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Post by Sah291 on Mar 1, 2019 15:36:33 GMT
Bioware has gotten progressively more...quippy with their banter/writing, that does feel sort of Marvel like, true. I just figured it was because they are mostly aiming for a younger audience demographic now, which I guess I fall out of. The game is rated Teen (I think?), so I wasn't expecting to see anything too dark or gritty around town. The NPC interactions are mostly there to add interest and to flesh out the world and lore, IMO. I also feel like some of the humor is going for intentional camp or satire at times. Like lines sort of poking light fun at some of the romantic subplots and tropes Bioware is known for. If the only reason (or the biggest one) the dialogue feels quippier in Anthem is because it's T for Teen, then I can let it slide, as long as they steer clear of it in any future M-rated game. As much as I love the MCU, I'll never forgive it for making quippy shit more prevalent in fiction. Or at least in the fiction that I consume. Yes I've just doubled checked, it's got a T for Teen rating. I figure that's the other (big) reason there are no romances either, despite how popular that feature is with Bioware's fanbase. But I agree 100%, the quippy Marvel dialogue is everywhere in fiction these days and it's getting a little (a lot?) old. I appreciate Anthem doesn't seem to take itself too seriously though. It's good popcorn fun. But I'm also hoping for something more mature with DA4.
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Post by bshep on Mar 1, 2019 16:10:32 GMT
All the characters are completely one note. "Hi I'm a quirky Asshat", It's the exact opposite problem of what the first Destiny had, where everyone one was way too serious. In a game with a lot of fighting you need some serious dialogue. Not only that but many of the voices didn't seem to fit the characters. I expected better from this company. I have to disagree. While some NPCs are obviously there to be weird or comedic (Amal, Rythe, Sayrna, Matthias), others are dead serious like Layton, the Chronicler, the old survivor and the woman waiting for her daughter. Some, like Mora, Dax's aunt, Jak, Brin, Tassyn, Owen, Haluk and Faye are middle of the road. And that redheaded guy Neeson is supposed to be annoying AF.
Talking to one of them made me tear up, but I won't go further into spoilers.
And since most of those conversations aren't open in the first hours of game that is why i think OP never bothered to play the game much or any at all.
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Post by Vortex13 on Mar 1, 2019 16:15:29 GMT
Bioware has gotten progressively more...quippy with their banter/writing, that does feel sort of Marvel like, true. I just figured it was because they are mostly aiming for a younger audience demographic now, which I guess I fall out of. The game is rated Teen (I think?), so I wasn't expecting to see anything too dark or gritty around town. The NPC interactions are mostly there to add interest and to flesh out the world and lore, IMO. I also feel like some of the humor is going for intentional camp or satire at times. Like lines sort of poking light fun at some of the romantic subplots and tropes Bioware is known for. Tell me about it. I'm not one to completely abhor the occasional quip or funny bit of dialogue but with Anthem, Andromeda, and the Citadel DLC it just felt like it was on non-stop. The "Sexy Danger" Freelancer, and Dax (oh my God Dax is the worst), were just constant quips and 'funny lines' to the point of annoyance. I was immensely glad to be finished with their quests as it meant that I would never have to hear them speak to me again. All the "comedic dialogue" just feels out of place and artificially forced into the setting. The odd joke is fine, but the last few stories BioWare has told are apparently populated with some weird subspecies of humanity that can only communicate via bad puns, quips, and cringe inducing dialogue. Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins felt much more balanced when it came to seriousness and comedy (IMO).
