439 réponses à ce sujet

[Sifr]

To me, the darker the better.  I love the love the gritty low fantasy.  Or fantasy with horror themes.  As a kid, what got me into fantasy were actually films like The Never Ending Story and Legend.  The Dark Crystal.  Old Grimm fairy tales.  They've always been dark.

Inquisition's tone doesn't come close to it.  I can't fault the devs for going in that direction.  Again, maybe they just wanted to change things up.  But the grimness of Origins (the broodmothers, the grey moral area, the misogyny,) gave it a weight.  It felt like a world that NEEDED saving.  Dragon Age 2...Hawke's story is a tragedy, in many ways.  And that's what makes it riveting.  The world is falling apart around him.  Serial killers, mad mages, a tyrannical Templar order, Qunari invaders, Kirkwall's political ineptitude.

I just don't get that feeling out of Inquisition.  At all.  There's nothing scary at all about Coryepheus.  He's more Cobra Commander/Skelator level of "seriously?  That's your plan?" cartoon character. (And when I first saw ol' Cory in Legacy, I LOVED the idea of this character...sigh...)  Even the mage/templar war lost it's weight.  It's supposed to be tearing Thedas apart.  I never felt that SCOPE, you know?

 I do hope we see a return to Thedas with a little more darker edges.  All the things mentioned above are still present in Thedas.  (Hell, you can find it all in the books and comics leading up to this game written by the same writing staff.)  Just for whatever reason, the presentation of the game muted them significantly. 

 

Yeah, half of the conflicts in Inquisition don't have any of the weight they should have had. The Mage-Templar has already fizzled out, as has the Orlesian Civil War, to the point where you have to question whether or not the Inquisitor is actually solving the problems and instead more just acting as the cleanup crew to wrap everything up, once the problems have already resolved themselves?

 

In Origins, the Warden had a Civil War in progress and the Archdemon on the rise to contend with, to resolve a conflict between Werewolves and Dalish and stop Orzammar from being on the verge of anarchy and tearing itself apart.

 

In DA2, as much as people gripe, you got the sense of what it was like for Hawke to constantly be stuck in the middle of things when everything inevitably went to hell around them and being forced to fight their way out of a tough situation.

 

In Inquisition, it sometimes feels like you're just swooping in at the last minute, after the chaos has abated and taking all the credit and glory for yourself?

 

(And swooping is bad)

[hong]

This thread reminds me of the bitching that Diablo 3 wasn't dark enough compared to D1 and 2. To address the complaints, the devs changed a number of things for the D3 expansion, Reaper of Souls. To be precise, they reduced the saturation and brightness levels, and made a few areas where you literally couldn't see anything outside a few feet away. Hey presto, no more bitching.

Bioware could do the same thing for the next DA game. They don't have to change anything content-related, just make everything 50 shades of brown. I'll bet money that would clear up three-quarters of the complaints.

[Melca36]

Yeah, I hardened her character too. My character was a hardcore assassin and monster hunter who was on a bitter path of revenge with some world-saving on the side, so it only seemed fitting that her one and only take the same path XD. The comment Isabela makes to her in Sebastian's quest makes it even more worth it.

 

 

 

Wow, really? Where do you get the lines that indicate this?

 

 

You obviously did not click on Alain in the Gallows. HE TELLS YOU that Karas goes into his quarters at night and threatens him to not say anything.

[TMJfin]

While I absolutely love the Inquisition, I hope that next game will happen in Nevarra or Tevinter and is much darker.

[Sifr]

Bioware could do the same thing for the next DA game. They don't have to change anything content-related, just make everything 50 shades of brown. I'll bet money that would clear up three-quarters of the complaints.

 

Y'know, Hawke did comment in DA2 that the thing s/he most missed about Ferelden was how everything was brown... maybe they were onto something and that's why the game didn't do as well?

[LadyJaneGrey]

Yeah, half of the conflicts in Inquisition don't have any of the weight they should have had. The Mage-Templar has already fizzled out, as has the Orlesian Civil War, to the point where you have to question whether or not the Inquisitor is actually solving the problems and instead more just acting as the cleanup crew to wrap everything up, once the problems have already resolved themselves?

 

In Origins, the Warden had a Civil War in progress and the Archdemon on the rise to contend with, to resolve a conflict between Werewolves and Dalish and stop Orzammar from being on the verge of anarchy and tearing itself apart.

