Dragon Age: Inquisition

[Zen]

Are you getting this game? If you've already gotten it, can you let us know what the game is like? I'm debating on getting this myself simply because I'm craving a good rpg game. But I was a little disappointed with how the second Dragon Age game went, yet I loved the first.

ARGH. Choices.

 

[Starkson]

I feel your pain man. I loved the first one, didn't like the second at all so im not sure on whether to get it or not. I too am craving a good rpg game. I think im getting the Witcher 3 but that doesn't come out till next year sooo

 

[Windsong]

The reviews are coming in as if it's the next coming of a colored transgender Jesus.

Needless to say the paid reviews gave DA2 stellar reviews while everyone agrees it's shit. Just like this will be. MMO style quests and the like, terrible dialogue and story. Your average bioware game post EA.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. SJWs and their abominable ilk will praise it to high heaven without ever actually buying it. Because pandering to the lowest denominator is a good business strategy if you can hide behind them to shield your company from criticism.

 

[Brovo]

Just pirate it if you want to play it and disappoint yourself.

 

[Windsong]

Just pirate it if you want to play it and disappoint yourself.

Perfect plan. Except the playing it part.

I'll pirate it. And seed it until I've shared the amount of at least 25 copies.

Surely karma will smile upon me for my contribution.

 

[Vanq]

Wow, didn't expect as much hatred for this :p

I loved DA:O and even DA2, though I wasn't a fan of the repeated maps or the simplified battle system, but overall I don't see where the hatred comes from for 2. I'm no company shill, said every company shill ever, but I liked it.

I'm also looking forward to Inquisition, though the death of my 360 means I won't be getting it til I can shell out the money for a new system and the game.

 

[Windsong]

The hatred comes from the bastardization of a mediocre but promising series, the same thing happened with Mass Effect.

And the pandering. Oh the pandering to such tiny but noisy communities.

 

[Vanq]

...I mean, I'm not saying it was perfect. But I fail to see how its "bastardization."

And, I hear this tossed around a lot. But never explained. Tiny but noisy communities, so I'm assuming SJWs though I loathe that term. Can you explain how though?

 

[Windsong]

Great games by a good company that's gotten progressively worse. It's amazing they haven't been canned yet.

And of course, the incredibly noisy lbgt community that they're trying to pander to. The most glaring thing was in origins with Morrigan, people complained she was too pretty. Her current iteration is a complete replica of a Morrigan cosplayer that looks more man then witch.

Plenty of people didn't like the women too pretty. So they made them all ugly so no one was offended that they weren't as cute or some such.

Another issue is David Gaider, the lead writer. He refused to write a dwarf romance because he claims anyone who wants that to be a pedophile because "short, stacked, and stocky" must mean you like little girls.

 

[Windsong]

I'm not telling you to not enjoy the game. If you love it, that's grand. But I'll loathe it until the heat death of the universe, and even then, my hatred for what Bioware has become with smolder.

 

[Hellis]

Windsong is getting caught up on his fuck anyone progressive a d fuck all the bigcompanies who did not make the game exactly according to his taste. I eould not take him at face value. I Played dao at comicomn. It was far better then 2. Wether it was worth buying im not sure

 

[Brovo]

Merrill. A Disney Princess fan girl elf who uses blood magic with near zero consequence. In fact, (spoiler alert obviously) her mentor who warned against blood magic is the one who eats it. For some reason. Then, even if her entire tribe is murderized by you all because of this blood magic shit, she still doesn't learn a thing, and no further consequences befall her throughout the story.

Nothing you do matters concerning Merrill, and her personality is designed with no effort to make a creative, human character, but instead is made to service fantasy fuel. Not necessarily bad, but for a series that prides itself on characterization, that's pretty horrible to make a character where their only purpose to exist is fantasy fuel.

Anders. They hand wave his death in the expansion and no matter what you do, romance or not, he blows up the citadel in a mad lemmings suicide chaos pact thing.

Nothing you do matters concerning Anders, and he exists solely to provide a false grey narrative before going full blown terrorism and shooting any chance of feeling empathetic for the mages.

Isabela exists solely to be the arbitrary slut and most things involving her are just sex. The few times it breaks away from this is to service a subplot for the Qunari, in some extraordinarily coincidental circumstances that I almost didn't believe when I heard it the first time. "You have what? You've had it this whole time? And you're going to damn the entire city because... You're a sociopath, I guess?"

Actually that's pretty consistent across all of them. Merrill has no lasting scars from slaughtering her entire tribe, Anders has no regrets about mass murdering thousands of innocents, Isabela doesn't give a shit about damning the entire city to be burned and murdered by the Qunari--nobody has even a remote hint of humanity in them. They're cardboard cutouts that service specific stereotypes, so painfully, that if you're even slightly genre savvy, you slowly begin to realize what a soulless, vapid piece of crap it is in the writing department. Which is a shame because it did show great promise in Dragon Age: Origins, since all DA 2 had to do was run with all the established material and make something out of it. Instead it diverted away from all the established material to give us a dedicated mages versus templar conflict where the mages pretty much always do turn out to be horrifying monsters.

Adding insult to injury, you rerun the same dungeons 6-7-8 times for quests that have similar themes, to the point that I sometimes forgot how far into the game I was and wondered if I had loaded back to the wrong save file.

The aesthetics are nice?... That's about the only compliment I have for it.

