45 réponses à ce sujet

[JasonPogo]

I know it is kinda early to be wondering on this but still. If DAI really lets us make some serious decisions throughout the game (Like siding with the mages and freeing them from oppression/siding with the Templars and enslaving all mages) How can they represent that in the next Dragon Age game? Seems hard to have such huge world impacting things that would make the next game look very different in the future.

[Andraste_Reborn]

It's always possible that the next game will be set in the north of the continent - if the main events were happening in Tevinter, then what was going on with mages and Templars in the south wouldn't have that much direct impact.

[Fast Jimmy]

I know it is kinda early to be wondering on this but still. If DAI really lets us make some serious decisions throughout the game (Like siding with the mages and freeing them from oppression/siding with the Templars and enslaving all mages) How can they represent that in the next Dragon Age game? Seems hard to have such huge world impacting things that would make the next game look very different in the future.

You can't make such decisions with the Save Import. Or, I should say, you can't have the world state vary drastically with such choices.

You may side with the Mages and fight for freedom for all Mages, but that doesn't mean mages will be successfully freed from their tower. You may opt liberate elves across Thedas and work to give them a homeland, but that doesn't mean they will get it.

You may get the choices and they may result in different endings, but it will not, it CANNOT, create different setups for the fourth Dragon Age game. The world will be exactly the same regardless of your choice, with a few lines of dialogue and a Codex entry being the only thing changed.

That's the price you pay for importing your choices - you make them totally worthless.

[Fast Jimmy]

It's always possible that the next game will be set in the north of the continent - if the main events were happening in Tevinter, then what was going on with mages and Templars in the south wouldn't have that much direct impact.

This could be true. If they go to a far, distant place like Rivain or Par Vollen, it might not matter. But, then again, if it doesn't matter in a future game, then why bother importing it? Again, aside from the random cameo, Codex entry or side quest.

[Gwydden]

It's always possible that the next game will be set in the north of the continent - if the main events were happening in Tevinter, then what was going on with mages and Templars in the south wouldn't have that much direct impact.

I am almost completely certain that will be the case. Three games in a row in southern Thedas is more than enough.

[TurretSyndrome]

When the Qunari begin their invasion, none of the offered resolutions regarding Mage Vs Templar in the game will matter. I believe that is what the fourth game will be centered around.

[Sylvius the Mad]

You can't make such decisions with the Save Import. Or, I should say, you can't have the world state vary drastically with such choices.

You may side with the Mages and fight for freedom for all Mages, but that doesn't mean mages will be successfully freed from their tower. You may opt liberate elves across Thedas and work to give them a homeland, but that doesn't mean they will get it.

You may get the choices and they may result in different endings, but it will not, it CANNOT, create different setups for the fourth Dragon Age game. The world will be exactly the same regardless of your choice, with a few lines of dialogue and a Codex entry being the only thing changed.

That's the price you pay for importing your choices - you make them totally worthless.

I expect we'll be offered big choices which will be rendered moot by events.

For example, if we liberate the mages, but then the veil tear gives magical abilities to everyone anyway, our choice - while still a big one - has led us to a world state that is relevantly similar to the world state arising from every other possible option.

[Fast Jimmy]

I expect we'll be offered big choices which will be rendered moot by events.
For example, if we liberate the mages, but then the veil tear gives magical abilities to everyone anyway, our choice - while still a big one - has led us to a world state that is relevantly similar to the world state arising from every other possible option.

Agreed. There will be railroading, even when the choices are given. Which, to me, devalues the choice. It has roleplaying value, but in the end you are fated to have every character you make that wanted hat choice to matter be unable to ever succeed.

[thats1evildude]

You can't make such decisions with the Save Import. Or, I should say, you can't have the world state vary drastically with such choices.

You may side with the Mages and fight for freedom for all Mages, but that doesn't mean mages will be successfully freed from their tower. You may opt liberate elves across Thedas and work to give them a homeland, but that doesn't mean they will get it.

You may get the choices and they may result in different endings, but it will not, it CANNOT, create different setups for the fourth Dragon Age game. The world will be exactly the same regardless of your choice, with a few lines of dialogue and a Codex entry being the only thing changed.

That's the price you pay for importing your choices - you make them totally worthless.

 

The same situation would occur without the Save Import, Jimmy. These are the perils of a continuing series.

 

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that it were possible in Origins to destroy the entire world and a small percentage of players chose that option. Then the game is successful enough to make a Dragon Age 2. What, then, happens with those players who chose to destroy the world? That choice can't be reflected in the sequel because the game would consist of the wind blowing over a field of bones. Any choices made without a Save Import are completely irrelevant, because the devs have to make them for us anyways or completely ignore them, as is the case with, say, the Fable or Elder Scrolls series.