 

In DA2, as much as people gripe, you got the sense of what it was like for Hawke to constantly be stuck in the middle of things when everything inevitably went to hell around them and being forced to fight their way out of a tough situation.

 

In Inquisition, it sometimes feels like you're just swooping in at the last minute, after the chaos has abated and taking all the credit and glory for yourself?

 

(And swooping is bad)

 

Eh...my Warden, Hawke, and Inquisitor all felt just as trapped as each other.

 

On the main topic: I'm only on my third play-through of Inquisition, but I haven't tripped over options like abandoning Redcliffe, "cleansing" the Circle, killing Connor, or slaughtering Zathrian's clan all in the name of the greater good.  I miss having those options.

 

I don't feel like Thedas itself needs to be DARKER or EDGIERER as a setting, but going forward the player needs to be given more role-playing opportunities.

[KaiserShep]

You obviously did not click on Alain in the Gallows. HE TELLS YOU that Karas goes into his quarters at night and threatens him to not say anything.

I only got as far as him telling me that they captured Grace and the other mages, at which point I was thinking "Well duh-doy man, Grace is standing right next to you." After that I just passed right by him to do Sol's task. But this is kind of annoying because you can get this, but can't react to it, just like how Hawke can't react to Gamlen's pretty nasty remark about Isabela if romanced.

[Cell1e]

I don't like dark, gritty or tragic games at all. A certain degree of conflict is necessary in most games but dark themes like death of family members/friends is just not what I like in any fantasy game. At least not in any great quantities.

 

I also like a positive outcome and some humour and joyous moments throughout the game.

[LadyJaneGrey]

I only got as far as him telling me that they captured Grace and the other mages, at which point I was thinking "Well duh-doy man, Grace is standing right next to you." After that I just passed right by him to do Sol's task. But this is kind of annoying because you can get this, but can't react to it, just like how Hawke can't react to Gamlen's pretty nasty remark about Isabela if romanced.

 

Yeah, it's very easy to miss all the background stories going on at the Kirkwall Circle.  I avoided the place during my first game because I always had a mage in my party.

 

I do like the reaction radial menu Inquisition employs - would have been useful in that instance.

[KaiserShep]

Yeah, it's very easy to miss all the background stories going on at the Kirkwall Circle.  I avoided the place during my first game because I always had a mage in my party.

 

I do like the reaction radial menu Inquisition employs - would have been useful in that instance.

Yes, hopefully it's something Bio really pushes to take advantage of in the next games and Mass Effect. I don't want NPC's just dishing this kind of stuff and the protagonist just idly standing there saying nothing. If I hear something that any sensible person might be indignant about, I'd love to be able to express it somehow.

[LadyJaneGrey]

Yes, hopefully it's something Bio really pushes to take advantage of in the next games and Mass Effect. I don't want NPC's just dishing this kind of stuff and the protagonist just idly standing there saying nothing. If I hear something that any sensible person might be indignant about, I'd love to be able to express it somehow.

 

Seconded.

 

Or maybe they could employ the Kinect/Oculus Rift to react when I yell, "What the ****, Solas?"

[Skeevley]

Nothing really compares to broodmother disturbing. It's hard to top.

 

Though I think dragon age is too *gasp* mainstream for the kind of themes present in Origins. You're not going to get the, "You have to let me bang your boyfriend or one of you dies" thing in the future.  Like I know the Solas romance gets thrown around a lot as extremely distressing for some people, but Origin's romances were borderline ridiculous in how dark they were. I, personally, loved it.

 

But I've come to realize that I just don't think a lot of people share my views concerning dark drama. I don't have any topics that make me uncomfortable, and I have a pretty open mind. 

 

The majority of people however, seem to prefer the lighter story.

 

This is all relative, Inquisition is still dark fantasy, it's just noticeably less so than it's predecessors. 

 

Interestingly, DAO somehow managed to get a balance of the dark and the humorous almost exactly perfect. It's a very hard thing to do. When that mix is attempted you often end up with something really dark with some stupid one-liners thrown in for humor that just completely break immersion (stupid one-liner comic-relief dwarf in a LOTR movie... Anyone... Anyone??), or they end up with something that comes off more as a comedy. Anyway, it's yet another good example of what DAO (and DA2, and FO3, and FNV) all did extremely well but in which DAI somehow falls short. And before fans of the DAI say "oh you just have rose-colored glasses", well, no. If DAI had been the first game in the series I would have never picked up a second... It lacks nearly all the greatness it deserves and instead feeds us a continual stream of mediocrity and boredom.

