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Post by majesticjazz on Feb 18, 2019 0:14:23 GMT
1) Hub areas need to be more vibrant with active NPCs.
Bioware got away with this in the past cause the gaming industry was not there yet, but with Val Royeaux in DAI....it was evident that hub areas was beginning to be a weakness for Bioware. This was reinforced with MEA and now with Fort Tarsis in Anthem, it is beginning to be a huge negative for Bioware. With games like Witcher 3, Assassins Creed Origins/Odyssey, and Cyberpunk 2077 all pushing gaming forward in this area....DA4 for a 2020/2021/2022 game needs to improve in this area.
2) Move away from the snarky "sitcom" style dialog with jokes, quibs, and cringy one liners.
This was a problem for many in MEA and was also a problem for many with Anthem. Dialog needs to be less teeny bopper and more adult like....especially if the rumored/expected dark nature of DA4 is in effect. Not everything has to mimmick the MCU.
3) Move away from the "Tell, but not show" narrative design.
This was a big problem with DAI as much of the world story was told through notes, letters and journals rather than having the player experience them first hand. MEA doubled downed on this and it appears Anthem has much of this as well.
4) Make "good" choices more difficult to make.
Bioware has always been stuck with the concept of making good choices would lead to good outcomes while bad choices would lead to bad outcomes. It made the player feel less inclined to make bad choices/options outside of the "I just wanna be evil/a jerk" game sessions. I think Witcher 3 showed that you could do this and Assasins Creed Odyssey proved this method workable as well. Rarely ever in a Bioware game does a good choice yield negative consequences in the longterm or a bad choice yields good consequences in the longterm. It just makes things less predictable and more interesting when faced with choices cause you know that despite saving the family that is affected by the disease....you still caused bad outcomes cause that family spread that disease throughout the village and ultimately everyone in the village died. This happened in Assassins Creed Odyssey but if it were a Bioware game, saving the family would have also meant the village was saved as well.
5) The Elder One and MEA villain were essentially cartoon characters. DA4 needs to have a villain that is a bit deeper and not the "I just wanna see the world burn and I want muah power!" Villains. Assuming DA4 has Solas as the main villain, perhaps this wont be a problem.
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Post by pessimistpanda on Feb 18, 2019 0:35:14 GMT
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Post by colfoley on Feb 18, 2019 0:41:23 GMT
1. Probably. But I don't really anticipate this as being much of an issue for BioWare's games in the future. The tech just wasn't ready for DAI but more and more games are doing it. Even still I don't think this is a neccessity.
2. BioWare has always had that dialogue back to ME 2, ME 1, and DAO. Now you can argue the frequency has certainly increased buy BioWare has always tried for snark and humor, even in some of their best games. So again, not a neccessity.
Besides Anthem isn't even out yet so we do not know what kind of humor the game will have.
3. This is an odd one for me since a lot of the complaints levied against DAI (IE its a 'light hearted' game) seem to come from people who don't pay attention and want to be spoon fed (IE told) about how grim and dark is. Or be bashed over the head with grim dark cut scenes like the Hespith scene in DAO. I mean sure having more characters telling you to do interesting things (and having those characters be interesting and fleshed out) is always a plus almost every game has those kinds of notes. Including Odyssey, and that game is doing quite fine. Also Andromeda was a step in the right direction because most of the quests and missions in that game came from interesting characters asking me to do things.
4. This one is truly a headscratcher for me. BioWare hasn't had any morally 'good' choices since Mass Effect 3...at the earliest. All the major choices in DA I and MEA were neither good nor bad. And the consequences for those choices, while I agree game devs should always try and expand how much 'consequences' can come from the choices players make in their games those consequences always haven't always been 'good'. Like if you side against Jaal in the quest with the Moshae he can eventually just entirely ignore you (same with Drack) and then in DAI if you don't do the Elven Rituals at the temple of mythal you have to go kill a bunch of innocent Elves. Meaningful consequences for simple choices.
