Schmooples' Den! The DA News Discussion Thread

Erm... that day has long been here. It's just that the chosen "good" color of skin and sexuality were narrowed down to virtually only one option for each most of the time for quite a while  . Now THAT's identity politics of epic proportions... So yeah, we need to balance this out a little bit and I think it's baffling anyone could find it even mildly concerning.

/EOT for me

I had a bit of a Dragon Age question and wasn't sure where else to ask. If there is a more appropriate thread pls point me to it, TIA.

I'm wondering if anyone knows if all the books/comics that have been coming out are going to be required reading to know what's going on in the game? Will I be missing out on a lot of happenings? Or does everyone think it'll be fine?

If the general consensus is that reading is required, is there an order list somewhere?

Thanks!

(Also, I love SWtOR and it should always be included. The Austin team is good peeps!)

My original post wasn't comparing Bioware to anyone other than themselves:

"How can a company that released 3 ME games between 2007 and 2012 and 3 DA games between 2009 and 2014 now only have Anthem and MEA as releases over the past 6 years. Even MEA is now 3 years old should and should be due to get a sequel if there is even one contemplated but who would know as they communicate nothing and just expect customers to faithfully wait. It's a terrible indictment on Bioware and their communication strategy not to mention their project management skills."

That's 6 games in 7 years, yet since then they have released 2 in 6 years and both with issues at Launch.


In regards to the Cyberpunk comparison it was purely to do with the amount of communication re the games pre release.

They only have two games in 6 years because those two games had really troubled developments, and the Dragon Age project that was being developed after Inquisition was scrapped by EA, that directed most of the DA team into Anthem's dev team, and a small team was left to start a new DA project.

The 6 games in 7 years should also be analyzed with the caveat that EA forced Bioware to release a second Dragon Age in an insane short time, with basically one year of development...which caused issue in its reception, as the game, regardless of what you think of what they did about the plot and gameplay (which, with a normal development time, could've been improved), was released with tons of bugs, glitches and technical problems. I also think ME3 should've had a longer development then it had. We should remember that Bioware isn't like Ubisoft, that has tons of teams with far more developers on a series like Assassin's Creed, where they can have full teams work on different projects and have yearly releases (and even AC now skipped a year).

All of those things combines, plus the culture problems in Bioware that were discussed. by Jason Scheier on his article, lead to the current situation (for DA4, expecially the former project being scrapped).

I could agree on a smaller game (and I think that, while DA4 will likely be an open world game, they don't have to necessarily going for the biggest/among the biggest open world games, like they did with DAI). I don't agree on a rushed game, because it give tons of pressure and stress to the devs, and the game are affect negatively by it.
DA2's story was affect by the limited time of development, regardless if you like or hate it.

Which is why I think game development is going to die. At least, a large part of it is and will be substituted by automation, to make up for the large employee count, the crunch and long development cycles.

Sure, it would be great if they released quarterly substantial story updates to DA4 up through the release of DA5, but do you really think that is at all likely? I am not expecting anything beyond the usual dlc we got for previous games along with lots of cosmetic microtransactions and low effort events meant to sell those microtransactions.

All the way to DA5? I don't know - it depends how long DA5 will be in development. Much longer than the support period for games like DAI? Quite possibly.

Anyway, as far as I understand, everything that extends the life span of a title beyond what's in the base product now falls under the umbrella of live service. All the "usual DLCs" are also live services. This is why the DA devs told us years ago that every DA title to date had them. Thing is now the post-launch support period is a way more deliberate thing, rather than an afterthought and that likely means a longer, more consistent stream of updates, including story content.

I'd think that according to that definition, modding support would be live service.

Still less than TES.

The extra material IS canon. If it wasn't so Cole - a character introduced in Asunder - wouldn't be part of DAI, or events of TME wouldn't be mentioned in the game. Thing is that, in places where comic/book events conflict with chosen world-state, AFAIK, we've been told by devs that we are to imagine that major events of those stories did indeed happen, only somewhat differently.