84 réponses à ce sujet

[Helmetto]

Those aren't that dark. We could - at random - make a list for DA:I.

 

Yes, of course you could, and I'm not disagreeing that you could make a similar list for DA:I, but the point was that the Dragon Age franchise isn't exactly an epic filled with dapper gentlemen solving all the world's problems one fashion statement at a time.

 

Also, agree to disagree. As I'm currently playing through DA:O once more with a different protag than the usual, I find the overall tone of DA:O to be darker than that set by DA:I, give or take. Which, like I said, is odd because DA:I has some definite dark moments, but it doesn't affect/have a lasting impact on the overall tone of the story.

[Reznore57]

DAO felt darker , I mostly played mages but first you're thrown in the fade as Demon bait , then your BFF lies to you he's playing doctor with a local nun and he does blood magic.Him lying isn't surprising he's going to get lobotomized  soon.

If you go to the mentor figure asking for help and telling the truth , you're told to trick your best friend  , nun goes in jail , friends get lobotomized but hey look on the bright side the Chantry will look bad too!

There was a very high level of wrong here.

 

Stuff happens , you witness an heroic charge against evilz , the heroic and naive knight in shining armor gets ripped to pieces , your second mentor bites the bullet.Everyone is betrayed and killed.

 

More stuff happens , you're now the new heroic hero who goes to Lothering only to find out you're not saving this town.You can't .

You flee , and those who stayed died.Good times.

 

Redcliffe ...it depends on what you do ...but you could kill a child , sell his soul to a demon for profit , kill a mother ...or save the day.Still some of the option were again a bit hum wrong.Selling a child soul for sex?

 

Circle of magi , again depends on what you do.You could slaughter everyone or save the day.

 

Orzammar ...dwarven politics are a no win.You had the casteless , people who can't have a  job legally, there's no way out so they have no choice but to become an outlaw or slowly starve.Murderers , thieves , prostitutes that what the dwarven system offers .

Still you need those people so whatever.

Then the Deep Roads , where a Paragon fed her whole clan to darkspawn .

You can save the anvil of the void to make more golem , it would be a great help against darkspawn , but the anvil is really close to a torture device so again good times! I'm sure the dwarves would be responsible and never hurt the unwilling...

So you choose to doom the dwarves a little more , or let the dwarves doom themselves a little more.

 

Etc , etc...

 

So yeah DAO was darker in many ways imo.

[BraveVesperia]

I think the only reasons DAI isn't considered dark is because:

1) After In Your Heart Shall Burn, it feels like we're winning all the time.

2) Some of the really dark stuff isn't really elaborated on or given any weight. Like what happened to the Tranquil, that should've been a big thing, but was reduced to a collection sidequest and line of dialogue from each companion.

 

Personally, I like the setting as it is. Thedas seems like a sh*tty place but we can try to make it a bit better, that's grim enough for me. Too much 'dark and gritty' just leads to 'this is so depressing, why am I even bothering', for me. 

[Helmetto]

Personally, I like the setting as it is. Thedas seems like a sh*tty place but we can try to make it a bit better, that's grim enough for me. Too much 'dark and gritty' just leads to 'this is so depressing, why am I even bothering', for me. 

 

But that's the thing. It doesn't even feel like a shitty place that we're making better. It's only when we talk to people were it's like "Thanks, you're been a real help." We never see any changes to the Hinterlands when we help out. It just seems exactly the same as when we left it.

[In Exile]

Yes, of course you could, and I'm not disagreeing that you could make a similar list for DA:I, but the point was that the Dragon Age franchise isn't exactly an epic filled with dapper gentlemen solving all the world's problems one fashion statement at a time.

 

Also, agree to disagree. As I'm currently playing through DA:O once more with a different protag than the usual, I find the overall tone of DA:O to be darker than that set by DA:I, give or take. Which, like I said, is odd because DA:I has some definite dark moments, but it doesn't affect/have a lasting impact on the overall tone of the story.

