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Post by apollexander on Feb 18, 2019 4:22:50 GMT
Visually, I love the views in DAI, especially magical places like the Fade, the temple of sacred ashes, the shattered library. I guess this is the 'magical tone'? From the perspective of narrative, I think DAI is also grey and dark. However, it didn't deliver the sense precisely enough. Sometimes it feels disconnected emotionally. Too much information is hidden somewhere and you need to search for notes and side-stuffs. For example, in Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, you choose between Celene, Gaspard and Briala. As you progress you keep uncover information about them, but none of them is as connected to youself as Anora, Loghain and Alistair in DAO. Another example is that you discover the secret of the mayor of Crestwood by a letter. Although you have some hints before, the final moment lack of a dramatic climax. Good examples are the plots of Blackwall and Solas. As conclusion I have no doubt on grey and dark elements in DA4. I think Bioware needs to improve the narrative. Since they raise the guy responsible for Trespasser as the narrative director, I am conservatively optimistic
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Post by psychomegify on Feb 18, 2019 4:42:00 GMT
While Inquisition was just as dark as origins and 2, it all felt so... distant. They didn't really show any of it in a meaningful way. I mean we are told the mage/templar was this big thing that was destroying ferelden and orlais but we never see its effects anywhere other than the hinterlands. We are told about how orlais is built on the backs of servants but again we never see it.
DAO and DA2 felt dark and gritty because we weren't just hearing about these terrible things, they were happening in front of and sometimes to us. The blight was an effective threat because the game showed you that it was - you saw it spread on your map, how lothering was no longer accessible because it was destroyed, how the blight corrupts and changes people, how broodmothers were created. It was a constant thing. And with DA2 how all the mess with blood magic and demon culminates in loosing your mother.
I really don't think the colour palette is the issue, there are dark games that are colourful. I just think the gameplay and the story dont quite match up.
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Post by DragonKingReborn on Feb 18, 2019 4:51:35 GMT
While Inquisition was just as dark as origins and 2, it all felt so... distant. They didn't really show any of it in a meaningful way. I mean we are told the mage/templar was this big thing that was destroying ferelden and orlais but we never see its effects anywhere other than the hinterlands. *snip* I just think the gameplay and the story dont quite match up. This is it, in a nutshell, for me. There is - in DAI, anyway - too much of a disconnect between narrative and gameplay. Not enough to make me not love the game, just enough for me to see it as an area to be improved on.
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Post by Nightscrawl on Feb 18, 2019 6:50:29 GMT
Agree with colfoley, the color palette of Inquisition seems to have really bamboozled people. Lyrium that’s candy-apple red is still red lyrium. A corpse lying in sun-dappled ferns is still a corpse. The blue-and-gold finery of Orlais is still built on oppression — Leliana even says as much in Trespasser. I really hope they won’t have to tone down the color to get taken seriously. The “serious” vomit/poop color palette that plagued 90s-00s games was really obnoxious. Sadly, the forums prevent me from "liking" this multiple times...
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Post by Ieldra on Feb 18, 2019 9:15:01 GMT
While Inquisition was just as dark as origins and 2, it all felt so... distant. They didn't really show any of it in a meaningful way. I mean we are told the mage/templar was this big thing that was destroying ferelden and orlais but we never see its effects anywhere other than the hinterlands. *snip* I just think the gameplay and the story dont quite match up. This is it, in a nutshell, for me. There is - in DAI, anyway - too much of a disconnect between narrative and gameplay. Not enough to make me not love the game, just enough for me to see it as an area to be improved on. Indeed so. In spite of my overall appreciation, I experience DAI as sanitized in several ways, cleansed of everything that might make anyone feel uncomfortable, sometimes in presentation alone (which results in the detachment you mentioned), sometimes also in content. It leaves DAI lacking as an artistic experience, and outright artificial where content is affected. It's extremely noticeable in contrast to other rpgs I've been playing in the last three years.
So yes, I'd *very much* (!!!) prefer Bioware to remember what they set out to make with DAO. Just don't re-introduce the cleavage on female armor (just to remind people that not all changes since DAO were bad).