 

Man, that Boodmother, and the rest of the darkspawn designs, and the freaking dark and dark yet-so-touching Morrigan romance, and Shale's backstory, and and and. The list just goes on and on. DAO just absolutely nailed it in nearly every way. (And, being moddable, the rest could be community fixed!)

[Merlik]

I think if all the demon activity actually came off Demonic, the game would be darker, but all the demons and situations are a bit gamey or cartoony. The undead and demons never come off scary at all. I remember really having a sense of evil with the dark spawn in origins.  

 

The most demonic scene to me is the Templar quest when you go into the fade.

 

Oh, and I also liked the Fallow Mire undead sequences.

[Rawgrim]

It has some darkness and grittiness for sure, but the game is also...."weightless". Makes the darkness and grittiness fail to have any real impact.

[Seraphim24]

Do you know what's funny? Games like the Witcher get praised from some quarters because of its grimdarkness right? It's all so 'gritty' and 'realistic' but games like that go out of their way to emphasize how grimdark they're being. There's a surprising amount of grimdark in DAI but it does not get overly emphasized, it's quotidian, part of everyday life. Because it doesn't get highlighted for the player's voyeuristic pleasure though people think that it's not being grimdark or 'realistic' enough. Maybe the problem is that its being TOO realistic, that atrocities happen every day without fanfare.

 

What atrocities or horribly grimdark things happen in Inquisition exactly?

[In Exile]

It has some darkness and grittiness for sure, but the game is also...."weightless". Makes the darkness and grittiness fail to have any real impact.

That's not a bad notion because I think it recognises how much of a YMMV it actually is to say something has weight.

[Mocksie]

Well, Dragon Age has never been as grim and dark as some other games, like the Witcher for example. There is always a "good" choice, even if it is not readily apparent (I.e Conner in Redcliffe). 

 

However, the DA games have had some pretty creepy scenes/implications and DAI just never had that one horrifying moment like the previous two installments did for me, which I honestly really miss.

 

DA:O had that moment during the Orzrammar questline where you were traveling through the deep roads, hearing that crazy dwarven women talk about being force fed dead darkspawn, and how darkspawn are made before finally seeing a Broodmother for the first time. That quest sent chills up my spine the first time I did it.

 

In DA2, the thing with Hawke's mom was pretty creepy the first playthrough. The quest had a decent build up, especially combined with Hawke's growing panic, before finally seeing Leandra with her head sewn on another body.

 

Both games had smaller incidents that were fairly dark/gritty as well, such as the multiple implications that templars were raping mages in DA2. 

 

DA:I just has... none of that, and I miss it. I want to be creeped out some more.

 

[Luqer]

Games like Dark Souls or Bloodborne or The Last of Us are "dark" not just because it has scenes of atrocity, horror or gore (of which there is very little in those games, surprisingly) but because of its atmosphere and soundtrack. The areas in those games are beautiful while still retaining a consistent somber tone throughout it all without having to resort to a constant gray, brown or dull art direction. Colours are vibrant when it needs to be vibrant. Bright, peaceful areas with a lot of greenery become present in small doses, usually after the player has endured a lot of hardship i.e. Dark Souls 2's Majula, the Last of Us's Giraffe scene or its epilogue level.

 

I'm glad that Inquisition has done away with the previous games dull and lifeless level design but the problem with Inquisition is that there are just so many levels that are bright, peaceful and/or full of sunshine that it feels like I'm not living in the world that's been scarred at all i.e. The Hinterlands, Val Royeaux, Crestwood (after lowering the water level), the Emerald Groves, the Storm Coast, the Arbor Wilds, the Forbidden Oasis, etc. The bright and happy looking places should have been in small doses and certain effort should have been required to even earn a chance to be at such places. I never felt like I needed to help the world at all.

