Race selection is back in Dragon Age Inquisition

[Mycroft Holmes]

I heard that Hawke comes back with a predetermined personality based on your choices(aggressive, suave, diplomatic) and they are romanceable.

 

[Abomination]

Plus the lady Qunari are total babes. Babes, y'hear?!

Of course, to make them playable they would also need to add a bunch of new classes, like the shopkeeper!

Why kill giant spiders when you can soothe their berserk animalistic rage by selling them adorable garden gnomes! Why stab bandits when you can convince them to buy T-shirts with amusing phrases like "Koslun is my homeboy!" or "I went to Seheron, and I all got was a forced conversion and this lousy T-shirt!"

Speaking seriously, I think this is one of the reasons Qunari aren't ever likely to be playable. There's a reason we haven't seen a single female Qunari in game (beyond the time required to model and animate them).

I just think the writers would need to be more creative. The player could be Tal-Vashoth, for example, and then the Qun would mean shit to them. Also there are several female spy types in the comics and stuff, as well as Tallis, who was still Qunari, but by conversion rather than birth.

Still, incredibly unlikely, but I'm holding out hope.

So... you'd be a Quanri that wasn't of the Qun or not a Qunari that was of the Qun.

I'm sorry but female Quanri just aren't adventurers. This isn't a lack of creativity, this is sticking to the lore they've established over the past two games.

 

[confusedyokel]

Elves appear to look like this now.

Which is great, more subtle version of DA2 features (ears) whilst not being ugly donkeys and looking more human. In the video of the link I posted it also shows female elves, and male and female dwarves, all looking great.

I'm starting to think I'm the only man on earth who actually liked the elf design in DA2. At least with the eyes, I didn't care for the noses but they weren't that much of a deal-breaker.

 

[Abomination]

Now I think about it, I liked Hawke and the whole set origin, male or female.

There being races is fine and all but I care more about how I interact with the world, not how the world interacts with me. Or you know, people just say "YOU ARE AN ELF" when they talk to you occasionally - wow.
If player race = {race} then {X}.

Let's see if we can have...

Battles where enemies do not spawn out of nowhere three times per encounter. (DA2 issue)
Where melee characters engage opponents quickly rather than plod after them. (DA:O issue)
Voice for the main character. (DA2 benefit)
A proper epilogue. (DA:O benefit)

Both gaves had positives and negatives, being able to choose short and fat or frail with pointy ears was not one of them.

 

[SecondPrize]

Excellent, one of the many walls blocking my purchase of this game has fallen. Keep on going, Bioware, I'm pulling for you.

 

[Lunar Templar]

You mean I get to choose between being an unremarkable human, a skinny human with pointy ears or a short, stocky human again?

Thank goodness for that. Just wasn't the same without it.

^^^

this

Lemme know when there's more then the same 3 boring ass races that every fantasy game whores to death (and maybe some one else writing the game, don't care who) and then I'll be willing to conciser caring this exists

 

[wulf3n]

Plus the lady Qunari are total babes. Babes, y'hear?!

Of course, to make them playable they would also need to add a bunch of new classes, like the shopkeeper!

Why kill giant spiders when you can soothe their berserk animalistic rage by selling them adorable garden gnomes! Why stab bandits when you can convince them to buy T-shirts with amusing phrases like "Koslun is my homeboy!" or "I went to Seheron, and I all got was a forced conversion and this lousy T-shirt!"

Speaking seriously, I think this is one of the reasons Qunari aren't ever likely to be playable. There's a reason we haven't seen a single female Qunari in game (beyond the time required to model and animate them).

I just think the writers would need to be more creative. The player could be Tal-Vashoth, for example, and then the Qun would mean shit to them. Also there are several female spy types in the comics and stuff, as well as Tallis, who was still Qunari, but by conversion rather than birth.

Still, incredibly unlikely, but I'm holding out hope.

