Hopes for Dragon Age III

[Frozengale]

Here's how to make DA3 a success

-Base combat off of DA2 combat and skill trees (except the endless waves of guys)

-Base character interaction off of DA1 interactions (I want to actually talk to my companions whenever)

-Have the story center around the conflict between Mages and Templars
* Don't have all Templars be A-holes
* Don't have blood magic ALWAYS lead to "NOW I'M INSANE AND GOING TO BE EVIL FOR NO GOOD REASON MWAHAHAHAHA" Did no one else remember that Jowan turned out alright despite Blood Magic? Also Merrill. And there is mention of several Blood Mages in the Grey Wardens.

-Have Side-quests that actually explore the Fade and the relationships between the Demons and Spirits. So far all we see is "I'M A SPIRIT OF GOOD! TALLY-HO WE MUST SAVE THE WORLD AND DO GOOD BECAUSE I'M ALWAYS SO GOOD!" and "I'M A DEMON I EAT BABIES AND CHEW ON THEIR BONES BECAUSE I'M EVIL! HAVE YOU REALIZED I'M EVIL YET OR DO YOU NEED ME TO HUMP YOUR MOTHER'S CORPSE WHILE BURNING KITTENS?! EVILLLLLLLLLL!"

- Better Companions. Here is a list of every companion I found boring or annoying : Sten, Alistair, Morrigan, Oghren, Wynne, Dog, Justice, Leliana (unless you play her DLC), Nathaniel, Velanna, Oghren (Awakening), Loghain, Anders (DA2), Carver, Fenris. So yeah like 80% of the companions suck. I'm sure Sebastian and Bethany suck but I never played with either of them. I'm not even going to touch on all the horrible temporary/DLC companions in Origins.

- Don't bring back all the horrible Micro from DA1. I know people like micromanagment in RPG's but seriously go play with a spreadsheet. I don't need to play dress up with my companions, especially when they each have unique and interesting costumes. I don't want to sit there and be all , "Well I could give them the Boots of Purple with + 2 Armor and -1 Speed OR I can give them the Boots of Green Vomit with + 1 Armor and + 1 Speed." Every friend that I have tried to get to play DA:O is immediately turned off by the annoyingly high amount of micromanagement (And these are people that play stuff like Starcraft a game all ABOUT micromanagement) If they make it so that I can choose my companions armor then make it be a choice between complete sets that fit that character (So I can have a heavy armor, a light armor, a medium armor and then variations on those that I can unlock or upgrade).

- Don't force me to be a Grey Warden again. I really hated the whole "YOU GREY WARDEN GO SAVE WORLD NOW KTHXBAI!" story.

- Have Companion Quests be more like DA2 rather then the boring ones in DA1. Also make more of them like Varric's. You know where I have an actual reason to give a crap about the quest since Varric's brother tried to kill me as well.

 

[Frozengale]

Double Post. Whoops.

 

[Sp3ratus]

While i was thinking about how i fought the small and big battles of DA2 i realized that you are right, even with a full damage setup there is quite some tactic and thinking involved, about wich character does what and how to spec them for that , its just different than in DA:O. And like I already admitted DA:O had a balancing issue (aka Arcane Warrior) too. So i guess my problems with DA2's combat came mostly from my mindset, i expectet DA:O like combat, and at first glance it looked like it, but felt "wrong".
I imagine this realization will make my next playthrough more entertaining.

On a aditional note: It's not that i didn't like the DA2 combat at all, I had lots of fun with it too.
So if you are interestet in the whole damage thing and maybe want to try it, here are the guides i based my favorite Hawkes on, they are both with additonal guides as to how to spec companions and setup tactics.

For the Force Mage/Blood Mage [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/305/index/7126577]
And the Vanguard/Berserker/Reaver [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/305/index/6616406]

Both guides are quite extensive wall of text, but if you just look at the skills of each, and the short description what companion does what, you might allready get the gist.

