Now that the open beta is out I thought I’d ask this question. It’s a tricky topic since on the surface it might feel like a complaint/rant topic but it is far from it. I absolutely love the keep and appreciate the hard work that has gone into developing it. The post isn't about disparaging those efforts but rather trying to elicit an opinion if players are okay with these efforts in form of a website or if they would have preferred them in the game option menu.
For all intents and purposes the keep essentially is a world state creator where veterans and newcomers alike are made to create the world they want their inquisitor to be in or what it would have been from their past game decisions. The “import” feature of the keep rather than importing the past decisions (and I understand why it can’t) imports rather moot flags such as:-
a. Warden/Hawke’s name – Even in the previous game while playing as Warden or Hawke, the protagonist was never referred to by their user created names but always as The Warden/ Hero of Fereldan/ The Champion etc.
b. Background – It’s something that can be chosen in the keep while creating a hero anyways.
c. Portrait- Since Warden will not make a physical appearance and Hawke can be customized (as stated by devs), this feature doesn’t seem to have that much weight. Also considering the shift from eclipse to frostbite engine, wonder if the import process would have been a smooth one without forcing a rework on the imported face, which essentially is they are allowing in the first place for Hawke.
d. Previous games’ achievements – This one I concede but personally I would be more worried about the inquisition’s achievement popping up in the game. As long as my previous achievements have unlocked in previous games and are, say, synced to my bsn legacy account, I am alright if they don’t import over to inquisition for few points.
Thus “import” is not what the import was like in previous bioware games. Again, I know and understand fully well why it can’t be like that. The point is that import feature feels a bit shallow for what it imports and what keep allows us to do is perhaps (personally speaking) too important to have been kept separate as a website under the pretext of ‘importing from previous games’ feature. Also it is important to note that the keep imports from the legacy site and not from the direct save files thus all of the keep imports being done to the website could well have been done to the in-game world state creator with user logged into their respective origin/bsn accounts.
Would you have preferred The Keep as an integrated feature in the game menu screen since it essentially is as important, if not less, as the character creator? I mean it creates the world which my inquisitor will be in. If it were an option below the main campaign would that make any difference in your inquisition experience in terms of ease of accessibility or your centralized control over how the game behaves?
The reason I ask this is that given how the keep has been developed into and what it does, It feel a bit odd in logging into a website with the game fired up on my pc to fiddle with an important aspect of the game, and then connect online in-game to let those changes take place in my game and continue. I mean it is all cool right now but I wonder if the novelty will start to wear off and say after couple of playthroughs or 3-4 years down the line, a person might just want to change the world state without being bothered to connect to an external website.
But that is just how I feel and would like to know other opinions on it.
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