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Since the last thread on the game was locked for some reason. - Off-topicness I guess?

I figured I started a new one as there's loads of news out for the game now.

Firstly, the Dragon Age Keep is now in Open Beta, accessible from http://www.dragonagekeep.com

It seems fully functional, however it's not syncing up everything from the games correctly. - It thought my warden basically killed herself, lonely and unloved with no mates at all. In reality, her buddy Alistair performed the Dark Ritual before ascending the throne with his Queen Anora. Meanwhile she lived awesomely ever after with Leliana at her side whenever she was on leave from helping out The Divine.

Looking at The Keep's 'tapestry' on the other hand, once I got all the settings right, really does confirm how utterly disastrous Hawke was.

Generally speaking though, it seems pretty good overall, it's very similar to the Mass Effect 2 digital comic that playstation owners had (and you could download for PC). It seems pretty comprehensive too, with a lot of choices being covered in the tapestry.


There's also something called 'The Last Court' - which looks to be a minigame based around City / Castle management. I'm just trying it now, but it seems like it might have a minor effect on Dragon Age Inquisition's gameplay.

Compel wrote:It seems fully functional, however it's not syncing up everything from the games correctly.

Yeah, that's WAI. I suppose it was too much of a hassle.

"Unfortunately we won’t be able to directly import saves. However, over 300 choices are accounted for in the Keep, so you’ll be able to recreate your Dragon Age universe down to the details."
- http://forum.bioware.com/topic/510457-dragon-age-keep-faqs/

Compel wrote:There's also something called 'The Last Court' - which looks to be a minigame based around City / Castle management. I'm just trying it now, but it seems like it might have a minor effect on Dragon Age Inquisition's gameplay.

Not tried it yet, but supposedly (heard from a friend) it's actually enjoyable all by itself, too. Buddy of mine described it to be "like one of those Princess Maker games". You know, where you can make X decisions on a day and them affecting different things.

Done.

That truly is the best solution. Neither I nor my wife want to replay both games again.

Onward and death to all apostates! Hail templars!

Whenever I do buy the game I may well be happy about "The Keep". I haven't played the second game, but remember the first one being a bit of a chore after a while. I would like to play the second game at some point though, so I'd have to have played the first one before that to import my save, which is a bit annoying considering that I can't then port that save over to the third game. Well that's me assuming that the choices in the first game actually matter for the second one.

Reading bits and bobs about the second game, I would like to see the Black City (or whatever it was called) being elaborated on. Given that the game's all about demons (well I'm assuming as much as the first was all about Darkspawn as you spend half the game chasing after werewolves...) so presumably that will be covered. The line "the golden city was always black" intrigues me. Evidently the Taint originated there, but whatever presence resides in it may not be inherently evil (if its even intelligent, or just that the mages screwed up somewhere). Ie like Mass Effect's Reapers toting about the galaxy killing all the advanced civilizations because element zero and the mass effect drives drew their power from stars (or whatever it was) and was killing the galaxy. ...Ok I don't expect it to be a amazingly written explanation, but at least its a time sink, and there's developers with worse writers out there. =P

Wyrmalla wrote:Well that's me assuming that the choices in the first game actually matter for the second one.

It depends on what you consider "mattering", I suppose. There's quite a few bits where players of the first game would recognise their influence - from background stuff like the governance of Ferelden to funny details like whether or not you arranged for a threesome with Isabelle and Leliana - but nothing that would have a major impact on the second game itself. It's more of a "memory chain" to bridge the gap between both titles, maintaining recognition value even though the story takes place in a different country with (mostly) different characters.

Wyrmalla wrote:Reading bits and bobs about the second game, I would like to see the Black City (or whatever it was called) being elaborated on.

