Protagonist: Introductory section, or placed straight into the action?

I absolutely hope they implement something like the origin system into DA4, they sort of paid vague lipservice to the idea in DAI so it's not entirely out of the question. DAO still has possibly the most satisfying protagonist experience I've ever seen due to how certain events feel very different across different playthroughs depending on which origin you chose.

I don't see why it should have to be one or the other, but if I have to pick one, I'd say straight into the action. The absolute weakest part of every rpg is the time we spend meandering around our podunk hometown, having the basic concepts of the world explained to us as though we were babies. Plus they always, ALWAYS burn it down and kill everyone in it, so why the fuck should I, the player, give a shit?

Who we are and where we come from can always be dealt with later, perhaps in a flashback sequence that we get some control over. Or perhaps, depending on your chosen origin, you get different personal sidequests.

I wonder if the success and positive player feedback of Cyberpunks branching origin stories will make BioWare reconsider adding it in last minute. I remember one of the devs saying they stopped doing it because it wasn't as utilized as they liked; most people would only do one playthrough. I disagree with discontinuing it though because (1) it distinguishes your game from your competitors in the RPG genre, and (2) it allows your more dedicated playerbase more opportunities to role play. Most of the people who buy DLC's for a game are people who will likely give the game another playthrough anyway. Plus, even if the argument of "people normally only do one playthrough" were a thing, why add New Game + to the Mass Effect Trilogy?

True. I still think origins stories (even if limited) are good ways of expressing uniqueness in the characters you control.

I also prefer the DA:O approach. I like having some time in the beginning to talk to people, wander around a bit, learn some of the controls, and generally get a lay of the land first.

However, I know that's a pie-in-the-sky dream. The feedback BW got from DA:O was that people were complaining that they weren't getting thrown into the action right away. And that's why they made the change to throw players to the wolves right at the start in the subsequent games.

I remember way-back-when I brought up the pros & cons of this approach with someone at BW, and was told they didn't have any plans to go back to having slower starts. Of course, never say never, but I wouldn't count on it.

As much as I love origin stories (they add imeasurable replay and immersion value) their absence isn't the reason the beginnings of DA2 and DAI suck, they suck because they're in medias res.

If you start DAO at Ostagar then you still have a decent beginning where your introduced to important plot elements/the world, allowed to roleplay your character, be reacted to differently based on your background and most importantly experience discovering the Tower of Ishal has been taken, waking up one of few survivors and discovering loghains betrayel with your character. You expereance the crisis and aftermath with your character and can roleplay through it. And having actually witnessed what came before you can actually appreaciate what's happened.

Dragon age 2's beginning was like starting Origins with Aeducan already banished and fighting through the deeproads to Duncan. Inquisitions was like starting in Flemeth's Hut, complete with not remembering how you survived.

The idea behind making them in medias res was to start the player out with something exciting to draw them in, but for me it just served to immediately make me out of step with my own character and push me right out of the story. Watching my hawke reacting to having to flee from an attack on their village I didn't see/ experiance with them, watching my inquistor react to the deaths of a large amount of people I neither saw nor knew a single name of, was not exciting or fun. Twas disconnecting and immersion breaking, thankfully the rest of the games were great, very much inspite of their starts.

It's not as if you can't start with something exciting without dumping the player in the middle of/towards the end of their definining background event or main story plot hook. The Dalish origin starts you pointing your arrows at intruding humans and then immediately takes you to an ancient ruin filled with monsters. A future protagonists story could easily start with something interesting (a fight, settling a confrontation, a con, whatever) thats just apart of the characters life not the big crisis that will lead them into the main plot and that is spoiled by lack of context.

While I'd absolutly love to see Origins or a start that is different depending on your background in some smaller way - at this point I'm just hoping that the beginning that the background has/all the backgrounds share is an actual Beginning and not another in medias res mess.

I mean, by this logic I could argue that any and all stories start in media res unless they show the protagonist being born, and every moment of their life up until the story actually starts.

