Bioware choices (here we go again)

[Nomadiac]

Everyone who's getting worked up about this - [strong]it's not happening.[/strong] Game Informer fucked up.

[strong]Bioware is not retconning your Dark Ritual choice. [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/371/index/17133997#17134097][/strong]

I'm not sure where the "but even if they refuse, the other Grey Wardens of the world may not have the same resolve..." comes from. Speculation on the part of the article writer, perhaps? Regardless, [strong]if the player refused the Dark Ritual then it was refused. There is no Old God Baby.[/strong]

If they were actually doing this I wouldn't be too happy either - but they're not. Move along, there's nothing to see here.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Ultimately, we won't find out for sure until the game is out, and someone with that story tests it out, but I think I have an idea of how they well say it worked.

Okay, so if the warden doesn't take the deal with Morrigan, then she would likely go to Riordan[sub](because I think she would probably ask a tainted rat before Alistair(no offence meant to Alistair, he and Morrigan just hate each other))[/sub], but then why does Alistair or the warden die if they kill the Archdemon?

I think it can be blamed on Riordan dying in battle with the Archdemon.[sub](If any of this info is off please tell me.)[/sub]
That happens no matter what. My idea about it is that for the ritual to work right the warden who fathered the child has to be in the battle when the Archdemon is killed. That's why if the warden/Alistair takes the deal they don't have to be the one to kill the Archdemon, but everyone lives still. Even if say Alistair/Morrigan aren't right there next to the Archdemon when it's killed.

However, because the warden can not take the deal, Morrigan won't sleep with Alistair, and instead goes for Riordan. Who dies before the Archdemon is dead, and thus isn't there for that moment. Causing either Alistair's, or the warden's death.

That will mean that Morrigan will have the kid, but either he won't have the old god soul, or Morrigan will find some other way to make it happen if you don't do the deal.

This brings me to my idea of how the "Old God kid" can still work even if the offer is not taken by the warden. As I said the ritual won't work if the warden isn't alive at the battle, but maybe the only part that doesn't work is in saving the other wardens?

So Morrigan would still get the old god soul, but the warden/Alistair will still die. I know what you're thinking. The way the Archdemon and a warden die is that the soul of the Archdemon goes into the warden, and then they both die for good. So how can Morrigan get the soul?

The answer? Magic.

Joke aside, lets face it. The way Bioware explains bullcrap happening in Mass Effect and Dragon Age is really the same, but with different words. Magic for dragon age, science(or mass effect fields) for mass effect.
That said, magic often has some odd rules of what happens when things don't go as planed. So, it isn't so crazy to say the Archdemon soul could kill the warden/Alistair if they don't take Morrigan's deal, and the one she did do it with(Riordan) dies before the Archdemon.

As I said at the beginning, that's just my idea. We'll find out what it really is when the game comes out.

People are forgetting that Riordan is an impossibility. If you take the time to ask Morrigan about Riordan, she says that she needs somebody that hasn't been tainted long. Namely, the Warden or Alistair. Riordan does not and cannot work. Also, if you're a female Warden, Morrigan specifically asks you to get Alistair to agree to the Dark Ritual. Third point, if the Dark Ritual is performed, it doesn't matter who kills the Archdemon, the soul will seek out Morrigan's child, instead of another Darkspawn to be reborn through.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

Can we wait until we see what Bioware is actually doing with the character and story before we get angry? I mean, I understand that is asking a lot from some people, but honestly.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

This shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone who played witch hunt, there is a bug in the PS3 version which stops it registering that you performed the dark ritual but when you confront her she says that someone else did it with her. What annoyed me isn't that they are going with this but the bug itself, my character loved Morrigan and gladly had a child with her and I wanted that to carry through

I'm not so sure that happens all the time. I play on the PS3 and my male human noble was in love with her, performed the Dark Ritual with her and went with her through the Illuvien. They also recognized that I was the one that did the ritual with her, not someone else.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Fuck, I could have told you that shit after watching the trailer.

