The trailer looked so frigging bland that if I ever watch this, it will be out of curiosity about how dragon-agey it turns out to be, not because I think that it will be any good.
Teaser, not trailer. We haven't gotten a proper trailer yet. Netflix puts out trailers for upcoming series anywhere between a week to a month before release, so it won't be until November that we'll see one.
When we do, I think we'll be able to make a more accurate assessment of Absolution's potential quality.
Even better! The teaser, well... didn't tease very much.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
CDPR working on a sequel is a good decision. It lets them build a new game from the ground up instead of having to work with a base game's code that suffered so badly from the ill fated attempt to drag ancient console hardware along. They can lose that dead weight and make it snappy on present day hardware. A from the ground up work may take more effort, but will likely yield much better results.
I wanted more additional content for the original Cyberpunk 2077 too, but I totally understand what they're doing.
Ahem. On to the main topic.
The trailer looked so frigging bland that if I ever watch this, it will be out of curiosity about how dragon-agey it turns out to be, not because I think that it will be any good.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
I think this was pretty much confirmed, with DA2 conceived as a game-long origin story for Hawke. The devs also said at some point that they only covered about half of the story they intended in Inquisition. The impression I get is that the broad strokes of the main plot of DA:I and DA:D were originally going to be a single sequel to DA:O, but circumstances caused this hypothetical game to be split into two and get an extended prologue in DA2, effectively becoming a trilogy.
They used to say that they originally envisioned 5 games, so would this mean it would instead be 7? I wouldn't complain.
You must be an elf or asari or some other long lived species then...
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
I didn't like the Blandquisitor. I felt like the game actively sabotaged my attempts to give him some personality. Tried for "righteous wrath", got "well bummer I guess". Yes I know, there's one good moment for that, but it's just one and it's in the last DLC.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
Patch 1.7 will, among many other things, finally implement the police system everyone and their dog was jonesing for, at the price of cutting off old hardware, for whom 1.6 will have been the last patch.
I see four crows. And one lady with really impractical clothing for a fencer.
Practicality has nothing to do with armor and weapon designs in (most) fantasy. It's all either Rule of Cool or, at times, Rule of Sexy. Both at once, even. It was evident Dragon Age gave up on "realistic" gear right about the time the first "DA:O" trailer dropped
Contrast with Mass Effect, which started more or less reasonable, before giving everyone superhero costumes in ME2.
I'm quite aware of those rules, I just cringe at the dosage.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
I only ever tried to read The Stolen Throne, but it just wasn't my thing and I didn't touch any of the other books or comics.
So whatever happens there, I don't know it and thank goodness for that. I don't want to be influenced in my decisions by things my protagonist doesn't know because they were in a book or comic but not in the game.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
I don't know, human civilization is making a really good effort recently. It's a bit sad that I'm not particularly excited for anything on that list though.
But maybe DA4 will make it in 2024, just in time for the ten year gap.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
The great thing about (most likely) getting a new protagonist is that it doesn't really matter what the Inquisitor said and what "redemption" for Solas may actually mean (I personally don't think such a thing is even possible).
I'm hoping for an ending similar to The Witcher 1, just instead of
"But the silver one... is for monsters..."
we will get
"But s/he promised... to redeem me..."
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
I start most games on Normal just to get an idea of what's going on and then pick a difficulty that I feel is appropriate to the story.
If I'm playing as an underdog against terrible odds, I pick a very high difficulty. If I play as a Space Marine against trash, I leave it on normal. It has to feel right to me.
I played DAO on Nightmare out of curiosity and for the acheesements. DA2 and DAI I played on Hard right out of the box and never tried anything else since I didn't really feel like replaying them at all, just for the different diffculty settings. The combat just isn't fun enough for that, and I remember ME1 Nightmare or whatever the highest setting is as merely drawn out and annoying instead of actually difficult - I always imagined that those ridiculous bullet sponges eventually went down not because of the injuries I inflicted on them but because of the overall weight of all the rounds I flattened against their armour.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom handled the return of an iconic hero past his prime pretty well. A new conflict erupts, and the aging protagonist is transferred to a just as aging carrier by a resentful superior officer. But not all is as it seems in that new war, and it is up to the old guy to figure out who's really to blame for the unexplained attacks that have been happening. And the final confrontation was not a space battle, it was a senate hearing.
But this is a BioWare game, and I would greatly prefer if they left Shepard alone. I'd rather remember him as he was and not what he might turn into if written by whoever wrote MEA...
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
DAI's mouse and keyboard "support" practically screamed "last minute rush-job" to me, where controller inputs had simply been mapped to mouse and keyboard with very little usability testing. The UI in general was pretty awful, and I wonder why they bothered with that "Why DAI is awesome on PC" video at release.
