172 réponses à ce sujet

[rda]

I think my main gripe was the story was that either there were a lot of loose ends or I was too stupid to follow what was happening. Let me give a example, since I just did Cassandra's seeker quest.

In no particular order the things that puzzled me:

1) Why was Lucius apparently torturing Daniel and feeding him bad things? If his goal is to wipe out the Seekers, wouldn't it be easier to kill them? Why did Lucius basically implement a "sharks with laser beams" type death?

The only thing I can think of is they didn't want to give you the choice of siding with Lucius. After all, I think he might have had a point in wiping out the Seekers. By making him this torturing serial killer who, oh by the way is allied with a cult, the writers essentially give you no option but to kill him.

2) So, the seekers get their power by becoming tranquil! then being touched with a spirit of faith. This, for me, was kind of like a "let's reverse the polarity of the dilithium crystals" technobabble moment. Why does this work? Why, specifically, a spirit of faith? How do they summon this spirit of faith? Also: does being touched by the Spirit of faith change the Seeker's original personality to become uber believers?

Specifically, why was this so godawful for the Lord Seeker to cover up? I don't think it's the kind of thing you want every Tom, Dick, and Harry to know. Does The Lord Seeker know? Does the Divine know? Why isn't that enough? Do you really want every rank and file Mage to know about it? How was this an immense betrayal on the Seeker's part?

I could go on-this quest really bugged me-but it's already turning into a book. Suffice it to say, I thought the exposition of the whys and werefores on quests were a little thin. The explanation usually passed muster at first glance, but if you sat and thought about a lot of it, you were like, "This doesn't make much sense." It could have made sense-but not without a lot more exposition than what we got.

Maybe it's all explained in the codexes but...yeah. A lot of stuff makes me scratch my head. Don't even get me started on the Divine selection. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't selection for the Divine actually hinge on being, you know, within the Chantry? An actual religious person? Vivienne doesn't pass muster in the slightest, and Lelianna and Cassandra only if you squint and ignore a whole lot of things, which, as the Inquisitor, I'm not inclined to do. Sister "stab stab! kill kill!" becoming Divine when Mother Giselle is just hanging out in my Chantry garden! WTF.

Ok, I really am done now.

[rda]

I'll use Fallow Mire as an example. You are lead through the zone for the missing soldiers, but along the way you are hinted at about the Avvar and how they could be a powerful ally. Then, at the end, you have the option to sacrifice the soldiers and sign on the Avvar, or destroy them and rescue the soldiers as planned with character interactions and consequences, approval/disapproval, etc.

Except this lost a lot of its power due to it not really mattering who you allied with. In origins it kind of mattered. Did you want the elves or the werewolves? The elves were the good choice, but the werewolves were much better fighters. Sure, Branka was mad as a hatter, but those Golems she could send to fight at Denerim were nothing to sneeze at.

Instead, it's cosmetic choice #1 or cosmetic choice #2. Don't get me wrong, I still liked the game and the choices, but for the most part, they did not matter. Even who drinks at the well largely doesn't matter. Same events happen anyway. Again, it's essentially cosmetic choice 1 or cosmetic choice 2.

[AsheraII]

The things I really miss?

-proper AI settings & tactical gameplay (turn-based is not a dirty word!)

-strategical positioning of ones forces (we build an army, and do almost nothing with it? Even a Dune 1 implementation would've been nice!)

-Chainmail bras! Options, Bioware, options! Okay, chainmail bikinis might be a bit much, but some sexy options would've been nice.

-Mod-tools. The single one saving grace of Skyrim, the thing that extended the lifetime of DA:O. Modding tools.

[simpatikool]

Ok, I have spent 90 hours with three different characters progressing through Nightmare. I have yet to finish the game. Sounds crazy, but it tends to be my system with these RPG games.

 

Anyway.....

 

Things I think are missing..

 

#1) Not enough time explaining how influence and power interact with your character, war table and all that. I really like the system, but it could be more strategic in many ways. I feel like we spend a lot of time building power to unlock areas, but I would also like to see power have to be used in ways for like holding areas, or off table battles between your forces and the enemy forces. Getting power is rather easy. I find I want things to spend it on. Needing to use power to hold your areas, or do battles is an opportunity missed in my opinion.

