally goes, because the audience the genre has cultivated in its short history isn't one that likes words. or thoughts.

you don't have to tackle "serious real life issues" to tell a compelling story. it's almost a cop-out, although it's so hard to do well that that's really not fair of me to say. what's really impressive is telling a story that makes people care that they -can't- relate to their own lives. a story that's about people, rather than about ideas. A Song of Ice and Fire might qualify as an example; it's really not making a statement about anything except for the nature of blame and consequence. ASoIaF is so great because when you ask "whose fault is this whole mess?" the chain is endlessly looping, and at every stage you can understand why the character did what he or she did, as shitty as his or her choices were. there's no reason you couldn't tell a story like that in a video game. it's just a question of budget, of perspective shifts, of text versus voice acting.

 

[Azarkon]

Tolkien is an exception, his idea of wizards and magic was way more "grown-up", for the lack of a better word, than any other fantasy since. I wish more fantasy writers took a page from his book, literally. For example I found the way he described the "magic" of the three elvish rings beautiful and imaginative precisely because it wasn't anything tangible, no stupid D&D artifacts shooting fireballs and magic missiles.

Spoiler

EDIT: Oh I remember another book with an interesting magic system, The Braided Path trilogy by Chris Wooding. It's quite an obscure YA dark fantasy I read a while back but I still remember it for its very original fantasy tropes.

Magic in Tolkien was subtle yet when Tolkien tried to materialize it, he still did switch to the same old tropes - eg Gandalf shooting fire from his staff, blinding the orcs with a flash of light, casting Tenser's Transformation Eldar Powah on himself so that he's able to go toe-to-toe with a Balrog as a weakly old man, etc. You remember the elvish rings being imaginative because they actually didn't do shit, except for Nenya which had greenhouse effects that allowed the elves to maintain Lorien.

 

[crawlkill]

Tolkien is an exception, his idea of wizards and magic was way more "grown-up", for the lack of a better word, than any other fantasy since. I wish more fantasy writers took a page from his book, literally. For example I found the way he described the "magic" of the three elvish rings beautiful and imaginative precisely because it wasn't anything tangible, no stupid D&D artifacts shooting fireballs and magic missiles.

Spoiler

EDIT: Oh I remember another book with an interesting magic system, The Braided Path trilogy by Chris Wooding. It's quite an obscure YA dark fantasy I read a while back but I still remember it for its very original fantasy tropes.

Magic in Tolkien was subtle yet when Tolkien tried to materialize it, he still did switch to the same old tropes - eg Gandalf shooting fire from his staff, blinding the orcs with a flash of light, casting Tenser's Transformation Eldar Powah on himself so that he's able to go toe-to-toe with a Balrog as a weakly old man, etc. You remember the elvish rings being imaginative because they actually didn't do shit, except for Nenya which had greenhouse effects that allowed the elves to maintain Lorien.

frankly I'm surprised the One Ring even had as concrete an effect as invisibility. power seems largely to be abstract in Middle Earth. it's just...a thing you have. it doesn't really mean anything precise.

 

[kris]

Tolkien is an exception, his idea of wizards and magic was way more "grown-up", for the lack of a better word, than any other fantasy since. I wish more fantasy writers took a page from his book, literally. For example I found the way he described the "magic" of the three elvish rings beautiful and imaginative precisely because it wasn't anything tangible, no stupid D&D artifacts shooting fireballs and magic missiles.

Spoiler

EDIT: Oh I remember another book with an interesting magic system, The Braided Path trilogy by Chris Wooding. It's quite an obscure YA dark fantasy I read a while back but I still remember it for its very original fantasy tropes.

Magic in Tolkien was subtle yet when Tolkien tried to materialize it, he still did switch to the same old tropes - eg Gandalf shooting fire from his staff, blinding the orcs with a flash of light, casting Tenser's Transformation Eldar Powah on himself so that he's able to go toe-to-toe with a Balrog as a weakly old man, etc. You remember the elvish rings being imaginative because they actually didn't do shit, except for Nenya which had greenhouse effects that allowed the elves to maintain Lorien.