5. I agree with this. As much as it pains me too BioWare really could do a lot more showing when it comes to their villains. The problem is most video games like focusing on a protagnist player character almost exclusively. Gamers won't tolerate the game taking control away from them to show villains motivations and back stories for extended periods of time like with Television and books. That's why you can basically count the number of good video game antagonists on one hand.
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Post by Frost on Feb 18, 2019 1:46:16 GMT
Here are my thoughts: 1) This is not something that I personally care about, but I know a lot of people do. Hopefully, they can do this if they have the time and money. 2) I am hopeful this won't be an issue in DA4. DA4's lead writer has a lot of experience on other Bioware games and has not written in "sitcom" style in those games. 3) Agree. This was a huge problem in DAI's side quests (along with strange camera angles for NPCs during side quests) and to me should be the top priority of things to improve for DA4. It seems that they have heard people's feedback, so I am hopeful that it won't be an issue in DA4. 5) It is the Dread Wolf Rises, so Solas will be the main villain.
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Post by duskwanderer on Feb 18, 2019 2:11:05 GMT
1.) I find the concept of the "hub" world to be fairly useless. I understand building up a homebase, but an outworld hub...I never got the appeal.
2.) There's nothing wrong with jokes, humor is a great way to engage. But I think it's gotten a bit one note. I think they just need new joke writers.
3.) I agree
4.) That's actually a way to sap player enjoyment more than anything else. If choices have drastic consequences that are unforseen, the game can be criticized as unpredictable, and taking the dickish path is something that a player may not want to do. I remember Fallout 1 was like this in original drafts of Junktown. Siding with Gizmo was stable, but siding with Darkwater meant he became a vigilante and killed people without trial. It came out of nowhere and testers reacted poorly, so it was changed.
5.) Solas is a pretty one-dimensional villain: He acts all thoughtful and calm, but really he's just an arrogant racist who doesn't like the non-elves.
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Post by DragonKingReborn on Feb 18, 2019 4:20:14 GMT
1) Hub areas need to be more vibrant with active NPCs. Bioware got away with this in the past cause the gaming industry was not there yet, but with Val Royeaux in DAI....it was evident that hub areas was beginning to be a weakness for Bioware. This was reinforced with MEA and now with Fort Tarsis in Anthem, it is beginning to be a huge negative for Bioware. With games like Witcher 3, Assassins Creed Origins/Odyssey, and Cyberpunk 2077 all pushing gaming forward in this area....DA4 for a 2020/2021/2022 game needs to improve in this area. Fair criticism, although I'd say if we're heading to Tevinter as suggested in the DAI epilogue, then they'd have planned on at least one city being centre stage so it isn't something I'm greatly worried about. MEA didn't have cities, other than that one Angara one where we were only allowed in a certain area. For the rest, they were settlements and that's terming them generously. Well...dark humour is a thing. I'm fine with quip-laden dialogue, but it actually needs to be funny. I laughed a fair bit during DAI. There were even some funny moments in MEA. So, dark or light, I'm fairly confident that DA4 will have lots of humour and I'll probably like it. Um, yes. Codices should add flavour to a game and not be a core gameplay/narrative mechanic. Yes, I feel there should be a consequence for doing the "good" thing, at least some of the time. Agreed.
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Post by Fredward on Feb 18, 2019 4:40:06 GMT
I agree with the hub thing, presumably a lot of the game is going to be set in Minrathous and if they don't pull it off the game is going to be hobbled from the start. With dialogue as far as I'm concerned DA has always been the high water mark wrt Bioware's writing, when they're funny it's not canned laughter funny (usually) they're funny because the humor is generated organically from the characters, their flaws, foibles, attitudes etc. I don't really agree with the tell don't show thing, not on the face of it but because as far as I'm concerned show and tell existed alongside each other in DAI. The notes and books and stuff fleshed out aspects of the world that we were never going to get to see (too big, too much, too out of the way), which made the rest of the world feel like it actually existed and it wasn't just about what the Inquisitor was doing and we got to explore objectively more spaces than in any previous DA game. And I totally agree with making good choices harder to make, it's something I've mentioned myself before. Though I don't want it to go out of the way to punish you for being nice, have consequences flow naturally from the content of the decisions and leave moralizing it (one way or the other) at the door.