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Post by colfoley on Feb 18, 2019 9:31:22 GMT
This is it, in a nutshell, for me. There is - in DAI, anyway - too much of a disconnect between narrative and gameplay. Not enough to make me not love the game, just enough for me to see it as an area to be improved on. Indeed so. In spite of my overall appreciation, I experience DAI as sanitized in several ways, cleansed of everything that might make anyone feel uncomfortable, sometimes in presentation alone (which results in the detachment you mentioned), sometimes also in content. It leaves DAI lacking as an artistic experience, and outright artificial where content is affected. It's extremely noticeable in contrast to other rpgs I've been playing in the last three years.
So yes, I'd *very much* (!!!) prefer Bioware to remember what they set out to make with DAO. Just don't re-introduce the cleavage on female armor (just to remind people that not all changes since DAO were bad).
I'm not sure I get what you mean. Red Lrium growing out of people? Instances of slavery/genocide/ war? Giving your character the ability to participate in the assination of a ruling monarch? I mean hell even some of the more...uh...politically sensitive quests also made people uncomfortable? I mean I agree that DAI must have been missing something t make people feel this way but I just wonder if its not just so much that its not there but the mere fact that the game is so bright and vibrant coupled with the fact that it is also so large that people might miss it? Because I've played the game 5-6 times. I know this stuff is in there.
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Post by Ieldra on Feb 18, 2019 9:34:45 GMT
And as for being morally grey, well that's up to the individual, isn't it? I don't perceive the majority of the dilemmas in any of the games to be "grey" at all. I'm almost never confused or unsure about what I think is the right thing to do. Well, morality binds and blinds - in different ways depending on several factors that differ by individual. So, while *you* may feel no conflict, the question is more about how a decision is intended to come across, and how well it worked for the set of people who played the game as a whole.
Also, you say you never feel any conflict? Which means you're telling me the side you rejected never has a point? That comes across as.... rather one-sided. I usually know where my preferred decision lies in any particular scenario. I could, for instance, never make a pro-Templar decision in my personal canon game. However, that doesn't mean I feel completely comfortable with my decision, since I know it can have - and probably will have - its downsides. That's what "morally grey" means for me. You can be ideologically pre-occupied, as I clearly am in the mage/templar conflict, and which I suspect everyone is to some degree, but that doesn't make the scenario less grey. It only isn't grey to someone who's blind to one side.
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Post by Ieldra on Feb 18, 2019 10:02:19 GMT
Indeed so. In spite of my overall appreciation, I experience DAI as sanitized in several ways, cleansed of everything that might make anyone feel uncomfortable, sometimes in presentation alone (which results in the detachment you mentioned), sometimes also in content. It leaves DAI lacking as an artistic experience, and outright artificial where content is affected. It's extremely noticeable in contrast to other rpgs I've been playing in the last three years.
So yes, I'd *very much* (!!!) prefer Bioware to remember what they set out to make with DAO. Just don't re-introduce the cleavage on female armor (just to remind people that not all changes since DAO were bad).
I'm not sure I get what you mean. Red Lyrium growing out of people? ...which should've come across as as horrific as DAO's darkspawn conversion, but somehow....didn't. I don't mind toning down the disgust factor from DAO, but DAI refrained from bringing the horror home to you in any other way either. ...which you rarely see affect anyone you care about. Compare: DAO's mage origin (imprisonment), DAO's city elf origin (rape), DAO's Dalish elf origin (confining social boundaries), DAO's human noble origin (destruction of your home), DAO's dwarf commoner orign (de-facto slavery), DAO's dwarf noble origin (murder of a relative), and exile for all of them. In DAI, not even companions are thusly affected (as they are in DA2), only throwaway NPCs, and then they soon die as to not uncomfortably remind you of the situation. I maintain: the experience has been sanitized. ...for which you're never given a good reason, which weakens the case. As opposed to, say, doing the ritual with Morrigan in DAO. Uh...there were politically sensitive quests in DAI? That made people uncomfortable? What the heck are you talking about? The colors are a minor aspect. Most of the time I liked the visuals, actually. The Emerald Graves? Hauntingly beautiful. Crestwood after the cleanup? I want to live there. The Deep Roads in Descent? An impressive, but sad reminder of past glory (and this did come across right at the end, in combination with Descent's story, as opposed to almost all of the main game). In general my impression is that DAI's main game got scrubbed by someone with the attitude "Yes, I know that must all be in the story and the world, but I don't want to feel or see it". As I said: sanitized.
