154 réponses à ce sujet

[CuriousArtemis]

I'm sure y'all are nice and all, but if I want to read theories about Solas, I'll go to one of the many threads discussing him in the Scuttlebutt section with the added benefit of not having a constant break in discussions to talk about how nice his butt is or w/e it is you guys talk about in there.

 

You guys were saying no one ever talks about anything but romance in the character threads, so s/he kindly invited you to the Solas thread and said you could talk about whatever you wanted. 

 

Someone comes out of this looking very bad, and it's not the folks in the Solas thread.

[TheodoricFriede]

I wish the romances overshadowed the main story. I found the romances in this game to be somewhat pathetic in scope to be honest.

[Korva]

Ugh, tell me about it. I barely look at character threads because they tend to be all about the character's romance and their sexy time while discussing very little about the actual characters themselves. And I wholeheartedly agree that many of us LGBTs are far too concerned about the sexuality of the character than the characters themselves.

 

I think I need to apologize, here: I certainly didn't intend to point the finger at LGBT people as particularly single-minded -- so if that was unclear, I'm very sorry. Representation matters, and I very much know what it's likes when one feels "left out" and pretty much treated as non-existant. Bioware still remain the only ones who practice some decent inclusivity, so it's only natural that fans latch on to that as a rare chance to "see themselves".

 

Just wanted to pop in and say that this isn't always the case with the Solas thread.  Yes we do gush, and cry.  But there's a lot of theories and things like that, that are discussed as well.  Plus we're all pretty friendly .

 

Cheers for the heads-up. My reluctance to go into these character threads really falls mostly on myself -- it just feels rude to "derail" from the theme at hand, if you will.

[Uhh.. Jonah]

I think there's a difference between the impact of them in the game and the manner in which they are discussed in the forums.

[_Lucinia]

 

Cheers for the heads-up. My reluctance to go into these character threads really falls mostly on myself -- it just feels rude to "derail" from the theme at hand, if you will.

I can't speak for every one else that posts in there.  But my experience has been that the "derailing" is welcome.  Of course most of us are caught up in the romance with Solas, but that doesn't mean we aren't interested in discussing him in a capacity that has nothing to do with that side of his character arc.  The discussion does flow back and forth between theories and gushing/crying.  Always seems to me as long as everyone is being respectful any discussion is more than welcome.
 

[Broganisity]

Bioware games have always been more about the characters and their interactions with the player, their companions, and the world rather than the story of the game itself.

Also hats. Pretty hats.

[_Lucinia]

You guys were saying no one ever talks about anything but romance in the character threads, so s/he kindly invited you to the Solas thread and said you could talk about whatever you wanted. 

 

Someone comes out of this looking very bad, and it's not the folks in the Solas thread.

I'm out of likes.  Thank you

[ThreeF]

I think people talk about romances/companions more because they tend to have more positive common ground there.

In-game I would love a less rushed core story, but not at the expense of characterizations, because this is one of the things that  makes bioware games unique and imo DAI did a great job making the world come alive partially because of the way it handles its characters.

[Cheech 2.0]

I guess I'm just not the romantic type, but I'm glad so many people enjoy them. I do like the companion stories.My favourite Bioware relationship isn't even a companion. It's Shepard and Anderson, probabley because it's the one I can resonate with the most. Say what you will about the ending and I do agree it wasn't the best, but that last conversation with the two gave me feels no other companion/romance story even came close to. Brothers till the end.

 

[suntiger745]

I think Bioware did a much better job with the romances in Inquisition than in previous games. To me the romances don't hinder the plot per se, more so if anything is being hindered its the characters themselves because it really seems that we prefer quantity over quality with everyone wanting a romance catered towards them personally or just having so many romances in general. But as I said before I think Bioware did a much better job with all that in Inquisition than in previous titles. 

 

Also, as a random nitpick. What's with the lack of capes in DA. Capes make everyone look at least 10x more badass. I would totally buy cape DLC. I want my Warrior to look like Guts. 

https://www.youtube....h?v=KNUbPRj9TGM

 

It applies to Thedas too!

 

I'd say if anything the more open world style has put all the story elements (both main, side and companion/advisor) on the back seat.

This is also a good point.

I know with the Elder Scroll games, at least from Daggerfall and forward, the main questline is important plotwise, but only a small piece gameplaywise.

With a sandbox world, or even just one with fairly large areas that invite exploration, the main plot automatically becomes a smaller part of the content, percentage-wise if not impact-wise.

 

Well, I suppose you could just make some large area to explore and just not put anything much there beyond randomly spawned mobs, but how much fun would that be?

However, as soon as you start to add in little special treasures, side quests, rare materials/mobs or profession/character/item-related questlines to fill up the larger world you also make the main quest a smaller part of the overall experience.

Bethesda has chosen to deal with this in the way of having numerous large questlines (mages/fighters/thieves guild questlines, dark brotherhood questline, daedric princes questlines), the main plot being one among the big ones. To the point that the main questline oftenisn't the best story the game provides. They are ok with that though, and doesn't pretend that the main plot is the best part of the game, or its main selling point.

