158 réponses à ce sujet

[BaaBaaBlacksheep]

It's hard to take Dragon Age seriously when it, in turn, does not take its fans seriously. I'm tired of going into the next game and leaving with more questions than answers. BioWare doesn't need to hide the ball every single game. I doubt BioWare even has any well-conceived in goal for what they are doing with Dragon Age. I'd just prefer a bit more transparency and quality treatment towards the fans when you expect them to constantly buy these games. Mass Effect was the opposite as we continued to answer more questions throughout the trilogy. Dragon Age has never been that way, which is why I've never considered it anywhere as compelling as Mass Effect. I preferred DAO's approach. It was much more concise, succinct, and straight to the point. DA2 and DAI, especially, are just muddled messes likely suffering from writer's block because even the writing team doesn't know where to take the series.

Just hope that they don't **** up.

[NKnight7]

Why just set up playing different back stories like Origins?

 

I'd like that too.

[Mdizzletr0n]

It's hard to take Dragon Age seriously when it, in turn, does not take its fans seriously. I'm tired of going into the next game and leaving with more questions than answers. BioWare doesn't need to hide the ball every single game. I doubt BioWare even has any well-conceived in goal for what they are doing with Dragon Age. I'd just prefer a bit more transparency and quality treatment towards the fans when you expect them to constantly buy these games. Mass Effect was the opposite as we continued to answer more questions throughout the trilogy. Dragon Age has never been that way, which is why I've never considered it anywhere as compelling as Mass Effect. I preferred DAO's approach. It was much more concise, succinct, and straight to the point. DA2 and DAI, especially, are just muddled messes likely suffering from writer's block because even the writing team doesn't know where to take the series.

But they took the ME fans seriously? ME made it up as it went and there were plenty of unanswered questions throughout the trilogy.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

My only response is the main quest is optional. Just like in Skyrim, you don't have to be Dovahkiin. In Oblivion, you don't have to be the Hero of Kvatch. In Morrowind, you don't have to be the Neravarine. Sure, you can't avoid the prologue (unless you use a mod to skip it), but 80% of the content in Fallout 4 does not revolve around finding the protagonist's kid. Did you have a similar issue with Fallout 3? BGS has always provided a prologue and more of an introduction to Fallout than they have with The Elder Scrolls.

 

Rachni queen was a retcon that was unintentional and unfortunate. Would you prefer if all of your companions hated you and left? Mass Effect 2's suicide mission would not have been able to work if making all your companions leave based on you being a jerk was possible. Wrex was a hostile, merc krogan in ME1 and nobody knew him. Why would they sympathize when he was ready to attack Shepard over Saren creating a cure to the genophage?

 

There were plenty of consequences to your actions. If there weren't, we wouldn't have had a save import feature where our choices actually changed various aspects of the world state. That being said, not everything we did necessarily would change the world state. Again, some retcons were made for the writers to tell the story they wanted. It was bad planning.

 

It is a re-skinned Halo, which is why I found it bizarre you even brought Destiny up. It literally has nothing in common with Mass Effect, and I'm perfectly happy with that.

 

Honestly, I've felt Dragon Age has been the weaker franchise out of the two. Each game has its own identity crisis and can't make up what it is. Each successive story is more convoluted than the last creating more questions than answers. Not to mention, the protagonist is progressively becoming more bland and worse in each new game. I love Dragon Age, but BioWare needs to shake up their writing team. I'm glad David Gaider left, because he was running Dragon Age into the ground. DAO was by far the best and the series has been going downhill ever sense.

 

 

 

It's simple with your team members.... If you want them on your team, don't be a jerk. It doesn't mean you have to be "Paragon Shepard" but don't be a jerk. And there was a way that the suicide mission could have worked. They could have substituted Cerberus crew for the departed team members. Now the Cerberus crew would have died completing their assigned tasks or had the fail outcome assigned to them since they weren't trained as well. There really were plenty of characters to do the mission. But if you dropped below the critical number, Cerberus crew could step in. 