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Post by hawkspian on Mar 1, 2019 16:25:04 GMT
All the characters are completely one note. "Hi I'm a quirky Asshat", It's the exact opposite problem of what the first Destiny had, where everyone one was way too serious. In a game with a lot of fighting you need some serious dialogue. Not only that but many of the voices didn't seem to fit the characters. I expected better from this company. I skipped almost all conversations as I wanted to get back out and kill stuff. 0 interest in the story. Same as I was with division and destiny. Just my cup o tea. When I want story I play dragon ages or mass effects. Or skyrim. Or oblivion. Or FIFA. Lol
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Post by Sah291 on Mar 1, 2019 16:28:54 GMT
Vortex13, Oh I agree Dax had some cringey lines during the missions. But my son watches me play and was cracking up...so is this quippy humor just that popular with gen z? I have to take it with a grain salt because I'm old and cranky (over 30) and have been playing Bioware games since Origins and ME1. They had always snappy dialogue back then. But it was more Buffy like, with a lot of snarky humor and cynicism...you know, stuff that appeals to older millennials and gen x.
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Post by Thrombin on Mar 1, 2019 16:35:46 GMT
There is another point to the conversations, though. You get faction points. I suspect you get points for different factions depending on which response you go with too. Rather like the Loyalty stuff in Dragon Age.
Some of the dialogue was particular moving or intense while others were just a bit of fun and comedy but I've enjoyed them all to one degree or other. The only issue I have is when they start repeating themselves with the same line every time you move near them. Better to say nothing than to keep saying the same thing over and over!
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Post by Vortex13 on Mar 1, 2019 16:58:21 GMT
Vortex13 , Oh I agree Dax had some cringey lines during the missions. But my son watches me play and was cracking up...so is this quippy humor just that popular with gen z? I have to take it with a grain salt because I'm old and cranky (over 30) and have been playing Bioware games since Origins and ME1. They had always snappy dialogue back then. But it was more Buffy like, with a lot of snarky humor and cynicism...you know, stuff that appeals to older millennials and gen x. It might be a generational thing (30 club myself), but I don't know it feels more like a dip in overall writing quality instead of just appealing to the younger generation (especially with Dax). After all, it's asier to write a character who's 'quirky' and babbles incoherent nonsense over the radio like a moron than actually try and flesh out the character; but that could me being cranky. Needless to say I really didn't like Dax
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Post by AnDromedary on Mar 1, 2019 17:12:40 GMT
I haven't played Anthem, but I do have the impression that the serious to humour ratio has changed a bit more towards humour over time in BioWare's games. Dragon Age Origins seemed to be mostly grim with frequent moments of humour to lighten it, while Mass Effect Andromeda seemed mostly comedy with occasional serious moments. I also feel like BW ramped it way up on the forced comedy iin recent years. Maybe I am getting my timeline confused but I think it started with Citadel.
Yes, The DA and ME series both had their fair share of humor but no one can tell me the e.g. ME3 was a comedy, come an.
But I think since Citadel got so well received after the otherwise rocky reception of ME3, BW did their thing and over-corrected. DA:I shows the first signs of this but there it's still sort of in check. ME:A already goes into this inappropriately hip and cheery direction, to the point where I found it tough to believe that the members (even the senior staff) of one of the most dangerous expeditions ever made are actually professionals. Almost every character in there has some sort of goofy personality quirk.
Anthem has its share of decent characters, especially in the main quest line. Owen in particular is one character I like from beginning to (almost) the end (haven't quite gotten to the end yet). He is also the cheery type but you cans ee that there is something underneath as well, right from the start.
But so many of the side NPCs are so quirky and seem to focus on such frivolous problems that I actually have trouble believing their otherwise fantastic setting. The humans in this world are supposed to struggle to survive in a surrounding where natural disasters of massive scale happen on a daily basis and where predators are around that send humans without javelins or striders to the bottom of the food chain.
In this world, an NPC who keeps telling you stories about how she went out of the city in the search of baby monsters that she wants to pet, the fellow freelancer who - according to his report - goes out of his way to save a grabbit in the middle of a firefight because his nephew likes the Detective Hops radio show or even the dude with his puddle petitions are really tugging hard on my suspension of disbelief and makes other NPCs like the oldest man in Tarsis with their rather grimdark stories seem more like sociopaths, rather then like people with a real problem.
