Up until this point i was liking the game but it hadn't grabbed me the way Origins did. Then Mother Giselle started singing, it was at this moment when i said "this moment was worth the price of the game" it was then i knew i was in for an awesome game. So far im almost 60 hours in and i am loving it.
I felt the same way, the whole scene and setting was perfect. I love the bards songs as well , bioware did a great job on the music.
I felt the same way, the whole scene and setting was perfect. I love the bards songs as well , bioware did a great job on the music.
It's Florence from Florence & the Machine singing, they really hit that out of the park.
Absolutely. It was amazing. Spectacular music, wonderful animation, incredible moment of storytelling. The rest of the game was great, but that scene was the best.
This was the emotional height of the game and the point where the plot really picked up for me.
Beautiful scene and song.
Absolutely, sent chills up and down my spine. I just really hope it's on the soundtrack!
P.S. Could someone take the time to explain how to create the spoiler button? It's been a long time, and I've forgotten.
The song is on the soundtrack, just not the one in the game sung by Mother Giselle, Leliana and the Inquisition.
As for spoiler tags, you type [ spoiler ] type what you want to say or spoil then [ / spoiler ] without the spaces.
Loved it, was tear jerking emotional moment done perfectly.
It really was a very pretty song, but it was a very stupid scene.
That the scene happens regardless of everything else, even when you basically tell Mother Giselle to cram it right then, it totally removes any RPG aspect, as there is not actual ROLE PLAYING. Its just...walk to next cutscene, pick random meaningless dialogue, continue unplussed, etc. Unfortunately most of the NPC interactions are like that in DAI. Wonderful, lovely cutscenes and no player agency. There are a few which actually seem to affect anything, but so far there have been almost zero in the main quest. The companion quests are pretty good at least.
I wish it had sounded more like a bunch of cold-ass bastards huddled around campfires in the mountains singing that it did a choir in a cathedral, but it was nice.
Mh, on that note:
https://www.youtube....h?v=YbIrpwLGhq0
(just to preclude questions: movie this scene is taken from was made in 1993 and is an anti-war movie above all, if you couldn't tell by the stark contrast of a folk Christmas song being sung while corpses of dead soldiers are thrown onto a pyre.)
Personally, I wasn't so much amused as irritated by the musical-ish nature of the scene. Was it moving, somewhat? Certainly, yet I'll have to largely agree with the sentiment expressed here:
It really was a very pretty song, but it was a very stupid scene.
That the scene happens regardless of everything else, even when you basically tell Mother Giselle to cram it right then, it totally removes any RPG aspect, as there is not actual ROLE PLAYING. Its just...walk to next cutscene, pick random meaningless dialogue, continue unplussed, etc. Unfortunately most of the NPC interactions are like that in DAI. Wonderful, lovely cutscenes and no player agency. There are a few which actually seem to affect anything, but so far there have been almost zero in the main quest. The companion quests are pretty good at least.
To be fair, when it comes to the scene in question, Giselle does acknowledge the 'Herald's' dismissal of her once the song is done and my PC did not look particularly pleased with the performance to me either, which was fair enough for me, anyway. Even so, I got to say a somewhat more 'authentic' act, 'cold-ass bastards' lucky to be alive lurching into song as KingTony put it I would have preferred myself.
Utterly blown away, yes. In Your Heart Shall Burn is fantastic from start to finish, and as a whole it is probably the most intense, gripping and touching sequence of story developments in any game I have ever played, a real accomplishment that everyone involved should be rightly proud of. I stopped after reaching Skyhold in the wee hours this morning, and while I hope the game still holds more awesomeness, this alone was more than worth the purchase.
As someone who usually doesn't care much for graphics, I've been particularly amazed by some of the facial expressions in this game and how they convey mood or meaning. Solas is especially good at that, a hint of a smile from Cassandra (or Leliana but geez she's closed off these days) warms me to the bone, and Cullen's expressions during the song were just incredible. It's a great example of how technical progress should support storytelling, not drown it out in ever more realistically flashy "bang!"s and "boom!"s.