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Post by biggydx on Feb 18, 2019 6:30:17 GMT
I'm not that concerned about the writing for DA, since it's typically been a cut above other recent BioWare titles. Most of the issues surrounding Inquisition lied mostly with side quest design and the open world lacking meaningful content. I do agree that the Hub area should feel more alive. Even if it has to be made smaller to compensate, I'm cool with that.
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Post by gervaise21 on Feb 18, 2019 8:47:52 GMT
5. I agree with this. As much as it pains me too BioWare really could do a lot more showing when it comes to their villains. The problem is most video games like focusing on a protagnist player character almost exclusively. Gamers won't tolerate the game taking control away from them to show villains motivations and back stories for extended periods of time like with Television and books. That's why you can basically count the number of good video game antagonists on one hand Actually there is a problem with showing cut scenes that don't involve the PC which involves role playing immersion. I dislike being shown things that my PC can't possibly know. It happened with the cut scenes with Loghain, Howe, Anora and Zevran in Denerim and it also happens with the epilogue to DAI with Flemeth and Solas. In the latter case it actually removed what would have been a genuine journey of discovery in Trespasser to a case of the PC catching up with what the player already knew. Patrick Weakes did suggests at one point that they would like to have more cut scenes of this sort in the future but to my mind that does mean you are now simply participating in a story as a third party looking in (as you are in a book or on TV) rather than actually role playing a character and reacting to situations based off what you know as you live the world. For me to see something elsewhere in the game world there needs to be an in-game explanation for why I can do this. For example, you see it in the Fade or through someone interacting with you in your dreams. Then your PC is allowed to react to future encounters on the basis of this knowledge. What I did like was having things like the thoughts of Corypheus' servant in the Fade that gave insights into his character at the time he undertook the venture to the Golden/Black City. Then, if you do Champions of the Just, finding the memory crystals with Corypheus' own current thoughts on what has occurred since that time. The main objection there was that this was only available to people who took one specific path. Such insights into the mind of Corypheus were totally denied to you if you sided with the mages. So anything that expands on the character and motivations of the antagonist should be made available to you as part of the main story line, even if only revealed if you make certain choices as part of the plot, but not totally denied to you because you choose X faction to support instead of Y, particularly if they are not directly involved in the reveal. The information in the Temple of Dumat was only discovered after the actual section resolving the mage/Templar war. I always felt that splitting the path between the two different lieutenants didn't make much sense in terms of the Well of Sorrows plot, where clearly Calpernia was the most logical vessel since she was still alive but in the background to the Hushed Whispers path, just never seen on screen, and diminished Corypheus as a villain. The reason why Solas comes across as a better antagonist than Corypheus is precisely because we meet him directly and hear from him personally what his motivations were in the past and what they are for the future. Corypheus was definitely a missed opportunity as there was so much more I'd have liked to have discovered from him about why he acted as he did in ancient times. In the present he had potential based off his motivations as revealed to us at Haven but the next time we meet him he has degenerated into the standard cackling villain. This could be explained in game by the fact that the defeat of his plans meant he no longer cared about anything but revenge but it is also possible that his character suffered by not being the real mastermind that we had to defeat but simply one of many obstacles we had to overcome on the way to finding out who was our true enemy.
