The facial animations and hair clipping were admittedly not great, but Bioware has really never been able to do that well. I thought everything else was pretty goddamn great graphics wise. The battle effects, particularly for spellwork, were just fucking spectacular, and there was very little environmental stuff that wasn't gorgeous.

DA3 combat was hugely appealing for me personally. Mainly because of knight enchanter, reaver, and dagger rogue playstyles. I haaaaaaate babysitting AI, and those classes were all just so marvelously fluid and facerollingly op, that you only occasionally had to micromanage your AI on tough fights.

I made frequent use of the tactical mode on said tough fights. While it certainly didn't allow for as much tactical control as there was in Origins, it serviced my more action-oriented playstyle needs just fine.

That said, I do hope DA4 brings back the wheel, or maybe tries to come up with something new like a subclass or class swap mechanic that allows you to press a button and have access to another class's abilities.

Edit: Or, better yet, a weapon swap system. I cannot remember what game I was playing 3 or so years ago but it was basically depending on what weapon you actively had in your hands (several wepons slots, heavy, light, and utility) you had a unique class and unique button loadout for that weapon, allowing for a fuckload of customization given that there were like 10+ weapons types.

 

EA Stuff. Skip if you don't care.
If not wanting another thread become an anti-EA-dumpsterfire is asking for a safe space, then yeah, for the first time I consider myself wanting one. Mainly because I can't stand the moaning and bitching anymore, since we heard it loud and clear in the Anthem thread and probably everywhere else EA is concerned. (Another game, Apex Legends, that has recently been released on Origin, is pretty good actually. I've had a lot of fun playing that with a friend. And while there's the usual cosmetics for money shop in-game, there seems to be no actual gameplay advantage to paying. Take from that what you will.)

Again, I've heard your concerns over and over. And I agree for the most part. EA is shit. But I'm a fucking casual gamer and not a crusader, and after a day at work with a bunch of kids doing kidstuff and sometimes adults behaving like monkeys too, I want to be excited for a franchise that's got a special place in my heart and not consider evil business practices.

Am I being naive? Sure, call it that. Will it open me up to heartache? It's got a good chance of that, too, yeah. But you know what, I'll still fucking do it, because it's Dragon Age, and I'd fucking play that franchise even if ISIS made it. Can't we just agree that you get to say "I told you so" should EA drive us off the cliff and let this shit rest otherwise?

DA Stuff. Skip if you don't care.
Anyway, back to DA. I actually have to admit to playing the games out of order. I first found the franchise with DA2 and totally fell in love with the character design, witty dialog, and making my own choices. (I came strictly from the realm of rts games, and years after Gothic 1/2, DA2 was my re-introduction to rpgs). Repetitive level design didn't really bother me. Having spent the last five years of my life playing the same maps over and over in Dawn of War, always with similar build orders and strategies, I had no trouble whatsoever adjusting to caves that looked similar.

I just had an amazingly fun time beating the game on the hardest difficulty, no matter where I was walking. The combat looked stunning, performing combos was fun, and always there came those quips the characters would make while moving that gave me a total feeling of immersion. My team of Varric, Isabella Aveline was fantastic. They played off each other so well. When Varric's brother fucked up, I actually felt bad for him. When Aveline tried to get herself a man, I was rooting for my girl. And who couldn't love "the smell of tar, and the sea, and the sound of some whore plying her trade in a back alley . . ." I had other playthroughs with different team compositions, but none that really gripped me quite as that one.

I might just have talked myself into another run. Anyway, DA:4, should it ever come, is quite far off right now anyway. But damn, just thinking about DA makes me remember so many fun times.

 

I think folks romanticize DAO's companion tactics. They were simple condition->action commands, with no way to accommodate anything complex or useful outside of chugging potions, keeping sustains on, and maybe reacting to status effects. DA2 was a huge improvement in that regard. Now you could require two conditions to perform an action, which opened a wealth of new possibilities. Aaaand then BW went and took a step back in DAI. In DA2, it was possible to build a team instead of 4 powerful characters, a team that synergized and worked well because of each other's abilities. And on PC, the hotbar accommodated more than 8 keybinds, so...