 

There should also be different crew you can recruit. Say if you want to role play your character in a shady manner, you sure as hell don't want the goody two shoes types on your squad. You should have some scum bags you can recruit. Scum bags that understand pecking order and do what they're told. You could be a real jerk then. Think Boyd Crowder's gang in Justified. 

[Hazegurl]

It's simple with your team members.... If you want them on your team, don't be a jerk. It doesn't mean you have to be "Paragon Shepard" but don't be a jerk. And there was a way that the suicide mission could have worked. They could have substituted Cerberus crew for the departed team members. Now the Cerberus crew would have died completing their assigned tasks or had the fail outcome assigned to them since they weren't trained as well. There really were plenty of characters to do the mission. But if you dropped below the critical number, Cerberus crew could step in. 

 

There should also be different crew you can recruit. Say if you want to role play your character in a shady manner, you sure as hell don't want the goody two shoes types on your squad. You should have some scum bags you can recruit. Scum bags that understand pecking order and do what they're told. You could be a real jerk then. Think Boyd Crowder's gang in Justified. 

My Shepard was certainly a jerk, but he treated his crew good.  Did their missions, talked to them when they asked for him, and was not a complete ass to them. On some occasions sure, when they were whining about nothing and even then it wasn't all of his companions.  I'm actually thankful that I was able to shift Shepard's emotions like that. My Shep would stand there and listen, engage them, laugh with them, but also tell them to get to the freaking point when they were bothering him.  As far as not being a jerk to those outside of my crew, I don't see why I would have to be nice to everyone just so my companions will like me. Most of the ME crew were mercs, killers, thieves, info brokers, and so on. The only clean cut people were Jacob, Kaidan, Tali, and Ash. And during ME2 Jacob was working for a human supremacist terrorist organization.  Why on earth would they care if Shepard is a jerk?

[Giantdeathrobot]

That's more an issue with Bethesda being bad at making RPGs and thinking ''oh look here's your spouse and baby, oh look your spouse is dead and your baby is missing, now go plant some tomatoes for Preston McBoring and his psychic granny'' is a compelling story.

 

They should just keep the multiple backstories Mass Effect had. Hopefully with more than a few mentions over the course of the game. Total blank slate doesn't really work with voiced protagonists.

 

EDIT: @ Revan: I have the opposite opinion, actually. As a franchise, Mass Effect is pretty directionless. First game is about discovering the Reapers, ooops second game is side-quest piled upon side-quest so that you can undertake the mother of all side-quests, then they had to jam as many unresolved plotlines and plot devices in ME3 as they could in order to fit the Reaper Wars, then finished it with one of the lamest endings in video game history.

 

Dragon Age is kinda schyzophrenic when it comes to gameplay, true, but in terms of story I found each game flowed into the next quite nicely. The transition from DA2 to DA:I in particular was pretty good. I feel the writers planned that series ahead, twists like Flemythal and Solas included, whereas Mass Effect definitely feels like it was made up as they went along.

[Swaggerjking]

I agree with Revan on most points I always felt like bioware built the house and we decorated and Shepard was a mansion. I would prefer they keep the status quo for how is in the Me games or have it similar Da2 . As much as the overall plot went I liked what they tried to do with making a smaller more personal story

Also I think I like the Da series in a way more for the reason revan doesn't like it as much.I just want to know what going to happen or at least pre-descent dlc it is starting to wear me down but I think they had a plan for Da but it got hurt because they rushed 2 out and didn't want to force people to play as Hawke as the inquisitor

[BaaBaaBlacksheep]

I'd like that too.

I'll give you a couple of my own back stories that I made up.


