Bioware choices (here we go again)

[Batman]

Didn't we just recently have someone from Bioware say how our choices will matter in Dragon Age: Inquisition?

Don't count on it. Read this very informative text about Morrigan: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2013/08/12/dragon-age-inquisition-s-morrigan-past-and-present.aspx

And this is the best part

Male players are given the option of conceiving a child with Morrigan themselves, but even if they refuse, the other Grey Wardens of the world may not have the same resolve.

And

?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..."

The last big choice you get to make in Dragon Age: Origins doesn't even matter. It's the Collector base all over again. Fuck your choices, we'll just do what we want. But please, buy our game. It's all about you and the choices. Choices matter. Unless when they don't. But they do. And don't. At the same time. IT'S A MIRACLE!

Not trying to play the devil's advocate here (since bioware is pretty unpopular around these parts) but the first quote you posted was just the journalists own speculation. Devs since then have claimed on the forum that that particular plot wasn't going to be forced on players who didn't go down that path. Give them some credit guys, at least they are trying.

Edit: A lot of people don't seem to realise that bioware games never had much choice. They had the illusion of choice, and for the most part it did a good enough job that it passed for the real thing and people were happy. But an illusion is an illusion and sooner or later people suss out the trick. Then it becomes not so magical and more "why did I spend my money on that", or depending on what kind of person you are: "that was pretty clever, you earned my money". Besides, who buys bioware games for choice and "consequence"? can anyone even remember a single noteworthy "consequence" in a bioware game past decade? These games get sold because people love the lore, the world and the inhabitants that populate their games. The lore in these games are masterpieces of craftsmanship and that alone is enough to force my wallet open.

 

[hatok]

And at thsi point all I'm thinking is
What was wrong with the Collector Base?

 

[dementis]

They already pulled this shit in Dragon age 2 will leliana re-attaching her head if you killed her in the second game.
I've had to accept the fact that Bioware is nowhere near the great developer it used to be, I haven't really enjoyed a Bioware game since Origins.

 

[GoGoFrenzy]

I gave up on Bioware since Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2. Those were the points that I realized that they have transcended into AAA bullshit and will never deliver the classic RPG feeling that I grew fond of...

Ditto here. I am actually flabbergasted that people are even considering buying this game after the poop of Dragon Age 2 or Mass Effect 3.

No it won't get any better.

 

[Amir Kondori]

Player agency does not have to be expressed through binary plot choices. A game does not need to have real plot choices to be a good game.

I have never liked any of the Dragon Age games but after Mass Effect and their focus on player choice, meaning plot choice not game play choices like which path to take, how to build your character, whether to kill or bypass enemies, etc., I think a lot of people get hung up on this.

Sometimes a lack of reactivity is best. Imagine Bioshock where the story wasn't the story if the character made some choices along the way. Those were games all about a tightly crafted narrative.

 

[Tragedy's Rebellion]

It's interesting how when we talk about Bioware choices we mean "Morrigan's OGB". They are going to retcon it so she always gets pregnant, I have no doubt about it. It's obvious because the only thing they are talking about is her and her baby and stroking their egos. It's just a matter of how in-your-face and brutally crowbared in it's going to be. Also how much of a deus ex machina it's going to be.

EDIT: Actually, the lead writer has said that if there is no ritual there is no OGB period. My bad.

All *choices* in Bioware games are arbitrary and change so very little as to be almost completely unnecessary. They think up a story and then try to wedge in choices, but the story is already laid out so they can't really deviate from it. They just have bad writers in general. The only thing they do somewhat goodish is world building and then fail to use that world for something truly interesting or meaningful.

 

[Rack]

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.

Time will tell on the Witcher 3 but I wouldn't expect anything all that drastic to game to game. It's the same thing with Dragon Age Inquisition, the choices at the end of Dragon Age 1 were played up but they were really only meant to change the epilogues. I suppose they did do some fairly substantial changes in between Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 but that only left them in a position where they only had resources for a "choose the colour of your ending". If they'd tied up any major plot threads at the end of ME2 they could have put all that effort into branches in the game itself. I just think that's a better way of handling the limited resources you can have for this kind of thing.

 

[Mikeyfell]

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.

Dragon Age 2 still makes me skeptical about the Dragon Age writing team.