I thought it was a rather touching and enjoyed it. I may not personally be religious, but even I felt that after what happened in Haven, it was a moment of much-needed inspiration and comfort for a group of people who had just suffered a major blow and who had probably lost friends and even family during the attack. Even if you dislike it, I figure that if you're a halfway decent leader, you can put up with singing you detest if it actually benefits your army's morale (in my case, I found it beautiful).
Seconded. Anyone who thinks being a leader means you get to trample all over what those "below" you think and feel and need is nothing but an abuser and a tyrant. I'm an atheist IRL and very very wary at best of most religions, but I try to roleplay my first/canon Inquisitor as a devout-if-troubled Andrastian because it makes sense given her background and the setting as a whole. It's quite enjoyable, occasionally challenging, and sometimes -- like in this scene -- also deeply touching. And hell, it's not like they're screaming fascist slogans or burning crosses on someone's lawn. It's just a song about sorrow and hope, started and shared in the spirit of coming together in a time of terrible loss and despair, a much-needed outlet for all the emotions that these people feel and a way to transform these feelings into something positive so that they may find the strength to carry on. There aren't even any in-your-face religious references in it.
Both my character and I find the kneeling and such a bit squicky, but if that is what people need in that moment, she'll put up with it. On the scale of "unpleasant things to do in order to help others", it doesn't even remotely compare to having the crap kicked out of her as almost-certainly-doomed bait for the Elder One. She survived that, so she can survive being called Your Worship now and then. 
Now the fact that the singing scene plays out the same way doesn't mean you have no agency. You clearly get to say exactly what you want - it's just that Mother Giselle has every right to ignore you and to do what she thinks is right in that moment. Like in real life, sometimes people will just do things that you don't want them to do, no matter what you say.
Full agreement. Player agency is crucial for computer game stories or we may as well read a book, but it should never come at the cost of other characters or the integrity of the setting. It's like player character power -- many (most?) gamers like a powertrip, like being special and whatnot, but when that "power" and "importance" comes partly from having all NPC authorities portrayed as lazy, uncaring, stupid, corrupt or inexplicably kowtowing to my every whim, that is just lazy, shitty and immersion-breaking.
Agency and power are both meaningless when you're surrounded by mindless, useless, ass-licking robots. I want to have choices and convictions for my own character, AND I want NPCs who have choices and convictions of their own. I want my character to be competent and respected for it, AND I want competent, rightfully respected NPCs around me as both allies and enemies. It'd be ridiculous to always have everything go our way.
Felt odd and jarring to explain it in a humorous way:
Amidst the death, chaos and destruction of haven, The survivors huddled around in freezing snow and banded together forming a powerful alliance to take on evil through the power of SONG!
Starring John Howard, Vince Colosimo, Peter Phelps and Lisa McCune as Leliana. Nutra Grain brings you Dragon Age: Inquisition the MUSICAL! from the Awarding winning Director/producer of Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge, Australia's own Baz Luhrmann brings his awarding winning production down under Live at the enmore theatre from december 15th, Vist Ticketek.com.au for details!.
I don't know it was a bit laggy and buggy but if it was done better I think it would have been epic, it just seemed to cheesy with all the lag
I cringed all the way through tbh.
Full agreement. Player agency is crucial for computer game stories or we may as well read a book, but it should never come at the cost of other characters or the integrity of the setting. It's like player character power -- many (most?) gamers like a powertrip, like being special and whatnot, but when that "power" and "importance" comes partly from having all NPC authorities portrayed as lazy, uncaring, stupid, corrupt or inexplicably kowtowing to my every whim, that is just lazy, shitty and immersion-breaking.
Agency and power are both meaningless when you're surrounded by mindless, useless, ass-licking robots. I want to have choices and convictions for my own character, AND I want NPCs who have choices and convictions of their own. I want my character to be competent and respected for it, AND I want competent, rightfully respected NPCs around me as both allies and enemies. It'd be ridiculous to always have everything go our way.
And yet for supposedly being both the "chosen one" of a god, the devout seem give not a single **** about what you tell them, nor does your authority as the leader of a military organization actually seem to carry any weight. As it stands, the inquisitor becomes more of the meaningless piece of window-dressing to contrast with interesting NPCs who basically just continue being driven along their own sub-plot regardless of input.
