They dropped the origins because they were wasted resources from a reactivity POV. In this game they took those resources and gave more reactive content throughout the game. That's way better.
No, it's not. A meaningful character backstory is far more valuable to roleplaying than 50 filler side quests. I'd happily trade an entire zone of DAI for origin stories.
GWs post Ostagar. Then they took it one step further in DA:A when they made it mandatory that you become Warden Commander OR do the ultimate sacrifice.
That's not reactivity. The zone quests are not what I,m talking about and those aren't the trade off. The reactivity is in stuff like IB going "ROLF" to you being a Qunari Mage, or all the Dalish specific dialogue options, etc.
In DAO then origins introduced characters and themes that actively contradicted the main story and then completely overruled your character and beliefs to turn it into I
The backstory was the opposite of meaningful.
I agree. I liked the origins, but they did NOTHING with them. It didn't matter at all what background you had. I do think backgrounds are important, and one thing that bothers me about the inquisitor is that she's such a soulless puppet with no background whatsoever. At some point you have a conversation about your family, you can create a bit of a backstory and personality that way, but it's not the same thing as a proper introduction. The beginning of DAI feels very rushed, and I still struggle to form any kind of emotional connection to my character. Hawke was way better. Had a family and the entire game was Hawke's life basically.
However, DAI has a lot of references to your character's race or being a mage. It's way better implemented than in DAO. You get different dialogue options as a Dalish elf, you even get an entire romance just for that "origin"! A lot of people react to my character being an elf and a mage. I can't shove Dalish pride into everybody's face as much as I would have liked to, but I certainly can do so on several occasions.
It's more difficult to get on Sera's good side as an elf. The romance is easier as a qunari, I heard. It's little things like this that make DAI so enjoyable. Bioware put quite some effort into this.
Why would focusing on their fans make the game less popular ? I don't get this one.Don't forget that the source of the problem is that they are a subdivision of...
I get it, their fans (or at least Origins fans) are some good old rpg lovers. The "wider audience" are the part of the new generation that love action and simple stuff. Not only is it easier to make a dumbed down version of Origins but apparently it will also make them more money.
I agree. I liked the origins, but they did NOTHING with them. It didn't matter at all what background you had. I do think backgrounds are important, and one thing that bothers me about the inquisitor is that she's such a soulless puppet with no background whatsoever. At some point you have a conversation about your family, you can create a bit of a backstory and personality that way, but it's not the same thing as a proper introduction. The beginning of DAI feels very rushed, and I still struggle to form any kind of emotional connection to my character. Hawke was way better. Had a family and the entire game was Hawke's life basically.
I remember already becoming attached to my Warden by the end of his origin story. As for the Inquisitor, I finished the game and honestly wouldn't give a crap if he just dropped dead right there and then. As you said, the Inquisitor just feels like a soulless puppet that asks too many questions with that emotionless British accent. I wanted to just quit the game when I was talking to Morrigan with her amazingly done voice while on the other hand my Inquisitor kept asking personal questions like a robot with an accent. The voice just kills the whole thing because unless I (the player) can personally choose the voice actor or do it myself, I will never be able to make the character who I wanted him/her to be or pretended to be.
That's not reactivity. The zone quests are not what I,m talking about and those aren't the trade off. The reactivity is in stuff like IB going "ROLF" to you being a Qunari Mage, or all the Dalish specific dialogue options, etc.
In DAO then origins introduced characters and themes that actively contradicted the main story and then completely overruled your character and beliefs to turn it into I
The backstory was the opposite of meaningful.
So do you think that Bioware had finally found a good foundation for future DA games or do you think the next game will be completely different again?
Definitely! They made a beautiful world, it is fun to play, it is fun to watch friends play and has terrific characters. Perfect platform to build on.
As for Origin stories in DA:O, it was a nice touch but found it quite gimmicky. As a human noble, killing Howe was quite tame.
I agree for the most part. There's a way to go to find a balance in cutomization, tactics, and combat, but that's doable withing the engine and it does some things extremely well. Have you noticed the realism of flags flapping in the wind? It's insanely good and not trivial. The world is beautiful and animal animation is very realistic, as well.I think they really hit it with the graphics, physics and artstyle in this game. The action combat is great as well, mostly needs bug/tooltip fixes and could be even better if they add some new ability trees. The game misstepped with the tactical combat and balancing imo. Both the AI behaviors and the tactical camera control scheme need some major work. I think they can and should continue to polish and iterate on the current formula. So yeah, I believe they finally found their "thing"
Nah, they can and will dumb down more things just wait.