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Post by colfoley on Feb 18, 2019 9:04:56 GMT
5. I agree with this. As much as it pains me too BioWare really could do a lot more showing when it comes to their villains. The problem is most video games like focusing on a protagnist player character almost exclusively. Gamers won't tolerate the game taking control away from them to show villains motivations and back stories for extended periods of time like with Television and books. That's why you can basically count the number of good video game antagonists on one hand Actually there is a problem with showing cut scenes that don't involve the PC which involves role playing immersion. I dislike being shown things that my PC can't possibly know. It happened with the cut scenes with Loghain, Howe, Anora and Zevran in Denerim and it also happens with the epilogue to DAI with Flemeth and Solas. In the latter case it actually removed what would have been a genuine journey of discovery in Trespasser to a case of the PC catching up with what the player already knew. Patrick Weakes did suggests at one point that they would like to have more cut scenes of this sort in the future but to my mind that does mean you are now simply participating in a story as a third party looking in (as you are in a book or on TV) rather than actually role playing a character and reacting to situations based off what you know as you live the world. For me to see something elsewhere in the game world there needs to be an in-game explanation for why I can do this. For example, you see it in the Fade or through someone interacting with you in your dreams. Then your PC is allowed to react to future encounters on the basis of this knowledge. What I did like was having things like the thoughts of Corypheus' servant in the Fade that gave insights into his character at the time he undertook the venture to the Golden/Black City. Then, if you do Champions of the Just, finding the memory crystals with Corypheus' own current thoughts on what has occurred since that time. The main objection there was that this was only available to people who took one specific path. Such insights into the mind of Corypheus were totally denied to you if you sided with the mages. So anything that expands on the character and motivations of the antagonist should be made available to you as part of the main story line, even if only revealed if you make certain choices as part of the plot, but not totally denied to you because you choose X faction to support instead of Y, particularly if they are not directly involved in the reveal. The information in the Temple of Dumat was only discovered after the actual section resolving the mage/Templar war. I always felt that splitting the path between the two different lieutenants didn't make much sense in terms of the Well of Sorrows plot, where clearly Calpernia was the most logical vessel since she was still alive but in the background to the Hushed Whispers path, just never seen on screen, and diminished Corypheus as a villain. The reason why Solas comes across as a better antagonist than Corypheus is precisely because we meet him directly and hear from him personally what his motivations were in the past and what they are for the future. Corypheus was definitely a missed opportunity as there was so much more I'd have liked to have discovered from him about why he acted as he did in ancient times. In the present he had potential based off his motivations as revealed to us at Haven but the next time we meet him he has degenerated into the standard cackling villain. This could be explained in game by the fact that the defeat of his plans meant he no longer cared about anything but revenge but it is also possible that his character suffered by not being the real mastermind that we had to defeat but simply one of many obstacles we had to overcome on the way to finding out who was our true enemy. Oh yeah definitley. It is an interesting problem to solve for game writers/ designers but you have seen several good examples of things which lead to good developments for Antagonists. -You work with the Illusive Man in ME 2 (granted in ME 3 he didn't make a great antagonist IMO but you still got to know the character) -Hawke spent two acts getting to know and even doing jobs for the Arishock...who is BioWare's best antagonist to date. -Solas was a significant ally for the Inquisitor so we got to know him as a player. Now we don't know how he wil do as an antagonist but the potential is there. -Andrew Ryan you got to know him through the dialogue and the audio logs of the people of Rapture, through the archetecture of the city...hell pretty much everything in that game was designed to expand upon the characters of Andrew Ryan and Frak Fontaine. And well I thought it was a shame that Corypheus and the Inquisitor never had the chance to talk with one another. Like if Corypheus had captured the Inquisitor even temporarily could've gone a ong way and if Corypheus wasn't so purely antagonistic at first. I mean hell at that point the Inquisitor wouldn't have been fully comitted to the cause of the Inquisition maybe he thought he could turn them.
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Post by Gileadan on Feb 18, 2019 9:32:05 GMT
I agree with the need for more lively, vibrant hubs, but I'm not very hopeful.
What really needs to be avoided is the MEA style of writing. BioWare's writing took a sharp nose dive with MEA, completely avoiding all deep, interesting conversations in favour of YA tier sitcom and one-liners that merely lacked a canned laughter track. If the genophage conversation with Mordin on Tuchanka (ME2) had been in MEA, it would have gone like this:
Mordin: "What do you think about the genophage?" Shepard: Emotional: "It wasn't very nice." / Logical: "Made sense to me." And then the Codex would inform you about the thought provoking discussion about the genophage that you had with Mordin and made you understand him better. Like Suvi and religion. The "tell, don't show" principle applied to conversations.
I want none of that in DA4. I don't want another bunch of stand up comedy trainees that seem completely unaware of the severity of the situation at hand. And I certainly don't want yet another Corypheus style villain.