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Post by Ieldra on Feb 18, 2019 10:30:34 GMT
Oh yeah, sarcastic Hawke was a bit much at times and I kind of preferred the more mild sense of humor that they gave the Inquisitor at times but then I did appreciate in DA 2 that given how shity Hawke's life was that she would just mock it incessently. Sarcastic Hawke would be the type of character to mock the smell of someone's breath WHILE they were getting eaten. Now not sure how much of a sense of humor I will give my DA 4 protags, especially the male I plan on running, but I hope the option exists. And I do agree with Andromeda. As much as I did like the game and loved its story I can appreciate the criticism when it comes to the tone of the game. Give me the breadth of characterization possibilities of da2 over the blandiquisitor. I'm currently playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker. That game has characterization possibilities I'd like to see in a DA game!!! Most of them have few consequences outside the scene except affecting your character's alignment, but the number of relevant decisions does a lot to make your character feel real, even when it's mostly not even voiced. Also if your decisions go into one direction enough that your alignment is changed, it can affect your kingdom.
The overall effect is that my character in Pathfinder: Kingmaker is mine, much more than any of my Inquisitors. There are no cinematic cutscenes in that game, my character's lines are never voiced and most of the others' aren't either most of the time, but simply by giving me more options, and doing so in many, many common situations that tend to characterize a person better than the exceptional ones, where a game like DAI just uses canned lines to which you can only listen, the world and my character both feel more real.
BTW, DA2's characterization was extreme, often to the point of parody, which isn't exactly convincing either. As usual, Bioware "corrected" that by overcompensation in DAI, going to the other extreme. The lack of nuance probably has something to do with voice acting... I can only imagine the many variations of dialogue lines you'd need to record to create convincing variety.
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Post by Little Bengel on Feb 18, 2019 11:22:03 GMT
I'm not sure I get what you mean. Red Lyrium growing out of people? ...which should've come across as as horrific as DAO's darkspawn conversion, but somehow....didn't. I don't mind toning down the disgust factor from DAO, but DAI refrained from bringing the horror home to you in any other way either. ...which you rarely see affect anyone you care about. Compare: DAO's mage origin (imprisonment), DAO's city elf origin (rape), DAO's Dalish elf origin (confining social boundaries), DAO's human noble origin (destruction of your home), DAO's dwarf commoner orign (de-facto slavery), DAO's dwarf noble origin (murder of a relative), and exile for all of them. In DAI, not even companions are thusly affected (as they are in DA2), only throwaway NPCs, and then they soon die as to not uncomfortably remind you of the situation. I maintain: the experience has been sanitized. The one example we got from Red Lyrium growths (Fiona, IIRC) didn't quite look horrifying enough. It looked more like she was stuck in the lyrium and got red eyes as a result. I think it would've been more effective if she looked halfway between normal person and Behemoth: crystallized-looking skin glowing red, looking like a repeat of Meredith, incapable of coherent speech or thought, the works. It would certainly help in making it look all the more unsettling and horrifying, and it would've given people a clear-cut message that yep, that stuff's real bad and you shouldn't mess with it. In regards to the slavery/genocide/war thing: I agree with all of Ieldra's arguments here: in the city elf origin, Vaughan's rape of elves is shocking not only because it's rape, but because it happens to people you get to interact with and know in the first few minutes of the game, particularly Shianni. And in DA2, when Leandra is abducted and turned into part of a blood magic-fueled zombie monstrosity? You have known her for a long part of the game, as part of Hawke's family. Okay, so WEWH isn't quite clear in my memory, but I think that in addition to not being given a good reason to do it, you don't really have a good reason to care about it, while the Dark Ritual fulfills both requirements. I think that some of the War Table quests, if given a chance to shine via actual gameplay, could be politically sensitive. Unfortunately, they suffer by virtue of being War Table missions. Sadly, I also have to agree with the final points here.
