Dragon Age: Inquisition Brings Back Tactical View - PAX 2013

[Ishal]

I really want this game to be good.

But this part concerns me a little.

Unfortunately for you, the holes spawn all kinds of nasties like undead and the mages and Templars are too busy fighting each other to deal with the problem.

That is essentially the plot of almost every Bioware game it seems. "Big evil that logically people should be uniting to fight, but inner conflicts mean that it's down to you instead". If we have to convince the Mages and Templars to kiss and make up to take on the bigger threat then it will be terrible. That is pretty much the essence of both Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age: Origins.

Especially considering how they also like sticking you as a part of some kind of special Order to do so. Spectres, Grey Wardens and now the Inquisition. The idea seems solid, but if they are re-treading the basic plot of their other games it's going to feel far too similar.

Naturally it is too early to say for sure, but I hope they are a little bolder with the storyline.

I think back to basic is the best thing they can do. I'd rather see that then having them try to do some big grandiose adventure or something along the lines of DAII constrained story in Kirkwall. The strength of Bioware games has been the formula you described, because in that formula lies the conflicts that the well known characters from Bioware games are formed from. That formula makes the characters, or at least a good portion of them.

Bioware is not Obsidian, nothing they've done has convinced me they could pull off intrigue and plot twists like Obsidian can. They aren't nearly subtle enough. Also, with the way the past games have gone, they don't have much room to go elsewhere in terms of the story anyway. DAII was very much a setup for this whole conflict, and the Dark Spawn were finished off in DA:O. Yes, there was the architect in Awaekening, but c'mon, who are we kidding? Assuming that even matters to Gaider and his underlings in the first place, it'll get retconned to suit their convenience.

We'll see what happens. Time will tell.

 

[Nimcha]

So, in terms of gameplay this all sounds pretty good. It sounds a lot like Mass Effect 3, but it sounds pretty good.

My concern is with this "Corruption"; I'm realizing more and more that Bioware has a bad habit of making the least interesting aspects of their plots the main focus of their stories.

DA: II's problems didn't stem from it's ambition, it had lots of interesting concepts, they were just poorly executed. One of the best things about DA: II was that it wasn't about the end of the world.

"It's the end of the world!" is overused because writers seem to think it's a convenient way to structure a plot, but they too often ignore it's short comings.

"OMG Its the end of teh world!" is convenient because it's flexible, and it's flexible because it's empty; there is literally no sane person who wouldn't be behind such a thing. The plot has no meaning and no nuance because there's no conflict beyond a struggle for survival. The fact that someone is willing to fight for their life tells us nothing about them because it's something anybody would do, the fact that a group of people would organize to fight their own extinction is a meaningless message because it's something anybody would do.

"Someone or something is causing it" doesn't make the story sound more interesting it makes it sound less interesting. Wouldn't it be more profound and evocative if instead of some comfortable, easily stereotyped, unearthly abomination causing all the problems it was just a matter of human imperfection?

I agree wholeheartedly with you. But that's just not what people want. Judging by the reactions to Bioware's games over the years, people just want to wander around the world to gather up a crew/races/resources/whatever and then fight a big dragon at the end. It's really that simple. Anything deeper than that is not only hard to pull off, but also alienates about half the audience who won't interpret it the way you want it to be.

Personally I'm looking forward to this game because I very much enjoyed both Dragon Age games so far, both for their own different reasons.

 

[guitarsniper]

The thing that is really promising for me is that they've started all their big reveals now, which suggests that they had these reveals prepped for a fall 2013 release. Then they're announcing that it'll actually release fall 2014. This again suggests that they decided "hey, we need more time to make this thing work" and then TOOK THAT TIME. I may be drawing too many conclusions from disparate facts, but if I am correct this is a promising sign.

 

[Baldry]

Well the only way to express my feelings is to quote Django Unchained: "Gentlemen, you had my curiosity. But now you have my attention"
Seriously I'm trying not to get hyped for this Bioware hasn't released a great game for awhile but I am looking forward to playing this all the same.

 

[The_Lost_King]

When he said Dragons have returned, I could only think, you act like they just came back in this game. They didn't, the reason this is called the Dragon Age is because dragons started coming back.

 

[Ushiromiya Battler]

Granted, there's a lot nuance to it that mitigates the fact that YOU are the ONLY ONE who can stop the APOCALYPSE!, but that is the basic story we've got here. And it's the oldest one in the goddamn book. I won't let you criticize DA2s story for a lack of originality when the basic concept of DA:O is only slightly younger than the advent of writing.