 

With Inquisition Bioware did take a step in the Elder Scrolls direction, with varying degrees of success.

On the one hand the larger world is welcome (so is jumping btw), at least to me since I like exploring, and they did a fairly good job in making it interesting.

However, with a game that is so heavily character-driven, and where the interactions between the characters is both a focus and one of the main selling points I think making the main plot a smaller part of the game content, in terms of percentage, hurts it more than it would an Elder Scrolls game. Making it feel less significant in a way.

 

You could perhaps tie more of the exploration and remote areas to the main plot, but that risks going into extending and/or making the main plot convoluted just for sake of length/complexity, not to make a good story.

 

Where to draw the line in terms of size of the world, content, questlines and impact/significance/length of the main story and how important the characters and their interactions is something Bioware still seems to iterate on and, people being people, we will all have different opinions on when they hit the "right" balance.

 

In terms of romances overshadowing the main plot I can't see it gameplay/storywise.

I can see how you'd get that impression from the forums though.

[ThreeF]

 

With Inquisition Bioware did take a step in the Elder Scrolls direction, with varying degrees of success.

On the one hand the larger world is welcome (so is jumping btw), at least to me since I like exploring, and they did a fairly good job in making it interesting.

However, with a game that is so heavily character-driven, and where the interactions between the characters is both a focus and one of the main selling points I think making the main plot a smaller part of the game content, in terms of percentage, hurts it more than it would an Elder Scrolls game. Making it feel less significant in a way.

 

You know I've been thinking about it a lot, mainly because I wanted to play Skyrim but couldn't find it in the store anymore and ended up buying DAI instead not knowing about all these changes. I have to say that to me in comparison DAI is a much more "alive" world than Oblivion. I'm not quite sure yet what makes it so exactly, but I think that the fact that you get to see very different types of landscapes and the way you interact with your sidekicks and  they with you (banters) play major role in it.

I think what hurts the main story in DAI is that it is fairly short and kind of rushed (you can see this especially in the Mages vs Templar quest line where there seems that a chunk of Templar side quest is missing.  And the main antagonist isn't all that fleshed out (in contrast  with the Arishok from the previous game who was so well done that in my first playthrough I was surprised there was an act 3)

[Incantrix]

Bioware forums has always been a cesspool of romance fan boys/girls.  Most people who play  DA probably aren't that ecstatic over it. 

[Nyctyris]

I only know one other person in my circle of friends who even bothered to start (much less complete) a romance in the three games. Most of my friends just cba or didn't like the characters enough. 

 

I think a couple of them liked Lei in DAO and Safiya in NWN2MOTB but only two of us have tried it out for the sake of trying in other games 

[Korva]

With Inquisition Bioware did take a step in the Elder Scrolls direction, with varying degrees of success.

On the one hand the larger world is welcome (so is jumping btw), at least to me since I like exploring, and they did a fairly good job in making it interesting.

However, with a game that is so heavily character-driven, and where the interactions between the characters is both a focus and one of the main selling points I think making the main plot a smaller part of the game content, in terms of percentage, hurts it more than it would an Elder Scrolls game. Making it feel less significant in a way.

 

This is a very good point. I'd long been annoyed with how Bioware games had shrunk in scale after the Baldur's Gate series -- both in terms of the number and the size of the available areas. Their later games felt like theater stages in a way: tiny, confined, static, lifeless, very much just there as a backdrop, and a boring one to boot. So at first I was delighted when they "opened up" the world more in Inquisition. Jumping, I agree, is part of that because it ticked me off so badly when my super-agile Jedi or martial arts prodigy could be stopped in her path by silly little fences and rocks. Or worse, by invisible walls.

 

At the same time, I quickly came to decide that okay, they've gone a bit too far. There's too much "filler" content and not much for the main plot, or for the companions. I'd prefer to keep the bigger, more freely explorable zones but cut them down by a third or a half and just put all the saved resources into "core" story content with the plot, the NPCs, and Skyhold.

[leadintea]

I think I need to apologize, here: I certainly didn't intend to point the finger at LGBT people as particularly single-minded -- so if that was unclear, I'm very sorry. Representation matters, and I very much know what it's likes when one feels "left out" and pretty much treated as non-existant. Bioware still remain the only ones who practice some decent inclusivity, so it's only natural that fans latch on to that as a rare chance to "see themselves".

 

I agree that representation matters and I'm all for Bioware including LGBT content, but the way many people handle a lot of these social issues comes across as them caring more about numbers than the characters themselves. Like I said, before the game's release a lot of LGBT people wanted an extra gay romance just to spite the straight male crowd that had been getting more romances than they had. A lot of people that had put down Solas and Blackwall previously, for instance, were now clamoring for them to be bisexual just to reach some ridiculous goal of having more romances than straight males without caring about the actual characters themselves, which is the point I was trying to make.