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Post by Nightscrawl on Feb 18, 2019 11:32:23 GMT
And in DA2, when Leandra is abducted and turned into part of a blood magic-fueled zombie monstrosity? You have known her for a long part of the game, as part of Hawke's family. This had no impact on me at all. I felt the scene as done, especially with her wobbling forward, was almost comical, even as I understood it was supposed to be horrific; it didn't have that effect on me at all. In addition, for a character that so readily emotes about so many other things, I felt Hawke as cold and distant in response. Yes, people process trauma in different ways, but that is not how I wanted my character to process that trauma in the moment. You know who felt the most real to me during that whole mess? Gamlen. I thought he was raw and real, and I offer much praise for the VA in putting that emotion into the character. I didn't feel any of that for my Hawke. However, I will also say that I tend to have a disconnect for PC family members that are forced on you. I don't like the concept and find it frustrating that games like DAO and DA2 force these people on me and then further force me into situations where I'm supposed to care about these people because they merely exist and I've been told to. I have far more care and affection for headcanon characters that never existed in the games than I do for those they forced on me.
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Post by Iddy on Feb 18, 2019 11:35:13 GMT
First off I do object to the idea that Inquisition was inherently light hearted. Especially the DLCs. The only real difference between Origins and Inquisition is A. the color pallet was brighter and more varied and B. Inquisition wasn't as in your face or gratitious about the 'maturity' and 'moral grayness'. It was still there, in spades, but they really didn't revel in it...by and large. You had piles of skeletons and skulls in various parts of the map, carcasses of dead animals strewn across the land, hoards of undead, Lyrium growing out of people, etc. As far as morally gray issues pretty much every single moral decision in Inquisition, at least the big ones, was gray. There wasn't a single clear cut issue in the game (I mean keep in mind you cold be complicate in assassinating an Empress for crying out loud). And while Corypheus didn't get the attention he deserved he did have an element of grayness to him, not entirely clear cut...at least imo. Then you have Solas which there have been a lot of debates on him which show...also not a clear cut issue (Solas was introduced as a villain in DLC). Also might I just say that almost none of the villains in DA O was nuanced. Arl Howe, the Archdemon, Uldred, and that one guy in the Elf Origin you referenced were utter bastards. And then Loghain was pretty mustache twirley himself. Only one I felt any real interest in was Branka and Zathrian. So now that I got that out of the way these debates always come down to two things for me. A. What I expect and B. what I want. I expect them to go in a much darker in your face direction primarily because it seems that's what audiences want and the Witcher. It will probably a be a lot 'darker' in terms of literal color pallet. Greyer. Etc. I hope that's not universally true but I can almost see them doing Minrathous as a very dark and crumbling city. With all sorts of juicy gratitious violence and horrible attrocities comitted by the Tevinters and Qunari in the name of their ideologies. Also the descriptions of Sehron that place is going to be a positive shit show. Now as for what I want, I may be weird and it seems by most people's judgement I am in this regard...I don't mind darkness and I don't mind gritty 'shit show' stories. I didn't mind Origins and I didn't mind DA 2...though I think Witcher 3 Wild Hunt took it way too far. What I want tone wise is for them to have a very down in the mud story line with horrible attrocities comitted left and right...but balance it out with some moments of humor, levity, and the game (or at least the characters) can make fun of it. I think for what I want people should look at Blood and Wine and Assassin's Creed Odyssey as good places to begin. Really? That is your argument? "There are dead bodies around"? That doesn't mean anything. And I believe what really makes DAI too light hearted is that the Inquisitor rarely can do anything questionable. I can think of maybe two exceptions, but that's it. The most pragmatic Inquisitor still is a cute puppy compared to a pragmatic HoF.
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Post by Absafraginlootly on Feb 18, 2019 11:35:16 GMT
What I like in all three dragon age games is I could make multiple different characters who did what they believed to be the right things/the best choices and have those actions be completely different/opposite. The "greyness", I guess, of the choices combined with the differing personalities and beliefs of the character I made. So I hope they maintain that in da4 and don't fall into the trap witcher sometimes did of instead of having different choices that my character might think the best option in different playthroughs - they just have choices that seem equally repugnant no matter who you are and it feels like your choice doesn't matter.