 

#2) More on power and influence. I find it difficult that I can't customize my army in this game. Why can't I affect armaments, soldier types war making choices? Seems odd.

 

#3) I know people like Romances, usually I do too, but man do they seem silly this time around.

 

#4) Crafting. I love and hate crafting. I mean, I like that I can use the stuff I find to make stuff and different versions of things, but it sure seems hard to find different plans. Something is not right. Also, I can't figure out what to do with blank runes. Dagna is useless, and the master crafting only allows for finished rune insertion. And so what if I found other rune types with veil fire. Can't seem to figure out what to do with them either. The system is better than anything previously done by bioware, but still clunky.

 

#5) To tell you the truth, my favorite view of your character records is STILL the classic view presented in DAO. In harkened back to the glory days of RPGs and was easier for me to follow. I find the character records now with just the solid black backgrounds and all to be, well, efficient and boring.

 

#6) AI. A lot has already been discussed with this, but man, it seems so weak. I really can't tell my stupid companions to drink regen potions for example? Or give them some conditional abilities? Giving them skills like Fade Step or Charging bull is a mistake, cause, they get all ridiculous. You have to micro manage the crap out of them, constantly.

[LordOfScorn]

Except this lost a lot of its power due to it not really mattering who you allied with. In origins it kind of mattered. Did you want the elves or the werewolves? The elves were the good choice, but the werewolves were much better fighters. Sure, Branka was mad as a hatter, but those Golems she could send to fight at Denerim were nothing to sneeze at.

Instead, it's cosmetic choice #1 or cosmetic choice #2. Don't get me wrong, I still liked the game and the choices, but for the most part, they did not matter. Even who drinks at the well largely doesn't matter. Same events happen anyway. Again, it's essentially cosmetic choice 1 or cosmetic choice 2.

 

I know, that is exactly my point. Make little stories like this within the zones that actually have an impact in some manner. They could have easily done that in my example. Hell, the zone is almost like that already and little would have to be changed.

[Nathair Nimheil]

'Tween combat healing.
 

The things I really miss?-proper AI settings & tactical gameplay (turn-based is not a dirty word!)

And this, very much.

 

-Chainmail bras! Options, Bioware, options! Okay, chainmail bikinis might be a bit much, but some sexy options would've been nice.

Not this, at all. Not at all. Not even a teeny, tiny little bit. Kudos to BW for not indulging this any more than they did.

 

[pablosplinter]

For blank runes, you craft them in the armour crafting bit, provided you have the schematic.

[PlasmaPunch]

U can't critize romances unless you've played all of them, and children probably won't be outside having a good time when the sky is torn open, a magister threatens the world and the mages and Templars are ferociously fighting

Oh but yes I can. The game took me 110hr to beat with how I play, that's 110hours and a part of the game was not satisfying (It's not game-breaking in my opinion, the lore and world of Dragon Age means much more to me than a romance lol). I'd agree if it were a shorter game, but it isn't. 

 

You think children won't be children because the world is ****? I'm astonished if you truly think that.

[PlasmaPunch]

The things I really miss?

-proper AI settings & tactical gameplay (turn-based is not a dirty word!)

-strategical positioning of ones forces (we build an army, and do almost nothing with it? Even a Dune 1 implementation would've been nice!)

-Chainmail bras! Options, Bioware, options! Okay, chainmail bikinis might be a bit much, but some sexy options would've been nice.

-Mod-tools. The single one saving grace of Skyrim, the thing that extended the lifetime of DA:O. Modding tools.

 

...chainmail bras?

 

...

[Draining Dragon]

DAI is an excellent game that doesn't feel like Dragon Age.

[Sceptenar]

I miss quests, you know actual quests. As in stories to be told through a short adventure, like hunting down Sten's sword in DA:O or investigating the animal attacks in Trademeet in Baldur's Gate 2. Almost every quest in DA:I is a gather/deliver or FedEx quest, like you find a letter on the ground and now you have to place a flower at a statue in the hills or something. Most of them are so unbelievably boring that I can't even be bothered to read the text any more, I just follow the quest markers.

