Role Playing. No, I did not forget.

I like reading, bro. It's why I'm on DLP.

I like video games. I'm not a devoted fan of any one specific genre. And I haven't played many video games cuz I haven't been a gamer for long, only about ten years or so. Also, I simply can't afford to get and play every major game out there, for reasons that are, frankly, none of your business.

EDIT: No, I did not play KotOR.

 

Maybe you should just shut the fuck up before I start ranting again. Seriously, you sound like an enormous asshole saying that, especially here, of all places.

I mean, I can't imagine what's so exciting about "Michael Bay Explosions" once you've seen them once. Setpiece videogames are about as stimulating these days as stale bread.

 

This thread has just devolved. Seriously, I had hoped we'd be done with the arguing, at least for a bit.

Can we please get back to the topic? Anyone have any specific hopes for DAI that hasn't been mentioned, perhaps?

 

Seconded. As for hopes, I'm hoping they won't just throw away the darkspawn issue entirely in favor of mages and templars beating the shit out of each other. I mean, when DA:O came out, the franchise seemed to be primarily riding on darkspawn and the Grey Wardens. Then the big bads, the nightmarish creatures from the deep got sidelined so that mages and demons could be blown out of proportion.

 

Right, well, that's always been DA:O's greatest flaw and asset. The darkspawn are incredibly "ancient evil" unequivocally bad batshit insane skeletonmagedemonsdragons. As such they aren't that interesting.

Yet, at the same time, the only scenes of any drama or weight have been largely linked to the darkspawn. The mage/templar conflicts are pretty much petty in comparison and there are so many dickbags on both sides it's rather hard to root for either one. Loghain, the templars, the old fuddy duddy mages, the chantry - all of these groups stand in your way from defeating the real threat - the dark spawn. That is interesting to me. If they explored that aspect, those conflicts of frustration, I could see them creating a compelling narrative. But if we get too much of one faction or the other, and not enough interplay between the two (darkspawn vs quibbling society), we'll sure to be rolling our eyes at the trifles of the religious elite or yawning at the bumbling hordes of undead.

Don't get me wrong, BioWare has done some great scenes with the darkspawn - in DAO, I rather liked the way Oghren's wife was corrupted. The broodmother was the right kind of sick, depraved and disgusting. There was actually some tension in that piece. But in the deep roads before it? It's hard to care about slobbering idiots that can't even turn you into a dark spawn or anything. Oh and the Ogres? Yeah, ogres aren't exactly... terrifying or threatening. Not like the broodmother, anyway. And there are only so many times you can be wow'd by a large spider, unless you have arachnophobia or something.

In an older, more hardcore RPG, there'd be a real risk of becoming one of the darkspawn, instead of it being this thing you're just immune to because yeah wardens (and I guess Hawke was too?). I played an old text RPG a few years ago where it was very easy for your character to be turned into a zombie, which made fighting the undead wholly terrifying (it was great, because you wouldn't know something was seriously wrong until your character started bleeding from the ears, coughing up bile, or having your 'fingers and toes grow cold and numb'). That's the kind of thing we need to make DA3 intruiging.

 

This. You expressed my thoughts better than I ever could myself, Chime.

 

In regards to the Darkspawn. I do want to see more development there, as I can easily see them having something to do with the Final Big bad of the whole series. It's why i actually kind of liked the Legacy DLC for DA2, despite the fact that some of it's plot was kind of shaky. But yeah, I wanna meat more...intelligent Darkspawn, like the Architect.

At the same time, I hope there presence doesn't dominate the games either. I don't think another blight will happen so soon after the last one, so keeping most of the darkspawn to Deeproads and maybe the occasional above ground group. Heck, it even gives you something of a "Rare," enemy or something. Like Patrolling Mobs, that are a kind of sub-mini-boss. More challenging than regular encounters.

If any of that makes sense.

 

It does make sense. And I don't think there should be another Blight so soon, or even in the series. The Blight's appeal was that it was DA:O's main plot and what made everything else spin. You had to overcome all other difficulties in order to be able to stand against the Archdemon. Repeating that would be a total lazy&dick move, not to mention going against the developed lore according to which it takes years after a Blight for the darkspawn to find another dragon to corrupt.