DAO gave us the choice to kill Anders and Justice.
(In the playthrough I imported they had never met eachother) They still possessed eachother.
They gave us the chance to kill Nathan Howe, he is back regardless.

They gave us the opportunity to kill Lelianna, she's back
50% chance to kill Zeveran and he's back regardless
You could have killed Alistar and he only makes a cameo if you chose to kill him (?)
(I guess he makes a late game cameo if you made him king too)

None of those retcons had a decent explanation (or any form of explanation at all) I seriously doubt they'll pay more mind to using Morrigan again.

(I'll look the other way if they put Wynne back in the game)
I don't care if it's the biggest Retcon they ever pulled Wynne is my favorite Dragon Age Character, and as long as they're bringing people back from the dead she should be there.

 

[Raikas]

I am actually flabbergasted that people are even considering buying this game after the poop of Dragon Age 2 or Mass Effect 3.

You're flabbergasted that different people have different tastes in entertainment?

Seriously, fair enough if the games aren't to your taste now (whether it's gameplay or choices or whatever), but that hardly means that other people aren't going to feel differently (FTR: I loved 95% of ME3, and enjoyed enough of DA2 that I had no problem overlooking the recycled environments and the absurdity of the ending).

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

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.

Dragon Age 2 still makes me skeptical about the Dragon Age writing team.

DAO gave us the choice to kill Anders and Justice.
(In the playthrough I imported they had never met eachother) They still possessed eachother.
They gave us the chance to kill Nathan Howe, he is back regardless.

They gave us the opportunity to kill Lelianna, she's back
50% chance to kill Zeveran and he's back regardless
You could have killed Alistar and he only makes a cameo if you chose to kill him (?)
(I guess he makes a late game cameo if you made him king too)

None of those retcons had a decent explanation (or any form of explanation at all) I seriously doubt they'll pay more mind to using Morrigan again.

(I'll look the other way if they put Wynne back in the game)
I don't care if it's the biggest Retcon they ever pulled Wynne is my favorite Dragon Age Character, and as long as they're bringing people back from the dead she should be there.

Hmm... You know, I've played both Dragon Age Origins and DAII, but I may have to go back and play through them again. Honestly, the only Origins characters I remember making an appearance in DAII were Alistair and Leliana, both right around the climax as I recall. And I got the feeling that Alistair was only in Kirkwall because I didn't make him king in Origins, and after the Archdemon was killed, he didn't have anything else to do. I don't remember the context of Leliana's appearance: just that she appeared briefly. It was really just long enough for me to go "hey!" From the sounds of it, though, I'm forgetting some things.

Maybe I should come up with some kind of disclaimer.

*This opinion may be subject to change without notice.

 

[Raikas]

You could have killed Alistar and he only makes a cameo if you chose to kill him (?)

That's actually not true at all. Alistair appears late in the game as king if you made him king, he appears at the end of Act 2 as a grey warden if your warden became king (or if you made Anora queen without punishing him as part of the deal) and he appears as a drunk in the Hanged Man if you exiled or imprisoned him. I assume the fact that you got him despite killing him meant that the execute flag was the same as the exile one, rather than that it was a choice that didn't matter. I used three different imports and saw three different versions of him.

 

[GoGoFrenzy]

...But for the love of god people. Is your biggest complaint really going to be that a few choices you made were retconned? Are you really reaching THAT far to ***** and moan?

No. I can only speak for myself but the reason I'm complaining is cause I thought DA2 and ME3 ruined their respective trilogies with lazy writing and story inconsistencies. DA2's zoomed in camera also made for shite gameplay. They had a great thing going in DA1. And never leaving the city or not being able to choose another race besides human was a huge step down after DA1. Utter boredom...

 

[Mikeyfell]

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.

Dragon Age 2 still makes me skeptical about the Dragon Age writing team.

DAO gave us the choice to kill Anders and Justice.
(In the playthrough I imported they had never met eachother) They still possessed eachother.
They gave us the chance to kill Nathan Howe, he is back regardless.

They gave us the opportunity to kill Lelianna, she's back
50% chance to kill Zeveran and he's back regardless
You could have killed Alistar and he only makes a cameo if you chose to kill him (?)
(I guess he makes a late game cameo if you made him king too)

None of those retcons had a decent explanation (or any form of explanation at all) I seriously doubt they'll pay more mind to using Morrigan again.

