Honestly, just no. If you want to use something as a great template, use Mass Effect 2, the best of the series and the last great game Bioware developed.
The side content in particular was mediocre at best, and outside of the main quests (which were mostly great) there were long stretches of the game that were quite frankly..boring.
I have to agree. Part of the reason I have never finished it is because I frankly became utterly bored.
It does look nice and I agree about the CC, but what does it matter if the game is dull and full of pointless busy work?
I even found skyhold annoying in the end due to the sheer distance you had to run around for to chat to everyone.
It was bleeding ages until I found out where Cullen was hiding.
Why you can't summon people is beyond me. The same goes ME - I liked how in 3 you could invite people up, I wished they used that as an option for when people had something new to say, rather than forcing you to run around the ship to only hear the same stock phrases.
Skyhold is pretty much the reason DA:I ended up being less than good enough for me.
It's not just that you have to run far to find your squaddies, it's also in how there's NO advantage to Skyhold over Haven, gameplay wise. It's in how companion cutscenes warp you around the castle and then transport the companion back but not you or how in the instant I press "Talk" to Cassandra in cut it show me walking up to her in a completely different place than where you find her and in how you only get to make 3 upgrades that are entirely cosmetic and how guards' AI glitch out and make them slide through walls or how the people who talk to josephine walk behind the door to the war table and then warp through the wall. *GASP* It's in how there's no snow inside the castle ground yet it's surrounded by snowy mountains right outside the walls, it's in how "how the **** do people go in and out of this place anyway?" and it's in how the game never accounts for the fact that the player and entire platoons move several thousand kilometers BACK AND FORTH between the castle from Ferelden to Orlais, when DA:O perfectly incorporated traveling into the gameplay by making footmarks on the world map and making a camp as your hub *GASP*
End, ******, rant.
it's just bigger, buggier, poorly designed and overstays its welcome quickly. And it's a shame because I loved Haven. It reminded me of DA:O.
This was me recording the same event 3 times back to back, simply walking in and out of the room and this is the best Bioware could do even after a dozen patches. Fans had to create a community patch to even out the insane bugs Bioware didn't even bother to look at.
Skyhold is pretty much the reason DA:I ended up being less than good enough for me.
It's not just that you have to run far to find your squaddies, it's also in how there's NO advantage to Skyhold over Haven, gameplay wise. It's in how companion cutscenes warp you around the castle and then transport the companion back but not you or how in the instant I press "Talk" to Cassandra in cut it show me walking up to her in a completely different place than where you find her and in how you only get to make 3 upgrades that are entirely cosmetic and how guards' AI glitch out and make them slide through walls or how the people who talk to josephine walk behind the door to the war table and then warp through the wall. *GASP* It's in how there's no snow inside the castle ground yet it's surrounded by snowy mountains right outside the walls, it's in how "how the **** do people go in and out of this place anyway?" and it's in how the game never accounts for the fact that the player and entire platoons move several thousand kilometers BACK AND FORTH between the castle from Ferelden to Orlais, when DA:O perfectly incorporated traveling into the gameplay by making footmarks on the world map and making a camp as your hub *GASP*
End, ******, rant.
it's just bigger, buggier, poorly designed and overstays its welcome quickly. And it's a shame because I loved Haven. It reminded me of DA:O.
snip....
You are entitled to your opinion although I have to say none of this stuff bothered me.
The point about green spaces being inappropriate in snowy mountain terrain is wrong. Lots of examples from real life (not a big John Denver fan, just making a point):
On topic, I think if they went open world, they need more of a story basis to push exploration, as opposed to fetch quests. I really enjoy wandering around the DAI world and picking up stuff; other people don't.
Oh, ME:A is going to bomb so hard when people finally see what the game is like.
It's not just that you have to run far to find your squaddies, it's also in how there's NO advantage to Skyhold over Haven, gameplay wise. It's in how companion cutscenes warp you around the castle and then transport the companion back but not you or how in the instant I press "Talk" to Cassandra in cut it show me walking up to her in a completely different place than where you find her
when DA:O perfectly incorporated traveling into the gameplay by making footmarks on the world map and making a camp as your hub *GASP*
I love Inquisition.... I've had 4 playthroughs and have a platinum trophy on my PS4 for it. I'm sad that a lot of people find it mediocre. I know it has it's faults but I can't help but be sad when people bash on it because I sunk so much wonderful time into it!
- They need to expand character creation. More hairstyles, PLEASE.
- I heard somewhere in the Twitter thread that they're borrowing the War Table/ advisors thing, and that's ok with me.
- Obviously, since it's a shooter, I expect the button mechanics to be more complex than just "hold R2 to constantly attack and tap another button for another skill." I know that turned a few of my friends off, who went to Shadow of Mordor instead.
