Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition
I’m excited, I always wanted to explore that a little more.
The tattoos look like a variation on either June's or Mythal's vallaslin, and that looks like Dalish armor. So my guess was this was a Dalish Arcane Warrior or Rogue. But lyrium tattoos are an interesting theory, but they seem to be restricted to her face, and not all over as with Fenris. Maybe it's vallislin, just glowing for effect?
It’s hard to tell, especially with their eyes glowing in a different way. Then again this elf has white hair like Fenris, which I think we all assume was because of the experiments given his sister.
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The tattoos look like a variation on either June's or Mythal's vallaslin, and that looks like Dalish armor. So my guess was this was a Dalish Arcane Warrior or Rogue. But lyrium tattoos are an interesting theory, but they seem to be restricted to her face, and not all over as with Fenris. Maybe it's vallislin, just glowing for effect?
It’s hard to tell, especially with their eyes glowing in a different way. Then again this elf has white hair like Fenris, which I think we all assume was because of the experiments given his sister.
I think people may be overthinking this a bit. Maybe it was just a stylistic choice for the cover. Maybe it's actually a magic user who prefers to use the blades. Or perhaps the blade is enchanted and this is how they choose to illustrate the enchantment effect. We know enchants exist that can improve acuity or perception, so perhaps it's that.
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
I’m excited, I always wanted to explore that a little more.
The tattoos look like a variation on either June's or Mythal's vallaslin, and that looks like Dalish armor. So my guess was this was a Dalish Arcane Warrior or Rogue. But lyrium tattoos are an interesting theory, but they seem to be restricted to her face, and not all over as with Fenris. Maybe it's vallislin, just glowing for effect?
True. Yet we know Fenris was a little "one of a kind" experiment. It can be that the Dalish (or Arcane Warrior) have their own, less invesive magical tatoo. After all Vallaslin is already a type of magical tatoo.
Oh, I would love, love a return of the Arcane Warrior, even if just for story purpouse! One of the things I miss more from DAO as classes go!
"Odin è un nome ispirato alla mitologia nordica, ma in russo vuol dire qualcos'altro... significa uno! Chissà poi perché mi sarò scelto un nome russo?" Uno. PKNA
"Odin is a name ispired by norse mithology. However in russian it means something else... It means one! Why did I choose a russian name, I wonder?" Uno. PKNA
The tattoos look like a variation on either June's or Mythal's vallaslin, and that looks like Dalish armor. So my guess was this was a Dalish Arcane Warrior or Rogue. But lyrium tattoos are an interesting theory, but they seem to be restricted to her face, and not all over as with Fenris. Maybe it's vallislin, just glowing for effect?
True. Yet we know Fenris was a little "one of a kind" experiment. It can be that the Dalish (or Arcane Warrior) have their own, less invesive magical tatoo. After all Vallaslin is already a type of magical tatoo.
Oh, I would love, love a return of the Arcane Warrior, even if just for story purpouse! One of the things I miss more from DAO as classes go!
Indeed! AW/KE style classes are definitely my jam.
Though it may be worth entertaining the possibility of lyrium tattoos, as (IIRC) we've had a hint that they might be a thing in DA4.
I’m excited, I always wanted to explore that a little more.
The tattoos look like a variation on either June's or Mythal's vallaslin, and that looks like Dalish armor. So my guess was this was a Dalish Arcane Warrior or Rogue. But lyrium tattoos are an interesting theory, but they seem to be restricted to her face, and not all over as with Fenris. Maybe it's vallislin, just glowing for effect?
Or maybe she's an ancient elf, with "real" vallaslin... The ones that mark her as some Evanuris' slave, and maybe do other things that we don't know about since we haven't encountered them much yet (except on the Sentinels, of course, but there they didn't really need to do anything special/there was no reason to ask Abelas since no one gets the story about the original meaning of vallaslin from Solas until after they've been to the Temple of Mythal).