Morrigan is in the trailer. That means she's in the game, that means that even though you could have killed her, she's back. That means...... Oh, don't all shout it out at once... Bioware is lying to us again! Yes thank you.


I wonder if the death of your Grey Warden even matters, or is mentioned, or is completely retconed?

Frankly I'd be happier if Dragon Age went the way of Final Fantasy or other JRPG series like that.
Enough similarities for you to be able to tell they're related but other then that completely separate games.
(Kind of like Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3(Ba-dum Tish(Cry)))

You can have a lot more fun with Dragon Age 2 if you consider it a non cannon spinoff where the events of the first game never happened. (There are a few hiccups in this plan but it's manageable) And Dragon Age [sub]Nobody Expects the Spanish[/sub] Inquisition doesn't even seem like it's going to give us that reprieve.

I refuse to let anything ruin Dragon Age Origins for me, the same way I let Mass Effect 1 and 2 get destroyed by 3 so the Dragon Age universe is closed. Everything else Bioware releases can be chocked up to the fever dream Shepard had after she drank the Ryncol in Mass Effect 2

 

[Imp_Emissary]

People are forgetting that Riordan is an impossibility. If you take the time to ask Morrigan about Riordan, she says that she needs somebody that hasn't been tainted long. Namely, the Warden or Alistair. Riordan does not and cannot work. Also, if you're a female Warden, Morrigan specifically asks you to get Alistair to agree to the Dark Ritual. Third point, if the Dark Ritual is performed, it doesn't matter who kills the Archdemon, the soul will seek out Morrigan's child, instead of another Darkspawn to be reborn through.

Oh yeah. :/ I forgot about that bit. You're right. It won't work unless you accept her deal.
Thanks bud.

Guess we'll just have to wait until the games out.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Can we wait until we see what Bioware is actually doing with the character and story before we get angry? I mean, I understand that is asking a lot from some people, but honestly.

I understand the appeal for reason, but does Bioware really deserve the benefit of the doubt?

After Dragon Age 2's general suckieness and going out of it's way to retcon the choices you made in the original for the sake of cheep fan service.
And Mass Effect 3's blatant disregard for everything that happened in the first two games.

They brought back a character after giving us the choice to kill her. Biwoare has made it painfully clear how exactly they feel about the people who play their games. If there was ever a group that deserves the internet's typical kneejerk hatred it's them.

 

[Gennadios]

I'm not surprised but at this point I don't even care, I'm done, won't be buying another BioWare game again.

The thing is, The Walking Dead by Telltale Games had a very similar amount of narrative constraints and a way smaller budget... somehow they still made their games just as enjoyable and 10x less rage inducing when the inevitable previous choices had to converge to keep the narrative moving forward.

I don't think EAWare really deserves any kind of benefit of the doubt primarily because all the writers that made my favorite games are long gone, there's no point in expecting anything good because the talent simply isn't there.

 

[Krantos]

News Flash!

BioWare doesn't actually care about how many different outcomes they had in previous games. They're just going to do what they want/think will sell, regardless.

"Then why do they keep saying our choices matter?"

Because you keep believing them. And saying that helps them sell games.

Are we done here, yet? Seriously, this is old news. This was made pretty clear when DA2 came out. BioWare wants you to think the choices in game matter, because it's good for advertising, but they don't actually care if they do or not.

No point getting upset about it. Just accept this is how BioWare markets their games and move on. Don't get fooled again.

 

[Michael Collett]

A game can still be awesome by giving you an illusion of choice.

Just look at the Walking Dead - the ending is the same no matter what you do. However in that game they managed to give the player a sense of agency at all times, you always felt like you could have changed the outcome for the better but in reality every plot point plays out the same no matter what you do, with only some alternate dialogue. I played that game and said to myself "this is how Mass Effect 3 should have been handled", we only needed one (good) ending because the lead up to it depending on the actions in the previous 3 games.