Really? The human noble's family being murdered by Arl Howe, motivating them the player to fight against Howe (and Loghain by extension) wasn't meaningful? It didn't add depth to the human noble's story? And besides, characters who knew the noble did react to them on that basis. All the nobles react to the human noble differently to how they react to other Wardens, so it's not like character background based reactivity is a new feature of DAI, it's just handled in a more advanced way. There is no reason why there could not be origins and still have that reactivity. In fact, giving the player a chance to experience the character's backstory could provide even greater opportunities for reactive interactions. Even if there were a trade off and we could only have one of the two, I would still take the Origins over those little additional dialogue moments.
What the origin stories did was provide a background for the character and some potential motivations for wanting to fight the Blight (defend home and family, avenge wrongs done, achieve great things, etc.). Conversely, the Inquisitor is just the wrong guy/gal in the ring place at the wrong time. We know nothing of their background save a single brief paragraph during chargen and are given no reason to initially care who this character is or what they are doing. Other than "The mark is killing you", the Inquisitor has no clear motivation for his/her role in things. If the Inquisitor had more of a backstory, it might provide reasons why the player should be invested in this mission from the outset and inform who the Inquisitor is as a person.
From my own experience, I never really developed any sense for who the Inquisitor was because they lacked the fleshed out background of the Warden and Hawke, and felt comparatively hollow as a result. I never had that issue with any of my Wardens or Hawkes, I always knew who they were because I was able to latch onto facets of their backstory to build that particular character.
As for the issue of overruling the backstory to force the story, the game has to do that to make you play it. The same accusation could be made of Inquisition; the PC might not want to be Inquisitor, but he/she has no more choice in that than the Warden does. The mechanics of the game demand that the character takes part whether they want to or not (you can choose not to play at all, I suppose). The only alternative option would have been a "You run away to Orlais to escape the Blight. Ferelden is destroyed by the Darkspawn. Game Over." screen, which is not very viable from a gameplay perspective since it would make for a short game. Instead, you can rail against the unfairness of being forced to be being a Grey Warden all the while you are playing the game. The game has to make you play it, but it still allows you to play a bitter, unwilling Warden if you so desire.
wardens. DAI does this with the Inquisition. But DAO doesn't. That's what makes the origin thematically broken.
Great topic.
I think that bioware has found some features that define what Dragon Age really is and that need to be kept. These features are:
In Dragon Age Inquisition there have been some additions that I think need to be kept because they can become a staple of the franchise:
Finally there are still some features where this franchise still needs to find its own formula, something that is both unique and engaging.
I remember already becoming attached to my Warden by the end of his origin story. As for the Inquisitor, I finished the game and honestly wouldn't give a crap if he just dropped dead right there and then. As you said, the Inquisitor just feels like a soulless puppet that asks too many questions with that emotionless British accent. I wanted to just quit the game when I was talking to Morrigan with her amazingly done voice while on the other hand my Inquisitor kept asking personal questions like a robot with an accent. The voice just kills the whole thing because unless I (the player) can personally choose the voice actor or do it myself, I will never be able to make the character who I wanted him/her to be or pretended to be.
Yeah, the British female voice is pretty bad. I think that's why I don't care about her while I was rather fond of my diplomatic femHawke. My sarcastic manHawke too. Voice acting is always hit and miss. I believe the sole reason I'm abnormally attached to my Shepard is Jennifer Hale...
And yeah, Morrigan is so damn great because of Claudia Black's phenomenal performance . Perfect choice.
However, I do NOT like silent protagonists at all. I need the emotion in the voices... and the faces (fix the terrible face animations, Bioware! forgot to mention that on my wishlist). I didn't care much for my wardens actually. They were even more of a puppet to me than the inquisitor. It actually broke immersion for me to have everybody talk but the warden. Always standing there like an idiot.
It's possible to roleplay how they would say something. And I played my second warden as a young know it all cheerful guy. I get the appeal of it. It's not my kind of thing though. So I'd rather take the gamble and hope for a talented voice actor to bring my character to life. If they fail that, it's not worse to me than a silent protagonist, so I have nothing to lose I guess.
I have no doubt that they actually read people's complaints about this stuff. What really matters is the world they set up, which, to me, is probably the best-realized of the three games, and there are some really nice additions to the basic mechanics of the game, like the occasional timed dialogue wheel that you can get while out on a quest. It's nice that you can actually react to companion input in the field on occasion.
I enjoy the interactive banter as well. 
I'm afraid that the extreme overabundance of fetch quests might be here to stay due to how many people have responded positively to them and will argue with you when you say you want something of more substance also 
That's why games are what they are today... Origins all the way even for a single human race. Now we have multiple races with a pretty shallow background ? People usually don't think these things over.