Thanks, man. I'll definitely check it out and try it out for my next playthrough, whenever that'll be. I'm glad I convinced you that DA2 is at least somewhat tactical, even if it's not to the same degree as you expected, going in.

Also, I think you'll enjoy the DLC. I saw you mentioning you bought it, but hadn't played it in another post. It addresses a lot of the problems people have with the vanilla game, such as additional areas to visit, not as much realiance on waves and so on. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say, whenever you get around to play it.

 

[darlarosa]

I think that a lot of significance will be placed on things hinted at in DA:Legacy, and whether or not Hawke is viewed as a champion of the mages or Templars. Both the Grey Warden and Hawke vanish for unknown reasons, and most likely the game will deal with tracking them down and figuring out what role they play in the greater context of everything, and possibly working with them.

Well I just got all the DLC for Dragon Age 2 and haven't played them jet, so i have no idea what goes on in Legacy and Mark of the Assassin (no spoilers please ) and thus can't comment on that.
But unless what happens there is a lot more significant than everything else that happend during DA2, tracking down Hawke makes not much sense. I also never really got why Cassandra is searching for him either.
Thats my whole point, Hawke didn't do anything important, or was even caught up in anything major. He helped with the Qunari, thats it. So why would they need him/her for anything?

Well,I'm gonna be a total asshole and say well duh you don't know why Cassandra is looking for Hawke they never tell you because it's an obvious lead into the next game. They never explain anything so there was nothing to get. >_> sorry I can't not be an asshole at this moment.

But Legacy shows a connection between the Hawke bloodline and the Grey Wardens(not a spoiler).

 

[Imp_Emissary]

My hope for dragon age 3 is that my companions and I can have a conversation about...

Spoiler: THIS.

I kind of understand why they haven't let us talk about it yet, but they really should now in the next game.

Especially given what's going on in the game's world now.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

That it won't exist? Or at least that it'll just be a unique story in the setting instead of an actual sequel to anything from previous games.

 

[Raine_sage]

I have to admit I'm kind of not a fan of mages/templars just because I hate it when games make moral choice exclusively centered around an arbitrarily binary faction. I say arbitrary because both sides are right and wrong in different ways so I really can't feel invested in either.

I dunno maybe it's just my personal preference but I really hope they have the kinds of moral choices present in DAO, where the focus wasn't so much on which side was "right" as opposed to "There is a war happening, what lengths are you willing to go to in order to stop it?"

Each choice in that game was framed in terms of "What will help you win the war and do you think it's worth it?"
You were generally given partial information initially and later on the game would show you all of it and you could determine if you did the "right" thing or if you went too far. It was a nice exercise in not going off half cocked and taking everything at face value.

I'd like to see more of that in DA3, mages and templars if they must, but maybe with more of a focus on "when does necessary bleed over into extreme"

 

[Glaice]

It will probably be disappointing like DA2 was.

 

[Chris Tian]

Also, I think you'll enjoy the DLC. I saw you mentioning you bought it, but hadn't played it in another post. It addresses a lot of the problems people have with the vanilla game, such as additional areas to visit, not as much realiance on waves and so on. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say, whenever you get around to play it.

I am really looking forward to playing the DLC.
When i started this thread I was halfway into DA2 Act1, but then thought: "Why not get the DA:O DLC I didn't have yet and replay that game too". So I bought Witchhunt, Leliana's Song, and the Golem thing and startet a new DA:O playthrough. That means I have a Blight to stop before I get to DA2 and it's DLC again, but I have quite alot of freetime next week.

Well,I'm gonna be a total asshole and say well duh you don't know why Cassandra is looking for Hawke they never tell you because it's an obvious lead into the next game. They never explain anything so there was nothing to get. >_> sorry I can't not be an asshole at this moment.

But Legacy shows a connection between the Hawke bloodline and the Grey Wardens(not a spoiler).

Yes, of course they left that hanging over the cliff.
But I mean Hawke is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. So I can't imagine any reason why she(Cassy) makes such a big deal out of finding him/her. I fear any revalations in that regard will come totally out of the left field.
A bit like the "Oh look, we found this prothean device blueprint and have no clue what it will do, lets pool all our resources and build it"-thing.