It also doesn't help of course that we are not at all connected to these people. We don't have any personal stake in their stories, really. Why am I not involved in what's going on with these people? The setup for quests is all there. Why don't get a lost grain or seed shipment to get the new bakery started that I just advised some NPCs to open up? Why don't I actually get to help "sexy danger" lady to get her Javelin back?
The combination of disconnect between the NPCs and the world and the disconnect between the NPCs and the player is really the thing that bothers me the most about Anthem, mainly because it is the current high point in what I perceive as a deteriorating curve that's plagued BW games for the past several years. I really hope they can reverse that trend in a Dragon Age 4 or a new Mass Effect game.
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Post by bshep on Mar 1, 2019 17:23:40 GMT
There is another point to the conversations, though. You get faction points. I suspect you get points for different factions depending on which response you go with too. Rather like the Loyalty stuff in Dragon Age. Some of the dialogue was particular moving or intense while others were just a bit of fun and comedy but I've enjoyed them all to one degree or other. The only issue I have is when they start repeating themselves with the same line every time you move near them. Better to say nothing than to keep saying the same thing over and over! Yes there is true. Diferent dialogue choices give you points with either sentinels/arcanists(i see them usually grouped in this point system, maybe because they usually operate inside the city) or freelancers.
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Post by Vortex13 on Mar 1, 2019 17:44:25 GMT
I haven't played Anthem, but I do have the impression that the serious to humour ratio has changed a bit more towards humour over time in BioWare's games. Dragon Age Origins seemed to be mostly grim with frequent moments of humour to lighten it, while Mass Effect Andromeda seemed mostly comedy with occasional serious moments. I also feel like BW ramped it way up on the forced comedy iin recent years. Maybe I am getting my timeline confused but I think it started with Citadel.
Yes, THe DA and ME series both had theur fair share of humor but no one can tell me the e.g. ME3 was a comedy, come an.
But I think since Citadel got so well received after the otherwise rocky reception of ME3, BW did their thing and over-corrected. DA:I shows the first signs of thsi but there it's still sort of in check. ME:A already goes into this inappropriately hip and cheery direction, to the point where I found it tough to believe that the members (even the senior staff) of one of the most dangerous expeditions ever made are actually professionals. ALmost every character in there has some sort of goofy personality quirk.
Anthem has its share of decent characters, especially in the main questline. Owen in particular is one character I like from beginning to (almost) the end (haven't quite gotten to the end yet). But so many of the side NPCs are so quirky and seem to fucos on such frivolous problems that I actually have trouble believing their otherwies fantastic setting. The humans in this world are supposed to struggle to survive in a surrounding where natural disasters of massive scale happen on a dayly basis and where preditors are around that send humans without javelins or striders to the bottom of the food chain.
In this world, an NPC who keeps telling you stories about how she went out of the city in the search of baby monsters that she wants to pet, the fellow freelancer who - according to his report - goes out of his way to save a grabbit in the middle of a firefight because his nephew likes the Detective Hops radio show or even the dude with his puddle petitions really tugging hard on my suspension of disbelieve and makes other NPCs like the oldest man in Tarsis with their rather grimdark stories seem more like sociopaths, rather then like people with a real problem.
It also doesn't help of course that we are not at all connected to these people. We don't have any personal stake in their stories, really. Why am I not involved in what's going on with these people? The setup for quests is all there. Why don't get a lost grain or seed shipment to get the new bakery started that I just advised some NPCs to open up? Why don't I actually get to help "sexy danger" lady to get her Javelin back?
The combination of disconnect between the NPCs and the world and the disconnection between the NPCs and the player is really the thing that bother me the most about Anthem, mainly because it is the current high point in what I perceive as a deteriorating curve that's plagued BW games for the past several years. I really hope they can reverse that trend in a Dragon Age 4 or a new Mass Effect game.