 

Is it so much to ask that we get quest with actual stuff that happens in them? I mean, outside of the main story and companion quests there is almost no character interaction at all. I miss the days when RPGs were about grand adventure, and not just killing trash mobs.

[Iakus]

I think my main gripe was the story was that either there were a lot of loose ends or I was too stupid to follow what was happening. Let me give a example, since I just did Cassandra's seeker quest.

In no particular order the things that puzzled me:

1) Why was Lucius apparently torturing Daniel and feeding him bad things? If his goal is to wipe out the Seekers, wouldn't it be easier to kill them? Why did Lucius basically implement a "sharks with laser beams" type death?

The only thing I can think of is they didn't want to give you the choice of siding with Lucius. After all, I think he might have had a point in wiping out the Seekers. By making him this torturing serial killer who, oh by the way is allied with a cult, the writers essentially give you no option but to kill him.

2) So, the seekers get their power by becoming tranquil! then being touched with a spirit of faith. This, for me, was kind of like a "let's reverse the polarity of the dilithium crystals" technobabble moment. Why does this work? Why, specifically, a spirit of faith? How do they summon this spirit of faith? Also: does being touched by the Spirit of faith change the Seeker's original personality to become uber believers?

Specifically, why was this so godawful for the Lord Seeker to cover up? I don't think it's the kind of thing you want every Tom, Dick, and Harry to know. Does The Lord Seeker know? Does the Divine know? Why isn't that enough? Do you really want every rank and file Mage to know about it? How was this an immense betrayal on the Seeker's part?
 

 

Well, my own thoughts:

 

1) Lucius was trying to create Red Templars out of Seekers, and they were proving resistant to the standard "eat red lyrium, go nuts" treatment.  He saw this whole deal as a way to bring about a Thedasian Armageddon, which is what the Promisers wanted.

 

2) It seems to suggest that when someone is cured oof tranquility, thier bond with the Fade is not restored as it was, but is somehow changed.  The person's mind is also not restored to factory spec, as it were.  How they summon the spirit is not explained.  But the Asunder novel makes it wuite clear that a spirit of Faith is specifically not required.  Any Fade spirit will do, even a demon.  I imagine that in this case a Faith spirit would be most amenable to the situation, since fasting and prayer is part of the ritual.

 

What's so awful about it is that the mage-templar war kicked off because Lord Seeker Lambert (Lucius's predecessor) tried to bust up the mage conclave that was gathered after an independant discovery of this cure. 

[PlasmaPunch]

I think my main gripe was the story was that either there were a lot of loose ends or I was too stupid to follow what was happening. Let me give a example, since I just did Cassandra's seeker quest.

In no particular order the things that puzzled me:

1) Why was Lucius apparently torturing Daniel and feeding him bad things? If his goal is to wipe out the Seekers, wouldn't it be easier to kill them? Why did Lucius basically implement a "sharks with laser beams" type death?

The only thing I can think of is they didn't want to give you the choice of siding with Lucius. After all, I think he might have had a point in wiping out the Seekers. By making him this torturing serial killer who, oh by the way is allied with a cult, the writers essentially give you no option but to kill him.

2) So, the seekers get their power by becoming tranquil! then being touched with a spirit of faith. This, for me, was kind of like a "let's reverse the polarity of the dilithium crystals" technobabble moment. Why does this work? Why, specifically, a spirit of faith? How do they summon this spirit of faith? Also: does being touched by the Spirit of faith change the Seeker's original personality to become uber believers?

Specifically, why was this so godawful for the Lord Seeker to cover up? I don't think it's the kind of thing you want every Tom, Dick, and Harry to know. Does The Lord Seeker know? Does the Divine know? Why isn't that enough? Do you really want every rank and file Mage to know about it? How was this an immense betrayal on the Seeker's part?