Ehh ... I dunno. Yeah, on one hand I'd be curious, too, but I also appreciate the mystery for what it is, and for still allowing so many theories to be crafted among the fans. I'm not entirely sure I want to see this veil lifted, like Black Library authors did with the Horus Heresy (yes, I know it's not canon, but everyone still treats it that way), especially given that BioWare didn't exactly handle it very elegantly in Mass Effect. Don't get me wrong, I loved the story in ME, and still like the ending, but there were some really awkward dents in it. It's like the writers are way better at crafting interesting hints about a secret than fleshing out what it actually is.

Though, it's a different team, so who knows. We can't really influence it either way, but I'll remain cautious.

[edit] By the way, that browser game is actually quite fun. Simple, but very good at wasting my time.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Done.

That truly is the best solution. Neither I nor my wife want to replay both games again.

Onward and death to all apostates! Hail templars!

Very much so.


I'm probably making my Inquisitior a scrawny old man

Just to note the sync is working fine; it is only meant to sync your characters, not the acts that they carried out. Even says so at the top of the screen.

Wow. Just. Wow.

Bioware managed to feth the pc version up. DA:I has one of the worst pc controls of recent gaming thanks to a huge focus on controllers. It's clunky as hell.

Apart from that: fail. The combat is pretty much like DA2 with no tactics involved, just spamming your abilities works well.

Worst of all: the world is now literally full of collectibles. Because that's what a DA game needed: collectibles.

So far, with a few hours in: 4/10.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Wow. Just. Wow.

Bioware managed to feth the pc version up. DA:I has one of the worst pc controls of recent gaming thanks to a huge focus on controllers. It's clunky as hell.

Apart from that: fail. The combat is pretty much like DA2 with no tactics involved, just spamming your abilities works well.

Worst of all: the world is now literally full of collectibles. Because that's what a DA game needed: collectibles.

So far, with a few hours in: 4/10.

Did it get released early in Germany?

 Sasori wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Wow. Just. Wow.

Bioware managed to feth the pc version up. DA:I has one of the worst pc controls of recent gaming thanks to a huge focus on controllers. It's clunky as hell.

Apart from that: fail. The combat is pretty much like DA2 with no tactics involved, just spamming your abilities works well.

Worst of all: the world is now literally full of collectibles. Because that's what a DA game needed: collectibles.

So far, with a few hours in: 4/10.

Did it get released early in Germany?

No. Test copy

It's the finalized gold version, though. Man, I am so disappointed right now. The characters don't really stick out well either and the ties to the former games are...meh. Can't fully talk about the latter though as I can't use my own Origin account, but according to the copy's owner, very few things are linked. I haven't encountered any actual choices yet that would influence the game's outcome.

Relationships are absolutely terrible and typical for Bioware. Talk to them X times, do a special quest, suddenly, love. Ugh.

I don't know. DA2 left such a bad taste in my mouth that it's hard to get excited about this one. I'll wait and see what reviewers and players think.
(Looks over at Zero Punctuation.)

 Sigvatr wrote:
Relationships are absolutely terrible and typical for Bioware. Talk to them X times, do a special quest, suddenly, love. Ugh.

Thanks to Bioware I learned one can always buy the affection of another with enough gifts.

To be fair, if I had to choose between BioWare's dialogues and the average "rescue girl -> kiss -> happy end" I see in the vast majority of games that touch on the subject, I'd happily pick the former.
Whenever the topic of BioWare romances comes up, it just reminds me about what Churchill supposedly said about democracy as the worst form of governance, except for all the others.

I suppose a case could be made about just leaving romances out of a game altogether (I feel only a game that has this as its focus could even come close to capture the complexity), but that would require writers to come up with something else to motivate the players and appeal to their secret desires.

It would be a good start to not give the player control over relationships. It'd be awesome if you invested time and effort into a relationship and your girlfriend suddenly came up to you, telling you that she doesn't feel the same you do for her and would then leave the group in order to avoid bad feelings. And there's NO GODDAMN BIOWARE OPTION to persuade her into staying.

In a good RPG, a player needs to both be and not be in control. If you have no control at all, you would be frustrated and if you have full control, there was no challenge and it would be boring.