And I heard about the Legacy-bloodline-connection, i think it was even in the product description or something like that. I'm really excitet to see how it ties in the rest of the story and lore.

My hope for dragon age 3 is that my companions and I can have a conversation about...

Spoiler: THIS.

I kind of understand why they haven't let us talk about it yet, but they really should now in the next game.

Especially given what's going on in the game's world now.

Hahaha, yes you are totally right about that. This bugged me a little too since DA:O.

Wynne:"Bloodmagic is super evil and gross and everybody who uses it becomes an abomination and we shouldn't even talk about it."
Warden:"Hey Wynne, would you be so kind and make that mob explode with the bloodmagic I taught you earlier?"
Wynne:"Why yes, of course my dear."

I'd like to see more of that in DA3, mages and templars if they must, but maybe with more of a focus on "when does necessary bleed over into extreme"

There's a good chance that we will see that. Because this question lies close to the whole safety vs. freedom theme. Also "the necessary bleeding over into the extreme" is kinda what happend when everybody decided that becoming a bloodthirsty monster would make their point better than, you know, staying at least somewhat close to the realm of sanity.

 

[Legion]

Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 are extremely similar in many ways in both how they work with mechanics, as well as the way the stories worked.

Sadly from what I have read by the developers on the Bioware forums (the last time I was there anyway), they are planning to continue in the same vein that they have in their last few games.

Could you elaborate both statements?
I'm not sure what you mean, i do not see too much similarity between ME3 and DA2. I had more the feeling DA2 tried to be like ME2.
And thus i'm not sure what you mean by "same vein".

It's more of an overall direction they are heading in. There are a lot of parallels to be drawn, even though the style is different.

Both games tried to focus more on an action packed adventure, whereas the previous games had more of an RPG feel to them. The removal of statistic based abilities in favour of simply requiring points to access abilities makes it feel more like Bioshock and FarCry 3 than ME1 and DA:O.

They both lessened the amount of dialogue choices, and put in their own characterisation into the playable character. For example in Mass Effect 3 not only does Shepard not like chess, they are apparently too stupid to even grasp the basics. They also are a "bad dancer" despite my Shepard never having done so in my play-through's. In Dragon Age my example is linked to my next point.

Both games used ham fisted attempts to get us to care about characters. By making you have family members in DA2 they needed to make the character care about them, or else it'd feel strange. The problem with doing this is that you cannot force the player to care about a character just because they are family. So they "made" my character express horror when certain characters died, despite me personally not feeling attached to them in the slightest. In a game based around the player creating their own character, such things should be left to them, not the writers.

In Mass Effect 3 they had Shepard suffer from post traumatic stress due to the child dying on Earth. Despite the fact that Shepard has seen millions die, has caused hundreds of thousands to by their own actions, has had close friends and possibly loved ones die in front of them, yet the game writers decide to force them to suffer nightmares over a single child who died due to their own fault.

As I said at the start, it's more of an overall direction they seem to be heading in with their style of story telling and game-play mechanics. I am not suggesting the two games are the same with their core game-play.

 

[CloudAtlas]

It's more of an overall direction they are heading in. There are a lot of parallels to be drawn, even though the style is different.

Both games tried to focus more on an action packed adventure, whereas the previous games had more of an RPG feel to them. The removal of statistic based abilities in favour of simply requiring points to access abilities makes it feel more like Bioshock and FarCry 3 than ME1 and DA:O.

There's no reason why action and RPG need to be mutually exclusive. I like action, i like RPG, but I don't like number crunching, I don't like the feeling of dice being rolled in the background to determine the success and effect of my actions.
Do I think DA2 found a great combination? No. An action RPG feel is totally fine with me, but then it just feels very wrong if you need 30 regular hits or something with your gigantic twohander to kill even the weakest enemies, no matter how low your strength or whatever is.