 

Even if we all end up at the same destination, at least with a Save Import we feel the impact of SOME choices, even if it all it does is influence some dialogue and some NPC appearances. My canon likely differs slightly from yours, making that storyline feel more like it's my own unique experience. That, I feel, has value.

[fchopin]

I hope this is the last game in this timeline so we get different characters and different stories in the new dragon age game.

I personally do not want to play another game with the same people as it is getting boring.

[thats1evildude]

As to the OP's question, I strongly suspect that the next game will be set in the Tevinter Imperium, though Nevarra might be a good choice as well.

[Fast Jimmy]

The same situation would occur without the Save Import, Jimmy. These are the perils of a continuing series.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that it were possible in Origins to destroy the entire world and a small percentage of players chose that option. Then the game is successful enough to make a Dragon Age 2. What, then, happens with those players who chose to destroy the world? That choice can't be reflected in the sequel because the game would consist of the wind blowing over a field of bones. Any choices made without a Save Import are completely irrelevant, because the devs have to make them for us anyways or completely ignore them, as is the case with, say, the Fable or Elder Scrolls series.

Even if we all end up at the same destination, at least with a Save Import we feel the impact of SOME choices, even if it all it does is influence some dialogue and some NPC appearances. My canon likely differs slightly from yours, making that storyline feel more like it's my own unique experience. That, I feel, has value.

You misunderstand... the Save Import is a weak story telling option not because it gives one option, but because it must accommodate all options simultaneously.

You could never be given the option to destroy the world, or kill an entire nation, or really suffer any type of major outcome for your choice.

I always use the Anvil as a great example - this is one of the most powerful artifacts in Thedas and it is found by the dwarves, a group who are barely able to hold their own against the Darkspawn in their daily existence. Golems are said to be as powerful as ten solder is, so if you preserved the Anvil, a story could be told about powerful the dwarves become in the world of Thedas, how their need for more troops could cause huge tensions with the surface, how their control of the lyrium trade should make them huge players in the. Mage v. Templar conflict and to the Inquisition as well. Conversely, if you destroyed the Anvil, the dwarves now are back to their desperate, brutal struggle against the Darkspawn. The story about how they are soowl edged further into, possibly being forced to abandon Orzammar completely and all become surface dwarves could be incredibly poignant and interesting.

But with the import, all imports have to be accomodated. So Orzammar will exist exactly as it did before. The dwarves will neither gain back more of the Deep Roads, nor will they lose any. They will not address the concept of sacrificing warriors souls to feed the Anvil, anymore than they would likely talk about the huge loss of life their forces would face against the Darkspawn if they did not have any golems.

In fact, we're likely to not see Orzammar or the dwarves ever again. Maybe if we visit Kal-Sharok, we'll get an envoy there from Orzammar who gives different dialogue depending on some basic choices, but which have zero impact to the story at large. Because of the Save Import, not only does it result in the choices not mattering, but it effectively makes Orzammar itself not matter, as if it might as well not exist. We won't visit it or, if we do, it will be in such a neutral way that it may as well be a totally different location rather than visiting a place where he player previously had choice.


If, instead, a canon was set, you could chose one of these options as the "true" one and tell a story accordingly. Not everyone chose to destroy the Anvil, but if that was determined to be canon, an amazing story could be told about the ramifications of that choice. However, when you have to accommodate ALL choices, the story that can be told is limited. Neutered. Sanitized.

The problem with the Save Import isn't that it results in only one world state, it's that the world state l it has to revert to is narratively much weaker than one where a canon was chosen and a choice could be actually explored for its ramifications past the surface.

[Jorji Costava]

Personally, I think the smartest move for any game following DA:I would be simply to stop putting world-changing decisions in the hands of the PC. It's the main cause of most of the headaches associated with the save import system, and more importantly, for a series like DA, which is aspiring to some level of sophistication in how it represents the politics of its world, it's just not believable to have the future of every political and social institution hang on the decisions of one exceptional individual. If the PC doesn't have to be the Most Important Person in the History of Thedas in every installment, then accommodating every player's world state via save imports becomes a lot easier.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Agreed. There will be railroading, even when the choices are given. Which, to me, devalues the choice. It has roleplaying value, but in the end you are fated to have every character you make that wanted hat choice to matter be unable to ever succeed.

Not necessarily. In the example I described, the character absolutely can succeed. But as circumstances change, what the PC diid ceases to matter.

This is, I think, the best way to do it if you're stuck with save imports. Given that we know the choices can't ultimately matter, I'd like the game design that gives me the biggest possible choices within that constraint.

