Heh. Shy kids get nothing (paraphrasing a local phrase). If you stay quiet nobody will pay attention to you, and you'll subsequently not be taken into consideration when the company managers/directors make their decisions.

---------- Post automerged at 06:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:52 PM ----------

Actually, I'm beginning to think a crash might be a good thing, at least as far as my preferred genres go. It would bring indie devs to the fore as bigger companies fail or cut back. Kickstarter is the start of this process, I think. Steam as well. We might be seeing the slow death of big business in gaming, which I'll admit brings a smile to my face.

 

Or maybe studios will stop chasing Call of Duty and chill out on the budgets and expectations. That probably won't happen, but hey, it's a whole hell of a lot more likely than another industry crash.

 

If it means: 1)EA goes fuck itself 2)and games with good graphics expand on other aspects of gameplay, then I'm all for it.

 

Yeah, more hipster indie games. That's what we need.

 

I just need Bioware to give me more than 3 fucking dungeons in the entire game.

 

That actually is exactly what we need.

 

We need less indie games that are instantly respawn when you die look there are memes hey here's a QR code puzzle do my graphics look retro yet (aka Fez) and more indie games like Hotline Miami or Mount & Blade.

 

Lets change the topic from the depressing thought of a market crash. No matter how helpful said crash may be in the long run, it'll still make me said, because game series I've come to love, (Like DA and AC, actually) will probably stop making more, or not even finish.

So! Which Specializations do people hope make an appearance in inquisition?

For Mage, I'd say Arcane Warrior, but to me that Specialization seems like something to be unique to The Warden. But Battlemage was fun in awakening, and Spirit Healer is useful. I do hope that Blood Mage doesn't make an appearance. I also wasn't too keen on Force Magic.

For Rogue,I'm actually hoping for an Archery Specialization. Maybe an overhaul of Ranger.

And for Warrior, my least played class, I'd like to bring back the Spirit Warrior Specialization, as a kind of replacement for Arcane Warrior. It'd also fill a kind of Anti-Magic role, instead of Templar. It IS the Inquisition though, so we'll probably just get Templar. Reaver has also always been cool.

 

Basically, we need games made by small companies, that have not been swallowed by a large publisher, or are publishing games themselves.

 

It's gonna suck, I'm not gonna buy it. And this is coming from the guy with a map of Thedas on his wall, four Dragon Age books on his shelf (not counting the RPG sourcebooks) and and approximately all the fucking hours sunk into countless playthroughs of it. I gave up hope at DA2, and I don't expect better from inquisition.
But hey! They bothered to give it a title this time!

 

I was watching another dev thing, and the head writer talked about how they have a "five game plan" right now for what they want with Dragon Age, with "more to follow after."

So that's a solid bit of evidence to throw onto the theory that they're trying for a teamup. One game for each Main Character to fill up all four party slots, game five brings them together.

I see these two points as being connected. Again, the Origin Comic concept is an extremely easy out for this. Either it's day one free DLC or built into the game, you use it and it lets you basically make your own "History" save data for your New Game data to start off of from by going through a really quick "recap" comic book/graphic novel/VN style thing were, I don't know, Varric is narrating the story to someone and you can choose what he says at certain points.

That way, you can keep it as consistent (or inconsistent) with your previous saves as you want it to be. The fact that they don't port is completely irrelevant.

When I say Hawke is canonically a mage, I mean that I'm reasonably certain that if they are going for a team-up in the future, when they do promotional material for it, it's probably going to be showing off the main characters all standing together in their 'canon' roles, to illustrate a fully outfitted and balanced team. You could use the comic to make them all mages if you wanted to, nothing is stopping you. But the promotional material and official gameplay demos would probably have them in their 'promotional canon' roles. Hawke will be the mage when they show this off, the Inquisitor will probably be the warrior, ect. You don't have to build it that way. That'll just be what's on the poster.

That's expecting far, far too much from any game, let alone something published by EA. I can't even remember the last time I played an RPG where class choice literally changed massive portions of the entire plot.

