Gileadan
N5
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 17, 2021 17:39:04 GMT
To me, DAI "feels" less dark than Origins because it so often prefers the "tell, don't show" approach when it comes to the really grim bit. Origins shows you the horror of the brood mothers, the darkspawn overrunning places and murdering the populace, even small moments such as marching soldiers saying goodbye to their loved ones, often for the last time. In DAI you find journals about mages being trapped in a burning building, you have Josephine tell you how a group of labourers took up arms to defend Haven and got cut down. It's never quite as impactful if you just hear about it instead of actually seeing it. Imagine someone created a remake of "Saving Private Ryan", but instead of showing you 20 minutes of Omaha Beach, it just has characters talk about it. Or someone reading about it in the news. Same exact event, but I guarantee that the hypothetical second movie will be considered less dark than the first one. What about when you go back in time and see a dark future where corypheus wins? That was horrific and definitely an example of showing not telling. It certainly was, as was the lyrium-spiked red templar body horror. I just wish it had done more of that, and maybe lost a few of the more boring maps instead. There's so many missed opportunities to show some details that invest the player in the story and create a feeling of high stakes. Corypheus has a grand entry, then just takes one L after the other until he commits suicide by protagonist in under ten minutes. At no point during the game I was worried that there would be an ending where that guy wins somehow. There's a cave somewhere with an operating table that has a dissected corpse with lyrium spikes on it, clearly the site of a cruel experiment, but the table is just a non-interactable prop and none of your companions reacts to it. Not a word, not a single raised eyebrow. Of course this problem may also come from the design decision to limit all meaningful conversations to Skyhold while you just get light banter everywhere else (when it works). I just can't help but think that it could have been so much better.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 17, 2021 7:31:24 GMT
To me, DAI "feels" less dark than Origins because it so often prefers the "tell, don't show" approach when it comes to the really grim bit.
Origins shows you the horror of the brood mothers, the darkspawn overrunning places and murdering the populace, even small moments such as marching soldiers saying goodbye to their loved ones, often for the last time.
In DAI you find journals about mages being trapped in a burning building, you have Josephine tell you how a group of labourers took up arms to defend Haven and got cut down. It's never quite as impactful if you just hear about it instead of actually seeing it.
Imagine someone created a remake of "Saving Private Ryan", but instead of showing you 20 minutes of Omaha Beach, it just has characters talk about it. Or someone reading about it in the news. Same exact event, but I guarantee that the hypothetical second movie will be considered less dark than the first one.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 10, 2021 9:08:22 GMT
Ma boi Titus is back. Please, please don't fuck this up...
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
Clearance Level Ultra
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 8, 2021 14:47:30 GMT
I seem to remember that the Craftworld Aeldari were somewhat unbalanced in this game, is that still the case?
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 7, 2021 10:48:51 GMT
Heh, thank god they didn't do that. I generally don't like contrived drama choices where you are denied your chance to actually fight the danger you're facing and are instead forced to pick who takes one for the team and gets to unsubscribe from life. Chargers vs bunch of horned people on a ship anyone? Drack's scouts and Salarian pathfinder? Kaidan and Ashley? Why do they like this crap so much?
But imagine spending hours in the character generator to faithfully recreate your Warden and your Hawke, only to be reduced to the choice who has to die just so the Inquidunce can live? And then have either Varric or Morrigan/Leliana make you feel like a terrible person afterwards?
Uh, no thank you.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 7, 2021 6:23:24 GMT
Anthem was seven years in development, so a long dev time does not seem to do them much good. Several times, their problem has been that they either didn't know what to do with their game or they tried something that they couldn't make work and then crunched 18 months straight to make sure there was some product to sell come the deadline, and crunch tends to produce delays as the constant strain makes people work less effectively.
I don't know, but the two reboots they had so far (as far as we know...) don't say "there is a clear vision for this game" to me. That doesn't mean that it's certain to be awful in the end, just that products that go through such a hellish dev cycle generally tend to be. But maybe they'll surprise me.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 6, 2021 17:51:43 GMT
Well, I hope that at least a few player choices will be respected. I'rather not hear anything about all the things the Inquisition did during the 8 years since I thought I disbanded them and such. And hopefully Divine Victoria won't be hit by some equalizer event.
Ideally the story will be as standalone as possible with a minimum of returning characters and a focus on Tevinter, not Ferelden/Orlais and whatever adventuring tourists from there might show up.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 5, 2021 23:35:11 GMT
Well, I looked it up and there actually is standard HR terminology called "Termination by Mutual Agreement".