What I'm trying to say is:

The important thing is feeling like you have an effect on the story, not actually having an effect. The story requires Morrigan to pop out a baby - how does this come about? Do you have a romantic relationship? Can you begrudgingly put a bun in her oven as a favor? If you don't do it maybe she finds some one else to donate sperm? Maybe it's a virgin birth? Maybe she is raped by some kind of Fade demon?(though that'll be way to dark for a game to dare touching on). They all end up with the same outcome. But how do these different pathways change the characters perceptions of the outcome? That is the more interesting aspect of storytelling.

However, it's Bioware we're talking about here - and given their recent performance they'll probably just blow it on a binary choice in a dialogue and the characters will be weirdly possessed mannequins.

 

[Boogie Knight]

I think it should be pointed out that Game Informer is the advertising arm of Gamestop and their job is not to fairly review and break down games but to create hype for the AAA games. Quality of journalism has very low standards for that rag, even by the standards of game journalism which often gets cozy with the people they should critically examine.

As for Morrigan and her possible love child and/or demon baby I have mixed feelings. I figure regardless of the father, Junior would look like Morrigan, but the kind of life his pappy led would influence in part what kind of man he grew up to be. To be honest, I couldn't tell you which choices I made in Dragon Age II even mattered, not even the final choice mattered in which bosses in what order you faced. However, I am hopeful that choices like going out of the way to save Connor without sacrificing anyone (and by necessity save the young mages from massacre) as well as guiding Feynriel toward taming his powers would help make an ideal resolution possible. By actions in the previous games, there could be upstanding mages to credibly make peace or give aid against the big bad with their rare talents.

Honestly, I had hoped conversations where more like Dragon Age: Origins with Persuade and Intimidate. Leveling those skills up in order to get what I wanted out of others was very fun, especially if it helped me avoid murdering the crap out of everybody. DA2 was too Mass Effect-y when they would have dialogue options where you would have the Paragon check and get the desired result with no effort. Heck, I really like the Landsmeet where I built a case out of Loghain's abuses and systematically tore him down. That DA2 didn't give you the option to politic through your party members' standing in the community along with the reputation earned in quests and sidequests was a glaring misstep on Bioware's part.

 

[Kingjackl]

It is popular to compare the choices in most recent Bioware games to (say) The Walking Dead game, but to say The Walking Dead is better than something like Mass Effect 3 at choice agency is kind of a misconception. If anything, Mass Effect 3 was less obnoxious in how it dealt with choices - it had a few infamous moments like the Collector Base that got retconned behind the scenes, but generally the choices you made stuck.

By comparison Walking Dead was aggressive and almost obnoxious in yanking the rug out from under you. Since pretty much everyone was guaranteed to die, the best you could hope for was that they lived a bit longer or didn't die hating you. Of course, The Walking Dead's ending was far, far, far superior to ME3s which is why we tend to overlook one's flaws while lambasting the other, but purely on the basis of player choice, I'd say they're about the same.

 

[Brian Tams]

"The most important thing for me when I wrote [Origins] was that at the end even if Morrigan loved the player, she had this thing that she believed in, that was so important that she would do it regardless of the player..."

I actually like this. The thing that bugged me about Mass Effect (especially later ones) was that characters would immediately abandon ideals that they've lived their whole lives believing in just because Shepard had some cheery words for them. Think Mordin in ME2. The whole narrative before you get to his secondary mission has you believe that Mordin has spent his large chunks of his life invested in retooling the Krogan Genophage, and he absolutely believed that he did the right thing. However, get to the end of his mission and Shepard convinces him to keep the data and invent a cure with just a few sentences (Now, I do believe that mission features some very good writing. There's a particular scene I'm thinking of when Mordin finds the dead Krogan female, and if you follow the right conversation tree, Shepard steps back and simply points at the dead Krogan as proof against Mordin's claim that he was helping sentient beings, and Mordin's reaction suggests that he has had second thoughts. However, this whole scene is a moot point because you can still convince Mordin to abandon his life long ambitions regardless.)