You said it broke your immersion. I pointed out that they explained why nothing happened to you and why you didn't have to watch your back in the game, so it didn't break mine, because they explained it. Their explanation is also consistent with other things in the game, like why isn't Bethany arrested then when she's just as high profile as you, or why Anders hasn't been carted off when he's being as subtle as a flatulant moose in a French boutique, and everybody and their dog knows where he's holed up in Undertown.

Varric covers for them by bribing all the correct people, and they're protected by their association with you, because the powers that be appreciate the Batman routine. The explaination is no different when you yourself are an apostate, instead of just your friends.

Your father is dead and your sister doesn't have to be in the Circle in Kirkwall, depending on what you do.

There's no direct reason for Hawke to care that 'has' to come up, especially if you take into account the "I've got mine, I hope you get yours" mentality that you're allowed to play Hawke as having.

Even the most Renegade asshole Shepard was still a hero who wanted to stop Saren/The Collectors/The Reapers. He was just an anti-hero. It's entirely possible to play Hawke as someone who should not in any way give a fuck about the mages or the Templars, and yet you're roped into playing their games anyway.

That's a fault on the writers.

Still think this is what TESO should have been. Strictly third-person, combat system incorporating Dragons Dogma, Dark Souls, and Monster Hunter, with a focus on small-party tactical combat (two to six variable, average of four man parties) with heavy use of teamwork and interactive enemies (knocking off armor, breaking horns, severing tails, damaging wings to prevent flight, ect).

 

I think it would be a crime if blood mage weren't in the game. On one hand it's 'dark and edgy' and on the other, it clearly breaks immersion ("Um, yes, those insane bloodthirsty cretins who summon demons? I'm one of them! But no, none of the downsides of being a blood mage really apply to me, other than that tiny little blurb I might get if I visit the fade and talk to somebody in there.")... but it potentially offers a slew of more interesting spells and mechanics. I've always loved mage mechanics where you use life instead of mana for spells.

 

Going on missions with Wynne in DA:O and ravaging enemies with blood magic was hilarious, but yeah, it was immersion breaking.

And also reason 3,422,942 why mods rule.

 

I'm moderately certain the Tevinter use blood magic fairly regularly.

If you want a Blood Mage companion, the logical choice would be a Tevinter wizard or sorceress that is for some reason not in Tevinter. It would be an interesting juxtaposition to basically throw an atheist slaver wizard from a Meritocratic-Magiocracy into a party with a puritan paladin that was raised in a society where mages are feared and spent their adult life watching mages turn into Abominations and be put down for meddling with Blood Magic and getting lost in the Fade.

I'd pay money to see the arguments coming from that.

 

Occasionally BioWare gets it right, with Sten, HK-47, Viconia, Ordo, Bindo, Morrigan, et cetera but they usually frustrate the hell out of me with their companion choices. Like, Mexican Burrito, from ME3? The whole time he was on screen, I was pretending he was Space Marine Minsc or something, you know, because I would have had more fun with character like that than a boring speesh marine like him.

Mass Effect 2 was a perfect setting to introduce some truly dogged companion characters - people from the seediest of the underworlds. Yet, all we really got was Zaeed, who was DLC and not fleshed out enough to my liknig.

There's so much potential to tell a good story when you really get some interesting characters constantly bantering, like in a classic BioWare game. That's what DA2 and for the most part DA:O were missing for me (Morrigan almost filled that sarcastic snark void, but if she had someone else seedy/sarcastic to play off of it would have been glorious).

It'd be fun if we got a genuine slaver as a party member. And maybe a real thief. Make the game challenge you to work with a bunch of bastards and hardened killers.

 

Yeah, but for a Blood Mage protagonist, do you really think they'd be able to pull it off? I may like the games, but I do notice there flaws, and I could see them just brushing it off or not even bringing it up.

Still, if they do it right, I wouldn't mind.