Agreed completely on BioWare's seeming trend of over saturating their games with "comedy". Citadel was not enjoyable for me, I know that everyone else loved it because of how much of a downer the rest of the game was, but for me it felt like a completely separate universe, one were 'funny' doppelgängers had replaced all of my cherished companions. I found the shooting contest with Garrus in the main game to be much more endearing, even bringing a smile to my face, than I ever felt with his knockoff clone who spent the entire party talking about how he was going to booby trap my apartment. Dragon Age: Inquisition had a bit of restraint to it, but there were times were the tone of conversations and characters actions felt totally at odds with what was happening. Andromeda was even worse; like an entire 20+ Hour campaign that was even more 'zany' and 'quirky' than the Citadel DLC was. The way the characters acted in that game made me seriously wonder if everyone wasn't suffering permanent brain damage from the cryo-sleep. Now with Anthem we have a total disconnect from the established nature of the setting an how characters act. Tina from Bob's Burgers wanting to go pet baby animals and literally causing loss of limb with her stupidity, but hey its 'funny' and 'quirky' so nothing is done about it. Or Dax and her dialogue. Honestly, how is someone like that even allowed to be Sentinel? Is recruitment quotas at Fort Taris so low that authorities are turning to mentally unstable individuals for their police force? I too hope that the next Dragon Age or Mass Effect will correct this lopsided ratio seriousness to comedic moments; maybe even work on having said comedic elements be more natural extensions to the situations rather than forced humor just for the sake of it.
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Post by wright1978 on Mar 1, 2019 18:03:36 GMT
Agreed completely on BioWare's seeming trend of over saturating their games with "comedy". Citadel was not enjoyable for me, I know that everyone else loved it because of how much of a downer the rest of the game was, but for me it felt like a completely separate universe, one were 'funny' doppelgängers had replaced all of my cherished companions. I found the shooting contest with Garrus in the main game to be much more endearing, even bringing a smile to my face, than I ever felt with his knockoff clone who spent the entire party talking about how he was going to booby trap my apartment. Dragon Age: Inquisition had a bit of restraint to it, but there were times were the tone of conversations and characters actions felt totally at odds with what was happening. Andromeda was even worse; like an entire 20+ Hour campaign that was even more 'zany' and 'quirky' than the Citadel DLC was. The way the characters acted in that game made me seriously wonder if everyone wasn't suffering permanent brain damage from the cryo-sleep. Now with Anthem we have a total disconnect from the established nature of the setting an how characters act. Tina from Bob's Burgers wanting to go pet baby animals and literally causing loss of limb with her stupidity, but hey its 'funny' and 'quirky' so nothing is done about it. Or Dax and her dialogue. Honestly, how is someone like that even allowed to be Sentinel? Is recruitment quotas at Fort Taris so low that authorities are turning to mentally unstable individuals for their police force? I too hope that the next Dragon Age or Mass Effect will correct this lopsided ratio seriousness to comedic moments; maybe even work on having said comedic elements be more natural extensions to the situations rather than forced humor just for the sake of it. Citadel was hit and miss for me. There were some lovely moments and I appreciated additional content for favorite characters who got overlooked somewhat in the main game but equally wincy moments. I could accept most of it as sort of a fond farewell at the end of a trilogy but they seem to have taken its popularity as an excuse to do so without doing the serious character stuff.