So... you'd be a Quanri that wasn't of the Qun or not a Qunari that was of the Qun.

I'm sorry but female Quanri just aren't adventurers. This isn't a lack of creativity, this is sticking to the lore they've established over the past two games.

Well Bioware aren't exactly known for sticking to the lore they've established. Case in point the Qunari.

Now I'm probably wrong about this, I didn't explore too deep into the original canon, but in Origins the Qunari didn't have horns. They did explain this in DA2, but it felt tacked on, like Thermal Clips in Mass Effect.

 

[Souplex]

This pleases me.
Having the player's race be Human in a fantasy game is like having their class be accountant.
This was also a problem with Space Wizards. Who wants to be human when you could be a Krogan or Salarian?
Granted there are some crazy people who would want to be Elves or Quarians, or whatever.
I don't see why they make it a choice. Just make everybody a Dwarf. The people who complain aren't the types of people whose opinions matter.

 

[Abomination]

Well Bioware aren't exactly known for sticking to the lore they've established. Case in point the Qunari.

Now I'm probably wrong about this, I didn't explore too deep into the original canon, but in Origins the Qunari didn't have horns. They did explain this in DA2, but it felt tacked on, like Thermal Clips in Mass Effect.

To be fair the "thermal clips" part was a mechanic decision... that I personally thought was a bit stupid.

But there's a bit of a difference between Sten not having horns and then other Quanri having horns (of varying degrees) than going back on something that was established in BOTH games.

It'd be like saying that the Quarians have an issue adapting to germs outside their suits and would require years and years of contact to eventually be able to leave their suits, requiring all those years and generations to develop immunities - then having in Mass Effect 3 a Quarian show signs of having immunity after one case of exposure... oh wait, that did happen. Thanks, Tali romance.

Damnit Bioware.

 

[Talvrae]

Tevinter is also in. Looking forward to that one.

Really? Oh yes, i really hoped to see Tervinter somewhere down the road. I mean it look to be real interesting, and would like to see a society where mage are free in that universe

On the Quanari horn thing.... They always wanted them to have horn, but in the first one because Stern was a pllayable character they ahd difficulty with the helmets and the hors, so they cut them out of the game

 

[Lieju]

Apparently the elves are back to how they looked in Origins. It seems like Bioware are trying to pretend that Dragon Age 2 never happened - a move I wholly support.

I liked their look in DA2. And that they weren't just skinny humans with pointy ears.

Also I didn't have an issue with being able to play just as a human in DA2 because it was a personal story of one family.

But in a more epic story like Origins? That needs the race-selection.

 

[Ishal]

Where melee characters engage opponents quickly rather than plod after them. (DA:O issue)

Is this a statement endorsing the combat in DA2? Wow... I didn't think you people existed. Slow and plodding made sense for melee characters, except for rogues. Slow combat was part of what made it tactical. I expect a character wearing full plate + mail to be slow, and even slower if they are carrying any large two handed weapon. DA2 had characters swinging greatswords like twigs as if they were weightless. Performing leaps into combat and all this other garbage like it was some sort of anime. The only character that should be acting like a ninja should be the rogue, but even that has its limits.

Voice for the main character. (DA2 benefit)

Debatable

 

[The Wykydtron]

Cool, A new Dragonage, awesome I liked those games. However, there will a return of the endless pro/anti/middling/apathetic/hipster Bioware threads once it comes out though... These forums and Bioware, I swear to Christ.

More on DA specifically, I was one of those retards who liked 2, despite how boring the combat was (didn't notice the copy paste dungeons until someone pointed them out to me) and the ending was really, really interesting. Not having your choices meaning jack shit was the point and that was totally awesome.

Bioware and endings man. Their last two games DA2 and ME3 had so much shit over the ending. Dunno whether to blame the devs or the fanbase or both or magical hallucinogenic pixie dust.