But BioWare clearly prioritizes controllers over mouse and keyboard and has been doing so for a while. Just watch what the devs are using in the pre release streams. DAI felt like they wanted to make an action focused RPG but ended up with a weird, super clunky hybrid on PC. I hope combat gets lots of iteration (in whatever direction they prefer) for Dragon Age Dredwlof.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
DAO Favourite: Morrigan, Leliana, Zevran, Dog Least Favourite: Didn't really dislike anyone
DA2 Favourite: Aveline, Isabela, Varric - the only team I could really go with. I didn't like anyone else and really hated Fenris and Anders and their oppression olympics. I don't want to be a traveling therapist. Alos, what a waste of Gideon Emery's talent. Overall the most dire cast of companions.
DAI Favourite: Vivienne, Cassandra, Dorian Least Favourite: Blackwall (boredom with a beard), Solas (likes to listen to himself way too much)
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
I am fine with a "best ending" if it takes skill and effort to get it, i.e. more than just "pick the right conversation options".
My favourite example is Dawn of War II, a Warhammer 40,000 RTS with RPG elements. It had a bad ending, a good...ish ending that was cautiously optimistic and a heroic good ending. This last ending however required you to play at a certain minimum difficulty level, keep the enemy "infestation level" low enough on several planets throughout the game and achieve a minimum final score (calculated in some way from enemies killed, own troops lost and time taken to complete a mission). When you got that best ending, you knew you'd earned it.
I disagree. I would not appreciate a role-playing game in which the "best ending" is gated behind a higher difficulty setting for combat. That's fine for games that are combat-focused, but I do not play an RPG for the combat; I play it for the role-playing. Ideally a game would allow for several different ways to get a "best ending." For the people who live for video game combat and just click as fast as they can through dialogue without actually reading anything, there should be a way for them to get a "best ending" in a way similar to the one you describe for Dawn of War II. But for the people who enjoy the story, there should be a way for them to get a "best ending" through thinking through and picking the right dialogue options. As an example in DAI, I definitely felt like I'd earned the "Belle of the Ball" achievement at Halamshiral, having played the whole game spoiler-free as a Lavellan, which I found out after the fact meant I had a disadvantage of starting at a lower point level for being Dalish among the Orlesian courtiers. There was a strategy there, especially during the dance with Duchess Florianne, of having to think like an Orlesian playing The Game before clicking one of the dialogue options. It was a combat of wits rather than martial ability, and that was wonderful and I hope we see more of it in DA:D.
Aside from my own preference for role-play over combat, “best endings” should not be made impossible for a player with disabilities that affect their hands simply because they do not have the manual dexterity to press a sequence of buttons quickly enough to be able to play at a higher-difficulty combat setting.
Oh, I apologize. I never meant for reflex based combat to act as a gatekeeper for the best ending - I don't want BioWare to make some kind of Soulslike game, and I don't want more combat at the cost of fewer roleplaying opportunities. I'm all in favour of strategy and thinking over twitch combat (which is how Dawn of War II plays), in fact I'd love another good RPG with turn based combat (which BioWare likely won't deliver, so Owlcats pls...). I just feel that if combat (in whatever shape it may take) is a major way of achieving progress in the game then it should present some kind of obstacle on the road to complete victory. I mean, for all your skill in besting the Orlesian Court at their own game under the worst possible circumstances (for which I salute you), you still had to defeat Coryphywaffles in combat in the end. That was also an important part of the way to the ending and maybe shouldn't be too trivial.
Of course it would be awesome if BioWare managed to craft a game where you have lots of freedom to decide how to tackle your adversaries - by diplomacy, espionage or outright battle. That would be quite the game!
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
A binary choice in entertainment, particularly one where player input is supposed to be an important aspect, isn't a real choice.
So I'm curious (and this question isn't just limited to you Lakus). Are people fine with games having what can be perceived as the "Best" ending? It's hard to specify what that means, since it's subjective the game we're discussing, but as it pertains to Dragon Age or Mass Effect, the best "ending" or outcome is normally with having all possible companions alive. This is also coupled with a reduction in the amount of harm done to civilians or specific factions, with some outcomes being solved peacefully; or amicably.
Sometimes I wonder if there should be a significant struggle involved on the upfront to achieve the "best" ending. Sometimes the best option can often times be so obvious, it can trivialize the sense of consequence in some games I play (including BioWare titles).
I am fine with a "best ending" if it takes skill and effort to get it, i.e. more than just "pick the right conversation options".
My favourite example is Dawn of War II, a Warhammer 40,000 RTS with RPG elements. It had a bad ending, a good...ish ending that was cautiously optimistic and a heroic good ending. This last ending however required you to play at a certain minimum difficulty level, keep the enemy "infestation level" low enough on several planets throughout the game and achieve a minimum final score (calculated in some way from enemies killed, own troops lost and time taken to complete a mission). When you got that best ending, you knew you'd earned it.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
The Dragon Age franchise's gameplay is way too inconsistent over its different iterations to produce any lingering issue spanning all three games. All had issues of their own - DAO has the Warden Shuffle, DA2 the annoying "plate ninjas from the sky" wave reinforcements, and DAI the messed up hitboxes and combat generally being a boring chore.