 

The soundtrack of the game is good but the majority of it all is constantly trying to evoke a sense of a heroic-feeling. Heck, I still felt like an unstoppable hero in the Redcliffe AU quest because the soundtrack kept reminding me of that. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be heroic and peaceful soundtracks in future DA games. I'm saying that such soundtrack should have been done in small doses. 

 

Furthermore, playing as a larger-than-life hero with a special power sort of takes away any sense of feeling like your mortal and vulnerable. While it is necessary in RPG games that the player-character should be special in some way, I don't feel that it was a right move to have the game constantly remind you that you are incredibly important and the world at large hinges on your decisions. 

[Andreas Amell]

After finishing the story, I kinda felt that the story as a whole is a lot less dark, violent and gritty in comparison to previous Dragon Age games. It feels as if Inquisition is the most light-hearted game in the series. 

 

While I don't necessarily that making a story dark and gritty automatically makes it better than a light-hearted one, it just seem odd for DAI to be so light-hearted when previous Dragon Age games were darker.

How is that a problem?

[Ogillardetta]

This game can't be grittier because then someone might get offended by the grittiness.
"Someones mother got killed and that reminded me of that time my mom went to the store and I didn't think she would come back because she was away for so long" or something like that.

[Marshal Moriarty]

Dragon Age will always retain a certain appeal to 'people who like this sort of thing', (i.e us), but whether it will ever truly matter to anyone else is a different story. What I mean by that is that something like The Witcher or Mass Effect or Dark Souls, are all fairly standard fantasy or sci-fi worlds, but they have gone beyond that for various reasons. The Witcher's explicit tone has brought it to people's attention, and it does a good job of projecting at least the illusion that the world is big and full of unexplored and unknown delights and horrors. It just has a 'big' feel about it, like its a real saga.

 

Mass Effect too was just a mash-up of many well established franchises, borrowing a bit of Star Wars,here, some Babylon 5 there, some James Bond over there, and by making it into one continuous story with a character people enjoyed playing (basically you are Space James Bond), it was able to make the setting seem like it mattered so much more than it probably deserves. (Because Mass Effect's universe is decent enough, but it was the production values of ME2, and letting you really feel like you *were* Space Bond that get people on board, taking it from a sucessful but niche title to a mainstream hit that has taken on iconic status). Many TV series for example are perfectly serviceable, and offer good sci-fi entertainment, but every so often one will have that extra bit of magic that lets it really take off (The X-Files in the 90's for example), whereas other remain 'Good, but only really beloved by genre fans'.

 

This latter description is where I think Dragon Age currently is and will stay, unless it can do something to convince the mainstream that it is something worth getting excited about. Sales for the game were not amazing (good, but not uber smash hit good). And months later, you can feel that the attention this game got around its launch is basically gone, and only the hardcore fans are really talking about it now.

 

Mass Effect will still be remembered and spoken off as an important event in gaming, many, many years from now. Dragon Age is unlikely to receive the same as things stand. Origjns got it off to a good start, and if they had produced a similar big scale, epic saga that really went for the mainstream, then it might have broken through. But DA2's quieter focus, and extremely short dev time and smaller budget (and I say this as someone who loves DA2), basically put the lid on those dreams. I just don't think Dragon Age *matters* to many people in the same way Mass Effect matters to them (outside of these boards anyway). Inquisition was flavour of the month, but the industry does that with all AAA games that aren't completely broken. A couple of weeks pass and eveyone moves onto the next big thing.

 

To break out of that mould, you need to have something extra, and Dragon Age just doesn't have it IMO. Certainly not at the moment anyway.

[Fredward]

What atrocities or horribly grimdark things happen in Inquisition exactly?

 

Thousands of people die on a mountaintop. Some weird living crystalline fungus grows into people and turn them into agonized monstrous automatons. Someone's face gets skinned. Some nobles torture and abuse their daughter to try and suppress her magic only to have it backfire and everyone dies horribly. Torture in the name of religion. A mage burns himself to ash to keep himself from being possessed. A number of demonic shenanigans. We learn about a man that drowns hundreds of men, women and children to save the rest of his town. A woman sells some of her villagers to become lyrium statues so that she has the resources necessary to save the rest. Tranquil get used to make ocularum in such a way that for a brief moment they become normal again except not really because Tranquil that get 'restored' become extremely emotional so in that brief moment before they get killed they must experience near inhuman amounts of mind numbing terror. Priests dismember and bind their abbot. In a war table mission you can have a bunch of people's tongues cut out. You can stand by and watch us an empress is cut down. A man who has gone insane betrays his order and those who trust him implicitly and lures them to a place where they are fed red lyrium. A group of men and women who have dedicated their lives to fighting an inhuman evil are tricked and exploited into killing those they've served with for years in what they think is their last selfless, necessary act and is actually just demonic binding.