The tattoos look like a variation on either June's or Mythal's vallaslin, and that looks like Dalish armor. So my guess was this was a Dalish Arcane Warrior or Rogue. But lyrium tattoos are an interesting theory, but they seem to be restricted to her face, and not all over as with Fenris. Maybe it's vallislin, just glowing for effect?
Or maybe she's an ancient elf, with "real" vallaslin... The ones that mark her as some Evanuris' slave, and maybe do other things that we don't know about since we haven't encountered them much yet (except on the Sentinels, of course, but there they didn't really need to do anything special/there was no reason to ask Abelas since no one gets the story about the original meaning of vallaslin from Solas until after they've been to the Temple of Mythal).
Yea... but I use the similarly looking Mythal vallaslin on my main and it does indeed looks like it glows at times. White tattoos are relatively uncommon and tend to give that appearance.
Plus, it's drawn as it's simply a white tatoo. There are shadows and highlights on it (which wouldn't be a thing if the tattoo glowed) and it lacks bloom that usually accompanies glowing objects. You can see it on Fenris' tatoos when they actually glow and it's lacking here.
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
seb hanlon @hanlsp and/or the just-too-good-for-this-game original concept for the Grand Fear Demon as an environmental boss with gigantic seed-pod legs that spawned spiders @joshstiksma
Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada Everybody do a @simuliu today. Shoot your shot. Speak out your dream job right here on Twitter. Tag the people who can make it happen. Don't even give a eff.
Low Gravitas Warning Signal @norareed i want to make a trash generator for the next dragon age game. like you know how when you kill randos they have pieces of twine in their pockets? i want to generate names for those objects
John Epler @eplerjc This is such a remarkably specific thing, I love it.
Emily (aka Domino) Taylor pentapod Ugh I have a talk to give tomorrow and I have rewritten it at least 20 times and I'm still not happy with it but have now reached the point where I've added picture of an underwear gnome to see if it helps, so at least there's that. 😖 #argh
Electric McDangerous @a_Fat_Raccoon Hey @hanlsp , I FINALLY played through the end of Dragon Age: Inquisition(been noodling around doing side-quests and whatnot for almost 2 years now) and got a little kick when I saw your name in the credits! 😁 Thanks for helping to make such a wonderful experience.
seb hanlon @hanlsp also, in case you missed it the first time around, please enjoy this trailer for Trespasser, including @alixwiltonregan delivering some of my favorite lines in the whole series
hey, sports fans. It’s been almost 4 years since Trespasser shipped! Isn’t this a great trailer? #dragonage
Emily (aka Domino) Taylor pentapod “We should NOT be crunching, unless a meteor is about to hit the building or something.” “Um... FYI I’m going to remote in if a meteor is about to hit the building.” “Okay, maybe a bad metaphor.” #overheardintheoffice
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Emily (aka Domino) Taylor pentapod “We should NOT be crunching, unless a meteor is about to hit the building or something.” “Um... FYI I’m going to remote in if a meteor is about to hit the building.” “Okay, maybe a bad metaphor.” #overheardintheoffice
I hope this means BioWare is getting serious about avoiding crunch for DA4. Good for them!
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Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, Anthem, Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Emily (aka Domino) Taylor pentapod “We should NOT be crunching, unless a meteor is about to hit the building or something.” “Um... FYI I’m going to remote in if a meteor is about to hit the building.” “Okay, maybe a bad metaphor.” #overheardintheoffice
I hope this means BioWare is getting serious about avoiding crunch for DA4. Good for them!
I hope that's the case. It's hard to infer anything too concrete based on the statement. It could mean the company no longer allows crunching (under new guidelines), or it could mean the person Emily overheard believes they are crunching right now, and disagrees with the fact that they are.
Crunch should be avoided except in a national emergency.
On the other hand, a light nibble applied with care and attention to detail is often acceptable. Disclaimer. Any double meaning you apply to this statement is your own mind. (And you should be ashamed of yourself!)
Crunch should be avoided except in a national emergency.
On the other hand, a light nibble applied with care and attention to detail is often acceptable. Disclaimer. Any double meaning you apply to this statement is your own mind. (And you should be ashamed of yourself!)
completely unashamed *eyebrow waggle*
does this chain mail have a forward link?