The only thing I could come up with is what I feel a general trend of gradual elimination of tactical elements in an attempt to make the game simpler (or "more welcoming" in marketing babble) and more action focused. The tactical presets from Origins have been dumbed down to near non-existence. You no longer pick your attributes in DAI, they come with your skill picks. 8 active skills are enough now (including spells). Quest texts no longer contain descriptions of how to get to the target location because they know that people will just follow the waypoint GPS on their map. Side quest became simpler and more cookie cutter - there's barely any conflict solving through diplomacy and/or investigation anymore, it's mostly "go there, kill the things, optionally pick up the thing" or even "click journal item, follow GPS to other journal item, click to complete the quest".
I for one hope that this trend won't continue.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
I made my suggestion because I thought it would be some kind of poetic justice. But it wouldn't take much effort to talk me into simply killing Solas instead.
This doesn't mean that I hate him.
I, the player, am mostly tired of the character after so many years and otherwise indifferent.
My Inquisitor promised to redeem him because he just doesn't give up on people. But I'm not him and my emotions are not his.
My new protagonist may simply decide that killing Solas is the easiest, most convenient and at least somewhat permanent (given how stuff sometimes refuses to stay dead in Dragon Age) solution to the problem. It's merely a logical problem solving approach - my new protagonist has as far as I know never met Solas before and therefore has no reason to hate him.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
An example of superior marketing by Bio. In game? ... superior crap. Why the number of combatants that I saw was less than platoon size. Yep, a real war it was. so much so, that every time I passed by after the first encounter I heard the war cries but no one to be seen.
(◔‿◔)
______________
It was less the size/number of combattants for me, but how it was treated in the story. Lotta buildup, and then DAI breaks it down to "choose one as your mutually exclusive reinforcement, note that only one option gives you a stack of background info on the main antagonist of the game while the other has no equivalent to that".
"...which you'll only notice if you talk to someone who picked the other guys... after you finished the game.
Wanna play again?"
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
Wow. Anyone remember the high quality gear that came with the DAI Collector's Edition? This looks just like it. At least back then this kind of stuff came with a game.
"Due to differences between monitor displays, your product may vary from the images shown."
Heh. Yeah, I'm sure it may.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
I haven't watched anything Starfield related so far, but I LOVED the trait system in Alpha Protocol that just evolved your character based on what you did and how you talked to people. It could certainly work with the Mass Effect franchise or really almost any game with RPG mechanics, but I wouldn't trust BioWare to implement a good version of it. The trend of their games has been more simplification as time passed with more and more RPG mechanics removed in favour of a more action oriented approach.
I'd love more RPG mechanics, including a trait system. But I don't think that's were BioWare games a whole are headed.
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly
Rheinmetall recycles the good stuff: in this case, well known tank names.
Enter the KF-51 Panther, successor to the Leopard II. Can't wait to see what this kitty can do. Or undo, as it were.
I'm skeptical about the gun size and autoloader, and I think it could have had an even bigger turret.
This is good: It places an enormous emphasis on situation awareness and decision loop (even if nothing is said about that in this video), something that US and Israel have already pushed in their tanks. And this is probably the most important feature of modern tanks. Who shoots first survives. Who survives wins.
It also clearly has the modern type of armor that tries to break and tumble APFSDS projectiles, the type of penetration that is the hardest to protect against. You can see this type of armor on Israeli tanks and the latest Leopard 2s, A6, A7. Though it was the M1A2 that pioneered the technique with extra depleted Uranium elements inside its Chobham armor, long ago.
Otoh, it kinda begs for a top attack, doesn't it? Also, tanks must have automatic, active defenses against missiles today. But they probably consider that an add-on. I'd also like to see more cage armor, but that is likely considered an add-on too. 130 mm seem like a hefty overkill, but maybe they look farther into the future than contemporary russian tanks. But the ammo will be bulky.
I would have believed in keeping the 125 mm, adding an automatic 60 mm mortar and 40 mm grenade launcher, an even bigger turret (on the outside), no auto-loader and 4 crew. Also, it could have been heavier, but it's likely gonna be, eventually.
It comes loaded with active, reactive and passive defense systems, including a top attack protection system, according to Rheinmetall. The gun's effective range is said to be 50% greater than the previous 120 mm smoothbore, which would give it a 7500m reach. I'm no defense engineer and can't say whether that requires a certain minimum caliber or not.
It also still carries a crew of up to four. The fourth crew man is considered an optional specialist - a company commander, a drone operator or a wingman pilot. It can be fitted with four HERO 120 loitering munitions as an optional armament. It might be heavier eventually, but they put a lot of effort into keeping the weight low to give it "a greater mobility than any other current system".
"Give me a fully loaded Hornet and I'll shake the gates of heaven." -Aria Reilly