 

DA:O is very much about the dapper gentlemen (or lady) solving problems one at a time. There's no option to fail. You can't fail - you succeed at everything. Even the "dark" options - massacring the Dalish for the werewolves, for example - is actually a huge success (persuading tortured beasts who wanted to be free from a curse to remain cursed because of how awesome and persuasive you are). 

 

I think a cloud of darkness hangs over DA:I as much as DA:O. It's all the same, except Bioware excluded cutscenes to show their darkness, and so it falls apart for a lot of players. But that shows the weakness in their world-building - Bioware always just told people stuff by cutscene, and they can't worldbuild without them. 

[Broquisitor]

Thedas seems like a sh*tty place but we can try to make it a bit better, that's grim enough for me. Too much 'dark and gritty' just leads to 'this is so depressing, why am I even bothering', for me. 

 

This is exactly what it's about for me! When a setting is too grim I don't even want to play it because it just feels like it will never get better. It's something to discuss over for hours, to each their own. 

[Wulfram]

DAO did a better job of presenting some of the darker aspects of the world, I think. Though I wouldn't say DAO was all that dark. I wouldn't want it to be, that sort of thing gets tiresome for me.

Partly, the Origins helped because it meant you got to see the world briefly from the viewpoint of the downtrodden. And the minor side quests benefited from better presentation - close up camera and so forth - which again helped to get more of a feel for how ordinary people were being affected.

If they'd made Emprise du Lion into a mandatory quest with proper cutscenes and so forth that would have helped the game seem a fair bit darker, I think.

[In Exile]

DAO did a better job of presenting some of the darker aspects of the world, I think. Though I wouldn't say DAO was all that dark. I wouldn't want it to be, that sort of thing gets tiresome for me.

Partly, the Origins helped because it meant you got to see the world briefly from the viewpoint of the downtrodden. And the minor side quests benefited from better presentation - close up camera and so forth - which again helped to get more of a feel for how ordinary people were being affected.

If they'd made Emprise du Lion into a mandatory quest with proper cutscenes and so forth that would have helped the game seem a fair bit darker, I think.

DAI suffers from three problems. The first is the lack of cutscenes that set the scene and expose the player to the visceral suffering of a region. The second is that the open world is static - the regions were we should see war and desolation - Emprise du Lion, the battlefield ceasefire between Celene and Gaspard and the Hinterlands - are basically just areas filled with mooks of a particular stripe who don't really convey a story. The third is that these regions are so disconnected from the plot. We don't really experience any of this on the critical path -it's just the crescendo victory of the Inquisition.

Lothering is a well done contrast. You first meet the brigands. You have to deal with them. You wade through refugees. They're all static, but they're the first thing you see. A few quests are about helping them, and they attack you out of desperation. You see the chansind going insane. And this is all a small area where all the content is super staggered and it takes one hour - not 17!! - to see it all. DAI tried the same thing in the Hinterlands but didn't space it out right and didn't control how the player saw the content. You could just totally ignore the Crossroads and clear out the whole map first.

[straykat]

DAI suffers from three problems. The first is the lack of cutscenes that set the scene and expose the player to the visceral suffering of a region. The second is that the open world is static - the regions were we should see war and desolation - Emprise du Lion, the battlefield ceasefire between Celene and Gaspard and the Hinterlands - are basically just areas filled with mooks of a particular stripe who don't really convey a story. The third is that these regions are so disconnected from the plot. We don't really experience any of this on the critical path -it's just the crescendo victory of the Inquisition.

 

Worse than that, in in the Hinterlands. The mooks have absolutely nothing to do with the war. It's just another group of random temps and mages out of control. lol. And then what war there is later is just resolved as easy as picking a side like you do in DAO/DA2. Whoever thought this was a good idea is a ****** idiot. In all seriousness. Not just lacked any dark sensibilities.

[vertigomez]

In DAI, the main character loses an arm.

In True Grit, the main character loses an arm.