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Post by Vortex13 on Mar 1, 2019 18:40:41 GMT
Agreed completely on BioWare's seeming trend of over saturating their games with "comedy". Citadel was not enjoyable for me, I know that everyone else loved it because of how much of a downer the rest of the game was, but for me it felt like a completely separate universe, one were 'funny' doppelgängers had replaced all of my cherished companions. I found the shooting contest with Garrus in the main game to be much more endearing, even bringing a smile to my face, than I ever felt with his knockoff clone who spent the entire party talking about how he was going to booby trap my apartment. Dragon Age: Inquisition had a bit of restraint to it, but there were times were the tone of conversations and characters actions felt totally at odds with what was happening. Andromeda was even worse; like an entire 20+ Hour campaign that was even more 'zany' and 'quirky' than the Citadel DLC was. The way the characters acted in that game made me seriously wonder if everyone wasn't suffering permanent brain damage from the cryo-sleep. Now with Anthem we have a total disconnect from the established nature of the setting an how characters act. Tina from Bob's Burgers wanting to go pet baby animals and literally causing loss of limb with her stupidity, but hey its 'funny' and 'quirky' so nothing is done about it. Or Dax and her dialogue. Honestly, how is someone like that even allowed to be Sentinel? Is recruitment quotas at Fort Taris so low that authorities are turning to mentally unstable individuals for their police force? I too hope that the next Dragon Age or Mass Effect will correct this lopsided ratio seriousness to comedic moments; maybe even work on having said comedic elements be more natural extensions to the situations rather than forced humor just for the sake of it. Citadel was hit and miss for me. There were some lovely moments and I appreciated additional content for favorite characters who got overlooked somewhat in the main game but equally wincy moments. I could accept most of it as sort of a fond farewell at the end of a trilogy but they seem to have taken its popularity as an excuse to do so without doing the serious character stuff. True enough. Citadel wasn't for me, but I could see the appeal it had for the majority of the player base, and I could safely ignore it after playing through it once. Unfortunately, as you said, BioWare has seemingly taken that DLC and begun using it as a blueprint for all future titles. It's no longer an option to overlook a wacky piece of side content since it's now baked into the very DNA of the main campaign. I can no longer expect characters to act rationally in a given situation, instead you have characters like Peebee, Liam, Dax, or Tina from Bob's Burgers acting on a logic wholly divorced from the setting I'm playing in.
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Post by AnDromedary on Mar 1, 2019 18:51:07 GMT
These days, I only play Citadel with the Citadel Ending Mod. Because when you play it after finishing the main sotry and the reapers are defeated, it makes perfect sense that everyone is super cheery und a bit silly. In that sense, I really enjoy the DLC. It's pure fan service but it's fan service well done. Also, I think after 3 games and 100s of hours of playtime in a franchise, the authors can afford to have a little fun with their setting. In the inaugural game of a new IP, dosing that sort of tongue in cheek humor properly is way more important IMO, if you want to sell the audience a believable setting. But I am totally with you Vortex13 on the point that good humor in BW games used to evolve naturally out of a situation. Take drunk Tali in ME3 for example. The scene was (arguably) pretty funny (emergency induction port ) but it also made sense in the context of Tali's relationship to her father and the fact that Miranda just had to deal with hers on the mission we were just on. It wasn't a disconnected self serving scene but underneath the humor there was a moment that brought different character arcs together. I wish we'd see more of that kind of humor in future BW games again, that are more seamlessly woven into the stories, characters and situations, rather than these "I wrote this NPC as a joke" kind of scenarios.
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Post by Mobius Y on Mar 1, 2019 19:06:33 GMT
It was worse in Andromeda but I get you. The dialogue to me feels like two 19 year old middle class girls with degrees in gender studies sat in a Starbucks and decided to try and impersonate 2 working class tradesman bantering with each other. “Oh my god my dude did you totally see the football last night?” “Yeah pal, I saw the football pal it was totally amazeballs and stuff” “Yeah and what about that goal by the Number 7, he really smashed the goal with the ball didn’t he pal? Your team are like totally trash fire and icky” “No your team are trash fire and icky, I like 100% spilled my beer all over my football jersey because I was so angrymad.” “Yeah dude, you’re such a asshat now let’s check our white privilege and finish construction on this house so we can go home and beat our wives because we are savages” Hey that’s a direct quote from conversations that framers have three times a day, obviously.