I will agree that while grey choices and darker realities were present in the DAI they did feel a little more distant then in previous games. Though it's trickier to put the finger on why exactly.
I don't think its about the visuals, atleast not for me, DAI was i huge step up in graphics and looked way better but it doesn't look cheerier or anything.
It might be coming from when the inquisitor hears about things by reading about them, perhaps stuff that you see has more impact then stuff that you read about. It might be the literal distance of being zoomed out in conversation and less cinematics.
It might be about personal stakes, the warden got an origin to connect them to the worlds troubles beyond just the blight/mainquest, Hawke got their tragic origin event™ stretched out over the whole game and partially interconected with its events. The inquisitor is very connected to the main plot but doesn't have much onscreen connection to other things in the world.
It might be that the far larger amount of exploration content spaces out the darker and more narratively present plot points so they seem less thick on the ground.
It might also have something to do with the fact that when the inquisitor goes around putting peoples house in order and recruiting them, the shit they have the resolve is caused by the big bad (preventing the corypawn from assasinating the empress [or not], alexius/envy's traps and controlling of their respective factions, revealing the trick played on the wardens) as opposed to their own fault/events that were happening in the world regardless of the big bad (orzammer assembly standstill, the circle falling in on itself, dalish-cursed wolves cursing dalish inkind)
Or maybe each of these things contribute a small amount that build up to the effect, i dunno. Feeling an effect from a game and figuring out how to change it are different beasts.
Regardless, I hope that the da4 protagonist has a personal stake in the world and whats happening in it (tevinter if thats where it is) not just in stopping solas.
RE: Hawke - there are alot of things I like about da2, but the personality dialogue system was not one of them. I hope we never see it again. Which is not to say that the dialogue system can't still use improvement, just not that way please.
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Post by Little Bengel on Feb 18, 2019 14:06:41 GMT
But the Inquisition's problem was not the colourfulness. The Inquisition's story was not dark, because the Chosen One saved the world, just like in the fairy tales. Truth. Not only is the world saved, but it is saved with relatively little cost or change (to the protagonist's situation) no matter what you do (Haven aside). In Origins, you could outright die (or Alistair or Loghain could) if you didn't take the right choices. In 2, depending on your final choice, Hawke could end up fleeing the city or become Viscount. Of course, Trespasser arrived and put a slight dent or two into what could potentially be an otherwise peaceful future for the Inquisitor, but in the base game? Bad guy loses, chosen one wins, party time, then back to business as usual.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2019 14:30:30 GMT
For a game like DA:I that was supposed to show how the world was close to be destroyed, it was really light and a bit boring lol.
I felt way more pressure in DA:O, while it happened in an irrelevant small country called Ferelden and didn't even concerned the rest of the continent...
The orlesian civil war was even laughable. If it weren't for the book, I wouldn't even notice how brutal it should be.
The worst thing that happened in DA:I ? The loss of Heaven, a small village. Yeah.
Seriously, DA4 needs to do more than this. But I admit that maybe it was also because the gameplay was too disconnected from the narrative.
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Post by alanc9 on Feb 18, 2019 15:29:17 GMT
...which you rarely see affect anyone you care about. Compare: DAO's mage origin (imprisonment), DAO's city elf origin (rape), DAO's Dalish elf origin (confining social boundaries), DAO's human noble origin (destruction of your home), DAO's dwarf commoner orign (de-facto slavery), DAO's dwarf noble origin (murder of a relative), and exile for all of them. In DAI, not even companions are thusly affected (as they are in DA2), only throwaway NPCs, and then they soon die as to not uncomfortably remind you of the situation. I maintain: the experience has been sanitized. Note that the origins are doing all the work here. One might as well say that DA:O itself is sanitized the moment you get to Ostagar. The origins gave DA:O access to strategies which DAI didn't have an easy way to get to. You can't put the companions in an oppressive situation without turning recruiting companions into a major quest, or having that past somehow come back to bite them in the ass. (Arguably the case for Blackwall, so it isn't impossible.) Alternatively, I suppose DAI could have been completely restructured, turning the Inquisition into an actual, um, inquisition into the structure of Thedosian society itself. But while that would have been an interesting game, I'm not sure we can judge the game Bio made against a game Bio never tried to make.