In Mass Effect 3 they had Shepard suffer from post traumatic stress due to the child dying on Earth. Despite the fact that Shepard has seen millions die, has caused hundreds of thousands to by their own actions, has had close friends and possibly loved ones die in front of them, yet the game writers decide to force them to suffer nightmares over a single child who died due to their own fault.

I don't know, I'm dreaming about strange and unimportant stuff all the time, not necessarily the important stuff that's happening in my life.

 

[Chris Tian]

It's more of an overall direction they are heading in. There are a lot of parallels to be drawn, even though the style is different.

Both games tried to focus more on an action packed adventure, whereas the previous games had more of an RPG feel to them. The removal of statistic based abilities in favour of simply requiring points to access abilities makes it feel more like Bioshock and FarCry 3 than ME1 and DA:O.

That made such a big difference to you, if you need 30 whatever to get skill X? Please read no judgement of any kind into the question, its pure curiosity.

I think I liked DA2 skilltrees slightly better. I liked that they were actually more, well trees(ish) and not so linear. So you had to think a bit more about wich skills to take when, to be most effective at each level.

They both lessened the amount of dialogue choices, and put in their own characterisation into the playable character. For example in Mass Effect 3 not only does Shepard not like chess, they are apparently too stupid to even grasp the basics. They also are a "bad dancer" despite my Shepard never having done so in my play-through's. In Dragon Age my example is linked to my next point.

Personally that doesn't bother me much. I dont need choices in my games. For example FF9 is one of my favorite games, especially for its writing, story and characters. If i remember correctly you have almost zero choices there, dialogue or otherwise.
That means I dont need a blank template hero, I like the sort of pre written heroes like Geralt from The Wichter just fine.
And Shepard feelt very similar, he/she was never really like the Warden or my Skyrim hero to me. He/She was always Shepard, he/she had two extrem versions, the badass and the paragon, I only chose where between them he/she would stand and make his/her descisions according to that. Hawke was kinda a Shepard clone so for him/her its the same.

It starts bothering me very much if I'm presentet with choices and then it turns out they have no meaning or consequence. Skyrim did that excruciatingly bad.
I was the slayer of Alduin, Archmage of the Mageschool, Herald of the Companions, Warhero of the civil war, Thane of every city, but still some measly noble could frame me for murder just by saying I did the crime.
I just atempted to assassinate the Emperor and butchered myself through his bodyguard and when the guards a the gate spot me I can just pay a small fee and go my way?
Or even worse I actually succeeded in my assassination of the Emperor of this Empire in the midst of civil war and NOBODY gives a f*ck???
Well now [/rant] ähem....

My point is, if a developer doesn't want to take player choices into account while making his game, fine don't present me any. But if you do present choices they better have appropriate impact on my gaming expirience.

Both games used ham fisted attempts to get us to care about characters. By making you have family members in DA2 they needed to make the character care about them, or else it'd feel strange. The problem with doing this is that you cannot force the player to care about a character just because they are family. So they "made" my character express horror when certain characters died, despite me personally not feeling attached to them in the slightest. In a game based around the player creating their own character, such things should be left to them, not the writers.

Well i cant really say much to this point, because family themes always hit VERY close to home with me. If you introduce a character like "Hi, this is your sibling/mother" i immediatly care a great deal about them.
So my oppinion says nothing about how well there attempt to make you care about your family in DA2 went.

In Mass Effect 3 they had Shepard suffer from post traumatic stress due to the child dying on Earth. Despite the fact that Shepard has seen millions die, has caused hundreds of thousands to by their own actions, has had close friends and possibly loved ones die in front of them, yet the game writers decide to force them to suffer nightmares over a single child who died due to their own fault.

I have not much to add here too, i absolutely hated the dreams too. Always hated to suffer through them, and that they are not cutscenes you can skip.

As I said at the start, it's more of an overall direction they seem to be heading in with their style of story telling and game-play mechanics. I am not suggesting the two games are the same with their core game-play.