 

If I had to nail a theme down onto DA:O, it would be the tale of Andraste. The music, some of the lines certain characters say (specifically, what the first enchanter says when you arrive for the first time at the circle tower while it's under siege), plus that whole... Andraste's ashes trial nonsense.

It's pretty clear that the "final" Dragon Age game, or at least the one where BioWare pulls all the stops, will be about our party venturing into the place where the corrupted mages reside. That's in the fade somewhere, if I recall correctly. Thta's probably what DA3 is about, actually? I dunno.

But you're right. It would be awfully hamfisted for there to be a new blight already, yet, without a blight, the darkspawn aren't likely to be an interesting threat, they're just stuck in the deeproads.

 

But again, the way the last one went, and with some of the people we know of, I could still see a 6th Blight. But personally, my guess is an all out invasion, not from the deeproads, but from the Fade and Black/Golden City. One last, all out attack, to wipe out everyone but them.

They of course fail, in no small part due to us, the hero, and our mighty companions. The Darkspawn are gone forever, or depending on what you did with The Architect, maybe a few small groups of Self-thinking Darkspawn that may actually be able to interact with society later on.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Chime

 

Is it wrong to wish for a DAI visit to the Tevinter empire where my mage character can own some slaves? Missing the days of KoTOR when you could actually be evil or psychotic.

The thing that annoyed me so much in DA 2 was how inevitably any mage you came across resorted to blood magic. There was no pro-circle mage character. All the companions and their opinions were black and white or either\or.

Am I the only one who thought Varric was highly overrated? I couldn't care less about the dwarf.

Finally, I'm tired of all companion characters being bi (and this was in ME3 too). Some companions should be one orientation and won't change unless you make a different character. I also liked that Aveline was unavailable. Not every character needs to get on their knees for Hawke.

In DA2 the writers\whoever really hate Hawke's family. I mean seriously hate family.

Has anyone seen the Obsidian crowd-funded game planned? http://eternity.obsidian.net/

Supposedly you can play a really evil character and there are a lot of mature themes. The only thing that sucks is that it may be pc only and I like my consoles.

 

From what I gather the conflict between mages and templars has damaged the border between the Real world and the Fade and now Demons are crossing over in force. A bit like what happened in the Wardens Keep DLC only everywhere. (I could also point to another game with a similar idea but I am sure that Bioware has good enough artists that don´t need to steal ideas (Oblivion).)

And I think that the Mage-Templar conflict pared with a possible Qunari invasion are enough for one game especially because Bioware doesn't tire of telling us that this is no true continuation like ME.

And for the whole EA/Bioware problem.. I think and hope that EA is willing to spend some extra money and time on this game to ensure its quality and silence the critics. Both companies are in dire need of some positive PR and this is their chance for it.

 

Read the gameinformer article. Pretty excited. It sound ls like its maybe going to be about obtaining the side you choose's dominance. Surfing against castles sounds pretty awesome. Varric and Cassandra are companions. Possibly leliana. Morrigan has a 'not small' role.

Doesn't sound like you are the God-child.

 

That you're probably the kind of person who wouldn't play Chrono Trigger because it's graphics aren't up to the standard you're used to, and that you're exactly who EA is marketing this game towards.

I'd also say that you being the market right now is the reason why gaming is going down a funslide that's on fire into a cesspool of YouTube Celebrity-tier writing and acting.

There has been no upswing on /v/ or /vg/ in regards to abusing Hamburger, beyond the static level of background shitposting that always happens when 4chan is involved.

Gearbox are greedy lying assholes, the devs fucked up Heist, Starbound will never be released, Bioware is a faggot, how fucking dare mojang work on putting things that are already put in by mods into the game when they could be making Minecraft more mod compatible. The sun still rises, the stars still set, the planets spin and nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

There has been no spike. I've been in those threads. This is just her randomly deciding to quit years later, and citing this as an excuse. I have no idea why she's doing it, but it's not because of anything that was said on 4chan. Not anything that was said on 4chan in the past two years, anyway.