 

[Windsong]

Can't forget that illusion of choice they kept offering.

 

[Brovo]

Can't forget that illusion of choice they kept offering.

Sometimes illusion of choice is appropriate, but yeah, Dragon Age II is pretty much the epitome of how to do it wrong.

 

[Windsong]

Sometimes illusion of choice is appropriate, but yeah, Dragon Age II is pretty much the epitome of how to do it wrong.

I dunno. Mass Effect felt pretty bad at doing that too.

And no, @Hellis , I'm not mad the game doesn't cater to my definition of a good RPG, I'm mad because it's a genuinely bad attempt at pandering to a small audience while hiding behind them to avoid any sort of criticism. Golden poo awards, when?

 

[Hellis]

Twos writing was pretty damn atrocius

 

[Brovo]

If I had to pick a game where illusion of choice was done well in the Bioware catalog I'd probably gave it to... Knights of the Old Republic. There are several decisions where the outcome is the same but how you deal with it in tone is different. That difference is then noticed by your compatriots, who slowly learn and grow with you, and sometimes even start to adopt your methods and ways. (ex: You can turn Bastila away from the Jedi. You can make Carth a bitter and hatred filled man bent on revenge, or turn him away from that to become a sympathetic, loyal, justice-seeker.) The choices are false in that the outcome is the same, but the characters you take with you change and adapt based on your decisions, giving impact and weight to what you do, regardless of whether there was actual choice involved beyond the tone and method you used to accomplish the goal.

Dragon Age Origins also had some of this. If you completed Sten's loyalty quest early for instance, you could avoid the entire fight on the mountain because he's grown to trust you enough that when you tell him to fall in line and trust you, he just... Does so. He offers his recommendation, and that's it. It's still a little gimmicky (the whole "I can buy your love with two and a half shiny rocks is bizarre") but you can still see impact and meaning even in false choices with your compatriots.

EDIT

Still. To get back on topic, Dragon Age Inquisition? I hope it's good. They have a different lead writer, so maybe it'll get better from the schlockfest that was DA 2, but I don't know. Under the EA label I'm not hopeful, but I'll keep an eye on it anyway in case my skepticism proves wrong. Either way, if anyone enjoys it, that doesn't mean they're bad people. I think their tastes are... Odd, but I'm sure they think the same of mine, so, really... As long as you enjoy it, why do you care what I think?

 

[Vanq]

Great games by a good company that's gotten progressively worse. It's amazing they haven't been canned yet.

And of course, the incredibly noisy lbgt community that they're trying to pander to. The most glaring thing was in origins with Morrigan, people complained she was too pretty. Her current iteration is a complete replica of a Morrigan cosplayer that looks more man then witch.

Plenty of people didn't like the women too pretty. So they made them all ugly so no one was offended that they weren't as cute or some such.

Another issue is David Gaider, the lead writer. He refused to write a dwarf romance because he claims anyone who wants that to be a pedophile because "short, stacked, and stocky" must mean you like little girls.

LGBT community = making Morrigan "ugly"? I'm not sure I see the connection there. I honestly don't see how they made the women ugly, though of course that's entirely subjective. But that makes me want to question if the lgbt comment was more towards the fact that any of the chars, barring Sebastian, could play both sides, depending on the gender of your character. If that's the case, I don't see how that's a problem or how that is pandering the awful and noisy community of those not straight.

The dwarf thing, though I'd like to see the actual article with that quote, is just plain stupid. I wanted me some Varric action :( I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean I'm in to little girls.

@Brovo - I can see your points, I just come to a different conclusion. Sometimes, it doesn't fucking matter what you do, the people around you will do what they want. Two was setting up the utter failure of many existing structures in the world. You can't control your party members. I thought it was rather nifty. And sometimes, there is no right decision. Are the mages at fault for what they become, or did the Templars push too hard too many times? Were the Templars being tyrannical assholes, or were their hard stances right in the end? Maybe to you it was doing it wrong, but I enjoyed the ending that even though I was big bad hero Hawke, I couldn't save the city from destroying itself, couldn't stop the two sides from colliding down the paths they set themselves on.

 

[Windsong]

Ta-da

 

[Brovo]

@Brovo - I can see your points, I just come to a different conclusion. Sometimes, it doesn't fucking matter what you do, the people around you will do what they want. Two was setting up the utter failure of many existing structures in the world. You can't control your party members. I thought it was rather nifty. And sometimes, there is no right decision. Are the mages at fault for what they become, or did the Templars push too hard too many times? Were the Templars being tyrannical assholes, or were their hard stances right in the end? Maybe to you it was doing it wrong, but I enjoyed the ending that even though I was big bad hero Hawke, I couldn't save the city from destroying itself, couldn't stop the two sides from colliding down the paths they set themselves on.

Except there's a difference between a character acting independently and the protagonist having zero impact. Wrex shooting a guy was acting independently. He told you exactly what he was going to do, and he did just that. You had the choice of not bringing him with you. Later on in the game you can kill him, even, meaning you still have some impact on the world.

Anders tells you he's going to literally kill everyone.

You have no choice to stop him.

See why this is kinda really bad? You're just told things. You can't do anything except reply in a snarky fashion to everyone going completely insane until the game lets you kill more red shirts. On the bright side, I do love the snark button. That button got me through the whole game, even the absurd anime ending.