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Post by Absafraginlootly on Feb 18, 2019 12:28:30 GMT
And well I thought it was a shame that Corypheus and the Inquisitor never had the chance to talk with one another. Like if Corypheus had captured the Inquisitor even temporarily could've gone a ong way and if Corypheus wasn't so purely antagonistic at first. I mean hell at that point the Inquisitor wouldn't have been fully comitted to the cause of the Inquisition maybe he thought he could turn them. Oh sure, that bit in haven where he briefly glances at your mark, determines its useless to him and throws you away could instead have been him capturing you so he can work on trying to remove the mark. Providing an opportunity for an actual conversation. I do think its a shame that they never took advantage of the fact that Corypheus can appear normal. The end of legacy and Bianca having spoken to him still looking like a warden show that he doesn't have to burst out of the warden he inhabits like a stripper from a cake. That could have been an excellent oppurtunity to talk with him without even knowing he was your enemy. Or for him to do sneaky shit like infiltrate your base to leave it wide open for attack, or walk right up to the leader of the wardens you just recruited, slit his own throat, whomp over and take command. We know that corypheus could be sneaky and clever because of all those plots that he set before the game even started - but we only got to see him onscreen when he was smashing things
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Post by Little Bengel on Feb 18, 2019 13:10:38 GMT
1: Having checked Anthem out, this is starting to worry me by the minute, because I can see Bioware choosing to build a new hub city in Minrathous. Not saying it's impossible... but they definitely have a long way ahead of them.
2: This definitely needs to go. Bioware games always had an element of comedy to them, but now it's becoming more pronounced. If there's one negative I can highlight for the MCU, it's the prevalence of quippy humor that arrived in the wake of its success.
3: This I can agree with. It's debatable how much "show" and "tell" there is in DAI, but for DA4 they need to lean more on the "show" whenever possible.
5: One word: YES.
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Post by Iddy on Feb 18, 2019 13:59:54 GMT
6) D W A R F S E X
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Post by boxofscreaming on Feb 18, 2019 20:14:07 GMT
I think "show don't tell" is often bad advice. Much of the plot of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was told through books and letters and it ended up as one of the most thought-provoking and memorable stories in an RPG.
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Post by pessimistpanda on Feb 18, 2019 20:54:48 GMT
To be perfectly honest, I would never take writing advice from someone who unironically says that something is 'too teeny bopper'.
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Post by river82 on Feb 18, 2019 21:56:56 GMT
I especially agree with point number 2. Bioware's gone from having a serious atmosphere liberally sprinkled with whimsical quipping to lighten the mood, to (*looks at Andromeda and Anthem*) having nothing but whimsical quipping.
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Post by river82 on Feb 18, 2019 22:00:44 GMT
I think "show don't tell" is often bad advice. Much of the plot of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was told through books and letters and it ended up as one of the most thought-provoking and memorable stories in an RPG. People play Elder Scrolls for the story? : S I thought people usually treated that game like a sim, go out and adventure in a really well realised and detailed world. IIRC you could beat Morrowind in about 2 minutes, and the plot of Oblivion was easiest to do at level 1, which isn't really the sort of gameplay mechanics found in a game with a great story
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Post by pessimistpanda on Feb 19, 2019 1:55:54 GMT
I especially agree with point number 2. Bioware's gone from having a serious atmosphere liberally sprinkled with whimsical quipping to lighten the mood, to (*looks at Andromeda and Anthem*) having nothing but whimsical quipping. And all their games must have a serious atmosphere because...?
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Post by river82 on Feb 19, 2019 1:59:43 GMT
I especially agree with point number 2. Bioware's gone from having a serious atmosphere liberally sprinkled with whimsical quipping to lighten the mood, to (*looks at Andromeda and Anthem*) having nothing but whimsical quipping. And all their games must have a serious atmosphere because...? Well I didn't say they MUST do anything. But why do I believe they need to move away from all 100% light-hearted? Because they made their name telling epic fantasy, then later branched into epic science fiction, and it's very hard to write epic fiction when everything is always light hearted. They could branch out and do light hearted games if they want, but imo they don't really do a good job at it.