[Korva]

Ahh, I see. Yes, the numbers game, no matter who plays it, annoys me too. I'm not saying "be grateful that you get anything at all", but if someone is more concerned about spiting others than about the characters themselves, it's just BS.

 

I do sort of wish Solas was bi, or even better, that a "romance" wasn't required to see some of his stuff, only being an elf and a friend, because I do loathe it when lore is gated away so massively. A romance as silly little side-fluff? Fine. As a big lore- or plot-point? Ugh.

[leadintea]

I do sort of wish Solas was bi, or even better, that a "romance" wasn't required to see some of his stuff, only being an elf and a friend, because I do loathe it when lore is gated away so massively. A romance as silly little side-fluff? Fine. As a big lore- or plot-point? Ugh.

 

I kinda agree with you on this. I do think it's ridiculous for a romance to have a lot of lore in it that would be useful for all players to know, but I'd also like romances to have more plot relevance. Personally, I'll never roll a female character, so I would never find out stuff like the truth about vallaslin if it weren't for other players. My feelings on the matter are that if a romance expands more on a character, then that's fine, but if their romance reveals a lot of plot heavy and important knowledge, then it should be available for all players to access.

[kyles3]

I guess I'm just not the romantic type, but I'm glad so many people enjoy them. I do like the companion stories.My favourite Bioware relationship isn't even a companion. It's Shepard and Anderson, probabley because it's the one I can resonate with the most. Say what you will about the ending and I do agree it wasn't the best, but that last conversation with the two gave me feels no other companion/romance story even came close to. Brothers till the end.

 

Completely agree. One real downside to the new-protagonist-every-game approach is that your character will never build up a bond with other characters like Shepard and Anderson could. As much as I love DA2 from a story perspective, I've always wondered if the time jumps were a deliberate attempt to squeeze those kinds of relationships into one game. Whether it was or not, it just wasn't the same as actually having characters like Shepard and Anderson occupying space in your head for five-plus real-life years.

 

Varric's one of my favorite characters, and it was kind of a bummer not being able to bond with him as the Inquisitor like Hawke could've. That's why even though I find the Inquisitor the least interesting DA protagonist so far, I wouldn't mind seeing her return for another game or two. It'd be interesting to see what a steady main character could do for the series. I'd love to really feel like old war buddies with Cassandra in some epic battle five years from now.

[Kinsz]

I dont care for romance usually but i have to admit that the Cassandra romance made me enjoy the game a lot more this time around , i dont mean just the sex scene but the way her relationship with my Inquisitor developed from Jailer - prisoner to people who love each other more than anything else in Thedas, that somewhat made the game more meaningful for me......does that make sense?

[Kinsz]

Completely agree. One real downside to the new-protagonist-every-game approach is that your character will never build up a bond with other characters like Shepard and Anderson could. As much as I love DA2 from a story perspective, I've always wondered if the time jumps were a deliberate attempt to squeeze those kinds of relationships into one game. Whether it was or not, it just wasn't the same as actually having characters like Shepard and Anderson occupying space in your head for five-plus real-life years.

 

Varric's one of my favorite characters, and it was kind of a bummer not being able to bond with him as the Inquisitor like Hawke could've. That's why even though I find the Inquisitor the least interesting DA protagonist so far, I wouldn't mind seeing her return for another game or two. It'd be interesting to see what a steady main character could do for the series. I'd love to really feel like old war buddies with Cassandra in some epic battle five years from now.

DA would definitely be better if it keeps the same protag from game to game , all resources wasted on " starting over " and different races could be allocated elsewhere , which is why i was excited with Bioware's initial plan of making the Inquisitor human only.

[kyles3]

DA would definitely be better if it keeps the same protag from game to game , all resources wasted on " starting over " and different races could be allocated elsewhere , which is why i was excited with Bioware's initial plan of making the Inquisitor human only.

 

Maybe. There are trade-offs, of course. I would hate to lose out on being able to play as different races. And I wouldn't want BioWare to go all Ubisoft on us and start making the same game in different settings.

 

But there is something to having the same cast of characters share a long history together. Up until the last few minutes I think ME3 capitalized on that beautifully.

[Wulfram]

People like to squee over the romances on the forum, but they're not particularly important in the game.

There's still plenty of discussion of the rest of the game, though it seems to be more located in the spoiler scuttlebutt forum than this one.

[Korva]

DA would definitely be better if it keeps the same protag from game to game

 

Disagree. It would remove a lot of options and meaningful choices (of which there are few enough as it is). Keeping track of an ever-increasing mess of diverging paths from game to game while still making the new story work is a pain -- or worse, they'd end up ramming a singular "canon" down everyone's throat and pretend there never were choices to begin with.

[Kinsz]

 

Disagree. It would remove a lot of options and meaningful choices. There's just so many things you can track of between games and still make the new story work -- or worse, you ram a singular "canon" down everyone's throat and pretend there never were choices to begin with.

ME did it and there still were "choices" , we could have had Hawke as the protagonist for the Inquisition it would have changed absolutely nothing choice wise. the extra time spent on other races however would have been spent on fleshing out the story more.