Meet me in Minrathous

Ancient?

It is a couple weeks old. I don't consume the forum like a can of Coke - I would puke. Therefore, I don't see every topic or post immediately or at all.

Simping... Go ahead kid, I feel like this is just the start of your tantrum. Be aware it will only make you look more foolish.

Come on guys, make love not war!

Sorry I'm siding with Panda on this one 

I work in a public library, and I see a lot more stuff that, judging from the pulp-style covers and blurbs, follows more in the vein of Conan the Barbarian and John Carter of Mars, but I never saw any of this when I was working in a bookstore, or when I go shopping in bookstores. Libraries seem to be an entirely unique ecosystem, I see all sorts of shit every day (not just books, but film too) that I have never come across in any other context, lol.

I honestly have no idea who the "big names" are in fantasy these days, N.K. Jemisin? Maybe? Brandon Sanderson I assume.

I don't read much fantasy anymore because I got sick of being expected to keep up with absurdly long series. Even trilogies I find offputting now, and I wish more authors would do standalone novels. Fantasy has definitely moved on from Tolkien, though. When I was working in a bookstore and being expected to read often in order to make recommendations, I was able to find lots of stuff that satisfied my criteria of being different and interesting. The names people are bringing up in response to my posts are not people that I would have considered to be relevant, even six years ago, but I have no idea how popular China Mieville, Jeff VanderMeer or Zen Cho are, so maybe I should hold my tongue.

A gentle reminder that - as per the post from mousestalker above, this thread is for discussion of the concept art and how you feel the look and style may end up being incorporated in DA4.

It is not for debates about whether or not my Fantasy Author Dad could beat up your Fantasy Author Dad.

Thanks.

Responding in a PM.

Frankly, I see a tremendous amount of similarity between us. Some of it good, some not so much.

If you want to disregard me on face from here on, that is your loss but also your life, your rules.

In my ideal DA4 world, we’d see 3 fleshed out big cities, several smaller settlements, and maybe 3 large open locations. I do not need DAI’s ‘10 zones of fetch quests’, or DA2s repeating corridor city. I really REALLY hope they’ve used all their pre-prod and development time constructively.

I'm kinda expecting Minrathous to be a bit like Novigrad from the Witcher 3 in it's scale and complexity. Any less than that and I will honestly be a bit disappointed. D:

I think this would be a good opportunity for Bioware to wow us though, because we haven't really had a massive city to explore in the DA universe that has as much detail as they've described in the lore, and Minrathous is the biggest and oldest city in Thedas. There is a lot of history to reveal there so I think it makes sense story-wise and lore-wise to flesh it out as much as possible. I know what you mean though. I'd be happy with more quality quests and less filler overall, like the shards or astrariums in DAI which felt more like work than fun gameplay. 

I think it's interesting that Novigrad always comes up as a comparison. The Assassin's Creed cities do an even better job for me, they're large, sprawling and positively buzzing with life. Other than constantly stepping on chickens and running over people while on horseback, they're my fave game metropolis. Which reminds me, dear Bioware, please let me climb these buildings.