 

No doubt I've forgotten a whole slew of things but you get my point. DAI is rife with grimdark. But I don't know? A number of people seem to lack the imagination or empathy to notice them as such without the game grabbing them by the head, twisting it to where they're suppose to look and yelling in their ear "HEY LOOK AT HOW EDGY WE'RE BEING ISN'T THAT LIKE SO COOL AND CONTROVERSIAL?!!?"

[SurelyForth]

 

No doubt I've forgotten a whole slew of things but you get my point. DAI is rife with grimdark. But I don't know? A number of people seem to lack the imagination or empathy to notice them as such without the game grabbing them by the head, twisting it to where they're suppose to look and yelling in their ear "HEY LOOK AT HOW EDGY WE'RE BEING ISN'T THAT LIKE SO COOL AND CONTROVERSIAL?!!?"

 

Let's not forget Felix, whose best outcome is dying from the Blight and not being turned into a ghoul by his father, or Connor, whose story can get even sadder in DAI. Then there's the darkness inherent in your companions' storylines: we have addiction/PTSD, attempted personality overhaul via blood magic, a child forgotten and left to die in a cell, a ragtag band of misfits abandoned by their beloved leader for a political alliance that may or may not be legit, a woman who has to mercy kill her former apprentice because he is being consumed by a demon, another woman who is struggling with the loss of her beloved mentor and the fact that her beloved mentor essentially used her to avoid getting her hands dirty, and then two men who outright lie about who they are, one of whom has the blood of an entire family on his hand and another who, if nothing else, enabled the events that caused the Breach to begin with. 

 

Of course, since none of that has the classic appeal of the overt sexual violence and explicit waves of blood that let us know "hey! this is totally dark and mature!", that means DAI is totes shiny and happy for all. 

[Helmetto]

Let's not forget Felix, whose best outcome is dying from the Blight and not being turned into a ghoul by his father, or Connor, whose story can get even sadder in DAI. Then there's the darkness inherent in your companions' storylines: we have addiction/PTSD, attempted personality overhaul via blood magic, a child forgotten and left to die in a cell, a ragtag band of misfits abandoned by their beloved leader for a political alliance that may or may not be legit, a woman who has to mercy kill her former apprentice because he is being consumed by a demon, another woman who is struggling with the loss of her beloved mentor and the fact that her beloved mentor essentially used her to avoid getting her hands dirty, and then two men who outright lie about who they are, one of whom has the blood of an entire family on his hand and another who, if nothing else, enabled the events that caused the Breach to begin with. 

 

Of course, since none of that has the classic appeal of the overt sexual violence and explicit waves of blood that let us know "hey! this is totally dark and mature!", that means DAI is totes shiny and happy for all. 

 

Except we really don't explore any of these themes, or these characters stories, other than they tell us about them and we're meant to pat their heads and tell them its alright, we love them and we know what's best for them.

 

In example, there is a hell of a huge difference between us being told about how Dorian's dad tried to blood magic the gay away, and us actually going out there, witnessing this **** go down, and stopping him ourselves.

 

A lot of the things in DAI is informed darkness. We, the player, are never submerged in it, we just kind of have to think more into the implications of things, as opposed to experiencing it.

[SurelyForth]

Except we really don't explore any of these themes, or these characters stories, other than they tell us about them and we're meant to pat their heads and tell them its alright, we love them and we know what's best for them.

 

In example, there is a hell of a huge difference between us being told about how Dorian's dad tried to blood magic the gay away, and us actually going out there, witnessing this **** go down, and stopping him ourselves.

 

A lot of the things in DAI is informed darkness. We, the player, are never submerged in it, we just kind of have to think more into the implications of things, as opposed to experiencing it.

 

Do you really need to be submerged in it, though? Do you really need to see Dorian being subjected to a blood magic ritual to change his sexuality? Is his palpable anger and hurt not enough, or is actual blood and suffering required to have an impact?