Mapper- You are a young talented college graduate who just received a geomapping degree and astrology, you want to have an adventure of a lifetime to explore outer space. An Alliance recruiter came to you offering you a job as a mapper, so you receive basic combat training and passed. After that your C.O. brief you in your very first mission to travel to Andromeda to explore and map out nebulas, solar systems, and anomalies. You entered the state of the art spacecraft to travel to Andromeda once you and your team is in outer space a wormhole is opened and you are in Andromeda. Your new life begins.

Astronaut- You are an astronaut for the Alliance R&D with military training, your character is happy that he/she have a career of a lifetime because of space traveling, learning different things about life beyond humanity, and the thrill of exploration. The R&D head scientists called your team for a mission that involves science, astrology, and archaeology to another galaxy called Andromeda, you were so excited that you can't wait to get in the spaceship so you can have an adventure to travel to another galaxy for the first time of your life. Your spaceship is prepping for liftoff by playing Space Oddity by David Bowie, once you lift off people cheered and warped to Andromeda to begin your mission.

Soldier- You are a seasoned soldier that has seen combat in your military career, you are part of an Alliance 231st Airborne Division a highly specialized elite light infantry who has a reputation of going behind enemy lines by skydiving, strike fast and hard and disappear (they can add a few combat missions to play them to get a feeling of being a soldier). Your C.O. is impressed by your service record and leadership skills and gives you a highly classified mission to travel with Alliance R&D to Andromeda to be head of security for the Alliance R&D team. You in their spaceship with your sqaud from his unit to travel to Andromeda.

[The Elder King]

It's hard to take Dragon Age seriously when it, in turn, does not take its fans seriously. I'm tired of going into the next game and leaving with more questions than answers. BioWare doesn't need to hide the ball every single game. I doubt BioWare even has any well-conceived in goal for what they are doing with Dragon Age. I'd just prefer a bit more transparency and quality treatment towards the fans when you expect them to constantly buy these games. Mass Effect was the opposite as we continued to answer more questions throughout the trilogy. Dragon Age has never been that way, which is why I've never considered it anywhere as compelling as Mass Effect. I preferred DAO's approach. It was much more concise, succinct, and straight to the point. DA2 and DAI, especially, are just muddled messes likely suffering from writer's block because even the writing team doesn't know where to take the series.

Well, If the answer is on the same quality level of Starbrat, I'm not sure it's better then not knowing.
While I do agree on DAO being better then DA2 and DAI, I don't think the writing team doesn't know where to take the series. Both games had problems that affected the writing (lack of enough dev time, and starting a open world approach). Not to mentioned that DA2's not well reception affected their plans, since some plots in DAI should've been in the former expansion.
And even though we do get more questions in each game, the last game actually revealed quite a bit of stuff, which has implications on the whole IP. Revealing that the elven 'gods' are real it's big deal, in my opinion.

[Felya87]

I think there should be a big difference between background and backstory. A well polished background is useful for the story and can actually be a good thing for roleplay. Some examples are Fallout 3 and Dragon Age: Origins. The characters had both a defined background: family, friends, and all that. But the player could shape how his/her character interact with them, and define what he/she have learned while growing up in those enviromants, since there can be different interpretations. (will my city elf just hate all humans, or see that there are some that can be trusted? is s/he on good terms with her family, or just hate all the people in the alinage?)

 

Fallout 4 had the same problems (at least for me) that DA2 had: preimposted relationships with the family, even if at least DA2 let my characters have their blank sexuality.

I played a straight female character in Fallout 4, but I didn't like having a husband and a child imposed. I would have liked more if the kid was a nephew or something. I would like having my characters became parents, but only if is an option and is not forced. Not all my characters would have been ok with having a family, and Fallout 4 start was too much imposed.

[In Exile]

Dragon Age is kinda schyzophrenic when it comes to gameplay, true, but in terms of story I found each game flowed into the next quite nicely. The transition from DA2 to DA:I in particular was pretty good. I feel the writers planned that series ahead, twists like Flemythal and Solas included, whereas Mass Effect definitely feels like it was made up as they went along.