Also, a Five Game Plan? I hope not too much time passes between the next few games then. You could noticeably see Zevran's age catching p with him DA2, and I don't want The Warden to die of old age (or the Calling) before I see him again.

 

TESO as in Elder Scrolls Online? Because the combat mechanics between Skyrim and Dragon's Dogma couldn't be more different. Also, is it even possible to make a combat system like that in a PC ? I loved both Dragon's Dogma and (the first) Monster Hunter, specially their combat systems. Never played Dark Souls though.

Blood Magic is very complicated. In-game you only should be able to lear from demons, since none of the origins make it possible for you to already know it or learn from someone. And after learning, you don't really need demons right ? I read somewhere that Blood Magic was only used as an "enhancer" to the other types of magic.

In the specializations topics, I was frustrated, they changed the ploted very little, in DAO they played an important part in combats, in DAO:A they were way overpowered, and in DA2 they almost didn't matter. I hope to some changes in that. More integrated to the story and each with a more unique feel, or at least that felt different like in Mass Effect.

 

That one book described a way to survive the Calling, with that elf Warden who's probably Alistair's real mother. I don't remember the exact circumstances behind it though, or whether that cure for it was unique to her.

@LordRaine, I'll concede that Mage Hawke is plausible enough, but it's still not my preferred variant.

As for the team-up idea, while it would be cool, I can't even imagine how they'd implement it.

 

I almost always tend to choose Mage or Biotic or the "powers" option just because I like the idea of having an intrinsic ability so a Mage Hawke also makes sense to me.

One thing I really hope they change is the loot system and the kinds of items that are found on enemies corpses. I'm really sick and tired of opal fragment or torn trousers. Then, whatever class you're playing your bound to find way to many weapons for the classes that you aren't playing.

Finally, considering Obsidian funded a PC RPG through Kickstarter - is that one way to get better games out there? I wouldn't mind seeing more independent game makers get crowd funded and answer to the gamers.

However, considering that big game budget are sometimes equal to movie budgets I don't know how viable the system is for an intensive rpg.

Economics is not my strong suit but if enough people want good rpgs will the supply come to exist to meet demand?

 

A mid budget RPG could make money in theory. There's no reason an RPG needs 20+ million dollars to be built. Granted, FO:NV had about a 30 million dollar budget (maybe a little less?), but FO:NV has a rather massive world with a ton of voice acting. If you wanted to make something... to the tune of a sprite-based or IE-like RPG, you don't need a large team for that.

I mean really, cut out the bloody voice acting and you've probably saved around one million dollars (20 people doing weeks worth of voice acting probably isn't $1mil, but it's a lot, add that with programmers/designers having to hookup all those sound files and organize them and QA them and debug them... it's probably a million dollar feature). RPGs are more suited for text anyway. Just voice the trailers if you're really concerned about marketing.

EA and other companies expressed interest in funding a mid budget RPG when Obsidian/Wasteland got funded, so it's not like they'd out right turn down the idea, now that they've seen it has traction. However, in their eyes, big bugets means potential big bucks. Since publishers are run by businessmen, they're certainly less tempted to be interested in a smaller title...

Yet they know of minecraft's overwhelming financial success. They even know how popular mobile/browser games can get. I guess they don't understand that you don't need to pour one hundred million dollars into a product to get it to sell by the millions.

Paradox is a publisher which funds a lot of small indie game titles, they're one of the few 'big' publishers that actually publishes a whole host of smaller games at once, instead of half a dozen big budget titles.

It's not rocket science. Behind Mario, what is the most recognized franchiase in the East and West? Over 90% of school children for the last decade could recognize and name Pikachu, the mascot of guess what - a sprite based RPG. I know, I know, it's Nintendo, the company that farts rainbows, but it's not like RPGs don't have mass appeal. Do you think the pokemon games cost that much to make? Maybe X/Y will, because it's finally going full 3D, but even then, X/Y's graphics are very scaled down compared to the average mid/low budget 3D game. A good game doesn't need a big budget to sell in the millions.