@Eilyfe, no one says you can't be casual, man. No one can be involved and informed on every topic. But then people go and act petulant when someone dares point out that the game industry is rotten and impulse buying the next <insert_IP> is spoiling their fun. Fair enough. Although if you've ever been frustrated with someone because they were casual about a topic you're passionate about, you understand why I keep saying "fuck EA" in these threads.

Further, I believe that gaming is one of those industries that customers can actually change with their behavior. We're not gonna stop using banks, or buying food. We can't up and decide to stop driving cars. But you don't have to buy a game. And also, because it has been shown that customers can force change, because it's been done. I don't consider Battlefront II a great victory, but it was a win for us, for me, and for you too. Casual gamers like you weren't the ones bombarding that infamous thread on Reddit with the concentrated PR nightmare fuel, and I emphasize that I don't fault anyone for not participating--not everyone has to be am activist, is what I tend to say. But some people have to be, or nothing changes. But those of us who gave EA this headache made EA walk back some of the shit about that game.

I won't say you can't just play your games and not care, but at the same time, you can't expect me not to say my piece. I think people who keep buying EA products if they're the least bit informed on the topic (which I can see everyone itt is) are the main cause that keeps making the industry worse, because you're the incentive.

@Agayek, the industry is healthy as in it's here to stay, no doubt about that, but it's also broken as hell in its approach to customers. Indie stuff will be more customer-friendly by nature, because it depends on customers to a much greater degree than AAA, which generates a lot of its money from inertia (see BioWare, in this thread and Anthem. They've head a major fuckup of some kind with every game since 2012, but 7 years later people still invoke DAO and KOTOR and keep expecting their next game to be more like those than MEA).

I think gamers are on average more informed about their entertainment compared to other industries, and it translates into, for example, indie successes. It's not just that people keep prattling on about shit but then don't reward the creators when they do what people prattle about. Of course, not every indie game gets attention, there are only so many hours in day, and people only have X dollars to spend on fun, but the industry has success stories that I think show a clear pattern: if you create a good product, then even if you don't have the marketing budget of EA, your game can be successful just by word of mouth and nothing else (just off the top of my head in the last decade: Limbo, Hollow Knight, Shovel Knight, Firewatch, FNAF, Subnautica, Cuphead, Minecraft).

That, of course, doesn't mean that no bad comes out of indies (cough No Man's Sky cough) or that AAA can't do good things (DAO because yeah, but more recently: The Witcher series, God of War, Spiderman and RDR2 from last year), but it's really hard (impossible for me, in fact) to ignore the fact that publishers like EA contribute the big budgets to big games, but then inevitably demand shit like MTX in the games, or they side with "games journalists" against gamers, both of which have been shown to backfire not that long ago (BattleFront II underperformed for the first reason, Battlefield V for the second).

 

Apologies for the necro, but Jason Schreier did a thing again.

The Past & Present of Dragon Age 4

Goddamnit, Bioware.

 

Really nothing in here that wasn't covered by Schreier's 'State of Bioware' Anthem article. If anything, it presents as a relatively hopeful and optimistic speculation about where they will go with DA4. A bit of fear-mongering about it having a giant online multiplayer component due to it being a 'live service' and being 'based on Anthem's codebase', but then it cites numerous Bioware people saying in short "that's really not what we mean".

I fully expect the negative reaction to Anthem to influence their design choices going forward. They simply can't afford another disaster/flop.

 

I appreciated the bits of information on Joplin that I didn’t know before, but yes, it does read very much like a spin-off from last week’s article. And I dearly hope that they learn and apply their lessons. DA4, whatever form it may take upon release, will probably prove to be Hudson’s litmus test on whether he can lead Bioware into the future.

 

I'd really love to be more excited, but EA seems to want to shove bad idea after bad idea down Bioware's throats. First it was the everyone must use Frostbite engine idiocy. Now, it's the "everything is a live service" bullshit.

I know it's a cliche to hate on EA, but it's often with good reason. At this point, I expect DA4 to still be at least another 2-3 years away, assuming Bioware still exists by then.

 

DA4 can just be buried, when was the last time that EA released a good narrative experience? Live Service boys.