I agree ME3's ending was horrendous with only the Extended Cut helping it to be kind of ok, (except the Refuse ending is just generally shit) but the rest of the game was amazing. Suddenly the last ten minutes erase everyone's memories entirely, 0/10 fuck you.

I would LOVE to see if DA3 manages a worse ending, that would impress the fuck out of me.

Wait, wait. You thought not making your choices matter is a GOOD thing? What in the actual fuck?!?!? Don't tell me you're one of those people that think having your choices hand waved in a game means the devs are trying to show "that the game is much more life-like and has a super cereal message about not mattering in the grand scheme of things". News flash, they're not. It just means the devs are being lazy.

It's all a matter of opinion and perspective really. The point is that the legendary hero of the land actually failed to stop his city from falling into chaos no matter how hard he tried. Don't know about you but that's pretty interesting, especially how pretty much all Bioware games beforehand were about heroes saving worlds singlehandedly.

Sort of mini-Spec Ops if you think about it. You raging at the game's lack of endings mirrors Hawke's own frustrations at being unable to stop anything getting worse.

Now some of you throw hissy fits over how all of your good choices meant fuck all by the end. Maybe they meant to make it a cool comment on legendary heroes of the land ending up being absolute wank OR maybe they just ran out of money and had to cobble together something at the last second EA pls.

I could be looking for thought-provoking endings too hard and it could be that plainly they ran out of time/effort/money so they had to cut all endings into one. Why the worst ending though? Why the everyone loses ending?

At the end of the day, you could write it off as laziness just like that OR you could get some enjoyment out of the thing by overthinking everything like i'm so prone to doing.

 

[RJ 17]

More on DA specifically, I was one of those retards who liked 2, despite how boring the combat was (didn't notice the copy paste dungeons until someone pointed them out to me) and the ending was really, really interesting.

I'm riding the short bus with you on this one, my friend, as I always thought that DA2 got a bad rap. It tried to be very, VERY story-based and evidently people either didn't like that or didn't understand the story itself, I don't know. The point is that it was the 2nd chapter in a trilogy, and those rarely have solid, satisfying conclusions. People need to think about the 2nd chapters in other trilogies to get what I'm talking about...like what REALLY happens in Empire Strikes Back? Luke gets his hand chopped off and finds out he's Vader's son, and Han get captured and sent to Jabba. No real major, concluding event like blowing up the Death Star in A New Hope or, more specifically with the DA story: Killing the Arch Demon in Origins. DA2 was a story showing you all the events that led to the outbreak of the Mage-Templar civil war, so as cliché as it sounds: its ending was merely the beginning.

And I didn't write all of that for you in particular, Wykydtron, but rather for anyone else who might read this post.

Bioware and endings man. Their last two games DA2 and ME3 had so much shit over the ending. Dunno whether to blame the devs or the fanbase or both or magical hallucinogenic pixie dust.

Seriously, maybe its the fact that I have a preference for an "herbal supplement" which can be burned and inhaled to produce relaxing side-effects, but I never really saw what all the hub-bub was about with regards to DA2 and ME3's ending. I hate using the "you just didn't get it" argument but sadly I really think that applies to the majority of the hate that goes towards DA2. Back when it was still an issue generating forum topics, I made one ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.342589-About-Dragon-Age-IIs-story?page=1 ) on the subject of how mechanics and gameplay aside, DA2 still had a good story and tried to explain away the belief that it was disjointed and lacked focus through my responses to various people and in my OP itself.

I agree ME3's ending was horrendous with only the Extended Cut helping it to be kind of ok, (except the Refuse ending is just generally shit) but the rest of the game was amazing. Suddenly the last ten minutes erase everyone's memories entirely, 0/10 fuck you.