I could go on-this quest really bugged me-but it's already turning into a book. Suffice it to say, I thought the exposition of the whys and werefores on quests were a little thin. The explanation usually passed muster at first glance, but if you sat and thought about a lot of it, you were like, "This doesn't make much sense." It could have made sense-but not without a lot more exposition than what we got.

Maybe it's all explained in the codexes but...yeah. A lot of stuff makes me scratch my head. Don't even get me started on the Divine selection. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't selection for the Divine actually hinge on being, you know, within the Chantry? An actual religious person? Vivienne doesn't pass muster in the slightest, and Lelianna and Cassandra only if you squint and ignore a whole lot of things, which, as the Inquisitor, I'm not inclined to do. Sister "stab stab! kill kill!" becoming Divine when Mother Giselle is just hanging out in my Chantry garden! WTF.

Ok, I really am done now.

 

Okay these I might be able to help with. 

 

1.) Lucius was attempting to find a way to corrupt the Seekers, instead of killing them all. The reason seems to be that he thinks he'd be doing them a favor by keeping them alive and letting them join his 'new order'. This is basically him being insane, but he truly thinks that if he can lyriumize the Seekers, he'd be saving them. However they can't be corrupted with read lyrium, just like Cole, and other spirits can't be. Seekers are made by tranquilling a normal being, and then summoning a Spirit of Faith to restore them to health. 

 

2.) Faith isn't just believing, it's action, and determination reinforced by faith. I can only assume that part of the Faith spirit is embedded within the Seekers, making them slightly magical - just like Cole was originally a roguish mage, now he's a mage with the ability to make people forget him. As it's said by Cassandra at some point, all seekers can do what Templars do, and they don't need Lyrium to do it. (Leading me to believe that Seekers become some kind of mages, albeit weak.)

 

also to your miniquestions - Yes it changes their personality, I'm sure that Cole didn't obsess over 'helping people', just like I'm sure Cassandra didn't obssess over changing the world into a better place for the Maker's children. Summoning a spirit seems to be extremely easy from what I can tell, there's multiple ways - mages going into the fade and seeking them out is probably the most likely though.

 

The reason why it's so shitty that they covered it up - to put it bluntly, is that it's an extremely ****** terrible thing to do to a person. You change who they are, make them starve and nearly die before doing so. On top of that, you didn't tell them it was happening, and then you told them after that the Maker is the one that changed them. It's obtrusive and terrible. 

[Iakus]

 

 

Is it so much to ask that we get quest with actual stuff that happens in them? I mean, outside of the main story and companion quests there is almost no character interaction at all. I miss the days when RPGs were about grand adventure, and not just killing trash mobs.

Part of the problem might be the banter bug.  We seem to be getting a lot less companion interaction than we should.

[rda]

Guys, thanks for explaining the Seeker quest. It does make a bit more sense now-but to a certain extent I think you've kinda reinforced my point...it seems a lot of the ways this quest makes sense are if you read the books, which I haven't. I certainly don't mind the books adding to the lore of DA:I, but IMHO the quests should still be understandable and make sense without it.

And the spirit of faith changing people makes sense-but if true it should be a majorly big deal for Cassandra shouldn't it? Like a "Holy crap, I'm no longer the person I was because the infused me with a spirit/demon. Who am I? Who is Cassandra Pentaghast?"

Her biggest question seems to be "Should I reform the seekers or not?" not "Holy crap, I was mind raped and my personality supplanted by an alien presence!"

To any rational person, shouldn't point two be of slightly greater concern than point one?

I dunno. Again, the explanations/characterizations fall a bit flat for me. A lot of times I can see what the writers were trying to accomplish but somehow it just keeps falling a bit flat. Maybe because the limited amount of voiced dialogue can't really support these tremendously nuanced plots they're trying to do?

[Rawgrim]

A patch for the game-breaking bugs. Can't continue the storyline until that is in place.

[fosewham]

Romance with Morrigan, lol.

[Zatche]

I agree with this. Many of the areas are like 'here, look at this awesome sandbox. have fun!', but connections to the main quest are all tangential. If they weren't awesome sandboxes this game would be mediocre. Luckily they are and it isn't. A little more emphasis on narrative. You're almost there BW.