There is so little agency about how you run the Inquisition is just absurd. In DAO, you could reduce your camp to just you, a crazy bog-witch, a whiny templar dropout, and a dog if you wanted. And there you were just some random schmuck who happened to get stuck in the Wardens during a blight.
Maybe you haven't noticed what should be obvious - regardless of personal wishes, a lot of religious folks by nature are inclined to believe what they want to/need to believe, even in the face of evidence that might completely tear down the beliefs that they hold dear. So however much you want to rage about it - and you can rage all you like - it's really quite unlikely to shake their faith in you and what you represent to them.And yet for supposedly being both the "chosen one" of a god, the devout seem give not a single **** about what you tell them, nor does your authority as the leader of a military organization actually seem to carry any weight. As it stands, the inquisitor becomes more of the meaningless piece of window-dressing to contrast with interesting NPCs who basically just continue being driven along their own sub-plot regardless of input.
There is so little agency about how you run the Inquisition is just absurd. In DAO, you could reduce your camp to just you, a crazy bog-witch, a whiny templar dropout, and a dog if you wanted. And there you were just some random schmuck who happened to get stuck in the Wardens during a blight.
At first I thought it was cheesy but by the end of the song I was won over. I get that it would be a weird scene for some people who's characters reject all the religious things going on. I felt it was fitting regardless of how your inquisitor feels though as I think it makes sense that the people who were singing would do so in such a situation.
Maybe you haven't noticed what should be obvious - regardless of personal wishes, a lot of religious folks by nature are inclined to believe what they want to/need to believe, even in the face of evidence that might completely tear down the beliefs that they hold dear. So however much you want to rage about it - and you can rage all you like - it's really quite unlikely to shake their faith in you and what you represent to them.
Because of your actions and because people thought Andraste was the woman on the rift, they had only their belief and the evidence of their eyes, not to mention the Inquisitor's astonishing luck in facing off against you-know-who and surviving, to rely on as they came to believe that you were the Herald. More importantly, I think it was critical that they had some hope to latch onto so that they weren't overtaken by despair.
And you keep complaining about not being able to decide how to run things, but I pointed out the judgments which do give you choices. You can be a heartless, ruthless bastard when rendering judgments, or you can exercise restraint and show mercy, etc. However, since you seem fixated on how much you could do in DA:O by driving off all your allies (woohoo, I know I really wanted to face an Archdemon alone and friendless with zero alllies except my dog and Alistair *sarcasm*), maybe you should just stick with being a grumpy Warden and spend your relatively short life (the Calling and all) hiding out in the Korcari Wilds so that you don't have to deal with the horrors of having relatively nice and devout people looking up to you, believing in you, and having faith that you can lead them out of the nightmare that they're all stuck in!
Well, I suppose being led around by the nose and being given the illusions of choice, which affects little to nothing once that specific cut scene/conversation is over is fine. But for an RPG, the choices to have a persistent impact in the state of things outside of companion approval would actually be player agency, rather just an imitation of it. The companion quests are the only parts which have had any persistent impact, and even those is only in regards to how the companions react to the Inquisitor or each other. The world remains relatively static.
And I am not complaining that the various Andrasteans continue to believe what they will, but the complete lack of agency in affected how Skyhold is even run. And as for running off all your allies, that should be an option, even if very few people do that. But Woohoo! why expect more choices when I can just putting up with the sanctamonious preaching of random NPCs while being their "chosen one" /sarcasm.
And yet for supposedly being both the "chosen one" of a god, the devout seem give not a single **** about what you tell them, nor does your authority as the leader of a military organization actually seem to carry any weight.
[...]
Well, I suppose being led around by the nose and being given the illusions of choice, which affects little to nothing once that specific cut scene/conversation is over is fine. But for an RPG, the choices to have a persistent impact in the state of things outside of companion approval would actually be player agency, rather just an imitation of it. The companion quests are the only parts which have had any persistent impact, and even those is only in regards to how the companions react to the Inquisitor or each other.
And I am not complaining that the various Andrasteans continue to believe what they will, but the complete lack of agency in affected how Skyhold is even run. And as for running off all your allies, that should be an option, even if very few people do that. But Woohoo! why expect more choices when I can just putting up with the sanctamonious preaching of random NPCs while being their "chosen one" /sarcasm.