Okay, that you did not mean they have similar gameplay was obvious, even to me.

 

[CloudAtlas]

(...)
The problem with this is that mix and matching gameplay elements from multiple genres, especially ones that are inherently different, tends to be a fail on all sides.

Always better to focus more on one thing and do that extremely well than to try to make the game equivalent of the spork.

And how exactly are they inherently different?

 

[Smeatza]

snip

snip

I thought we were using the normative sense of morality, not the descriptive sense.
In a descriptive sense each person defines their own morality, that is true.
In a normative sense imprisoning those who have done nothing wrong yet, is objectively wrong.

Let me give you an example, If you were a monarch, and given the choice between letting thousands die from a horrible disease, or creating a cure, at the cost of a 5 year old girls life, would you consider this a moral choice?
Because it's not.
Let's break it down and get to the core of the morality of the decision. Taking one action will lead you to murder an innocent child and succeed in helping your subjects, taking the other action will lead to you failing in helping your subjects.
There is nothing morally wrong with failing, there is with child murder.
You could try and justify it, with the argument "more people survive if you take the second choice." But that is not a point of morality, it's a point of practicality.

I suppose it not only depends on what sense of morality you use but also your definition of "moral choice."
You could define "moral choice" as any choice that challenges your descriptive morality.
I usually define it as a choice between two equal (either moral or immoral) normative moralities.

For example, You are a network administrator and another employee (who is your friend's partner) requests you release a personal e-mail they sent, out of the spam filter. When scanning the e-mail (as is standard procedure for such an incident) you realise that it is being sent to a lover, and the employee in question is having an affair.
When accepting the job you signed an agreement of confidentiality stating that you would never make light of anything read in personal emails, except if there is a danger to someones life.
To tell the friend about the affair would betray the agreement of confidentiality you have with all the employees.
To keep it to yourself is to be complicit in your friends partner's affair.
Both choices are equally immoral.

It would be helpful if there was an objective definition for "moral choice" but I can't find one for the life of me.

 

[Chris Tian]

snip

snip

I thought we were using the normative sense of morality, not the descriptive sense.
In a descriptive sense each person defines their own morality, that is true.
In a normative sense imprisoning those who have done nothing wrong yet, is objectively wrong.

Let me give you an example, If you were a monarch, and given the choice between letting thousands die from a horrible disease, or creating a cure, at the cost of a 5 year old girls life, would you consider this a moral choice?
Because it's not.
Let's break it down and get to the core of the morality of the decision. Taking one action will lead you to murder an innocent child and succeed in helping your subjects, taking the other action will lead to you failing in helping your subjects.
There is nothing morally wrong with failing, there is with child murder.
You could try and justify it, with the argument "more people survive if you take the second choice." But that is not a point of morality, it's a point of practicality.

I suppose it not only depends on what sense of morality you use but also your definition of "moral choice."
You could define "moral choice" as any choice that challenges your descriptive morality.
I usually define it as a choice between two equal (either moral or immoral) normative moralities.

For example, You are a network administrator and another employee (who is your friend's partner) requests you release a personal e-mail they sent, out of the spam filter. When scanning the e-mail (as is standard procedure for such an incident) you realise that it is being sent to a lover, and the employee in question is having an affair.
When accepting the job you signed an agreement of confidentiality stating that you would never make light of anything read in personal emails, except if there is a danger to someones life.
To tell the friend about the affair would betray the agreement of confidentiality you have with all the employees.
To keep it to yourself is to be complicit in your friends partner's affair.
Both choices are equally immoral.

It would be helpful if there was an objective definition for "moral choice" but I can't find one for the life of me.

Okay lets get the definiton of "moral choice" out of the way, since I can't find a clear one either (not in englisch nor my native language). So iI will skip that since we seem to have slightly different interpretations, for you it should be some kind of moral dilemma (did i understand that correctly?), for me its enough if the choice challenges my moral somehow, even if its a no brainer for my chosen character.