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Post by pessimistpanda on Feb 19, 2019 2:39:53 GMT
And all their games must have a serious atmosphere because...? Well I didn't say they MUST do anything. But why do I believe they need to move away from all 100% light-hearted? Because they made their name telling epic fantasy, then later branched into epic science fiction, and it's very hard to write epic fiction when everything is always light hearted. They could branch out and do light hearted games if they want, but imo they don't really do a good job at it. Well, aside from the fact that I think you are completely wrong about the tone of the series (if anything DAI has far less jokes than its predecessors, and almost none of them were funny, and the protagonist doesn't even have a 'humorous' dialogue branch anymore), BioWare's earliest games also had multiplayer elements, and everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten that. So appeals to BioWare's history as a developer of ___________ seem arbitrary. Plus, I just plain despise this entire mode of debate, where words like "epic", "dark", "mature" and all their synonyms and antonyms simply mean whatever the speaker wants them to, and now things I like are epic and things I don't are not, and the established definitions of the various fantasy subgenres can all go fuck themselves.
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Post by river82 on Feb 19, 2019 2:53:17 GMT
Well I didn't say they MUST do anything. But why do I believe they need to move away from all 100% light-hearted? Because they made their name telling epic fantasy, then later branched into epic science fiction, and it's very hard to write epic fiction when everything is always light hearted. They could branch out and do light hearted games if they want, but imo they don't really do a good job at it. Well, aside from the fact that I think you are completely wrong about the tone of the series (if anything DAI has far less jokes than its predecessors, and almost none of them were funny, and the protagonist doesn't even have a 'humorous' dialogue branch anymore), BioWare's earliest games also had multiplayer elements, and everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten that. So appeals to BioWare's history as a developer of ___________ seem arbitrary. Plus, I just plain despise this entire mode of debate, where words like "epic", "dark", "mature" and all their synonyms and antonyms simply mean whatever the speaker wants them to, and now things I like are epic and things I don't are not, and the established definitions of the various fantasy subgenres can all go fuck themselves. I didn't mention Inquisition, I mentioned Andromeda and Anthem. I respect Inquisition for maintaining a seriousness in its storytelling. If you reread the OP you'll notice that, once again, no mention of Inquisition is made. What is epic fantasy? Epic fantasy, a thousand years ago, used to have a very defined and specific meaning that has largely become obsolete these days. When people talk about epic fantasy these days they tend to talk about fantasy which is large in scope, the world is large, the problem affects the world, the consequences are large, the villains are larger than life. Epic fantasy is relatively self-explanatory in that it deals with the scope and scale of the story. Something is of epic scale if it threatens an entire world or universe. Epic stories don’t just involve a village, city, or even country, they are far more wide-reaching and are filled to the brim with so many characters you may need to keep a list of them to hand. To accompany this epic plot, you often have a novel of epic length. You know the kind… where they could double as weights or door stops in a violent storm. Epic stories also tend to have fairly black and white ideas of good and evil/light and dark. Think Jedi versus Sith, everyone in Middle Earth that’s not under Sauron’s control, or Belgarion’s questing party against Torak in The Belgariad. This genre also tends to include magic in some guise as well as characters on a quest, but these are elements they also tend to share with the high fantasy subgenre.pop-verse.com/2015/05/13/epic-heroic-urban-whats-the-difference-between-fantasy-sub-genres/So bringing this back to Bioware, it's very hard to write a story with dire consequences, a huge problem, and terrible villains, when everything is always light hearted *looks at Andromeda*
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Post by pessimistpanda on Feb 19, 2019 3:00:31 GMT