Now I never thought the ending to ME3 was as bad as everyone made it out to be. I was disappointed in it, sure, and I wished there was more to it to give an epilogue for the story, but I never thought it was punch-a-hole-in-the-wall bad. As for the EC, it literally gave me everything I wanted for the ending, and with regards to the "option to refuse", lots of people were pissed off that they had to pick one of those and if you refuse, the Reapers win....honestly, what did people expect to happen? The Indoctrination Theory to be correct and Shepard wakes up?......half dead on a battlefield overrun by Reapers while the fleet is getting crushed and no one is on the Citadel to fire the REAL Crucible?

I would LOVE to see if DA3 manages a worse ending, that would impress the fuck out of me.

Oh I promise you there's going to be people bitching about it. That's almost a universal absolute.

Again, the majority of this wasn't directed at you in particular, Wykydtron, just your comment gave me a platform to make some comments of my own.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Wait, wait. You thought not making your choices matter is a GOOD thing?

Very few choices ever matter in cRPGs. Noone is going to waste time creating vast amounts of content which will only apply to some players. Recording a few lines of voice acting and setting up some animation is one thing, changing the entire trajectory of the story is never going to happen.

It's why, even though Bioware has promised that Morrigan's stupid god-child will be more of a passing reference in DA3, it's not going to be the plot-critical world shaping event which Morriganmancers demand, because it simply can't be. The story has to proceed as planned. Characters have to go to the same places and do the same things. Their presumed reasoning may be shaped by dialogue, but overall the story must remain intact otherwise it's just chewing up time which could be spent on providing more content accessible to everyone.

Consider mass effect. You killed the Rachni Queen in ME1? Oh, sorry, we spent time creating these Racnhi models and distributing them throughout encounters in ME3 so the reapers simply built another Rachni Queen. What's that, you talked Wrex down on Virmire? Well, sorry, he can't take any part in the battle even though he could feasibly have helped to saved whichever squad mate dies because that would require radical changes to the story. Did you destroy or rewrite the heretics? Oops, it doesn't matter because some Quarian invented an electromagnetic flashbang so the Geth lose anyway, because they have to in order for the Quarians to be in orbit around Rannoch. Your choices can't matter that much because they can't really impact on anything beyond the dialogue.

All most RPGs are doing though, most of the time, is giving you the illusion of choice. Your choices are always extremely limited and generally quite cosmetic, but you care about them because you see (through dialogue) how they impact on characters and on the world.

This is also why the argument that race selection isn't meaningful doesn't work. It's clearly meaningful to some people, because even if it only results in a few lines of dialogue some people will invest in those lines of dialogue and see them as an important part of establishing who their character is and what their relationship is to the world. It doesn't have to change the entire story of the game or carry vast mechanical weight in order to be extremely important in maintaining the illusion that any of what you're doing in a cRPG actually matters.

 

[Raikas]

I sequel should IMPROVE on the elements of a previous game, not take away or regress. Now, I'm fine with a more "human" story where you aren't saving the world from the big bad whatever but I want to have at least SOME affect on the world if I'm given the choice.

I thought the best parts of DA:O were the smaller character moments, and that the whole "become a hero, slay the dragon, save the world" element was routine - it was solid, but it's been done before. Having DA2 be more of a character piece was an improvement for me. Sure, there were issues with the game (primarily because it was rushed), but in terms of story I'm another one who liked it.

I totally understand that plenty of other people prefer the epic quest story - but it's not true that player choices don't impact the world at all. You can't alter what Orsino/Meredith/Anders do, but you do make decisions that determine what happens with Feynriel, with your surviving sibling, Varric's brother, Fenris' sister and a decent number of other characters. I've finished the game such that I only had three companions left at the end, and I've finished it with seven - that's a huge difference in character terms. Player choices change the backstory as well - diplomatic Hawke talks about having a patient father, snarky Hawke talks about a joker one, aggressive Hawke a disciplinarian.

And fair enough if you'd prefer your character to have a bigger influence on the world, but it's just not true that we didn't have "some affect", because we did. It just wasn't particularly grand. ETA: I think with a more extensive epilogue they actually could have given those elements more focus, so that was probably a missed opportunity there.