Now let's compare and contrast a similar moment with my favorite character ever from the ME series: Tali. Hell, I'll pull from the same game: ME2. Remember that conversation after (or maybe during) her loyalty mission where the player can try and convince Tali to abandon her hope to one day resettle her homeworld? You cannot succeed at all. Tali is too dead set on the idea that the only choice for her people is to try and retake the Quarrian home world. While I didn't agree with her then, I gained some respect for her not giving up on her dream, even if I believed it was foolish.

What I'm saying is that players need to learn that there are some things that, no matter what, they'll be unable to influence. And the fact that, whatever this thing Morrigan intends to do in the new game (good or evil, I haven't played much Dragon Age ), she's willing to even go against the wishes of the person she loves to accomplish it tells the player a lot about a character. Now, they'll need some good writing to pull it off, and I have faith that Bioware can do it (although, considerably less faith after ME3, which decided to take a hatchet to the narrative thread.)

 

[Michael Collett]

It is popular to compare the choices in most recent Bioware games to (say) The Walking Dead game, but to say The Walking Dead is better than something like Mass Effect 3 at choice agency is kind of a misconception. If anything, Mass Effect 3 was less obnoxious in how it dealt with choices - it had a few infamous moments like the Collector Base that got retconned behind the scenes, but generally the choices you made stuck.

By comparison Walking Dead was aggressive and almost obnoxious in yanking the rug out from under you. Since pretty much everyone was guaranteed to die, the best you could hope for was that they lived a bit longer or didn't die hating you. Of course, The Walking Dead's ending was far, far, far superior to ME3s which is why we tend to overlook one's flaws while lambasting the other, but purely on the basis of player choice, I'd say they're about the same.

I guess my point about the Walking Dead was that if you had no prior foreknowledge of the game and how it works than you were not aware that all the choices were just smoke and mirrors. When I tried to save Duck in Chapter 1, Kenny basically runs in and does a much better job of it and the farmhand dies. Since I had banned myself from reading about it, I thought that if I had tried to save the other guy neither of them would have died. In actual fact the farmhand dies no matter what and Duck is saved. There is no real choice in that scenario other than what kind of dialogue you get with Kenny in the next scene - but I felt like I had made a meaningful decision.

Granted if I had chosen differently in several key points (saving Duck, taking the supplies etc.) I would have felt the railroading of the games story but I tended to be lucky with my choices...

 

[RicoADF]

*shrug*

I'm not really sure what people expect from this sort of thing.

Two completely different plots that depend on a choice you made two games ago? 'Cause that isn't going to happen. It would be a logistical mess.

Although, to be fair, Bioware do talk up the choice aspect more than it deserves, so I suppose people having inflated expectations is on them, at least partly.

I remember playing Colony Wars (and even Wing Commander) and them having great story's that were effected by your choice. TBH in this day and age theres no excuse for not being able to do it other than lazyness.

 

[Saviordd1]

Good.

I'm sick of them trying and failing to bend over backwards to allow the players to have that small little scene that they may remember from the previous game show up in a minor way.

Just say theres a Dragon Age canon, I wont burn down your studio for it.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

Can we wait until we see what Bioware is actually doing with the character and story before we get angry? I mean, I understand that is asking a lot from some people, but honestly.

I understand the appeal for reason, but does Bioware really deserve the benefit of the doubt?

After Dragon Age 2's general suckieness and going out of it's way to retcon the choices you made in the original for the sake of cheep fan service.
And Mass Effect 3's blatant disregard for everything that happened in the first two games.

They brought back a character after giving us the choice to kill her. Biwoare has made it painfully clear how exactly they feel about the people who play their games. If there was ever a group that deserves the internet's typical kneejerk hatred it's them.

I didn't mean to sound like I don't understand, in a way, why people are upset. But I think you have to take into consideration the circumstances surrounding the development of these titles before you really get upset.