Well, aside from the fact that I think you are completely wrong about the tone of the series (if anything DAI has far less jokes than its predecessors, and almost none of them were funny, and the protagonist doesn't even have a 'humorous' dialogue branch anymore), BioWare's earliest games also had multiplayer elements, and everyone seems to have conveniently forgotten that. So appeals to BioWare's history as a developer of ___________ seem arbitrary. Plus, I just plain despise this entire mode of debate, where words like "epic", "dark", "mature" and all their synonyms and antonyms simply mean whatever the speaker wants them to, and now things I like are epic and things I don't are not, and the established definitions of the various fantasy subgenres can all go fuck themselves. I didn't mention Inquisition, I mentioned Andromeda and Anthem. I respect Inquisition for maintaining a seriousness in its storytelling. If you reread the OP you'll notice that, once again, no mention of Inquisition is made. What is epic fantasy? Epic fantasy, a thousand years ago, used to have a very defined and specific meaning that has largely become obsolete these days. When people talk about epic fantasy these days they tend to talk about fantasy which is large in scope, the world is large, the problem affects the world, the consequences are large, the villains are larger than life. Epic fantasy is relatively self-explanatory in that it deals with the scope and scale of the story. Something is of epic scale if it threatens an entire world or universe. Epic stories don’t just involve a village, city, or even country, they are far more wide-reaching and are filled to the brim with so many characters you may need to keep a list of them to hand. To accompany this epic plot, you often have a novel of epic length. You know the kind… where they could double as weights or door stops in a violent storm. Epic stories also tend to have fairly black and white ideas of good and evil/light and dark. Think Jedi versus Sith, everyone in Middle Earth that’s not under Sauron’s control, or Belgarion’s questing party against Torak in The Belgariad. This genre also tends to include magic in some guise as well as characters on a quest, but these are elements they also tend to share with the high fantasy subgenre.pop-verse.com/2015/05/13/epic-heroic-urban-whats-the-difference-between-fantasy-sub-genres/So bringing this back to Bioware, it's very hard to write a story with dire consequences, a huge problem, and terrible villains, when everything is always light hearted *looks at Andromeda* Orrrrrr... Andromeda's tone and story are fine, and people are just trying to assert their personal taste as objective fact.
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Post by river82 on Feb 19, 2019 3:02:27 GMT
I didn't mention Inquisition, I mentioned Andromeda and Anthem. I respect Inquisition for maintaining a seriousness in its storytelling. If you reread the OP you'll notice that, once again, no mention of Inquisition is made. What is epic fantasy? Epic fantasy, a thousand years ago, used to have a very defined and specific meaning that has largely become obsolete these days. When people talk about epic fantasy these days they tend to talk about fantasy which is large in scope, the world is large, the problem affects the world, the consequences are large, the villains are larger than life. Epic fantasy is relatively self-explanatory in that it deals with the scope and scale of the story. Something is of epic scale if it threatens an entire world or universe. Epic stories don’t just involve a village, city, or even country, they are far more wide-reaching and are filled to the brim with so many characters you may need to keep a list of them to hand. To accompany this epic plot, you often have a novel of epic length. You know the kind… where they could double as weights or door stops in a violent storm. Epic stories also tend to have fairly black and white ideas of good and evil/light and dark. Think Jedi versus Sith, everyone in Middle Earth that’s not under Sauron’s control, or Belgarion’s questing party against Torak in The Belgariad. This genre also tends to include magic in some guise as well as characters on a quest, but these are elements they also tend to share with the high fantasy subgenre.pop-verse.com/2015/05/13/epic-heroic-urban-whats-the-difference-between-fantasy-sub-genres/So bringing this back to Bioware, it's very hard to write a story with dire consequences, a huge problem, and terrible villains, when everything is always light hearted *looks at Andromeda* Orrrrrr... Andromeda's tone and story are fine, and people are just trying to assert their personal taste as objective fact. Your complaining about me asserting my opinion as objective fact in a post where you asserted your opinion as objective fact ...
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Post by river82 on Feb 19, 2019 5:54:31 GMT
As has been pointed out to me in an excellent post by Samhaim444, which was later taken to DM because of spoilers, Anthem is not always goofing around. And looks to be more serious than Andromeda, though still too light-hearted for me. So I wanted to reiterate that it is strictly my opinion (as I stated clearly above, despite PessimistPanda insisting I was asserting things as objective fact) that Bioware is better with a serious atmosphere sprinkled with light heartedness. People may disagree with that because people have different tastes, as is their right, but I'm also allowed to express my opinion which is that their stories are more impactful when serious ... some might even say darker, and that they should return to that style of writings for future stories. But I know there are some who would disagree vehemently with that
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