If anything, it's just the opposite. The current vocal minority are the devdefenders out there, screaming that this will be amazing and that Bethesda fanboys are all lifeless tards and autistic virgins who can suck a parade of dicks. On 4chan, mind, not the Bioware forums.

I'm not sorry to see her go, though. She wrote Wynne, sure, but she also wrote a lot of the utterly atrocious, ham-fisted, politically correct and cliche-ridden romance dialogue and character interactions in Mass Effect 3. She's a Slash-tier writer; okay when someone is forcing her to write things that have nothing to do with romance, but when she's allowed, she dives straight off into the deep end of Absolutely Disgusting. Her romance and character-to-character interactions are on par with the standard of fanfiction.net and Reddit, and since that what she was situated to be doing, I'm not sorry to see her leaving. Maybe now that she's freelance, the battering of the real world will knock her writing into some semblance of a respectable shape. Best of luck to her, and all that jazz.

She's still an attention whore, though. I'm not going to defend the psychotic minority of vocal assholes that actually threaten to hurt people over games. They're crazy CHUDS living in their parents' basements. That being said, try to keep in mind that last time, the mocking was only on medium heat until she started flipping shit on Twitter and basically throwing tantrums in public. You throw blood in the water, you shouldn't be surprised when the sharks swarm.

Maybe she's learned her lesson. Grant you, she's leaving about six years after the fact and no one actually cares about her anymore, so probably not. But I'll be optimistic anyway.

And never fucking mind. Maybe she won't turn out so bad after all.

I'd much rather have another City of Bones than another Mass Effect 3. I can ignore bad books by virtue of not reading them and laughing at anyone who thinks having their name drawn to compete in The Games is equivalent opening a closet and finding Narnia.

Still kind of pissed I didn't get my owl letter or find a talking lion. I guess at this point I'm holding out on Gandalf showing up on my 50th birthday.

You're actually starting to make me hate you. And that's pretty difficult to accomplish.

 

And you Raine should play games to enjoy them and not to spend your evenings writing novels criticizing them.

 

I'm playing Monster Hunter right now.

Or have you spent this much time on the internet and still not learned how to type with one hand and use the other to do something else?

 

Pfft. I suppose kiddy gamers have to start somewhere. Honestly.

It's finished. It's a mod for NWN2. Basically, it turns BG into a shiny 3D game ala NWN2.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/06/06/mad-mod-recreates-baldurs-gate-in-neverwinter-nights-2/
http://games.on.net/2013/06/baldurs...hat-recreates-the-entire-original-game-in-3d/

 

I'm kind of interested in the Chain. Will it be something every version of this MC has as a trademark toy of this MC, or is it a Warrior only thing? Will each class get a cool toy to play with?

It might make the Warrior more interesting, at least. I don't think I've ever played a pure Warrior MC, because it's never been that enjoyable. I was too busy being a Mage or a Rogue in Origins, and you've got so many Warrior companions in DA2 that it's utterly pointless for you to be one. Plus, Mage Hawke seems to be the "most canon" of all of them, and he's definitely the most interesting.

I just wish that meant Carver wasn't canonically the survivor. Your sister is far more of a bro than Carver ever was. He's kind of a bitch.

So Inquisition might be the Dragon Age that makes me play Warrior, at least.

I do like how we're just blatantly escalating power, though. Wynne was a teacher in a Circle Tower. Vivianne is the next in line to become First Enchanter in her Circle.

We've gone from having McGonagall on our team to ordering Dumbledore to carry all the vendor trash so our inventories have room for things that are actually useful.

I can only assume next game the mage is one of the original Tevinter Sorcerers that entered the Golden City or something.

 

I certainly don't take Mage Hawke as canon, as fun as it might have been. How the hell could you sling spells around without a care right in the middle of Kirkwall and not have any trouble with the Templars? Mage Hawke broke my immersion. Part of why I didn't finish that second playthrough.

 

If you take the commercials as canon then both characters have either been mages with the Warden being an Arcane Warrior or the Warden is a Reaver. Also Warden/Morrigan and Hawke/Isabela are the canon couples based on commercials.