The Skyrim/Dragon Age Baby

[Nannernade]

I think it'd be funny if our bulking friend Shale made an appearance in Skyrim, just randomly killing chickens on farms ha ha, I'm sure the Companions of Jorrvaskar would be called in to take care of her.

I love Shale. LOVE. Any opportunity for more Shale is fine by me.

For people saying that they really hated DA 2 characters, I'm curious - what class did you play? (This is about characters only, not about the gameplay.) I wonder if there's any correlation between people's enjoyment of the game (or at least with regards to the characters and story) and the class they chose.

I played as a mage mostly, every now and then a rogue, but I prefer to only play the rogue in the Elder Scrolls series so I can make great use of my bow.

Plus, who can turn down that mage armour? Certainly not I.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Given the divergence in design between the two games (and the style between the two developers), I would expect "Dragon-Rim" to be a trainwreck.

Very rarely do idealized fusions in game design actually happen. Though I admit, when they do, they can be glorious (Deus Ex 1 and Metroid Prime spring immediately to mind).

 

[Nannernade]

Given the divergence in design between the two games (and the style between the two developers), I would expect "Dragon-Rim" to be a trainwreck.

Very rarely do idealized fusions in game design actually happen. Though I admit, when they do, they can be glorious (Deus Ex 1 and Metroid Prime spring immediately to mind).

If this did happen, they would use Skyrim's environment graphics etc. and from Dragon Age they would take the character development make them less generic, need to stop thinking too hard about it dude.

 

[Amanda Diamond]

I've made it no secret that I think Dragon age 2 is shiiiiiiit and needs a complete do-over and another year in production. However, I believe my prefect game would be the three way spawn between Dragon age Origins, Skyrim and Shadow of Colossus with free running (because its my imagination and I can go as for as I want)

 

[Atmos Duality]

If this did happen, they would use Skyrim's environment graphics etc. and from Dragon Age they would take the character development make them less generic, need to stop thinking too hard about it dude.

"Graphics" aren't the issue here: Scale is.
Greater scale: Worse Characters. Why? Limited Interaction. Can't assume the player will even bother interacting with them.

More "Railroading" (smaller scale), better characters, but weaker exploration.
Why? Smaller scale makes it easier to force the player to actually pay attention to the plot (and thus, the central characters).

 

[Nannernade]

If this did happen, they would use Skyrim's environment graphics etc. and from Dragon Age they would take the character development make them less generic, need to stop thinking too hard about it dude.

"Graphics" aren't the issue here: Scale is.
Greater scale: Worse Characters. Why? Limited Interaction. Can't assume the player will even bother interacting with them.

More "Railroading" (smaller scale), better characters, but weaker exploration.
Why? Smaller scale makes it easier to force the player to actually pay attention to the plot (and thus, the central characters).

How you say it doesn't sound very fun to be honest, forcing a player to do something being dragged along on a choke chain as Yahtzee would put it yes it can be ok sometimes but in a large RPG like Skyrim there is no place for that kind of bull. Even though Skyrim is huge I have no problem following the plot. But that's probably just me and my weird sense to read everything I come across... I should really get that checked out.

 

[Atmos Duality]

How you say it doesn't sound very fun to be honest, forcing a player to do something being dragged along on a choke chain as Yahtzee would put it yes it can be ok sometimes but in a large RPG like Skyrim there is no place for that kind of bull. Even though Skyrim is huge I have no problem following the plot. But that's probably just me and my weird sense to read everything I come across... I should really get that checked out.

You're already being dragged along a plot-railroad in TES; it's just that between rail segments, you're allowed to fuck around the world.

Ultimately, nothing you do in the game-world really matters; it cannot, because that could potentially de-rail the plot's logic.

 

[Nannernade]

How you say it doesn't sound very fun to be honest, forcing a player to do something being dragged along on a choke chain as Yahtzee would put it yes it can be ok sometimes but in a large RPG like Skyrim there is no place for that kind of bull. Even though Skyrim is huge I have no problem following the plot. But that's probably just me and my weird sense to read everything I come across... I should really get that checked out.

You're already being dragged along a plot-railroad in TES; it's just that between rail segments, you're allowed to fuck around the world.

Ultimately, nothing you do in the game-world really matters; it cannot, because that could potentially de-rail the plot's logic.

Touche... alright I'll go along with that, great argument.

 

[Virgilthepagan]

Susan, I'd agree with the premise, but not the game you chose for comparison.
To be honest, Dragon Age II felt really inconsistent to me. Varric was a well constructed character, but I never got that same sense of attachment to most of my party. I really found myself pining for the characters from the first game, who though on occasion were certainly fantasy archetypes they grew and changed alongside you, as opposed to characters like Anders who were going to do...something regardless of what you said or did with them. I don't know, I just couldn't get invested in DAII, though the general premise of taking a bioware style character group into a world like Skyrim would be pretty cool.

 

[Hitchmeister]

Holy necro, Batman. But this article just cropped up again and one thing caught my eye:

I liked Kirkwall and its environs well enough, but I never really cared about them. There wasn't a particular house or cave or mountain or river that ever caught my breath or made me wish I could linger there.

Well, there was that one cave...

(Ba-dum, tish)

 

[maturin]

You're already being dragged along a plot-railroad in TES; it's just that between rail segments, you're allowed to fuck around the world.

Ultimately, nothing you do in the game-world really matters; it cannot, because that could potentially de-rail the plot's logic.

You can end a civil war, effectively crowning a king, all without disturbing the MQ of Skyrim. That's as big a deal as you'll find in any RPG, when it comes to reshaping the world. The problem is that the changes feels mostly cosmetic, with guards changing uniform and certain NPCs switching chairs. But a lot of that is down to the fact that ES is actually an open-world, and can't get away with alluding to huge changes off-screen.

 

[FFHAuthor]

Well, there was that one cave...

(Ba-dum, tish)

Oh...that was awesome and awful all at once.

Awesomful I suppose.