I mean, if you look at Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, you'll see two games that tried as best as they could to make the decision thing matter. I mean, there are umpteen references to the decisions made in Mass Effect that occur in ME2.

BUT between Mass Effect 2 and 3, the lead writer of the game changed. Now, when you're collectively working on a story, the lead writer is the person that not only presents ideas, but takes ideas given to them, and weaves them into a cohesive narrative that considers the past, present, and future of the story they're telling. When the lead writer of the series changed, a large part of the story's structure would have gone with it, because there were ideas brewing that wouldn't have been presented. That being the case, it's unsurprising that Mass Effect 3 felt, in many ways, disconnected from the previous games.

When you look at Dragon Age, that kind of shift hasn't, to my knowledge (i.e a quick Google search) occurred. The writing team is still largely the same. What you had in Dragon Age II was a game hampered by the fact that a.)key portions of it were occurring concurrently to the previous title, and b.)the stories were largely unconnected even besides that. Even further than that, it felt simultaneously like a narrative experiment, and like something that was pushed rapidly out of the gate to capitalize on the success of Origins.

Inquisition isn't hampered in the same way. The team has had plenty of time to work on it, and the writing team have had time to flesh out whatever visions they originally had for the series, without[\b] having to cope with anyone who had a significant amount of that lore stored away leaving the project. If Morrigan is making a reappearance, I have faith that, regardless of how she has to reappear due to past choices made, Bioware have had enough time to make any possible variances make narrative sense.

I'm just saying that the situation here isn't equal to that of Mass Effect 3 or Dragon Age II, so preemptively calling them out on it isn't really fair. Yeah, they've stumbled in the past, but they've also hit it out of the park on more than one occasion.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

But.... she said the energy would go into the nearest warden killing them immediately. So if the warden refused her and Alistair hates her and they were the only two living wardens in Ferelden then how the hell did she make her god-child? Unless DA3 is going to take place after another blight that they skipped over between games...

That being said having every quest change the game in a meaningful way is a fucking absolute nightmare from a development standpoint. You track 50 things each game in a trilogy and you'd end up with 125,000 different endings/experiences. Even if you only bother with 5 major decisions in each game. That is still 125 different endings to make appear 'meaningful.' The efforts Mass Effect went to, to simply mention things from previous games, was extremely impressive.

 

[Rack]

What are they supposed to do? Have 2 massive and differing plots based on 1 choice made at the tail end of a game? It's simply not possible at this point in gaming. Maybe someday when an RPG gets a huge and inflated budget and multiple years of development time it will happen.

Witcher 2 would like a word with you.
Yeah, the plot converges eventually, but right from the end of the first chapter it changes based off your choices. You get an entirely different second chapter dependent on who you side with.

But that's a choice made in the same game, not even CD Projekt Red would section off a massive section of the game based on a choice you made in a completely different game that's several years old now and effectively in a different genre.

When it comes down to it consequences can only be things that reflect back on the player you can have the odd exception but given the cost of developing games you can't exponentially add in real gameplay consequences for everything the player does in every game.

 

[Joccaren]

But that's a choice made in the same game, not even CD Projekt Red would section off a massive section of the game based on a choice you made in a completely different game that's several years old now and effectively in a different genre.

I don't know. IIRC they wanted your choices in W2 to do something in W3, and it will be interesting to see how they handle that.
Of course, CDPR wouldn't pointlessly change the genre of their game though. That's one of Bioware's traits that I really hate.

When it comes down to it consequences can only be things that reflect back on the player you can have the odd exception but given the cost of developing games you can't exponentially add in real gameplay consequences for everything the player does in every game.

Oh, of course not everything the player does has to have consequences. That'd be ridiculous. The major choices you give the player, and say "THIS IS A MAJOR CHOICE" to them about, however, should result in branching outcomes. Its not hard to do when you have maybe 4-5 major choices, and if you can't do it you shouldn't play up those choices.