 

Mass Effect feels like they were making it up as they went along within the individual games, which is a special kind of directionless. 

[The Elder King]

As for the OP, I'm honestly fine with different approaches, so it's not a big deal for me. I manage and enjoy to roleplay from blank characters to characters like Geralt, so DA and ME's approaches are fine for me.
Considering I doubt they'd go for blank slated characters, regardless of how Many backgrounds we'll get, I'd like the DAO approach.

[tesla21]

Sorry but the blank slate character era in RPG's ended 10+ years ago, even today's ARPG's characters have voiced dialogue and an unnecessary background story. It looks like MOBA's and MMO's are the last and completely horrific refuge for those who need to head cannon role play their character's story.

 

Mobas have defined character lore as far as I know

 

On topic though, it's not so much about the origin being bland as it should just be a closed story, the problem with FO4 is that your character's origin is all that you are, you really won't shup up about your son the whole game, how am I even supposed enjoy sidequesting when I am so desperate to find him I don't even know. I think ME origins were fine, they didn't say much about you, just some flavor for your character and most other characters took it by face value, meaning it was up to each player to head canon the details. I am all for another similar sole survivor/hero/ruthless,

 

The point is the character was never really given a chance to develop beyond the choices given to the player between love interest, background, psych profile, etc.

 

Till that kind of budget is spent... as far as voiced acted characters, I think ME1-2 Shepard was pretty damn good in control, yes one is essentially always Shepard but those were games about Shepard, Bioware cannot exactly make life simulator for one to have completely unique and varied dialogue according to whatever personality the player can come up with, a  voiced character brings alot of limitations with it. The fact that Shepard allowed you room to easily head canon and overall vastly change the feel and experience of the games depending on you "chose" to be, your motivations, your ideals, etc. it's a success imo. Like I said, Bioware can't nor pretends to make "life simulator",  our character will inevitably have to go through plot point "a" and "b" one way or another, so it's bound to only have a certain degree of variation of Bioware's character, and that's personally quite fine by me. Compared to say Fallout 4's main character who can be defined by "WHERE's MUH CHILD"

[Swaggerjking]

 

 

Fallout 4 had the same problems (at least for me) that DA2 had: preimposted relationships with the family, even if at least DA2 let my characters have their blank sexuality.

I played a straight female character in Fallout 4, but I didn't like having a husband and a child imposed. I would have liked more if the kid was a nephew or something. I would like having my characters became parents, but only if is an option and is not forced. Not all my characters would have been ok with having a family, and Fallout 4 start was too much imposed.

I feel Da 2 executed it way better. You can pretty much be an A hole to your whole family and you get to spend time forming your opinions of them due to the time you spend with them early.In FO4 until pretty much the end of the main quest line you can't do a single a hole thing to the family and it takes several hours to spend more than 5 minutes with them. I would of love if they made where you could get in a couple of fights with your spouse signify a unhappy marriage for what ever headcanoning reason you want and only adding 2-5 minutes before the bombs start to drop. If we could get a family member or someone we can decide if they we are child hood friend or rival would awesome if they executed it right.

[Revan Reborn]

Well, If the answer is on the same quality level of Starbrat, I'm not sure it's better then not knowing.
While I do agree on DAO being better then DA2 and DAI, I don't think the writing team doesn't know where to take the series. Both games had problems that affected the writing (lack of enough dev time, and starting a open world approach). Not to mentioned that DA2's not well reception affected their plans, since some plots in DAI should've been in the former expansion.
And even though we do get more questions in each game, the last game actually revealed quite a bit of stuff, which has implications on the whole IP. Revealing that the elven 'gods' are real it's big deal, in my opinion.