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Post by Little Bengel on Feb 18, 2019 16:09:13 GMT
...which you rarely see affect anyone you care about. Compare: DAO's mage origin (imprisonment), DAO's city elf origin (rape), DAO's Dalish elf origin (confining social boundaries), DAO's human noble origin (destruction of your home), DAO's dwarf commoner orign (de-facto slavery), DAO's dwarf noble origin (murder of a relative), and exile for all of them. In DAI, not even companions are thusly affected (as they are in DA2), only throwaway NPCs, and then they soon die as to not uncomfortably remind you of the situation. I maintain: the experience has been sanitized. Note that the origins are doing all the work here. One might as well say that DA:O itself is sanitized the moment you get to Ostagar. The origins gave DA:O access to strategies which DAI didn't have an easy way to get to. You can't put the companions in an oppressive situation without turning recruiting companions into a major quest, or having that past somehow come back to bite them in the ass. (Arguably the case for Blackwall, so it isn't impossible.) Alternatively, I suppose DAI could have been completely restructured, turning the Inquisition into an actual, um, inquisition into the structure of Thedosian society itself. But while that would have been an interesting game, I'm not sure we can judge the game Bio made against a game Bio never tried to make. True, but bad things can still happen to people you care about post-origin. Alistair can die if he kills the Archdemon without performing the Ritual, or he can become a drunkard in DA2. Zevran can turn on you near the end if you don't have high enough approval. Even the Warden can die if the Ritual isn't performed. And that's not even getting into DA2, where most of your family can die, Anders (a potential LI) blows up a Chantry full of innocent (if maybe ineffectual) people, Merrill is either exiled from her clan or watches them die at Hawke's hands to defend her, Isabela can up and leave you when the going gets tough... Granted, some of these are done by the characters themselves, but it's more than in Inquisition, Blackwall and Solas aside.
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Post by alanc9 on Feb 18, 2019 17:45:59 GMT
The Iron Bull too, no?
Note that Cullen can come to a bad end too, although epilogue text doesn't have the same impact. Maybe lyrium-mad Cullen can turn up in DA4?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2019 17:46:30 GMT
BTW, DA2's characterization was extreme, often to the point of parody, which isn't exactly convincing either. What do you mean? If it was on the verge of being parodic, then what it was parodying? CRPGs? BW games? D&D fantasy*? Dark fantasy? High fantasy? Whatever it is, I cannot see it at all. However, I do agree that DA2's characterization was extreme, but is an extremity ipso facto unconvincing? Or was DA2's extremity unconvincing in some particular way? Again, I don't exactly share the sentiment of the unconvincingness, but I am curious to know why some might think so. *DA is quite removed from that genre atm, but the inspiration and foundational tropes are there. It shares many basic elements and starting points , but they are used in a very different manner than traditional D&D fantasy does. It raises different perspectives, different questions, different emphases, etc.
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Post by gervaise21 on Feb 18, 2019 17:50:49 GMT
If Qarinus fell in 9:44 that means it fell in the same year as Tresspasser happened. Now this means that A. the end slide about tensions between the Qunari and the Imperium getting worse was accurate obviously but more importantly B. given the distances involved and the fact that they couldn't be sure Vidisaala's plan failed it would seem to suggest they were going to hit both places relatively simultaneously. I don't think the comic states an actual date for when it is set; we just know it occurs in the period following the Exalted Council. The events in Deception follow those of Knight Errant, so it is reasonable to assume a timescale of either late 9:44 or early 9:45.