Not only do I disagree that DA2 starts in media res, I would argue it starts too far from the beginning of the plot (such as it is), and that the Lothering sequence should have been cut in its entirity. The only real purpose it ever served was fanservice, the story proper doesn't even really start until Hawke meets Varric, a full year later.

As for DAI, it is fundamentally a mystery story. Finding out how you came to be where you are, and how you acquired these abilities is a core plot point. That does not mean it starts in media res, unless you think every story about amnesia starts in media res. You say the rest of the game was great, but giving us all that information upfront would have destroyed it. We would have a completely different end product. And it would ruin the elf origin completely, because a dalish spy can't just wander around an international peace summit, asking Templars stupid questions like "what is a chantry?"

Asking that the story not start right in the middle of a plot event of the game but instead shortly before so you can experiance it with your character is hardly the same thing and as asking to be present for every event of their life and I've no idea how you got that from my post. Or if you didn't why you would bring it up.


DA2 starts you with your character in the middle of fleeing with their family from the darkspawn attacking their village. Whether you consider it in medias res or not, it wasn't fun for me and I hope not to see it again. Starting in Kirkwall, whether at the gates or by encountereing varric, with a blurb that your family fled ferelden because of the blight, might well have been a better beginning allowing you to start on the same page as your character, depending on the execution.

Whenever the story of da4 starts I only hope that it not be right in the middle of that starting plot event. Regardless of whether that plot event is part of their background or the main story.


I am aware of the reasons why they chose to start DAI the way they did, in the middle of the crisis of the sky being torn open above thedas, this did not stop the experience from sucking for me. Amnesia does not mean you have to start in the middle of the main plot hook. Geralt had amnesia in from the beginning of The Witcher video game but the story still didn't start in the middle of the Salamandra's attack or straight after it, it started before then and you experianced the event that would jumpstart the games main plot (hunting the salamandra) with Geralt. His amnesia was also total, so you were on the same page with him, as opposed to him being shocked/angry/sad/confused about how a bunch of people he remembers and you've no idea about died.

I did not actually make a suggestion about how inquisition should have started, but we could still seen have the conclave without revealing anything about corypheus or the mark (much as we don't see, nor does our character remember, Flemeth rescuing our Warden from the Tower of Ishal after we fade to black), so starting with the sky already torn open was hardly a requirement to maintain the mystery.  

Since the PC asking questions they should know the answer to but the player might not is a completely seperate problem, one that is solved by finding other ways to convey the information which can be done regardless of whether the story starts in the middle of a major plot event or not, I'm not sure why you mentioned it.

I'm glad that you enjoyed the beginnings of DA2 and DAI, but I didn't and this thread is for people to express their preference for how the game starts. I did not expect to change the mind of anyone who did enjoy those beginnings when I shared my opinion, nor is it possible for anyone to retroactively change my not enjoying them.

And I mean, how much time does anyone need to familiarise themselves with Thedas, REALLY? It's an extremely generic fantasy world.

The only way anybody could struggle to grasp the basic concepts of Dragon Age is if they read LOTR back in 1954 and then promptly fell into a coma until 2009.

I liked the slower start of DA:O but I didn't like that we were given such a '' detailed '' origin story. I think things like an origin story should be left for the player themselves to figure out and create.

What???

I can only assume that the people they asked for feedback were all knuckle-dragging high school frat boys who "jU5t wAnt 2 pwN sTo0Ff lolololol111!!!!"

Obviously I prefer the slow start, and ability to live some kind of 'normal life' before being shunted into the action, as it allows my character to become properly bedded in, and allows me to form a proper relationship with them. Half Life was the first game I ever played that did this and I was absolutely blown away by the concept.

I can understand how some people felt that the origin stories in DA:O dragged on a bit too long, but actually moaning that there wasn't instant combat action right from the first mouse click is a bit much, especially in a role playing game.

Yes, exactly, after literal decades of every game in the world using this exact setup, it simply no longer has the power it once did.

"Haha! We killed your parents/wife/friends! I bet you're SUPER pissed and really motivated to play the whole game to get vengeance!"

If anything, crap like that is liable to make me give up on a game even earlier.