For the other part of your argument.
(Disclaimer: Like you have no doubt noticed, english is not my native language. Since I am not clear if i am translating "normal" "norm" etc correct let me say when I use normal morals from now on I mean what that most peoply in our society consider the to be right and morally correct)

I think your personal moral, might bleed into what you consider to be the normal moral.

You say imprisoning someone who has done nothing is objectively wrong. But there are people locked away in psychriatric institutions because they are considered very dangerous to others and/or themselfes, without having done anything yet.

In your second example you say failing to do something is never morally wrong. I would say thats also not considered normal moral, since if you fail to help someone who is in mortal danger, for exapmle not calling 911 (in the US case, here it is 112, no clue where you'r from) you can be held legally liable, at least here (in Germany).

 

[Smeatza]

I think your personal moral, might bleed into what you consider to be the normal moral.

You say imprisoning someone who has done nothing is objectively wrong. But there are people locked away in psychriatric institutions because they are considered very dangerous to others and/or themselfes, without having done anything yet.

Which is immoral. Practically it makes sense. These people are very likely to compulsively hurt others or themselves and there's nobody (no family members etc.) who is able/prepared to look after them.
To lock them up against their will is immoral when they've done nothing wrong.
But it's more practical than taking the risk or somebody getting hurt.

In your second example you say failing to do something is never morally wrong.

Not never morally wrong. Not morally wrong in that particular situation.
In the situation I gave there being no cure was the status quo. By not killing the girl you may not have gained a cure, but effectively nothing has been lost.

I would say thats also not considered normal moral, since if you fail to help someone who is in mortal danger, for exapmle not calling 911 (in the US case, here it is 112, no clue where you'r from) you can be held legally liable, at least here (in Germany).

Exactly.

 

[Chris Tian]

I think your personal moral, might bleed into what you consider to be the normal moral.

You say imprisoning someone who has done nothing is objectively wrong. But there are people locked away in psychriatric institutions because they are considered very dangerous to others and/or themselfes, without having done anything yet.

Which is immoral. Practically it makes sense. These people are very likely to compulsively hurt others or themselves and there's nobody (no family members etc.) who is able/prepared to look after them.
To lock them up against their will is immoral when they've done nothing wrong.
But it's more practical than taking the risk or somebody getting hurt.

My point is that society obviously thinks this practice is right. Because i've never heard of protest against this kind of thing.
You were saying its objectivly immoral. But there is no such thing as objectivly immoral, there are only everyones own morals. We consider it to be "the morally right thing" if most people have the same/similar moral values at some point.
Since most people agree that locking people away, that are very likely to hurt others, it becomes "the morally right thing" by that definition.

In your second example you say failing to do something is never morally wrong.

Not never morally wrong. Not morally wrong in that particular situation.
In the situation I gave there being no cure was the status quo. By not killing the girl you may not have gained a cure, but effectively nothing has been lost.

By that same principle the satus quo is the guy lying in front of me is bleeding to death, so if i do not call for help nothing is lost.
But society would still say I was behaving immoral and even punish me for it.

I am still thinking you might mistake your own morals for objectively right.

For example I think its morally 100% okay to lock dangerous people away even if nothing happend yet. If some guy is violent and crazy, please put him away.
If some guy has a terminal illnes that he can pass on by breathing the same air, i do not want him to ride the bus with me.
And maybe more extrem and controversial, if i could save 100 men women and children by killing one innocent girl, thats a no brainer for me. The good of the many and so on.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Well,I'm gonna be a total asshole and say well duh you don't know why Cassandra is looking for Hawke they never tell you because it's an obvious lead into the next game. They never explain anything so there was nothing to get. >_> sorry I can't not be an asshole at this moment.

But Legacy shows a connection between the Hawke bloodline and the Grey Wardens(not a spoiler).

Yes, of course they left that hanging over the cliff.
But I mean Hawke is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. So I can't imagine any reason why she(Cassy) makes such a big deal out of finding him/her. I fear any revalations in that regard will come totally out of the left field.
A bit like the "Oh look, we found this prothean device blueprint and have no clue what it will do, lets pool all our resources and build it"-thing.

