An entirely seperate b-questline will revolve around the Archon (main antagonist)

I'm sure it's an interesting read and all but the thread title is very spoilery. Could you change it, please. The spoiler rules thread states very clearly not to put spoilers in titles.

I'm particularly pleased that some quest lines will span multiple worlds. I just hope the writing (with cutscenes) is there and/or not been reduced to Astrarium/Shard collection.

Not nearly enough imo.  They tried to go on the cheap with that 3rd type of NPC interaction.  Jaws of Hakkon was an improvement on story within a large area, but the lack of cutscenes cheapened the experience...again imo.

I hope he's portrayed in a more... for lack of a better word, human manner than Corypheus. There was almost no nuance there. It'd be more interesting if the Archon was more like the villains of DA2 or like Loghain from DA:O, where even though he's an antagonist, there's more to it than just murder for the sake of murder. With the Arishok, he had to deal with struggling against his religious code. With Meredith and Orsino, they had to deal with their own respective ideals on the matter of magic and pushback against implementing them. And so on.

Mac did use the word "nuanced" but that was in comparison to the Reapers. But being a leader of the Kett which is a people and not a horde of demons and Archon being one of his own, I imagine and hope they've given him some properly fleshed out motivation and not made him too "I'm so evil, listen to how evil I am" every time he speaks.

Even so it can work. I liked Eredin in Witcher 3 even though he was a letdown to be honest. He worked becuase he was actually just a person and not some super-god and he had a reasonable motive for being the bad guy albeit completely egotistical and he was portrayed in a one-sided way and spouting villanous lines like a cartoon character, but to me it worked becuase he had presence.

That's the thing the Archon needs. He needs to be fucking present in the story multiple times before you beat him and he has to seem menacing and not like some vague threat everyone keeps talking about. The worst thing about DA:I was how right after the first encounter everyone goes "We have to stop Corypheus, or else!" -- almost every companion talks about him that way and you're just like "that weird abomination dude? What is so bad about him?"

It didn't help that you actually don't get a formal introduction to him. The first time you hear the name "Corypheus" is when you wake up after the first encounter and Mother Giselle calls him Corypheus. The player has no knowledge of who "Corypheus" is. He was called "The Elder One" in all scenes prior to that, which is a writing mistake. A similar thing happened with "The Prothean Device" vs "The Crucible" in ME3. If you do some side-missions too early you start getting emails about "The Crucible" before Hackett reveals the name.


This would be nice. I'm however thinking more akin to the Temple of Dumat questline in DA:I.

Would the Inquisition settle for "average"? I don't think so. Get someone who can do a superb job in this area because the fans clearly want the money spent in that direction.

Personally I'd prefer it if the Archon had more political motivations rather than religious. Perhaps he's a reformist of some type? Or maybe the Kett are traditionally isolationists and the Archon and his followers want to change that and start expanding or even reclaiming territory that once belonged to them but they lost due to some past conflict... idk, just some thoughts

Or reduced to a codex entry.. I can't tell you how much I missed because I didn't peruse all the reading material in DA:I

God, yes, thanks for bring that up.  I absolutely hate that sort of thing.  And that's a super big no, no in storytelling.  Show, don't tell.

I mainly guess at the religious angle from

Oh that sounds really good, I am all for some b-quests that gives you a good look at the world and NPCs. I love that in DA2 and I am glad they are doing it again. Now all we need is top notch writing.

Personally, I think that in terms of overall cinematic design, ME3's was probably the best, because there were instances where the cutscene would actually mesh right into the gameplay which I found pretty enjoyable. 

The fact that its called a B-storyline worries me. Seems like Bioware sees it as side content and isn't really putting much effort into them/ All content should be treated the same imo.