Right now, especially in Bioware games, relationships are in full control of the player - and that just isn't how relationships work. Should work. But with people like David Gayder writing, I am not surprised.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
I haven't played the second game, but remember the first one being a bit of a chore after a while.

Fair point.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
I would like to play the second game at some point though

I'd really advise against it. DA2 is a horrible game story-wise. Reading a synopsis and watching a few cutscenes on YT will still leave you disappointed but it will take so much less of your time.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Well that's me assuming that the choices in the first game actually matter for the second one.

They do but only tangentially. So for example, I exiled Alistair in DAO so he showed up as a drunken hobo in DA2. Come to think of it, seeing that insufferable git depressed and despised was probably one of the better parts of DA2. But it's not like it had any effect on DA2's plot. Then again, nothing the player chooses does either ...

 Sigvatr wrote:
I haven't encountered any actual choices yet that would influence the game's outcome.

How far are you in at this point? I would not be surprised if you were right about the whole game (if it is anything like DA2) but I wouldn't expect game changer decisions, or at least recognizing them as such, in the first handful of hours.

 Lynata wrote:
Whenever the topic of BioWare romances comes up, it just reminds me about what Churchill supposedly said about democracy as the worst form of governance, except for all the others.

I can't say I have played any other games with built-in date simulators but I have to admit, despite having a lot of problems with BioWare's take on RPGs, that the idea of talking to and getting to know the personality of your romance options is a pretty good groundwork. I agree with Sigvatr and Ahtman, however, that BioWare romances ultimately feel very rigid and objectifying.

I think I'm passing for now. I've only played Dragon Age 1 and it had a few amusing character moments and a couple neat character designs, but those are about the only positive things I could say about it. The game play felt pretty thin and rigid and the setting was among the my least favorite ever in an RPG, maybe just ahead of the dreadful "The Witcher" game. The whole city/castle management mini-game idea sounds like the kind of thing that would interest me, but I think I'd a lot more would have to change to get me on board.

The setting in DA:I is pretty tame compared to DA:O. DA:O was rather dark fantasy in some parts, and so far, DA:I feels very high fantasy.

Not sure how you're supposed to play "evil". You could play a super racist Shepherd who only did what he wanted, but I don't see how you would be able to do so in DA:I. Very tame answers so far and those have very little impact on the game. I don't even think that you can make people leave your party by a low friendship score...I have 1 party member I despite and would like to get rid of, but can't :(

I'm still waiting on the first reviews, not just from various blogs but chiefly from friends who had pre-ordered it. As nice and interesting as it looked from day 1, I had decided to wait for reviews out of principle this time around.

Sigvatr wrote:In a good RPG, a player needs to both be and not be in control. If you have no control at all, you would be frustrated and if you have full control, there was no challenge and it would be boring.

Narratively, I feel less control in such matters might make for an overall more interesting and perhaps more realistic story development. However, I am also convinced you*d piss of the vast majority of the target group players.

The heavily pre-scripted Mass Effect ending springs to mind. In my opinion a brilliant, emotional piece of "interactive movie", but countless posters complained about lack of control because they felt they should be able to change this or that. I can only imagine the QQ if you mess with "their" romance options.

I do hope you're referring to Mass Effect 1

/e: Confirmed: higher difficulty just makes the enemies spongier aka poor game design par excellance.

Some sidequests are really interesting, some are really, really awesome. Not spoilering, but when the time has come, you might stand still in your tracks

I've never heard any criticisms to the ending of ME1.

But now that you mention it, it was similarly lacking in control. Actually, you had even less control. I guess people just didn't bother because there it was still a Disney Ending.

People didn't bother because it was a good ending - it was clear-cut and obviously leading to the second part.

The ME 3 ending did not answer most questions that arose, it was full of giant, gaping plotholes and was extremely poorly written (exposition in the face).

Also: inb4 DA cliffhanger ending.