Since the outcome can't matter, let's focus on the choice itself.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Personally, I think the smartest move for any game following DA:I would be simply to stop putting world-changing decisions in the hands of the PC. It's the main cause of most of the headaches associated with the save import system, and more importantly, for a series like DA, which is aspiring to some level of sophistication in how it represents the politics of its world, it's just not believable to have the future of every political and social institution hang on the decisions of one exceptional individual. If the PC doesn't have to be the Most Important Person in the History of Thedas in every installment, then accommodating every player's world state via save imports becomes a lot easier.

It would be smarter, I think, to stop having save imports.

[Fast Jimmy]

It would be smarter, I think, to stop having save imports.

Agreed. DA2 took the approach of taking large choices out of the player's hand in an attempt for a more personal story of loss and, instead, made players feel they had no sense of agency or control over their own story.

I'd rather be told that Allistair is always king so that the best story could be told (like the secondary Dragon Age mediums do) instead of skirting the issue entirely by reducing the role to a cameo that says "swooping is bad."

It is saying a choice mattered, even if it wasn't the choice you made. Instead of the choice not mattering at all in the end, outside of the reason the character made that choice. But if that's be case, where the import is only a roleplaying tool and not truly creating different worlds for players, I think there needs to be much better communication and level-setting of expectations than what exists today, where threads like this pre-suppose that the player is going to completely change the face of the world during DA:I and DA4 will be unable to handle it. That's not what is going to happen, so players need to have their expectations reduced before the game even comes out.

[schall_und_rauch]

Even if this is only reflected in cameos, I think that a feeling of "this is my world, rather than a Thedas which has nothing to do with the world I built before" is something players want. I certainly want it. It's about weighing strength of setting vs. a feeling of individual story, that mostly exists in the player's head.

 

However, I don't think they need to do this indefinately. Mass Effect handles the point nicely. Some variation in the first two games, with a massive world changing decision in the third one. And the fourth one playing in a different time, where it doesn't matter. None of this invalidates the choices you've made.

 

How about you do chose the fate of the world at the end of DAI and DA4 plays in the Divine Age?

[Arvaarad]

I think it's realistic that the seemingly "big" choices often have only minor effects.

If I choose the ruler of a country, I am not choosing their advisors or the existing laws/culture within that country, so they must act within those confines. Civilized cultures are designed to handle a change in rulers without wildly changing direction. If they weren't designed that way, they would have fallen to chaos long ago, the first time they got unlucky in their choice of king/queen.

If Morrigan gets her OGB, she's going to keep that as quiet as possible. OGBs are powerful, but they probably can't survive discovery by all of the Grey Wardens, or an Exalted March.

When Hawke chooses a side in the Kirkwall conflict, it matters in the moment, but in the end there's only war. When large-scale wars happen in real life, no one cares who landed the first blow - it's mentioned in history texts, but it has little effect on how the war plays out. What actually determines the course of the war is the network of alliances and dependencies that exist between the warring parties, and that network can't be put in place by a single person. It evolves and grows over many, many years.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

I think for world-shaping things, you won't so much determine what happens but more how it happens. To use the Mage-Templar War as an example, let's say regardless there is a new Circle established. While you can't change that, you can change things like how it treats mages. So if you side with mages, it is more lenient and if you side with Templars it stays as it was. Those two differences can be handled easier in future games. 

[KC_Prototype]

I'm sure that DA4 will have a conflict taking place in Tevinter and possibly Antiva and Rivain. And I'm betting that the conflict of DA4 is the Qunari invasion.

[In Exile]

Agreed. There will be railroading, even when the choices are given. Which, to me, devalues the choice. It has roleplaying value, but in the end you are fated to have every character you make that wanted hat choice to matter be unable to ever succeed.

 

I don't think so. Just because a third event renders the choice moot, doesn't mean it didn't have (or doesn't have) value. The trick is just not to clear the board too often, and to stop falling obsessively in love with 4-7 world altering choices per game. If Bioware had smaller scale choices for the most part, the issues would go away. But we have to pick a leader of every group every time we meet one, which creates problems. 

[Jorji Costava]

It would be smarter, I think, to stop having save imports.

 

Over the long term, I think it's possible to do both. Suppose DA4 has no big world-shaping decisions; in that case, there's no pressure for DA5 to do a save import. Since the choices of the previous game didn't have a dramatic impact on the state of the world, there's no need for later games to either acknowledge or retcon them.

 

Agreed. DA2 took the approach of taking large choices out of the player's hand in an attempt for a more personal story of loss and, instead, made players feel they had no sense of agency or control over their own story.