In fairness, the issue with DAII was not its writing. In fact, the writing for the game was largely phenomenal. The problem was the gameplay was horribly inferior to DAO. That's largely why people panned the game. DAI just has mediocre gameplay and equally mediocre writing. The issue with DAI is the game was far too ambitious and BioWare cut corners on every turn. It attempted to do so much that they inevitably did a subpar job on everything. The elven gods being real was not that big of a deal, in my opinion. Considering we barely even know anything about ancient elvish civilization, it was filling in lore that was largely unexplained to start. What would be a much bigger deal is if the Maker was real. That, in my opinion, would change quite a lot of the dynamics of Dragon Age. Thedas doesn't even care about elves anymore and they are largely subclass citizens like dwarves.

[Hair Serious Business]

That's more an issue with Bethesda being bad at making RPGs and thinking ''oh look here's your spouse and baby, oh look your spouse is dead and your baby is missing, now go plant some tomatoes for Preston McBoring and his psychic granny'' is a compelling story.

 

Why are you planting tomatoes?

Go out and help the settlement, here I will mark it on your map.

[The Elder King]

In fairness, the issue with DAII was not its writing. In fact, the writing for the game was largely phenomenal. The problem was the gameplay was horribly inferior to DAO. That's largely why people panned the game. DAI just has mediocre gameplay and equally mediocre writing. The issue with DAI is the game was far too ambitious and BioWare cut corners on every turn. It attempted to do so much that they inevitably did a subpar job on everything. The elven gods being real was not that big of a deal, in my opinion. Considering we barely even know anything about ancient elvish civilization, it was filling in lore that was largely unexplained to start. What would be a much bigger deal is if the Maker was real. That, in my opinion, would change quite a lot of the dynamics of Dragon Age. Thedas doesn't even care about elves anymore and they are largely subclass citizens like dwarves.

The revelation of the elven gods being real has a lot of implications for the dynamics of Dragon Age, including for the Maker. It's not just about them being related to the elves, but I understand it's a matter of opinion.
Same goes for writing. I'd rate DA2 and DAI on the same level, more or less, with some good points and some mediocre points.

[Revan Reborn]

The revelation of the elven gods being real has a lot of implications for the dynamics of Dragon Age, including for the Maker. It's not just about them being related to the elves, but I understand it's a matter of opinion.
Same goes for writing. I'd rate DA2 and DAI on the same level, more or less, with some good points and some mediocre points.

I'm not suggesting it couldn't lead to some interesting stories in the future. I'm just stating that ancient elven culture has largely been background for much bigger themes in Dragon Age, such as blights, the Fade, templars vs mages, and chantry politics. Depending on what BioWare does with elven gods, it could be interesting. However, I still believe the Maker's inclusion would be far more interesting, considering everything is based around the Black City and the implications of its corruption.

 

DAII was just a more coherent story. It was a personal tale about family and trying to make a name for oneself in a new city. DAI was just nonsense from the very beginning and ended on a very underwhelming note. It just came across as if BioWare wasn't exactly sure what they wanted to do with DAI, so they threw a bunch of ideas into the game and called it a game.

[LinksOcarina]

Mass Effect feels like they were making it up as they went along within the individual games, which is a special kind of directionless. 

 

They kind of were, or at least had a vague idea where they wanted to go. 

[LinksOcarina]

I'm not suggesting it couldn't lead to some interesting stories in the future. I'm just stating that ancient elven culture has largely been background for much bigger themes in Dragon Age, such as blights, the Fade, templars vs mages, and chantry politics. Depending on what BioWare does with elven gods, it could be interesting. However, I still believe the Maker's inclusion would be far more interesting, considering everything is based around the Black City and the implications of its corruption.

 

DAII was just a more coherent story. It was a personal tale about family and trying to make a name for oneself in a new city. DAI was just nonsense from the very beginning and ended on a very underwhelming note. It just came across as if BioWare wasn't exactly sure what they wanted to do with DAI, so they threw a bunch of ideas into the game and called it a game.

 

I think they knew what they wanted with Inquisition. They wanted the rise to power story that was promised in Dragon Age II.