And yet the most vocal criticism was "I wanted a happy ending with my love interest" or "I wanted to shoot space boy in the head" or "the different endings are too similar! three colours!".

(ironically, the shooting was later patched into the game - with foreseeable, logical consequences, which led to more bitching)

Besides, it was not "full" of plot holes, there was "only" one that springs to mind (the reason for the Cycles, where frankly it would not have been difficult to come up with a similar but better explanation). But I'm sure this has already been discussed in another thread.

In one other thread? More like 10

The ending was done extremely poorly and they rightfully got dakka for it.

I just hope they didn't screw it up AGAIN in DA:I. Right now it's...not...looking good. Maybe about 1/3 through? I've seen so many clichées already...

It sounds really, really bad that DAI is "high fantasy" compared to DAO. I mean the game is called "Inquisition" for Pete's sake! If anything, it should be the darkest of all DA games so far.

But what constitutes "darkness" in DA anyway? Seems to me the idea is fantasy with horror themes.

In DAO, you had ... the possession story, the the Anvil of the Void/Broodmother -- those are the ones that stick out for me. In DA2, the most obvious one is what happens to Mrs. Hawke but there's also the Eluvian.

 Lynata wrote:
And yet the most vocal criticism was "I wanted a happy ending with my love interest" or "I wanted to shoot space boy in the head" or "the different endings are too similar! three colours!".

Oddly, I didn't hear either of the first two complaints at all, even though I frequented the official forums. People mentioned that they expressed their frustration by shooting space boy in the head, but there were no complaints that it didn't actually do anything. And no one I heard from had any problem with a "bad ending" for Shepard himself.
The third complaint largely faded away after Bioware added the extended ending.

Prior to that, yes, the only difference between the three endings was quite literally the color used.

And I still think the ME3 ending sucks. But that's a subject for another thread.



Getting back to the subject matter at hand, I'm disappointed to hear about DA:I. I wasn't going to get it right off the bat, and I guess this confirms my "wait and see" approach to the new game. I find it odd that they'd limit the PC version of the game to what a controller can handle. I thought developers had managed to move away from that sort of thing several years ago. As for romances... well...

There's only so much you can do with them given the limitations of the AI and conversation system. And people would probably riot if Bioware removed them. They're expected these days. I guess the most creative that they've been so far is when they had Viconia leave you at the end of the vanilla version of Baldur's Gate II - though in that case it was for your safety, and not because she didn't like you.

Are you really expecting game linked decisions in a demo copy Sigvatr? Unrealistic expectations is putting it mildly to be fair.

Also, love the typical net response of, 'one person doesn't like the demo; guess I shouldn't get the game.' Well done everyone.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
Are you really expecting game linked decisions in a demo copy Sigvatr? Unrealistic expectations is putting it mildly to be fair.

Also, love the typical net response of, 'one person doesn't like the demo; guess I shouldn't get the game.' Well done everyone.

It's not a demo copy, it's a gold version which is the same as release. I mentioned not being able to check for changes for my very own character in my previous post.

DA:I will receive 8/10 at the very least as it's published by Activision / Blizzard.

 Godless-Mimicry wrote:
Also, love the typical net response of, 'one person doesn't like the demo; guess I shouldn't get the game.' Well done everyone.

I'm seeing more along the lines of, "Hmm... maybe I'll take a wait and see on this one..."

I don't see anyone saying that the brief review means that they're not going to play it.

The game still has its upsides. Some good quests, graphics are good.

The game just lacks what the old Bioware was well-known for - a rich story, interesting characters and strategic combat / meaningful choices (depending on the game). It just feels...soulless. Very bland characters, easily foreseeable story "twists" and a very lame setting - in short:

[Very minor spoilers]

It's Oblivion's plot. You go around and close "rifts" that allow demons to enter the world after the war between templars and maniacs escalates.

[End spoilers]

That's...so generic.

It's not just one person not liking a (gold version) test copy. The issue is more like, Sigvatr is confirming a lot of what some of us were worried DAI would be like.