The narrative is there with the sidequests. Problem is with the presentation. The Ishamel and Old Crestwood sidequests would be great if they weren't told through short non cinematic conversations. The result ends up feeling less personal and dramatic, more academic yet hollow.

[PlasmaPunch]

The narrative is there with the sidequests. Problem is with the presentation. The Ishamel and Old Crestwood sidequests would be great if they weren't told through short non cinematic conversations. The result ends up feeling less personal and dramatic, more academic yet hollow.

 

Pretty much this, as someone who reads almost all the codex entries, all the papers on the ground, and looks at the enviroment for more lore etc - the game does this really well. However for someone that wants the story to be told to them, the game leaves out important bits that give the story depth.

[Brovikk Rasputin]

Nothing so far. 50 hours into the game and I honestly can't think of any minor things that are missing. More armor types maybe?

[PlasmaPunch]

Guys, thanks for explaining the Seeker quest. It does make a bit more sense now-but to a certain extent I think you've kinda reinforced my point...it seems a lot of the ways this quest makes sense are if you read the books, which I haven't. I certainly don't mind the books adding to the lore of DA:I, but IMHO the quests should still be understandable and make sense without it.

And the spirit of faith changing people makes sense-but if true it should be a majorly big deal for Cassandra shouldn't it? Like a "Holy crap, I'm no longer the person I was because the infused me with a spirit/demon. Who am I? Who is Cassandra Pentaghast?"

Her biggest question seems to be "Should I reform the seekers or not?" not "Holy crap, I was mind raped and my personality supplanted by an alien presence!"

To any rational person, shouldn't point two be of slightly greater concern than point one?

I dunno. Again, the explanations/characterizations fall a bit flat for me. A lot of times I can see what the writers were trying to accomplish but somehow it just keeps falling a bit flat. Maybe because the limited amount of voiced dialogue can't really support these tremendously nuanced plots they're trying to do?

 

I think they figure that if you care enough, you'll actually go read the codex/books or read every interact-able but for a lot of people they'll just be frustrated like you are, and that's totally fair. Also it's kinda hard to hate on that 'alien presence' when it's already attached. I'm sure all the seekers will rationalize it as a 'needed contrivance' or some sort. It should be also mentioned that when you fuse with a spirit, it can still be corrupted, meaning some pretty bad **** for the Seekers imo. Just like Anders(Justice into Vengeance), and potentially Cole...

[Joe-Poe]

Exactly the same can be said about the game in general... everything is sorta there, but not really great... aside from crafting, that one had potential.

I found the crafting to be very lacking, No reverse engineering to get blueprints, no taking items apart to get mats, no dye system....just very basic. The Winter Forge mod for DAO was more awesome than this system.

[Joe-Poe]

The narrative is there with the sidequests. Problem is with the presentation. The Ishamel and Old Crestwood sidequests would be great if they weren't told through short non cinematic conversations. The result ends up feeling less personal and dramatic, more academic yet hollow.

Yeah the majority of conversations are non cinematic throughout the entire game...it sucks.

[Fearsome1]

For me one huge thing that is missing is the terrific beard selections that DA:O dwarves had worn previously. Those lovely braided options have just vanished into the aether, and that really bummed me out for my planned dwarf Inquisitor. The facial hair options for male dwarves in Inquisition were so damned lousy that I just opted to have him go with as much stubble as he could. Decent beard customization may simply have been beyond the design teams capabilities with the new Frostbite 3 engine?

 

I admit to having had some high hopes for desire demon appearances too. Plus, the lack of a loyal mabari in at least one side quest or mission sucks for those of us who are dog overs. I have enjoyed the mounts, but didn't expect to have to "buy" them all. I had wanted to go out and catch some of them myself.

 

The elven customizations have been fine.

[Sailliak]

A mabari companion. I want my dog. Hawke had a dog, Hero of Ferelden had a dog, (I can't believe they didn't let him duel Loghain) what kind of monster is the Inquisitor in this game that they don't have a faithful dog.