The epilogue to Trespasser makes it clear that it is because the Viddasala plot failed, they turned their attention back to Tevinter. Essentially if they had managed to secure a quick and easy victory over the south, this would have isolated Tevinter. It also shows that it was definitely known about and approved by Par Vollen by the very fact they had their troops all ready to roll against the south but with an easy victory having been denied to them, they went with a surprise assault in Tevinter in the hope of making some quick gains there. Apparently, according to the comic, Tevinter's spy network was so useless that they were not aware of the build up of forces and the Magisterium so self-serving and corrupt that they never thought to reinforce the defences of Ventus/Qarinus, given what a strategically important city it is. So the Qun were able to invade and take down the city in the space of one battle. I think the best way they could show Minrathous would be as a city of stark contrasts. You have the bright magnificence of the noble areas, the Proving Grounds and the Hanging Gardens, compared with the squalor of the slums. I really don't want to spend my entire time in a monochrome world, particularly when we are travelling to where it should be brightly lit by sunlight during the day. Decadent splendour doesn't have to be dull and ancient buildings can still be of light coloured stone even if they are crumbling. (It is something that I found peculiar about one of the images shown for Tevinter in World of Thedas, that it looked more like what you expect in the south with leaden skies and mist.) I am also holding out hopes that they don't end up making the majority of the citizens look like they are Goths, with obligatory black clothing intimated in World of Thedas. As for the tone, I expect a degree of tension considering the country is at war and likely atrocities as well, as we found evidence of in DAI without actually having to see them carried out. Hopefully a degree of balance in the depiction of Tevinter and the Qun if they do want us to choose between the two of them. If we travel to Seheron, then it should be as bad there as Iron Bull maintained.
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Post by Ieldra on Feb 18, 2019 18:04:41 GMT
BTW, DA2's characterization was extreme, often to the point of parody, which isn't exactly convincing either. What do you mean? If it was on the verge of being parodic, then what it was parodying? CRPGs? BW games? D&D fantasy*? Dark fantasy? High fantasy? Whatever it is, I cannot see it at all. However, I do agree that DA2's characterization was extreme, but is an extremity ipso facto unconvincing? Or was DA2's extremity unconvincing in some particular way? Again, I don't exactly share the sentiment of the unconvincingness, but I am curious to know why some might think so. Character archetypes of course. Or call them stereotypes. Tropes. Whatever. Whatever stories do to characterize, DA2 took it up to eleven. Which would be ok if it was just one character, like, say, Anders, whose type is extreme by definition. Things become unconvincing if they're all of that kind, though, because you feel like you're walking through a collection of stereotypes, not dealing with human characters. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad on its own, but add the combat animations and much of DA2 feels like a caricature. That this didn't destroy the story completely is almost a miracle.
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Post by Gileadan on Feb 18, 2019 18:18:25 GMT
Truth. Not only is the world saved, but it is saved with relatively little cost or change (to the protagonist's situation) no matter what you do (Haven aside). In Origins, you could outright die (or Alistair or Loghain could) if you didn't take the right choices. In 2, depending on your final choice, Hawke could end up fleeing the city or become Viscount. Of course, Trespasser arrived and put a slight dent or two into what could potentially be an otherwise peaceful future for the Inquisitor, but in the base game? Bad guy loses, chosen one wins, party time, then back to business as usual. And not only that, it is saved with little to no doubt, at any moment, that it will be saved in the end. The game coddles the protagonist to inevitable victory through the disaster du jour that always feels like a temporary problem from start to finish.
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Post by KaiserShep on Feb 18, 2019 18:58:57 GMT
I think the same as someone else who said that the tone felt pretty consistent across the games so far. I do think that the games should get back into doing more of the showing rather than telling for the uglier sides of the world, however. I think Origins did this fairly well, with things like the plight of the city elves, casteless dwarves, the origins of the broodmothers, etc.. The game had plenty of pretty dark places to go to, but through all that managed to work in lots of lightheartedness to provide some levity, so it wouldn’t become some grim, humorless experience. So long as the game can retain that balance that we’ve gotten for the most part, I’d be pretty happy with that.
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Post by Kabraxal on Feb 18, 2019 19:25:36 GMT
Be like Origins or Inquisition... both games nailed the tone. If they over compensate and ram into The Witcher’s awful and juvenile grim Edginess, then I will be severely disappointed if not pissed off. I want mature storytelling.
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Post by Little Bengel on Feb 18, 2019 19:29:59 GMT
The Iron Bull too, no? Note that Cullen can come to a bad end too, although epilogue text doesn't have the same impact. Maybe lyrium-mad Cullen can turn up in DA4? True. I was just taking the base game into consideration more than I did the DLCs. Trespasser is a step in the right direction, though. That I must admit.
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