(I'll look the other way if they put Wynne back in the game)
I don't care if it's the biggest Retcon they ever pulled Wynne is my favorite Dragon Age Character, and as long as they're bringing people back from the dead she should be there.

Hmm... You know, I've played both Dragon Age Origins and DAII, but I may have to go back and play through them again. Honestly, the only Origins characters I remember making an appearance in DAII were Alistair and Leliana, both right around the climax as I recall. And I got the feeling that Alistair was only in Kirkwall because I didn't make him king in Origins, and after the Archdemon was killed, he didn't have anything else to do. I don't remember the context of Leliana's appearance: just that she appeared briefly. It was really just long enough for me to go "hey!" From the sounds of it, though, I'm forgetting some things.

Maybe I should come up with some kind of disclaimer.

*This opinion may be subject to change without notice.

That's a pretty good disclaimer to have.

I would like for DA:I to be good but I just don't see it happening.

I predicted a long time ago (Like before the Dragon Age 2 hub-bub was over) that the best possible course of action for the Dragon Age series would be to move farther and farther away from the events of Origins.
Just use DA:O as world building and let all the unrelated stories of later games happen without being bogged down with too much exposition. (Even though in Dragon Age 2 they reexplained everything they needed to so... so much for my idea)

Bioware is best at the boiler plate "Hero's journey" plot. Trying to break away from that is a noble goal but they've already proven (With Mass Effect 2, 3 and DA2) that they can't do that very well.
So I think they would be better off if they learned their lesson, cut their losses and went back to what they do best
Standard Hero's Journey with interesting characters that make up for the standard plots.

And they should also move away from "Action RPG's" or "Action games" as that's a more accurate description. and go back to a more old school stat based combat system.

 

[Mikeyfell]

You could have killed Alistar and he only makes a cameo if you chose to kill him (?)

That's actually not true at all. Alistair appears late in the game as king if you made him king, he appears at the end of Act 2 as a grey warden if your warden became king (or if you made Anora queen without punishing him as part of the deal) and he appears as a drunk in the Hanged Man if you exiled or imprisoned him. I assume the fact that you got him despite killing him meant that the execute flag was the same as the exile one, rather than that it was a choice that didn't matter. I used three different imports and saw three different versions of him.

I never saw him as a Warden. (Even if I imported a save where Anora was queen)
And I never actually made him King in Origins.
(But I believe you)

It's just not cool that they Retcon people back from the dead like that (Especially Lelianna)

 

[verdant monkai]

Bioware make some beautiful games but they are a pack of liars. Mass effect showed us that player choice ultimately means jack to them.

I'll just import whatever save I can find on my hard drive and just go for it, even though I prefer fantasy I was never as invested in DA as i was in mass effect. I'll just enjoy the game choices made in previous games be damned, if bioware doesn't give a shit I see no reason I should.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

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.

Dragon Age 2 still makes me skeptical about the Dragon Age writing team.

DAO gave us the choice to kill Anders and Justice.
(In the playthrough I imported they had never met eachother) They still possessed eachother.
They gave us the chance to kill Nathan Howe, he is back regardless.

They gave us the opportunity to kill Lelianna, she's back
50% chance to kill Zeveran and he's back regardless
You could have killed Alistar and he only makes a cameo if you chose to kill him (?)
(I guess he makes a late game cameo if you made him king too)

None of those retcons had a decent explanation (or any form of explanation at all) I seriously doubt they'll pay more mind to using Morrigan again.

(I'll look the other way if they put Wynne back in the game)
I don't care if it's the biggest Retcon they ever pulled Wynne is my favorite Dragon Age Character, and as long as they're bringing people back from the dead she should be there.

Hmm... You know, I've played both Dragon Age Origins and DAII, but I may have to go back and play through them again. Honestly, the only Origins characters I remember making an appearance in DAII were Alistair and Leliana, both right around the climax as I recall. And I got the feeling that Alistair was only in Kirkwall because I didn't make him king in Origins, and after the Archdemon was killed, he didn't have anything else to do. I don't remember the context of Leliana's appearance: just that she appeared briefly. It was really just long enough for me to go "hey!" From the sounds of it, though, I'm forgetting some things.

Maybe I should come up with some kind of disclaimer.

*This opinion may be subject to change without notice.

That's a pretty good disclaimer to have.