LOST DOG responds to Solas/Fen'harel/you bastard if found,return to Inquisitor Levellan immediately
The next two in the series of "The History of Dragon Age" were released recently. While probably nothing new for regulars here, I thought I'd leave it here anyway for those interested...
Just watched those-found them fascinating. Have they actually figured out now how to use frostbite and how much pressure will there be to use the technology from xbox1 and ps4
Ask a Game Dev @askagamedev A question to all of you other devs out there. Can you state your field of expertise and describe what you think the difference is between a junior, mid-level, and senior developer in your field is?
As I read this I think on some level "junior" through to "senior" is a mix of amount of responsibility and experience.
Hard to know that fine line, and certainly people can be given a ton of responsibility and be in way over their head. Also not sure where that line *is*
In the context of QA and responsibility though I'd probably be:
Junior: Largely executing testing delegated towards you Mid: Have specific ownerships and areas of responsibility that you drive test strategy for Senior: Considered an authority on probably several systems.
Senior part gets hard given that at BioWare we can have several paths where Senior people tend to either become team leads or are known as exceptionally skilled along several modes.
Fort Tarsis [CURRENTLY PLAYING: Shenmue 1] @forttarsishub I am a Senior QA Engineer at my company, any tips? We're still growing here ;-;
Allan Schumacher allanschumacher Hard to say as I don't think I'm senior! <.<
One of my big learnings as both a QA Analyst and QA software developer is beware the automation black hole. @askagamedev might have perspective too, but some tasks are just very difficult to automate especially like "play the game!"
But I find it's pretty seductive because, well, if I could make a bot that could creatively play through say, Mass Effect, that'd really help out testing things like crit path functionality and let human testers test more complicated stuff!
Ask a Game Dev @askagamedev I've worked on two separate projects with an automated testing suite and it's definitely a double-edged sword. Automated testing can catch a lot of system-level bugs by just mashing input and doing certain tasks, but often suffer from becoming development cancer.
"development cancer" meaning that they just grow in scope uncontrollably until they're essentially useless and abandoned
The biggest problem with any sort of automated test is that you need constant supervision and maintenance. It's a pretty huge ask as the project ramps up and the scope of the automation increases, which is why it can be come development cancer if you aren't vigilant
Allan Schumacher allanschumacher Doubly so if I create the test but not the system. System changes happen and I get caught unaware.
One of our best automation successes was working with a designer that created the test. It just did a simple suite of movement tests and measured the speed. I helped ETL the data.
Basically he had a dashboard that he could quickly look at and go "has anything obviously bad happened to locomotion systems" by seeing if the graphs had any changes.
Really helped for keeping on top. But he designed tests and knew to update them when he changed the system.
Ask a Game Dev @askagamedev What sort of specializations are available for QA? Would that be stuff like cert, embedded QA, etc.?
Allan Schumacher allanschumacher Cert is definitely one. I can't remember the specific title. Maybe "External" since they work with other teams.
Narrative is another one here. Once you become an embed is probably along the "mid level" transition. Varying systems can become the specialization: cinematics, combat
Ask a Game Dev @askagamedev Any thoughts/conjectures on career path/specializations besides cert for QA studios (e.g. EA Romania or Ireland) that aren't attached to specific projects?
Allan Schumacher allanschumacher That I don't. Not really sure about how those ecosystems work. I won't dispute that I probably have varying degrees of benefits by being face to face with the rest of the dev team. It helps being an embed, but frankly also opens doors to career shifts into design/programming.
I imagine you still get varying degrees of "I'm an expert." Possibly even granular in a way I wouldn't see (I'm expert at sport games. They're an expert at RPG systems) but stuff like that would also require lower turnover which may not be the case?
Emily (aka Domino) Taylor pentapod Programmer: I'd like to observe your workflow to see if there's anything we can fix or streamline! Me: 😍 I may have a few suggestions...
hint that they might be a thing in DA4. 