And I heard about the Legacy-bloodline-connection, i think it was even in the product description or something like that. I'm really excitet to see how it ties in the rest of the story and lore.

My hope for dragon age 3 is that my companions and I can have a conversation about...

Spoiler: THIS.

I kind of understand why they haven't let us talk about it yet, but they really should now in the next game.

Especially given what's going on in the game's world now.

Hahaha, yes you are totally right about that. This bugged me a little too since DA:O.

Wynne:"Bloodmagic is super evil and gross and everybody who uses it becomes an abomination and we shouldn't even talk about it."
Warden:"Hey Wynne, would you be so kind and make that mob explode with the bloodmagic I taught you earlier?"
Wynne:"Why yes, of course my dear."

I think I can answer that question of why Hawke is important.

They do kind of explain it. Hawke like the warden is someone who both or (depending on how you played in DA2) at least on side of the fight will listen to, so the seekers(I guess because they are looking) can get them to stop fighting and hopefully talk it out.

Why would they listen to Hawke?

Well there are a number of reasons.
1. He is a champion. Not as great as "Hero of Ferelden", true, but still. You don't see those every day.

2. (The other reasons depend on what you did, who you are in both games before.)First off if the warden was a human mage, you could have been related to the Hero of Ferelden, who as the name may tell you is a famous hero mage.

3. Hawke may have been something of a hero to one or both sides of the little Mage/Templar war depending on how you acted. And he/she may have also been the viscount too.

4. Whatever Hawke was like, he/she did save Kirkwall, twice. Just saying.

5. Also, Hawke and the Warden seem to have both gone somewhere, maybe at the same time, and maybe with each other. So, maybe find one, find both?

Yeah Hawke probably isn't as important to stopping the mess as the warden is, but he/she isn't very "unimportant". Though, how important dose depend on a few things.

 

[Legion]

It's more of an overall direction they are heading in. There are a lot of parallels to be drawn, even though the style is different.

Both games tried to focus more on an action packed adventure, whereas the previous games had more of an RPG feel to them. The removal of statistic based abilities in favour of simply requiring points to access abilities makes it feel more like Bioshock and FarCry 3 than ME1 and DA:O.

There's no reason why action and RPG need to be mutually exclusive. I like action, i like RPG, but I don't like number crunching, I don't like the feeling of dice being rolled in the background to determine the success and effect of my actions.

I agree, but Dragon Age: Origins was one of those kind of games, so wanting the same from a sequel is not a bad request in my opinion. Action RPG's are great, but it's not what I got into the series for. There are already plenty of games that fit that description.

Obviously some people prefer it, and I am certainly not saying that they are wrong for liking it, or that Bioware have no right to change it, but I tend to think sequels should be of a similar style to the game before. Unless it's been a significant amount of time (Fallout series) and they are trying to bring the series into a more modern design.

That made such a big difference to you, if you need 30 whatever to get skill X? Please read no judgement of any kind into the question, its pure curiosity.

I think I liked DA2 skilltrees slightly better. I liked that they were actually more, well trees(ish) and not so linear. So you had to think a bit more about wich skills to take when, to be most effective at each level.

As I said to CloudAtlas, it doesn't bother me from a game-play perspective, it bothers me that Origins was praised as a traditional RPG, and they decided to change the direction in the sequel. There are many other action games out there, but stat based RPG's are becoming rarer.

Personally that doesn't bother me much. I dont need choices in my games. For example FF9 is one of my favorite games, especially for its writing, story and characters. If i remember correctly you have almost zero choices there, dialogue or otherwise.
That means I dont need a blank template hero, I like the sort of pre written heroes like Geralt from The Wichter just fine.
And Shepard feelt very similar, he/she was never really like the Warden or my Skyrim hero to me. He/She was always Shepard, he/she had two extrem versions, the badass and the paragon, I only chose where between them he/she would stand and make his/her descisions according to that. Hawke was kinda a Shepard clone so for him/her its the same.