It means that the employee did not get fired and did not quit - either would be a one-sided action. Examples are contract employees at the end of their agreement, retirement and forced resignation. The existence of an agreement does not mean that both sides are happy with the termination, it means that there were certain stipulations concerning the termination that both sides agreed too.
Sources: thebalancecareers.com, ionos.co.uk
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 5, 2021 9:45:19 GMT
I'm in Germany too and I'm kinda more lucky. My parents all had their booster shots and so does my sister in law since she's medical staff. Fun fact: medical staff are not allowed to refuse treatment to even the most obvious plague birds.
Local doctors and my company are offering booster shots and I could get one if I wanted to, but I'll wait and let the even more elderly have theirs first.
However, none of this is thanks to our cowardly, incompetent government, it's all the result of initiatives taken by local doctors and businesses. The more time passes and the crazier and dumber everything gets out there, the happier I am to live at this particular arse end of nowhere.
But that's typical for all major problems in this country, like the Ahrtal flooding and such: the government mucks about uselessly while volunteers sort it out.
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 2, 2021 21:52:05 GMT
2021 has Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and so far I'm not seeing anything to look forward to as much in 2022. But hey, maybe it will surprise me.
But if it doesn't, that's fine too. I have lots of good games to replay, or keep playing.
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Gileadan
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Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 2, 2021 14:00:54 GMT
I figure it's not going to be easy to replace the lost talent. I mean, who'd really want to work at a company that obviously has massive leadership problems, glorified crunch as "BioWare magic" in the past and now is mostly infamous for how hard their two most recent releases cratered? Considering the reports and investigative pieces on different studios over the years, I don't see how it would be that much harder for BioWare over other studios to find employees. Off the top of my head, there is Riot, Ubisoft, Activision, CDPR, Naughty Dog, and probably more. All have had issues where there has been what I would consider bad management and mistreatment of employees. Right now I think the biggest problem is at Activision because its so persuasive, but its been pretty quiet at EA. As far as leadership problems replacing the General Manager with someone outside BioWare could be seen as a sign they are working on fixing their management issues which I think will fix crunch if successful. The crunch BioWare has done and the circumstances on why it happens is well known in the industry and even what would be considered industry norm crunch. It was just amplified to be worse with Andromeda and Anthem due to what I would agree would be what seems to be bad management which caused delays. There's probably a reason why Ms Livingstone didn't pick either of those juggernauts and joined the newly formed Humanoid Studios instead. I suspect neither of them will have a particularly easy time finding new hires. It's true, crunch is all over the industry, but BioWare probably crunched for the most frustrating of reasons: not because a big game didn't get polished enough in time, but because time was wasted meandering about with no one knowing where the project was going, often for years.
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Gileadan
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Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 2, 2021 10:38:22 GMT
I figure it's not going to be easy to replace the lost talent. I mean, who'd really want to work at a company that obviously has massive leadership problems, glorified crunch as "BioWare magic" in the past and now is mostly infamous for how hard their two most recent releases cratered?
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 1, 2021 21:48:52 GMT
Many drips make a puddle.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Dec 1, 2021 7:57:42 GMT
If I'm invested in a game and have played more than an hour or so I'll generally live with my choices and keep going. I only abandon games / playthroughs that I don't enjoy.
Never finished Divinity: Original Sin despite three good attempts. In the end, the writing was never good enough to make me get past the combat with its puzzle bosses and "archers are really mages because exploding arrows" things.
Abandoned three attempts of additional DAI playthroughs, each of them ending just after reaching Skyhold because I realized that now the boring "open world" slog was about to begin.
Never finished Fallout III after being stuck with a full inventory somewhere and just not having the energy to sort through my inventory to see what I could dump. Never bought Fallout IV because of that.
Stopped playing Horizon: Zero Dawn because while the combat is pretty good I just wasn't feeling the story and the protagonist. Might pick it up again at a later date, but certainly not start again from scratch.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 30, 2021 18:39:39 GMT
Overall, the Kafers from 2300 AD.
From the lot above, Turians.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 29, 2021 6:27:21 GMT
Some things that I remembered later:
Have your character read all the books you find. Most are just fluff, but some actually give you a permanent stat boost. There are (very, very rarely) tomes that increase an attribute, and there are books that give you specific bonuses in certain situation. Whenever the game tells you "You learned something new from reading this book", you have gained a (usually minor) stat bonus.