 

I think the ultimate response to that is us for having a more cliched narrative in terms of the same story beats and what not. 

 

I want a more political, more personal story again like Dragon Age II. Realistically, I don't think I will get it anytime soon because the general public is not really into the more gritty realism and grounded storytelling than they like to think. 

 

Sure, we can admit we want it, even talk about it, but we are in a minority position; this board is a minority position in the end. 

[Revan Reborn]

I think they knew what they wanted with Inquisition. They wanted the rise to power story that was promised in Dragon Age II.

 

I think the ultimate response to that is us for having a more cliched narrative in terms of the same story beats and what not. 

 

I want a more political, more personal story again like Dragon Age II. Realistically, I don't think I will get it anytime soon because the general public is not really into the more gritty realism and grounded storytelling than they like to think. 

 

Sure, we can admit we want it, even talk about it, but we are in a minority position; this board is a minority position in the end. 

I disagree. This was less of a re-imagining of DAII and more of BioWare wanting us to essentially lead our own empire. They wanted us to be the "chosen one" and lead armies against the established nations of Thedas. I don't have an issue with this premise as a concept. I just felt the execution was poor largely due to the protagonist not having a personality at all.

 

MEA seems to be taking after DAII in that we are supposed to get a more personal story rather than a galactic-wise conflict. It probably won't be as personal as DAII dealing with family matters, but I'm expecting it to be much smaller scale and more about exploring the unknown with your crew. BSN has always been the minority, even if it attempts to delude itself otherwise. That being said, there are a few moments of genius and even a few kernels of gold every now and then on here.

[fizzypop]

I actually prefer having a defined background, but I like that background to be somewhat variable. That's the thing I think that's really missing from ME and DA. The backgrounds in ME meant nothing especially after ME1. That sucked. DA titles it is preset. DAO did a pretty decent job with elves having three options city elf/dalish elf/mage. My "fantasy" system would be after we create our characters we answer some questions that define our past that makes changes to the game and how others treat us. That way each game would have some variability, but not so much that it would be too hard to implement.

[The Elder King]

I'm not suggesting it couldn't lead to some interesting stories in the future. I'm just stating that ancient elven culture has largely been background for much bigger themes in Dragon Age, such as blights, the Fade, templars vs mages, and chantry politics. Depending on what BioWare does with elven gods, it could be interesting. However, I still believe the Maker's inclusion would be far more interesting, considering everything is based around the Black City and the implications of its corruption.

 

DAII was just a more coherent story. It was a personal tale about family and trying to make a name for oneself in a new city. DAI was just nonsense from the very beginning and ended on a very underwhelming note. It just came across as if BioWare wasn't exactly sure what they wanted to do with DAI, so they threw a bunch of ideas into the game and called it a game.

The point is that the Maker might or might not be real at this point . The elven gods being real have an effect on the whole lore, and I personally find fascinating the possible relation with the Old Gods. Anyway, I wasn't saying that it's the most interesting truth possible in the DA game, just that it's kind of big in my opinion, and it doesn't leave me with a weirs sensation in my stomach as Starbrat did.

 

I wouldn't be as hard as you on DAI, but I do agree it have its problems, though the same can be said for DA2. Hopefully next time they'll improve themselves.

For the record, I enjoyed, in different ways, both games.

[fchopin]

I love the DAO backstories and would be very happy to see them again in a new game.

[In Exile]

I disagree. This was less of a re-imagining of DAII and more of BioWare wanting us to essentially lead our own empire. They wanted us to be the "chosen one" and lead armies against the established nations of Thedas. I don't have an issue with this premise as a concept. I just felt the execution was poor largely due to the protagonist not having a personality at all.

 

No. They wanted to deconstruct and reconstruct the concept of a chosen one, and being chosen at all. As well as the concept of a villain wholly driven by the desire to destroy the world. We can debate whether they succeeded, but they never wanted a basic chosen one story.