Therefore, DAI has true grit.

[Deanna Troy]

Envy's attempted mind rapes and people being forced to fight against people who were their comrades moments before in champions of the just was kid friendly and Chateau d'Onterre was rambows and roses apparently.

Yes it was. Once you understand the diference between the people like you who want conceptual gritty fantasy and people like me (and probably the OP) who want aesthethic gritty fantasy. Because of the art direction of DAO even if it was a My Little Pony game it would be dark enough for me, while in DAI, also because of art direction not even if it was a walk through putrid corpses in shades of red and gray it would still remind me of rainbows, icecream and cotton candy.

There is no "right darkness", but there absolutely are diferent concepts of darkness. It is the same in Diablo 2 and Diablo 3, some scenes in D3 are A LOT more violent and brutal than D2 but art direction makes it look like Tinkerbell and her friends are having fun in the forest. So if you don't understand that you and I are talking about diferent concepts of darkness it will always be ridiculous.

So yeah, there is a lot of creepy, dark, gritty stuff in DAI if what it represents to you is important, if you see those thing for what they mean, but if you are after a visual experience of gritty DAI is nothing but glitter and gloss. It is no use, even if I made the manliest ugliest brutest qunari warrior I would still feel like a fairy princess in Emerald Graves (or any place, but in Emeral Graves it is like Tinkerbell Majestic Glory)

I hope now people can understand that they disagree because they are talking about diferent things. No one denies the conceptual darkness of Chateau d'Onterre, HOWEVER, printscreen the scenes, paste it on photoshop and compare it's "palette" with any place in Origins and it is still gonna be colorbomb colorful colorific paradise of saturation, exposure and shinyniness.

[AedanStarfang]

I swear I've seen this topic or one eerily similar on the teslore reddit...

 

 

I think with all of the new lore and historical backgrounds we've been getting in Inquisition I think Bioware is heading in the right direction.

[Ashagar]

Origins runs on the old dated old unrealistic brown is somehow more real which it isn't and blood and guts is somehow gritty or scary. Blood and guts don't make something somehow more gritty or scary.

 

A good writer and director can invoke a air of suspense, grittiness and horror in even bright daylight settings or even simply a well lit room filled with people.

[pdusen]

I honestly haven't felt like any of the DA games, including DAO, were all that dark.

[Beren Von Ostwick]

It's plenty dark.  Find that blood soaked teddy bear on the plains and tell me that isn't dark.  Wait, is it because the graphics are not sufficiently bloody and dismal for you?  That's a lack of imagination on your part.  Go play a MUD for awhile to force your brain to actually do some stuff while playing a game.  It'll do you a world of good.

[Jedi Comedian]

I'm sorry, what's a MUD? I'm not a native speaker.

[Deanna Troy]

It's plenty dark.  Find that blood soaked teddy bear on the plains and tell me that isn't dark.  Wait, is it because the graphics are not sufficiently bloody and dismal for you?  That's a lack of imagination on your part.  Go play a MUD for awhile to force your brain to actually do some stuff while playing a game.  It'll do you a world of good.

Nope. People do not HAVE to enjoy either kind of darkness. As I said in my previous post some people are after things that are conceptually dark while others are after the graphical experience and it is fine for both. There is no superior way of experiencing it, there is just what you want, and you are free to choose. Also, as a plus, as some people say you can even think none of the games are gritty, or all of them, or maybe you just don't care. Again, what is the problem in these forums with people being unable to understand there are no rules on subjectivity?

People are free to choose whatever they want, complain about whatever they want and so on. So please, you (and a lot of people in these forums) stop ruling and rating subjectivities. "It is lack of imagination"... nope, it is just someone who wants a graphical experience of grittiness and darkness, and as far as we know it is legal and it is neither better nor worse than liking the "imaginative" or conceptual darkness of DAI.

[Beren Von Ostwick]

You're right and I apologize.  I should have been clear in stating that it was my opinion that others are lacking in imagination.  Given that caveat that it is my opinion, I still stand by everything I said... as my opinion.