You can respec characters if you are unhappy with your choices. Early on you will meet a character named Hilor, who will let you respec your protagonist and/or companions at first for free and then for a fee. Respeccing a companion will reset them to the state they were in when you recruited them, i.e. you get to do all your level up choices for them again. Respeccing your own character however will basically let you change everything - you run through the entire character generation routine again. So if you liked your looks and most of your level up choices and only want to change a certain thing, you have to recreate all that from memory. You retain any stat bonuses gained from books and other non-level-up sources, but your alignment shifts are reset. It can save you restarting the game though if you are not happy with your character.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
Clearance Level Ultra
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 28, 2021 22:48:29 GMT
Going in blind? Best of luck! I didn't know anything about the Pathfinder world either and I didn't feel it mattered much, it's all explained in the game, and often important terms in the game's text are colour marked, giving you an additional explanation when you mouse over it.
WotR is, as far as I could see, meant for a good playthrough. I haven't tried evil, but it's about kicking evil's door shut and it would probably require some mental gymnastics to make that work for a truly evil character (which you can absolutely play!)
Turn based mode is a godsend when combat gets really messy, I only deactivated it for easy random encounters.
Let us know how it goes...
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 28, 2021 22:38:03 GMT
From his tweets I got the impression that Matt Goldman liked DA for what it was, not for what it should become in his opinion. There's still no official reaction? By this time I get the feeling that BioWare/EA are completely paralyzed, unable to come up with even a feeble attempt at damage control. Or maybe they don't care anymore and just want to shove the product out of they way so they can go back to Mass Effect or some such. I mean, that internal email didn't exactly read like employee motivating greatness either, just "yeah he's gone don't worry things will keep going". I imagine they're just sitting there, frozen like the proverbial rabbit staring wide-eyed at the cobra (i.e. Jason Schreier). Better wait for his article and take the blow than make a statement that'll make them look even worse later... While I am angry at how Bioware abandoned the patches for the MELE leaving PC gamers to get help from modders, unpaid employees, and just pray that enough people forgot about that to get their money with DA4 and ME:N even though I am looking forwards it. They don't seem to care much since DA:O for post launch technical support. Their post launch support was almost always pretty mediocre to outright poor. They mostly only fix real showstopper bugs, and it takes them a lot of time for very little. It got really bad once they started to use Frostbite, when most of their patches (probably fumbled together by a skeleton crew) often broke as much they fixed. Anthem was their low point, where you could tell from the nature of the bugs that they either barely understood the code they were messing with or the spaghetti level of said code was truly a thing of legend. I'm curious about their next games and hope that they will manage some kind of turn around and produce something fun and playable. I'm happy with a shorter story as long as I get interesting characters that I can care about and not another bore fest like DAI or MEA. To be fair, DAI had some good characters in it, but its dozen or so hours of story were spread over way, WAY too much mind numbing busy work. But maybe they can capture their old magic again. I sure hope so.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 28, 2021 8:53:20 GMT
From his tweets I got the impression that Matt Goldman liked DA for what it was, not for what it should become in his opinion.
There's still no official reaction? By this time I get the feeling that BioWare/EA are completely paralyzed, unable to come up with even a feeble attempt at damage control. Or maybe they don't care anymore and just want to shove the product out of they way so they can go back to Mass Effect or some such. I mean, that internal email didn't exactly read like employee motivating greatness either, just "yeah he's gone don't worry things will keep going".
I imagine they're just sitting there, frozen like the proverbial rabbit staring wide-eyed at the cobra (i.e. Jason Schreier). Better wait for his article and take the blow than make a statement that'll make them look even worse later...
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Gileadan
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Agent 46
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 25, 2021 13:40:37 GMT
Yeah, obviously a movie or TV series would be a bad idea. I hope no one else gets any ideas, like books or comics or some such. That would be terrible also because customizable protagonist and all that... right? They could just not do shepard or one of the protaginist from the DA games. Yeah... I was trying to point out that they already had done books and comics, none of which were about the game's protagonists, so I don't get why that problem suddenly exists for movies or TV shows.
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Gileadan
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 25, 2021 6:06:11 GMT
David Gaider @davidgaiderI'm relieved to see that the Mass Effect/Amazon deal is for a potential TV series and not a movie. Even so, the possibility (and likewise for Dragon Age) makes me cringe just a little, unlike many fans who appear... excited? Let me explain. (Thread) [...] Maybe. I guess we'll see. Yeah, obviously a movie or TV series would be a bad idea. I hope no one else gets any ideas, like books or comics or some such. That would be terrible also because customizable protagonist and all that... right?