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Post by linksocarina on Mar 1, 2019 19:33:28 GMT
I haven't played Anthem, but I do have the impression that the serious to humour ratio has changed a bit more towards humour over time in BioWare's games. Dragon Age Origins seemed to be mostly grim with frequent moments of humour to lighten it, while Mass Effect Andromeda seemed mostly comedy with occasional serious moments. I also feel like BW ramped it way up on the forced comedy iin recent years. Maybe I am getting my timeline confused but I think it started with Citadel.
Yes, The DA and ME series both had their fair share of humor but no one can tell me the e.g. ME3 was a comedy, come an.
But I think since Citadel got so well received after the otherwise rocky reception of ME3, BW did their thing and over-corrected. DA:I shows the first signs of this but there it's still sort of in check. ME:A already goes into this inappropriately hip and cheery direction, to the point where I found it tough to believe that the members (even the senior staff) of one of the most dangerous expeditions ever made are actually professionals. Almost every character in there has some sort of goofy personality quirk.
But...thats kinda par for the course. Minsc comes to mind as the earliest example of an insufferable character quirk, and honestly he is much worse because it's more one note than most npcs are now in bioware games.
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Post by cypherj on Mar 1, 2019 19:55:16 GMT
I've come to the conclusion that neither video games or movies are being written for me anymore. They're going after a younger crowd. I've accepted this.
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Post by AnDromedary on Mar 1, 2019 19:58:20 GMT
But...thats kinda par for the course. Minsc comes to mind as the earliest example of an insufferable character quirk, and honestly he is much worse because it's more one note than most npcs are now in bioware games. I don't want to claim that the old games were all perfect. Conrad Verner for example teeters on the edge there as well.
I'd say the ratio of weird vs. believable when looking at the entire pool of characters in the games has shifted though.
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Post by linksocarina on Mar 1, 2019 22:23:08 GMT
But...thats kinda par for the course. Minsc comes to mind as the earliest example of an insufferable character quirk, and honestly he is much worse because it's more one note than most npcs are now in bioware games. I don't want to claim that the old games were all perfect. Conrad Verner for example teeters on the edge there as well.
I'd say the ratio of weird vs. believable when looking at the entire pool of characters in the games has shifted though.
I'm not sure i'm convinced that is the case, mainly because of the writing itself is only really on par in few instances to that "believable" scale. It's easy to look at the caricatures of Sayrna and the Janitor and all that, but their ratio is pretty low overall in the general game. Andromeda gets flak for the relatively young cast, but they were actually "real" people in how they acted. I am maybe going out on a limb here, but Cora and Liam are two of the best human characters BioWare has ever written because they are believable in their moods and dispositions, their shortcomings and general faults, all of that running the gamut that makes them hard to pin down as one "quirk". Most of the tempest crew fit that bill, actually, they didn't come off as caricatures outside of cherry picking lines. This is a massive far cry from the caricatures I have seen in BioWare games before I guess. Not saying they don't still exist either, but I am saying that they haven't really gone down a road of having everyone become the 2nd coming of Malcolm Reynolds. I will say this though, i'm more alarmed that their writing has not shown significant growths outside of several exceptions. Though I suspect that is mostly due to BioWare not wanting to venture out of their comfort zone again.
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Post by AnDromedary on Mar 1, 2019 22:44:33 GMT
Wait, did you just list Liam as one of the best human characters by BopWare? Seriously? Have you played his loyalty mission? Mr. "and one time in Crisis Response..." with all his really strange interactions with just about everyone around him is almost the low point of BioWare's history for me. Not even a comparison to someone like Kaiden, ME1 Ashley, Morrigan or Cullin.
But to each their own, I guess.