 

I'm sorry, what's a MUD? I'm not a native speaker.

 

The original MMORPGs.  Text based RPG adventure games played via telnet protocol.

 

"You travel north  <blah blah blah>.  The road continues north and south (N) (S)" 

 

and so forth...

[Nixou]

DRAGON AGE WAS A DARK GAME FULL OF DARKNESS. That's why it had a side quest where you gathered nugs and your pet mabari could pee on trees to get bonuses.

 

A Dark Tale Done Right always has a dog who doesn't give a **** about the bipeds petty squabble but still fight for the good guys because he wants to make happy the gal who scratches him behind the ears.

[CronoDragoon]

I think a cloud of darkness hangs over DA:I as much as DA:O. It's all the same, except Bioware excluded cutscenes to show their darkness, and so it falls apart for a lot of players. But that shows the weakness in their world-building - Bioware always just told people stuff by cutscene, and they can't worldbuild without them. 

 

I don't actually find this to be the case in DA: I. I have a healthy amount of screenshots wherein BioWare decided to show the misery of the world through the environment. One in particular that comes to mind, for example, being a set of burned huts in the Exalted Plains, and within one of the huts are two skeletons, one medium-sized and one tiny. The larger skeleton is splayed out over the tiny one, and a sword is driven through both. We can all fill in the blanks, there. Additionally, I felt the letter quests conveyed small instances that demonstrated a larger statement about the state of Thedas.

[Elite Fennec]

I don't know, I don't think scattering skeletons about the place and having a spooky mansion is quite on the same par as the former games when it comes to darkness particularly DA2 (with it's oppressive atmosphere and where it was possible to kill your lover, fight against your sibling and end up the non archetypal hero). When I found the blood soaked teddy bear I just thought to myself 'Bioware you are sick' because not only does it conflict with how the game feels but it's kind of a cheap tactic.

[CronoDragoon]

I don't know, I don't think scattering skeletons about the place and having a spooky mansion is quite on the same par as the former games when it comes to darkness particularly DA2 (with it's oppressive atmosphere and where it was possible to kill your lover, fight against your sibling and end up the non archetypal hero). When I found the blood soaked teddy bear I just thought to myself 'Bioware you are sick' because not only does it conflict with how the game feels but it's kind of a cheap tactic.

I do feel Dragon Age 2 does a better job establishing meaningful consequences for your actions in Hawke's immediate mileu. That's why even though a whole range of really messed up stuff happens in Inquisition, it's perhaps felt less potently than it was in DA2. In DAI, innocents and templars have red lyrium implanted inside them, which gradually eats them alive from the inside out until they are brainless monsters. In DA2, a necromancer decapitates your mother and attaches her head to a zombie corpse made up of murdered women. It would be a bit pointless to try and weigh which is "more dark": they both fall squarely within the same tone. But the latter happens to people you know and sometimes as a consequence of your actions (as you said, killing your lover for example) so it's seen as darker.

[Medhia_Nox]

When you begin establishing that your magic is of the non-consequential D&D solve everything sort... you undermine your "grim dark". 

 

- Oh, no!  Bad reality stuff happened!
 

- No fear!  I have MAGIC! *solved*

 

- Hooray!

 

- Wait!  Bad magic stuff happened!

- Already solved with... MOAR MAGIX!

 

- Hooray!

[Akrabra]

I have never been that into the dark gritty fantasy setting. Which is why i don't really like The Witcher, or A song of Fire and Ice. I feel like Dragon Age Origins had a good balance though, and i wouldn't mind returning to abit more of that style. Though i do think Inquisition was done right for what it was supposed to be. Also i value subtlety over "in your face darkness". 

[Medhia_Nox]

@Akrabra:  Only setting I needs me some over the top grimdark is Warhammer 40K. 

 

If there's happiness in Warhammer 40K... you're doing it wrong.