It starts bothering me very much if I'm presentet with choices and then it turns out they have no meaning or consequence. Skyrim did that excruciatingly bad.
I was the slayer of Alduin, Archmage of the Mageschool, Herald of the Companions, Warhero of the civil war, Thane of every city, but still some measly noble could frame me for murder just by saying I did the crime.
I just atempted to assassinate the Emperor and butchered myself through his bodyguard and when the guards a the gate spot me I can just pay a small fee and go my way?
Or even worse I actually succeeded in my assassination of the Emperor of this Empire in the midst of civil war and NOBODY gives a f*ck???
Well now [/rant] ähem....

My point is, if a developer doesn't want to take player choices into account while making his game, fine don't present me any. But if you do present choices they better have appropriate impact on my gaming expirience.

Agreed, but my problem is that Bioware tries to pretend that their games do have choices. They used these "choices" as selling points for their games. They use phrases such as "Shape the story" and other things to try and convince us that we are playing as our own character, when we are not.

There is nothing wrong with characters already having their own stories and personalities, but Bioware tends to pretend that they are doing otherwise when they advertise and discuss their games.

My criticism stems from them changing what they did in previous games, when they are established as direct sequels. The games should really (in my opinion) feel more like multiple parts to the same story, rather than mixing and matching as they go along.

If they didn't try selling "Make your own character and tell your own story!" as a selling point, then it wouldn't bother me.

But I mean Hawke is relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. So I can't imagine any reason why she(Cassy) makes such a big deal out of finding him/her. I fear any revalations in that regard will come totally out of the left field.

I will not give spoilers, but the Legacy DLC does show that Hawke is more important than previously thought. Still not as important as the Warden perhaps, but more so than before.

 

[Chris Tian]

I agree, but Dragon Age: Origins was one of those kind of games, so wanting the same from a sequel is not a bad request in my opinion. Action RPG's are great, but it's not what I got into the series for. There are already plenty of games that fit that description.

Obviously some people prefer it, and I am certainly not saying that they are wrong for liking it, or that Bioware have no right to change it, but I tend to think sequels should be of a similar style to the game before. Unless it's been a significant amount of time (Fallout series) and they are trying to bring the series into a more modern design.

That made such a big difference to you, if you need 30 whatever to get skill X? Please read no judgement of any kind into the question, its pure curiosity.

I think I liked DA2 skilltrees slightly better. I liked that they were actually more, well trees(ish) and not so linear. So you had to think a bit more about wich skills to take when, to be most effective at each level.

As I said to CloudAtlas, it doesn't bother me from a game-play perspective, it bothers me that Origins was praised as a traditional RPG, and they decided to change the direction in the sequel. There are many other action games out there, but stat based RPG's are becoming rarer.

For me DA2 did not become less RPG-y because the skills have no stat requirements. Since DA2 still has stats like CON, DEX, etc. and they are fairly important for your overall effectiveness.

Agreed, but my problem is that Bioware tries to pretend that their games do have choices. They used these "choices" as selling points for their games. They use phrases such as "Shape the story" and other things to try and convince us that we are playing as our own character, when we are not.

There is nothing wrong with characters already having their own stories and personalities, but Bioware tends to pretend that they are doing otherwise when they advertise and discuss their games.

My criticism stems from them changing what they did in previous games, when they are established as direct sequels. The games should really (in my opinion) feel more like multiple parts to the same story, rather than mixing and matching as they go along.

If they didn't try selling "Make your own character and tell your own story!" as a selling point, then it wouldn't bother me.

Okay you are right, they did not deliver that expirience as advertised in DA2.

I will not give spoilers, but the Legacy DLC does show that Hawke is more important than previously thought. Still not as important as the Warden perhaps, but more so than before.

cut

You make some good points Imp Emissary. I will revise my opinion about this issue when I have played Legacy since several people now told me that it has some impact on the importance of Hawke.