Gandalf was never weakly and in the sense that matters he wasn't an old man either. He just looked old.

 

[Azarkon]

Tolkien is an exception, his idea of wizards and magic was way more "grown-up", for the lack of a better word, than any other fantasy since. I wish more fantasy writers took a page from his book, literally. For example I found the way he described the "magic" of the three elvish rings beautiful and imaginative precisely because it wasn't anything tangible, no stupid D&D artifacts shooting fireballs and magic missiles.

Spoiler

EDIT: Oh I remember another book with an interesting magic system, The Braided Path trilogy by Chris Wooding. It's quite an obscure YA dark fantasy I read a while back but I still remember it for its very original fantasy tropes.

Magic in Tolkien was subtle yet when Tolkien tried to materialize it, he still did switch to the same old tropes - eg Gandalf shooting fire from his staff, blinding the orcs with a flash of light, casting Tenser's Transformation Eldar Powah on himself so that he's able to go toe-to-toe with a Balrog as a weakly old man, etc. You remember the elvish rings being imaginative because they actually didn't do shit, except for Nenya which had greenhouse effects that allowed the elves to maintain Lorien.

Gandalf was never weakly and in the sense that matters he wasn't an old man either. He just looked old.

Yea technically he was an angel, and that's why he was able to do battle with devils eg balrogs. Tolkien described a few mortal magic-users in Middle-Earth, but I remember being disappointed that in the end, all the actual magic-users in the story were effectively angels/devils.

 

[Monkeysattva]

Wow.
Did anyone mention the fucking convoluted areas? DID ANYONE? I cant find my way around, AT ALL. The maps are so fucking WRONG, it boggles the mind.
Just THIS makes the game 10 times worse than Dragon Age 2.

I haven't experienced maps like these in 15 years of fucking gaming.

 

[Monkeysattva]

Dragon Age 2 was a GEM compared to this crap.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Wow.
Did anyone mention the fucking convoluted areas? DID ANYONE? I cant find my way around, AT ALL. The maps are so fucking WRONG, it boggles the mind.
Just THIS makes the game 10 times worse than Dragon Age 2.

I haven't experienced maps like these in 15 years of fucking gaming.

What's wrong with the areas?

 

[Monkeysattva]

Wow.
Did anyone mention the fucking convoluted areas? DID ANYONE? I cant find my way around, AT ALL. The maps are so fucking WRONG, it boggles the mind.
Just THIS makes the game 10 times worse than Dragon Age 2.

I haven't experienced maps like these in 15 years of fucking gaming.

What's wrong with the areas?

The fact that they are a maze. I think that's what convoluted means, n'est-ce pas?

 

[DragoFireheart]

Wow.
Did anyone mention the fucking convoluted areas? DID ANYONE? I cant find my way around, AT ALL. The maps are so fucking WRONG, it boggles the mind.
Just THIS makes the game 10 times worse than Dragon Age 2.

I haven't experienced maps like these in 15 years of fucking gaming.

What's wrong with the areas?

The fact that they are a maze. I think that's what convoluted means, n'est-ce pas?

Oh, I thought you were going to complain that they were boring corridors.

 

[Bleed the Man]

Wow.
Did anyone mention the fucking convoluted areas? DID ANYONE? I cant find my way around, AT ALL. The maps are so fucking WRONG, it boggles the mind.
Just THIS makes the game 10 times worse than Dragon Age 2.

I haven't experienced maps like these in 15 years of fucking gaming.

What's wrong with the areas?

The fact that they are a maze. I think that's what convoluted means, n'est-ce pas?

A maze? Are you sure you're playing DAI?

Besides, even if they were, you have your nice little quest marker so you can find your way around with no worries.