I would like for DA:I to be good but I just don't see it happening.

I predicted a long time ago (Like before the Dragon Age 2 hub-bub was over) that the best possible course of action for the Dragon Age series would be to move farther and farther away from the events of Origins.
Just use DA:O as world building and let all the unrelated stories of later games happen without being bogged down with too much exposition. (Even though in Dragon Age 2 they reexplained everything they needed to so... so much for my idea)

Bioware is best at the boiler plate "Hero's journey" plot. Trying to break away from that is a noble goal but they've already proven (With Mass Effect 2, 3 and DA2) that they can't do that very well.
So I think they would be better off if they learned their lesson, cut their losses and went back to what they do best
Standard Hero's Journey with interesting characters that make up for the standard plots.

And they should also move away from "Action RPG's" or "Action games" as that's a more accurate description. and go back to a more old school stat based combat system.

Now that I can tip my hat to. I don't mind a good action-game (or a hack-and-slash, as that's the prevailing feel I remember having with DAII), but Bioware games always leave me feeling warmest when they're using a more "old-school" system.

As for the story front, I think Bioware's biggest problem over the last few years has been a move away from the more intimate, character-based stories into things that might be dubbed "epic." I mean, a threat against almost all significant sentient life in an intergalactic civilization (or "civilizations," if you want to discern the different races)? That's a pretty huge leap from something like, say, Jade Empire. Bioware have always been best at character interaction. I mean, the most memorable moments of the Dragon Age game are the ambient inter-character dialogues, and some of the campfire moments. Same goes for Mass Effect: it was always conversations with and missions pertaining to individual squad-mates that left me feeling satisfied.

I think if Bioware can get back to the character moments in Inquisition, then at the very least there will be a few bright spots within the game, even if it does, unfortunately, turn out to be underwhelming overall.

 

[Raikas]

As for the story front, I think Bioware's biggest problem over the last few years has been a move away from the more intimate, character-based stories into things that might be dubbed "epic." I mean, a threat against almost all significant sentient life in an intergalactic civilization (or "civilizations," if you want to discern the different races)? That's a pretty huge leap from something like, say, Jade Empire. Bioware have always been best at character interaction.

I actually think that DA2 was very much character-driven and non-epic - Hawke doesn't save the world, he's just buffeted along by history while his city falls apart. If anything, I imagine that the poor reception of that game means we can expect DA:I to be a return to an Origins-style hero's quest.

 

[Dragonbums]

If Bioware couldn't handle all these choices things in their games, then perhaps they shouldn't of waved it around like a banner and make the biggest selling points of their games all about your "choices"
When naturally, all the things you did in a game that claims you choices matter end up being bullshit, don't be surprised when people get pissed at you.

 

[Arina Love]

hahah, well just as expected from creators of ShitEffect3, i gave up on bioware after ME2 and ME3. It would be awesome if they announce no loot no inventory "streamlining" , then i would laugh even harder!

 

[Ishal]

Bioware really lost their touch when it came to the whole choice thing, so it really doesnt matter.

I am sure a number of people are interested in the next Dragon Age, but that is most likely an academic interest. I for one am interested in seeing just how badly fucked up it is, no so interested in playing it or giving EA money for it...

For better or for worse, there are a great many people that will hate this game regardless of the way it turns out. And heaven help Bioware (and especially Gaider) if it flops. The fires on the BSN still burn... and this game will only add fuel to them.

At the core though, its Bioware who determines how bad this goes, and I don't mean by them making a good game or not. Nearly all the rage heaped upon them in ME3 was due to their treatment of the fans and the way they responded. Not unlike the rage we just saw toward Microsoft. For YEARS they have said, "we respect our audience and userbase so much, we consider them co-authors of the game." Then as soon as things go south, everyone is suddenly whiny entitled brats. Haha NO. Bioware is responsible for everything that has been thrown at them.

Bioware games have always been formulaic in nature and carried the same number of pros and cons throughout their existence, but the momentum they gained since Balders Gate eclipsed many of those flaws. Now that the momentum is gone, I don't see good things in Bioware's future. DA:I is the time and place where they need to circle the wagons and convene the council. It's when they need to get back to basics and really play up what people love about Bioware games. Focus on their strengths. What have we heard? "We've been looking at open world stuff," Skyrim namedrop, and more bullshit about choices. Not looking good...