Funnily enough my warden didn't save the world. Alistair did in both my playthroughs. He slept with Morrigan or sacrificed himself, through out the whole of DA:O I was Alistair's companion.

So, YOU being the ONLY ONE who can stop the APOCALYPSE is blatantly wrong.
Apart from that I pretty much agree with everything you said.

OT:
I'm cautiously optimistic. This might be the Bioware game that drags me back in.

 

[Yeager942]

Some of the melee combat seems influenced by Dark Souls. I'm now cautiously optimistic.

 

[cjackson92]

Too little, too late.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Origins isn't good, it's great. But DA2 is way, way beyond that in its quality. DA2 is easily one of the best games ever made. Maybe not to the blinded crowd who can't see past the loss of their precious "old-school 90's RPG nostalgia", but then again, very few things please them, so their taste isn't generally indicative of quality.

Did we play the same game? I played a game with the absolute laziest level design I've ever experienced and repetitive combat involving predictable ambushes during every single fight. I gave up at about the point when my main character's armour kept glitching out, making him look like the floating head of doom.

90's nostalgia has nothing to do with it. Compared to many, many other games I've experienced, it was just incredibly tedious and uninspired. /opinion over

 

[BaronIveagh]

Bigger than DA 2? Please. When, and only when, it's bigger than SKYRIM will you be permitted to brag about how big your game is.

 

[schrodinger]

'Twas all excited until I spotted a stain in the last picture to the right; the fucking dialogue wheel is back. I hated that thing in DA2(along with most of the game) and seeing it returning does not make me happy.

 

[alj]

Good news lest hope it delivers (and they don't rush the ending ). You know dragon age 2 was not bad, it was rushed out and it was cheaply made ( copy and paste rooms ect) but it was not a bad game it was just nowhere near as good as DA1. Lets hope they have learned there lessons form the slip ups they have made in there last few games and get back on form, as dragon age is still one of my favorites.

Just as a side note reusing assets is not always a bad thing do you know how expensive it is to make a big ass 3d world? Very! But you have to do it in the right way and make sure that the rest of the game is up to scratch. Look at mass effect there are load of reused assets in that game but it does not feel like there is as its well designed. Same with saints row 4 i its the same bloody city with bright lights posters and a few new floating towers but it does not matter that game is still as engaging as hell and well designed.

 

[Quazimofo]

Bigger than DA 2? Please. When, and only when, it's bigger than SKYRIM will you be permitted to brag about how big your game is.

How about daggerfall? Haven't game maps been getting smaller and smaller since then?

 

[viranimus]

So does this mean I can manipulate the game by forcing my party to guard the entrance of a dungeon while I train every bloody thing in the dungeon to the next cut scene trigger in effect warping my party to that cut scene and cutting the train down to like 1/5th of what it was before entering the scene? Or will it be like DA2 me issuing my party a command to tell them to stay fucking put and if I go more than 10 feet away they freak out, disobey and start leashing on me trying to kill every single mob that I have pissed off along the way?

Or is it somehow implementing a combat system that is actually enjoyable instead of the tedious and nothing but a time sink hindering progress to the next plot point combat systems from Origins and DA2 respectively? Both systems suck. 2 tried to correct it in a way, but managed to goof it up worse with the illogical paratrooper reinforcements in effect making a tedious time sink even more of a time sink.

Captcha: Why should we care
V: Shut it Captcha, Or I lock you in the basement with Cleverbot.

 

[satsugaikaze]

I think we've had this whole Origins versus 2 argument a bajillion times in this forum (even before the ME3's Ending Kills Puppies argument was cool), but I'd just like to say that I think the two games were disparate enough for me not to quantify either as better or worse. Two steps forward, two steps back, I'd say. I genuinely enjoyed II's story, characters, combat feel and narrative structure even though its level design was objectively shit. I love me some tactical gameplay, but the slow, plodding pause-play of Origins and its forebears never appealed to me and the story was merely serviceable (if not downright boring) compared to the richness of its characters and the complexity of its choice-consequences paradigm.

All that said, Bioware said straight up they were trying to strike a balance between the two and I think they've done that for the most part. In any case, the game looks absolutely goddamn gorgeous.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IML4hhg8Yz0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6rV1Y6Vcxg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbGN7OBngCQ

Y'all skeptics should check the shit out of those videos. Pause-play combat and tactical top-down is in the third video.

 

[Fifty-One]

I'll keep an eye on it. To be honest I'd rather play DA3 than Elder Scrolls Online.

 

[iMortis09]

since they both have horns and tails mind the goat feet I guess.

Huh? They don't have tails. What the hell are you talking about?