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Gileadan
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gileadan
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
ALoneGretchin
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 24, 2021 22:54:19 GMT
I don't know how these messages work in Canada, but in Germany everyone would know this one for what it is: a departure that was definitely neither friendly nor cordial. The kind where you get back to your desktop from lunch break and find out that your password no longer works, in extreme cases, or where you've been on notice before and management finally had enough.
Will it have a big effect on DA4? Probably not. This game was rebooted twice (as far as we know...) so it will probably be the usual rush job in the end anyway, with or without whoever else may leave until then.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
Clearance Level Ultra
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
Origin: ALoneGretchin
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Agent 46
177
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7,117
Gileadan
Clearance Level Ultra
2,844
August 2016
gileadan
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
ALoneGretchin
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 24, 2021 6:06:24 GMT
At least in Germany, "mutually agreed" is a well known term for "we fired him". It's right up there with "tried his best to fulfill his tasks" (sucked at his job) and "very gregarious" (drunk at work) - especially when the goodbye message lacks positive paragraphs like "we will miss him" and/or "we wish him the best for his future". In fact, the statement says "has an impact on you..." meaning to say "...but not on us".
But, as always, it probably doesn't mean anything...
Oddly enough, I never felt that the conflict with Solas in Trespasser was personal. My Inquisitor is quite done after everyone's grateful "The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go" attitude. Someone else can fix that shit.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
Clearance Level Ultra
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
Origin: ALoneGretchin
Posts: 2,844 Likes: 7,117
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Agent 46
177
0
7,117
Gileadan
Clearance Level Ultra
2,844
August 2016
gileadan
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
ALoneGretchin
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 23, 2021 16:43:32 GMT
If they want a larger audience for DA4 they might have bigger things to worry about than the protagonist, namely the somewhat broken combat and the poor side content. I can't be the only person who remembers DAI's pre-release time when BioWare/EA gave lesser known youtubers a trial version of the game - and the general reaction was rather lukewarm along the lines of "looks pretty but kinda boring". "Looks pretty but kinda boring" doesn't cut it anymore no matter who your protagonist is. To appeal to a larger audience, fun gameplay is required first and foremost - only hardcore fans slog through combat that is a chore just to get to the lore and story bits. If playing the game is not entertaining, people not already invested into the setting or story will check out and do something else with their time. DA's current gameplay loop can do with a lot of improvement, and it should be their primary concern, before story and protagonist and everything else. To be fair... Gameplay-wise, ME1 is extremely different from ME2, which is fairly different from ME3, which I hear is fairly different from ME:A. DA:O is very different from DA2, which is very different from DA:I. Both ME1 and DA:O are entirely different from JE. All these games came out within a decade of each other, and they're all worlds apart from truly old school Bioware titles like BG1/BG2, NWN, and KotOR. My own paranoia aside, I see little reason to expect DA4 will be anything like DA:I seven years on and two reboots later. That doesn't necessarily mean it'll be good, but it's reasonable to expect it'll be different. Personally, I suspect they are going to lean even harder into action combat. What gets mass appeal are ARPGs or action-adventure games with RPG elements, while party-based tactical combat (particularly the turn-based kind) is a growing and thus potentially viable niche. Either approach would be better than the wishy-washy, have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too combat of DA2 and DA:I, but I don't see the Bioware of the 2020s going for the latter. My worry is not that DA4 will be the same or too similar to DAI, but that it will be done just as poorly, no matter what it turns out to be. As far as I'm concerned they're welcome to implement a more actiony combat, but they need to get their hitboxes to work properly and make it less of a chore, and they need to drop their quantity over quality approach to side content.
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Gileadan
N5
Agent 46
Clearance Level Ultra
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
Origin: ALoneGretchin
Posts: 2,844 Likes: 7,117
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Agent 46
177
0
7,117
Gileadan
Clearance Level Ultra
2,844
August 2016
gileadan
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda
ALoneGretchin
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Post by Gileadan on Nov 23, 2021 9:33:51 GMT
If they want a larger audience for DA4 they might have bigger things to worry about than the protagonist, namely the somewhat broken combat and the poor side content. I can't be the only person who remembers DAI's pre-release time when BioWare/EA gave lesser known youtubers a trial version of the game - and the general reaction was rather lukewarm along the lines of "looks pretty but kinda boring".
"Looks pretty but kinda boring" doesn't cut it anymore no matter who your protagonist is. To appeal to a larger audience, fun gameplay is required first and foremost - only hardcore fans slog through combat that is a chore just to get to the lore and story bits. If playing the game is not entertaining, people not already invested into the setting or story will check out and do something else with their time. DA's current gameplay loop can do with a lot of improvement, and it should be their primary concern, before story and protagonist and everything else.
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