You know, having played for more than 50 hours, I tend to agree with this. Strictly speaking, one could point out that, regarding Skyhold, one has certain agency when choosing one specific bulding over another - whether this is reflected upon in later conversation and events, as well as the institution of Skyhold is another matter, though.
Most of those 50+ hours I did spend on the non-essential, off-the-track areas and quests, and am quite aware that some went so far as to liken the quest-design of the content outside of the main-quest to that of MMOs. It's hard to deny that this is so (whether this is a good or bad thing is up to the individual player, granted).
A scenario I've been waiting for, so far in vain, in these side-areas would be something akin to the following, to spice things up beyond the usual routine:
The Inquisitor is approached by refugees, asking the Inquisitor to get supplies to feed their starving, displaced lot. An officer of the Inquisition's troops hears of this, and reports to the Inquisitor in no uncertain terms that the supply-situation for the troops is anything but good, morale low and thus the risk of mutiny high. Who to hand the supplies to, then, refugees that may spread the word about a benevolent Inquisition but are not soldier-material themselves at all and potentially provoke your own, battle-hardened troops to mutiny; or make certain that the troops' loyalty to the organisation is kept intact and meanwhile risk animosity or even rioting on the refugees' side? The crack-down on either mutineers or rioters being a real-time affair when recalled to the region.
So far, the only times I have seen something similar to this come up was in the text-based 'operations'. The nature of these, 'text-based' as they are, can, arguably, hardly be called satisfying.
It was a decent scene but was I blown away? No I was not.
It was a nice scene, at least one that I'll remember for a while even if the singing did take me a bit by surprise
That was the best scene of the entire game. So epic and beautiful 
I'm just glad the Inquisitor doesn't join in
To address the little "agency" side argument, you can opt to not recruit most of the followers in the 1st place. What I'd complain about is that besides Sera, you can't just tell someone to gtfo. In my 1st file I recruited vivienne thinking I would have fun pissing her off into leaving but she never did and I couldn't fire her from the inquisition, dafuq's up with that ?
I loved how everyone's all bickering and angry, and the Inquisitor has the gall to start acting NEGATIVE, and then Mother Giselle just calms everyone down with a church hymn. Her line when it's over just seems to scream "owned".
I don't know. The line about fanatics and the next world was pretty perfect.
Thing is ... in my opinion, Bioware games generally, logically, should not work if you're too much of a selfish, evil git or an insulting, abusive assbag. They're written as heroic journeys, generally there's a big "save the world" dilemma of some kind being dropped on our shoulders, and most of our companions strongly tend to support a certain selfless do-gooder narrative (especially the ones who are introduced early and most involved in the plot -- Morrigan is the one exception I can really think of right now). And because there is usually so much at stake, success requires cooperation, compromise, team-building and so on. If you ****** everyone off, if you kick our your team mates, trample all over the beliefs of the people, spit in the faces of the authorities, flaunt the law too much and for selfish reasons, coldly slaughter a bunch of potential allies ... you should lose because nobody will stand with you as you have clearly shown that you cannot be trusted. Or at least, it should make things noticably, painfully harder. When a story progresses pretty much the same way for a "good" character and an "evil" one, something's broken. You need consequences for your actions (and that doesn't and shoudn't always mean evil = harder or good = positive outcome) or the whole thing falls apart into nothing but a shallow power-trip.
While my own preferences run quite strongly towards that do-gooder sort of character and story, I certainly agree that there should be room for some ... less heroic ones. But I honestly think that this sort of game is not really meant for that. It'd work better in a game written with that sort of thing in mind, just as Bioware games are written mostly for the heroic types. The more divergent choices you allow players, the less you're able to flesh them all out, and the more unsatisfied you leave players as a result -- especially the ones who want to go with the choices that "deviate" from the "intended spirit" of a game.
That is why, my own preferences aside, I just can't play the evil/selfish/ruthless types in Bioware games. It just feels wrong in terms of story cohesion and continuity, and if I played that way, I would probably feel a bit let down too because 1) the game doesn't offer me enough choices of this kind and 2) the world does not react to my actions accordingly.
Long story short: I kind of understand where some people in this thread are coming from, I just think it may help to be aware that you're sort of "swimming against the stream" of the game's intended narrative.
Retour en haut