- Their companion character complexities are excellent, I want them to take that and make it even greater.
- The villain / overall threat needs to be a bit more threatening. I found Corypheus to be a bit boring, but dragons made me more anxious.
- Quests need to be less fetch-y and more meaningful.
- They need a better voice actor for the male protagonist.
I'm sure I'll think of more!
I agree I love the game as well and still play it. For me the only gameplay weak point is probably the side missions they could have been approached better but other than that DAI was pretty solid. Things like hairstyles need to be upped I think in MEA but that's moer of an aesthetics thing really rather than gameplay. Aside from that for me I'd just like to see what they've got.
I love Inquisition.... I've had 4 playthroughs and have a platinum trophy on my PS4 for it. I'm sad that a lot of people find it mediocre. I know it has it's faults but I can't help but be sad when people bash on it because I sunk so much wonderful time into it!
- They need to expand character creation. More hairstyles, PLEASE.
- I heard somewhere in the Twitter thread that they're borrowing the War Table/ advisors thing, and that's ok with me.
- Obviously, since it's a shooter, I expect the button mechanics to be more complex than just "hold R2 to constantly attack and tap another button for another skill." I know that turned a few of my friends off, who went to Shadow of Mordor instead.
- Their companion character complexities are excellent, I want them to take that and make it even greater.
- The villain / overall threat needs to be a bit more threatening. I found Corypheus to be a bit boring, but dragons made me more anxious.
- Quests need to be less fetch-y and more meaningful.
- They need a better voice actor for the male protagonist.
I'm sure I'll think of more!
Pretty much agree with all of these points, especially Corypheus. The villain in Inquisition just wasn't that threatening.
I'm not quite clear what the problem is with that last bit. Why can't scenes with the companions happen in various places? I suppose they could move the companion before the scene, but that would just mean that you'd need to check the map a lot. And it's not like Skyhold doesn't have plenty of fast travel points to get to wherever you wanted to be. It's substantially better than Haven in that regard.
This is just silly. But you were aware of that, I think.
I am, but I don't nitpick lightly. That stuff actually bothers me because it's like seeing someone do a presentation where they constnatly "uh" the whole thing or can't keep track of what they were about to say or somthing. It gives off the impression that the game wasn't thoroughly designed and it's just as much about how it transitions to these scenes as it is the fact that it does it. Sometimes the cutscene happens at their usual spot and it feels all nice and continuous but then sometimes it's on the wall or in the bar and when this happens it can be a jump-cut or a fade to black or anything, it's completely inconsistent, and afterwards it either leaves you alone on the wall (with or without any cinematic transition again) or warp you back to the companion's place.
What it should always do regardless of whether the scene plays out in a different place is to always use the same transition for entering a companion cutscene (cut or fade to black) and then take you back to the place you find the companion after the scene is done instead of leaving you alone the place the cutscene ends. Admittedly a lot of the awkward cop-out dialogues also had something to do with it. Sometimes, a conversation just... ends when it feels like there should've been more and you're just left with this empty feeling after it's over.
I hate ME2. It's like ME3, a railroad plot with no roleplaying, and a character we can't ever know or control, but it also makes combat more frustrating by restricting acess to ammo.
ME2 is probably BioWare's worst game.
Yeah, all those fetch quests, a boring villain, romance that doesn't exist out of a cut scene, that terrible crafting system, no PC optimization and controls that give you RSI...oh wait, that's DAI.
Whether it's Bioware's last great game or not is open to personal opinion. Mine is that DAI is BioWare's worst game ever. ME2 streamlined Mass Effect by removing a lot of the unnecessary clutter in the levelling system, it freshened things up with new and more nuanced companions, removed the bazillion cut and paste armours, introduced heavy weapons allowing for more specialisation as well as upping the acting quality and script over its predecessor. It was also a darker story than the original with Shepard having to work with the people he'd spent a large part of the first game trying to destroy. Because that's the point you see, not to compare ME2 to anything that came after, but to compare it to what came before.
DAI's dialogue and companion systems should just be copied wholesale. ME needed an approval system, and replacing Paragon/Renegade with tone icons would be an upgrade.
I'd go with more but smaller exploration areas than DAI had.
I agree wholeheartedly. When it comes to character interaction, Dragon Age in general is vastly superior to anything Mass Effect has to offer.
Snarky/Nice/Angry wheel made for many of the best interactons in dragon age, I am hoping they go alittle closer to that than DAI's:
Bored no/ Bored yes/ Bored tell me more/ Bored neutral/ Bored What?.
Or maybe get better voice actors if that was part of the issue. Look at the Inquisitor's "speech" when first in Skyhold. You say like 2 brief super unintense lines and then Cassandra and Cullen actually rally the people at skyhold. Compare that to Shepard's speeches throughout ME...