Well, most of us actually played a game that was entirely the Origin-Story of the coming Inquisitor. DA" just didn't click with audiences though...Hawke never became Inquisitor. But if that had happened, s/he would have had quite an elaborate origin ^^
This isn't Mario. It's actually refreshing to see a video game that DOESN'T constantly reiterate itself with the same old crap.
>bashes series that reiterate constantly
>uses the most varied series in the history of videogames as example
Sick reasoning skills bro.
So do you think that Bioware had finally found a good foundation for future DA games or do you think the next game will be completely different again?
I hope they have because changing it up every game has really held DA2 and DAI back in terms of focusing on improving stuff in the back end like the game systems.
Dragon Age has floundered around a bit. I promise you this has a lot to do with becoming a part of a major publisher, so some of it isn't what Bioware would have done if left to their own devices, but it is what it is.
There are two areas where I think Dragon Age should hang its hat; companion interplay and roleplayed realm management.
With companions, they've done a great job with one on one (though I'd say they put too much into romances). I've always wondered what it'd be like to be one of 8 equals sitting at a dinner table together discussing the adventures to date... or just discussing a preferred blacksmith or something. Think of the DA equivalent of the dinner scenes in Firefly).
I think the management sim style options and poltiical intrigue of this and Awakenings were great fun and I'd love to see them significantly expanded. I think the two entries in this series that really ground it and give you something to work with are Inquisition and Awakenings. They're also the most similar and in some respects, the best.
I love DA:O, don't get me wrong, but it lacked narrative focus.you could almost forget there was a blight happening as you're torn off on every sidequest you can imagine, where as DA:I's sidequests are at least tangentially related to the central conflict... admittedly, the sidequest in DA:O for the most part had higher stakes and seemed more important, but not more relevant. That's a critical difference... they need to find the happy medium. I think some aspects of Mass Effect 2 could be employed here... some kind of unfolding, episodic storyline that becomes more and more connected as time goes on rather than a straight up Hero's Journey.
Indeed... why they didn't allow Hawke to become inquisitor is a bit.... odd really. Cass even mentions they wanted Hawke for the role.
Bet it would have improved da2 sales, pre and post DA:I release, if they had. Wouldn't have been that hard to incorporate. Instead of Hawke becoming the Herald, perhaps Hawke becomes the heralds protector...maybe even a love interest...
People wanting multiple races + DA2 being poorly received is probably why Hawke isn't the Quiz.
Indeed... why they didn't allow Hawke to become inquisitor is a bit.... odd really. Cass even mentions they wanted Hawke for the role.
Bet it would have improved da2 sales, pre and post DA:I release, if they had. Wouldn't have been that hard to incorporate. Instead of Hawke becoming the Herald, perhaps Hawke becomes the heralds protector...maybe even a love interest...
I think it would have tanked DAI if they incorporated Hawke any more than they did. Best to pretend DA2 didn't happen.
1. Witherfang's heart had actual dialogue, with consequences, character development, and a compelling tale. More compelling than "LULZ WE'RE A BUNCH OF LAZY FATTIES GO GET US SOME MEAT"
2. DAO had more story content.
I really hope you aren't referring the refugees quest where the hunter is asking you to brave the roads filled with templars/mages/bandits/demons to get some meat.
You know, I almost abandoned the franchise at Origins when it was just constantly bullshit dungeon after bullshit dungeon. I like II and Inquisition quests better than "LULZ YOU GOTTA RESCUE KIDNAPPED ******" "LULZ WE AIN'T GONNA HELP YOO CUZ POLITICS" "LULZ I BLOOD MAGIC NAOW" "LULZ I ALSO BLOOD MAGIC NAOW" "LULZ GAEM OF THRONES, PUT ME ON TEH THRONE OR I'LL BETRAY YOO"
I really hope you aren't referring the refugees quest where the hunter is asking you to brave the roads filled with templars/mages/bandits/demons to get some meat.
You know, I almost abandoned the franchise at Origins when it was just constantly bullshit dungeon after bullshit dungeon. I like II and Inquisition quests better than "LULZ YOU GOTTA RESCUE KIDNAPPED ******" "LULZ WE AIN'T GONNA HELP YOO CUZ POLITICS" "LULZ I BLOOD MAGIC NAOW" "LULZ I ALSO BLOOD MAGIC NAOW" "LULZ GAEM OF THRONES, PUT ME ON TEH THRONE OR I'LL BETRAY YOO"
I honestly have no idea what you're saying.
Keep it up Bioware! Many of us love the direction, don't only read the negative posts!~
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