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Post by officerdonnz on Mar 1, 2019 22:59:49 GMT
Vortex13 , Oh I agree Dax had some cringey lines during the missions. But my son watches me play and was cracking up...so is this quippy humor just that popular with gen z? I have to take it with a grain salt because I'm old and cranky (over 30) and have been playing Bioware games since Origins and ME1. They had always snappy dialogue back then. But it was more Buffy like, with a lot of snarky humor and cynicism...you know, stuff that appeals to older millennials and gen x. Don't forget us 40+ people who have been playing Bioware games since BG 1
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Post by cypherj on Mar 1, 2019 23:20:28 GMT
Wait, did you just list Liam as one of the best human characters by BopWare? Seriously? Have you played his loyalty mission? Mr. "and one time in Crisis Response..." with all his really strange interactions with just about everyone around him is almost the low point of BioWare's history for me. Not even a comparison to someone like Kaiden, ME1 Ashley, Morrigan or Cullin. But to each their own, I guess. Man, people either love his loyalty mission or they hate it. I couldn't stand it, but I've seen some people rate it as one of the best missions in the game. Generational divide I guess.
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Post by Little Bengel on Mar 1, 2019 23:36:37 GMT
Vortex13 , Oh I agree Dax had some cringey lines during the missions. But my son watches me play and was cracking up...so is this quippy humor just that popular with gen z? I have to take it with a grain salt because I'm old and cranky (over 30) and have been playing Bioware games since Origins and ME1. They had always snappy dialogue back then. But it was more Buffy like, with a lot of snarky humor and cynicism...you know, stuff that appeals to older millennials and gen x. It might be a generational thing (30 club myself), but I don't know it feels more like a dip in overall writing quality instead of just appealing to the younger generation (especially with Dax). After all, it's asier to write a character who's 'quirky' and babbles incoherent nonsense over the radio like a moron than actually try and flesh out the character; but that could me being cranky. Needless to say I really didn't like Dax It's not generational, I can assure you. I'm 21 and I hate this "quirky", quippy shit. I prefer my humour with more snark and cynicism, a la DAO or 2. EDIT: Jesus, I really am 21. What am I doing with my life...?
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Post by Heimdall on Mar 1, 2019 23:52:28 GMT
Wait, did you just list Liam as one of the best human characters by BopWare? Seriously? Have you played his loyalty mission? Mr. "and one time in Crisis Response..." with all his really strange interactions with just about everyone around him is almost the low point of BioWare's history for me. Not even a comparison to someone like Kaiden, ME1 Ashley, Morrigan or Cullin. But to each their own, I guess. Well, I hated him, but that might just be because BioWare managed to write a character that so well emulates the sort of person I find insufferable in real life. Similar things have been said about Sera, who I liked.
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Post by smilesja on Mar 2, 2019 1:15:41 GMT
Wait, did you just list Liam as one of the best human characters by BopWare? Seriously? Have you played his loyalty mission? Mr. "and one time in Crisis Response..." with all his really strange interactions with just about everyone around him is almost the low point of BioWare's history for me. Not even a comparison to someone like Kaiden, ME1 Ashley, Morrigan or Cullin. But to each their own, I guess. Yeah Liam was written pretty realistic to me.
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Post by spacev3gan on Mar 2, 2019 1:24:44 GMT
The humour itself is not bad per se. It can have its place in the game.
But yeah, I do agree with the OP that the characters are just poorly written, simple as that.
Haluk does have his moments, but they end up being too few and far between. Faye, while she is present throughout most of the game, her personality just feels overall dull and shallow. I thought we would dive more into her story, but well, that never really happens. As for Owen, he is probably the highlight among the NPCs. Doing what he does (not spoiling that), he is still far beneath other similar characters Bioware have created in the past. Yarrow and Matti are OK being straight up generic quest-givers, nothing else, at the level you can expect from looter shooters.
As for the rest, oh boy, they are either forgettable or just worth forgetting about.
One thing that most people might have already forgotten: there is a main villain in Anthem, seriously, lol. A dude whom you will probably forget about not only when you are done with the campaign, but as you play the campaign. That guy is among the poorest written of the poorly written antagonists in gaming.
Now, to be honest, I suppose there isn't much about the story for a reason. No matter how much Bioware has tried to advertise otherwise, this game is not about the story whatsoever. This game is about shooting, flying, exploding stuff and getting loot.
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