I'd take Para/Ren any day over that half assed attempt at making a "roleplayable" character in DAI.
Snarky/Nice/Angry wheel made for many of the best interactons in dragon age, I am hoping they go alittle closer to that than DAI's:
Bored no/ Bored yes/ Bored tell me more/ Bored neutral/ Bored What?.
Or maybe get better voice actors if that was part of the issue. Look at the Inquisitor's "speech" when first in Skyhold. You say like 2 brief super unintense lines and then Cassandra and Cullen actually rally the people at skyhold. Compare that to Shepard's speeches throughout ME...
I'd take Para/Ren any day over that half assed attempt at making a "roleplayable" character in DAI.
I can't say that Shepard's speeches make for the best examples, because I consider them to be pretty cringeworthy. Heck I'd say that the brief final speech at the end of Trespasser is better than a lot of the stuff Shepard says.
If fighting the Andromeda version of thresher maws is the same as fighting dragons in DA:I I'll be happy. With jetpacks? Squee.
Dear maker yes.
Yeah, all those fetch quests, a boring villain, romance that doesn't exist out of a cut scene, that terrible crafting system, no PC optimization and controls that give you RSI...oh wait, that's DAI.
Whether it's Bioware's last great game or not is open to personal opinion. Mine is that DAI is BioWare's worst game ever. ME2 streamlined Mass Effect by removing a lot of the unnecessary clutter in the levelling system, it freshened things up with new and more nuanced companions, removed the bazillion cut and paste armours, introduced heavy weapons allowing for more specialisation as well as upping the acting quality and script over its predecessor. It was also a darker story than the original with Shepard having to work with the people he'd spent a large part of the first game trying to destroy. Because that's the point you see, not to compare ME2 to anything that came after, but to compare it to what came before.
The interrupt system alone is enough to make ME2 worse than every prior BioWare game.
And the voiced games generally need to overcome that obstacle in order to threaten the silent protagonist games. DAI is, I think, BioWare's first game with a voice protagonist that was any good at all. The ME games and DA2 are all pretty bad.
I can't say that Shepard's speeches make for the best examples, because I consider them to be pretty cringeworthy. Heck I'd say that the brief final speech at the end of Trespasser is better than a lot of the stuff Shepard says.
Have yet to do Tresspasser, so can't say about it yet I guess.
But anyway it's not so much about the content of the speeches themselves I am talking about the emotion/investment of the character.
Inquisitor's speech has absolutely 0 emotion. My problem is that the Inquisitor is always uninsterested.
Perhaps the speeches in particular was a poor example as I can see how some will find the "epic inspiring speeches" cringy, but that was besides the point I mean in general, at least for me the inquisitor has as much personality as a husk, I'd much rather they go with several defined personalities instead of some attempt at making a voiced voice-less like character.
The Inquisitor and FO4's mc suffer from the same problem, they have the worst of both voiceless and voiced characters. The voiceless characters have the freedom of giving the player a wider array of choices as well as imagine the delivery as they see fit. While voiced characters feel more integral and invested with the world, they usually have more emotional impact, etc but at the cost of limiting the freedom roleplaying and interpretation. And Inquisitor lacks both the intensity and the freedom.
Going back to Shep, at least as fem shep goes, you can hear her investment in the story, character depth aside, Shepard is as part of the narrative as any of the main cast. Inquisitor on the other hand stands out so much in an otherwise interesting cast of characters it's not even fun. If it wasn't for everyone constantly telling you how amazing you are I'd almost forget I am not playing a voiceless mc a la Zelda's Link.
I don't see any value in consistency here, but I'm also not sure that it's possible for you to explain it. This sounds like it might be one of those weird personal taste things.I am, but I don't nitpick lightly. That stuff actually bothers me because it's like seeing someone do a presentation where they constnatly "uh" the whole thing or can't keep track of what they were about to say or somthing. It gives off the impression that the game wasn't thoroughly designed and it's just as much about how it transitions to these scenes as it is the fact that it does it. Sometimes the cutscene happens at their usual spot and it feels all nice and continuous but then sometimes it's on the wall or in the bar and when this happens it can be a jump-cut or a fade to black or anything, it's completely inconsistent, and afterwards it either leaves you alone on the wall (with or without any cinematic transition again) or warp you back to the companion's place.
The interrupt system alone is enough to make ME2 worse than every prior BioWare game.
And the voiced games generally need to overcome that obstacle in order to threaten the silent protagonist games. DAI is, I think, BioWare's first game with a voice protagonist that was any good at all. The ME games and DA2 are all pretty bad.
Not really interested in starting an argument about it but I'd like to have more insight. Could you elaborate about what makes DAI's execution of a voiced mc better than in the other Bioware titles for you?