 

I think DA2's problem was that it was trying to have it both ways; everything about both the marketing and the game itself makes a big deal about being the Champion of Kirkwall, while the rest of the game was trying to be more of a smaller-scale story in which the protagonist didn't have all the answers. In other words, the smaller scale story hurt DA2 because the way it was presented engendered expectations that it wouldn't be so small; if you don't generate those expectations, there should be less of a problem. By the end of The Witcher 2, a war is brewing between opposed factions and there's nothing you can do to stop it. This plot development didn't lead to the kind of widespread negative reaction that DA2's endings got.

 

Part of my issue is that I just don't much care for the world-shaping decisions even taken on their own terms, independent of the save-import mechanic. I always like to joke that the plot of Mass Effect is analogous to having a highly trained Navy SEAL single-handedly decide how the conflicts in the Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, etc. get resolved, and I don't think it's much less silly in the case of DA.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Even if this is only reflected in cameos, I think that a feeling of "this is my world, rather than a Thedas which has nothing to do with the world I built before" is something players want. I certainly want it. It's about weighing strength of setting vs. a feeling of individual story, that mostly exists in the player's head.

You can still have that, though, within that game. You'll get to build your Thedas, and because the design of the game won't be constrained by the need to import that world state into subsequent games, you'd be able to make bigger choices and see bigger consequences within a single game.

And then, for the next game, you'd be given a new world state so you could make big choices there.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Over the long term, I think it's possible to do both. Suppose DA4 has no big world-shaping decisions; in that case, there's no pressure for DA5 to do a save import. Since the choices of the previous game didn't have a dramatic impact on the state of the world, there's no need for later games to either acknowledge or retcon them.

If I don't get to make meaningful decisions, I don't have much interest in playing the game.

I play these games to design and implement a character to see what happens. I do not play these games merely to be told a story. Making decisions describes, I think, the sum total of actual roleplaying gameplay.

[Fast Jimmy]

Over the long term, I think it's possible to do both. Suppose DA4 has no big world-shaping decisions; in that case, there's no pressure for DA5 to do a save import. Since the choices of the previous game didn't have a dramatic impact on the state of the world, there's no need for later games to either acknowledge or retcon them.

 

Yes, but if there's no choices that make a difference outside of who I sleep with or which of my companions I murder, then I don't care to make them. 

 

I think DA2's problem was that it was trying to have it both ways; everything about both the marketing and the game itself makes a big deal about being the Champion of Kirkwall, while the rest of the game was trying to be more of a smaller-scale story in which the protagonist didn't have all the answers. In other words, the smaller scale story hurt DA2 because the way it was presented engendered expectations that it wouldn't be so small; if you don't generate those expectations, there should be less of a problem. By the end of The Witcher 2, a war is brewing between opposed factions and there's nothing you can do to stop it. This plot development didn't lead to the kind of widespread negative reaction that DA2's endings got.

 

A set character is much different than an open ended one. MUCH different. Geralt's faults and his overall indifference to politics makes the nihilistic outcomes a pill that can be easily swallowed and watched with entertainment as much as chagrin. That's not true for every character that could be made. Geralt is a reflection of the world he lives in, but without having a way for a blank character to interact with the world, it makes the character blank as well.

 

Part of my issue is that I just don't much care for the world-shaping decisions even taken on their own terms, independent of the save-import mechanic. I always like to joke that the plot of Mass Effect is analogous to having a highly trained Navy SEAL single-handedly decide how the conflicts in the Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, etc. get resolved, and I don't think it's much less silly in the case of DA.

 

Shephard united the galaxy against a threat no one wanted to believe was real. The Warden united the lands to help get past their petty problems and tackle the danger that would kill everyone in the world if left unchecked. The Inquisitor is looking to be quite similar. 

 

Hawke, on the other hand, got to decide which of his friends he killed or slept with. Any other choice has zero consequence or deviation from one scene to the next. Oh, and picking which mooks you kill in between the two final bosses (Mage mooks or Templar mooks). 

 

Because I was given no circumstances which made me stop and think about what was right or wrong, I never was forced to put myself into Hawke's shoes and develop the character further. It was a flat, boring experience. World-changing choices aren't the only way of doing this, but a choice has to have weight to cause us to ask hard questions. Do I let the Anvil be destroyed to prevent anyone further from being enslaved? Or do I risk the dwarves of Orzammar losing the one tool they have to prevent becoming an extinct race? Those are hard choices. And DA:O had a lot of good ones. Granted, some of them had backdoor Third Options that made things rainbow and sunshines, but it still pushed the question in the forefront. I had none of that with Hawke, in large part due to the lack of real choice given to the character that I felt invested in.