I don't see any value in consistency here, but I'm also not sure that it's possible for you to explain it. This sounds like it might be one of those weird personal taste things.
The very last place I need my PC to be after an NPC interaction is right where I talked to that NPC, since the one thing I'm not going to do is talk to the same NPC again. So I'm going to be walking or fast traveling whatever happens
I think the problem stems from poor presentation and a lack of continuity. At a very basic level, the jumps can simply be jarring, prompting a "woah, wait, where am I?" that might snap you out of the scene for a moment.
But more importantly, I think it hurts the reality of the setting. One of my favorite features of ME3 was that companions moved about the ship and talked with one another by themselves. That simple dynamic gave all the squadmates a kind of life and agency I've rarely seen in games before. It feels natural if I walk by character standing on the barricades looking out at the horizon and strike up a conversation and the power of the scene remains if the dialog camera disengages and the character goes back to their staring. That power is instantly lost (or at the very least, diminished) if they're just gone the next second to their standard idle state or I get jerked around to some place I don't expect. It's so procedural, like a puppet show activated at the press of a button.
Obviously, moving characters around Skyhold might pose a greater annoyance because it's bigger, so I can understand that BioWare might have chosen the more convenient setup for the player.
I'm not even sure that this is what Linkenski was getting at, but this is how I feel about the whole matter anyhow.
'Just realized that the post above mine near-about the bottom of page-1 said pretty much the exact same thing as I did.
In my defense, I have that guy on Ignore.
I can't say that Shepard's speeches make for the best examples, because I consider them to be pretty cringeworthy. Heck I'd say that the brief final speech at the end of Trespasser is better than a lot of the stuff Shepard says.
Nope. Shepard's speeches were the best, this is my favourite.
1. The lines were far less likely to be tied to actions. We were choosing what the Inquisitor would say, not what the Inquisitor would say do.Not really interested in starting an argument about it but I'd like to have more insight. Could you elaborate about what makes DAI's execution of a voiced mc better than in the other Bioware titles for you?
1. The lines were far less likely to be tied to actions. We were choosing what the Inquisitor would say, not what the Inquisitor would say do.
2. The lines were delivered is a far less overwrought way. The Inquisitor's more neutral delivery was compatible with a wider range of possible mental states.
3. The paraphrases were much more informative. In the ME games, I often had no idea what Shepard was going to say based on the paraphrase, let alone how it would be said, or what actions might accompany it. As such, I had no confidence that the line I was choosing would be comparible with the mental state I'd fabricated for Shepard to motivate the selection. And if the line does condradict the motivation, why didn't I choose something else?
My objection to the interrupts was similar. For me, they failed in all of the abive three ways every single time.
I think we should be choosing our character's actions in much finer detail, and DAI is significantly further along the continuum in that direction.
Stuff that I really liked from DAI was
The Battle of Haven mid-way. from start to finish, including the song and discovery of Skyhold. It was a great reveal of the main-badguy, it had tension (try to save everyone), drama (Roderics death, Quizzy standing up to Cory etc), a sense of urgency (again villagers, defending the trebuchets), a little sense of victory when you confront Cory and escape, than the emotional peak when in the camp, everyone is singing etc
The templar/mage-missions were also cool, with one taking us into a trip to the future, and another in into our own mind confronting a dark entitiy within, showing us how the world could end like without our intervention. At least the latter could somehow be made in ME as well.
The temple frozen in time was also really good enviromental story-telling and visually so great - I hope MEA tries to tell more side-quests this way (additional to dialogue and cutscenes). Finding places where looking around, seeing remains, ruins, etc tell us what happened here, without much need for too much exposition
What should be avoided? Too much "open world"-criap. Yet the MAKO-Return already gives me not much jope on that part. Open world and exploration nowadays mean radiant repetitive "quests" that are merely there to waste our time with work instead of play ...
Also over-abundance of crafting...I just do not care about crafting. Finding ressources, and diagrams, and then you craft something, but then you find another better diagram, but you do not have the ressources anymore, so you always end up not using anything because you might find something better etc. Crafting is my least favorite thing of modern gaming ^^
But most of all: Keep the story "tightly narrated". Have the villain a constant threat, have us interact with him, show us why he IS the villain we should take serious. In DAI Cory all but vanished after Skyhold, and we hardly really see why we should fear him. Let the villain's armies march, plunder, pillage in cutscenes, let us face them and FAIL to save the planet/city, show us locations filled with refugees or whatever. And not just once - often, to create a sense or illusion of urgency while we runaround with the Mako scanning minerals - I go so far as: give us missions that we MUST do and cannot delay ecause damn, its super-important to stop the baddies NOW and not after we strolled over planet Pointless for 12 hours ...
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