Hi,
So i loaded up Dragon age Origins and after the first two minutes the character movement, camera and controls feel like "next level" stuff compared to BG3.

The buildings even have roof! In BG3 we cant know for sure
[img]https://imgur.com/gallery/zr1Dubd[/img]

You're insane, in a bad way.

No, I really like BG3, but he's right.

Hardly relevant as DA:O exploration is on a flat plane with little to nothing to interact with in small, almost linear maps. Control scheme and UI in BG3 might need improvements, but DA:O wouldn't cut it either. Also DA:O feels more dated then games from 90s

I have 2 runs through BG3 now and really enjoy the game, but this stuff needs to be better in my opinion

Indeed! I am merely talking about the controls and camera here.

I think bg3 environments look much better. Other than that yeah, right now bg3 is a worse version of Dao. But that's hardly fair with the game being EA and everything. If the final product will be half as good as DAO I'll be very happy

Whoever read this forum for the last month or so may have noticed that I hate the current control scheme in BG3 like few other people on the planet (see signature), but among all the possible choices DA: Origins is possibly the last one I'd pick as a model of how to improve things.
Examples like PoE 1 and 2, Pathfinder Kingmaker or Wrath of the Righteous would be so much better.

Not really too much related with the topic at hand, but: I also installed DA:O few days ago and man, it was ROUGH going back to it after all this time. I didn't realize how much old it looked by modern standards.

People always bag on how DA:O looks but I don't get it. I was playing it not that long ago, and I think it still looks fine.

It was never a massive looker when it was a fresh release either, to be perfectly honest.
But still, that was a dark era when party based RPGs were almost gone entirely and so contextually it was the unquestioned "king of the genre" in term of budget/production value.

But going back to it now? It looks PLAIN. Character models are especially dull, but even a lot of its scenarios are fairly shabby.

I dunno, I played Oranges again earlier this year and was pleasantly surprised by it not looking nearly as dated nor feeling as clunky as I'd managed to remember. Whereas DA2 was uglier and more annoying than I recalled... :|

Edit: okay, I looked at the screenshots and they are a bit potato, but IMHO they're well within the bounds of being playable. It's a subjective thing but for me they're a big improvement over, say, VtM Bloodlines which was right on the threshold.

The only thing i liked about Origins camera was being able to drop floor effects well off screen with camera edge panning. Something they removed in 2 and 3 because console players cried about it.

I agree DA:O doesn't look amazing (iirc looked dated on release), but I wouldn't say it's off-putting. I played it for the first time like two years ago. Nothing wrong with controls, too, they were pretty nice... unlike the next installments, which drove me crazy, especially Inquisition.

For all of DAO’s technical and design issues, they really nailed the camera. It seems like such a simple thing, but if you compare it so something like NWN2 then you understand how bad it could have been. I really hope that Larian works in their own camera and controls. I do t hate them, but I don’t love them either.

Dunno about graphics and visuals, a matter of taste I suppose. The biggest disadvantage of 3d graphics is how quickly they become dated (there are many examples, I think the best one is the comparison between xneogears and ffviii, two games who came out relatively close to each other) . I think regardless of graphics, Dragon Age Origins brought a great cinematic value to this genre. Something that kinda started with mass effect, but here is shown in a dnd like setting.

Ok. I have only one question: how did you manage to be unsure about roofs existence, while we can even climb on them? Like really comparing the game where roofs are just shown, aside from very few scripted moments, with the game where roofs are a surface to walk on as well as the ground... And saying that... Wow!

Ironically, DA:O had the best control scheme of the Dragon Age games, so it really is possible for "progress" to follow a negative slope.

Dragon Age: Origins is legitimately my favorite game of all time, but even I don't think the camera or character controls are that spectacular, at least compared to today's standards. Comparing it to BG3 in this area also feels strange to me, since they are pretty different games, at least from a design standpoint. Being able to see the ceiling in BG3 wouldn't really add anything to the interiors imo.

Well, that's mostly because Bioware decided that the first one was popular by accident and no one actually liked tactical gameplay, so they made increasing efforts into turning the titles in the series in action RPGs.


I'm trying not to be too judgmental here, but... Really?
What did you love about it so much? I'm not even sure I'd put it in a top 20 of the genre, let alone as my favorite game of all time in general.



But you ARE able to see the ceiling in BG3. You are even able to climb on it. Well, when there's one.

Yeah, everything I say about Origins is to be taken with a grain of salt. I feel in general I am able to be objective (I dislike Kingmaker for example, but I am not blind to its appeal). Origins, one the other hand, wound me with disappointment and I can help myself stabbing it back.

Considering how much Larian was pushing for zoomed in camera, I think something like WASDa controls in BG3 would be very welcome. Other then that... BG3 needs a more efficient, precise and reliable party management scheme. I wonder what it is in traditional control scheme (Infinity Engine, PoEs, Kingmaker) that Larian doesn’t like so much. Out of those mentioned I would point to PoEs as a masterclass of the UI design (Kingmaker’s custom quick bars requires too much maintenance with constantly changing spells for my taste, and some crucial buttons are too small and too easy to misclick). I really don’t see what D:OS2/BG3 does, that PoE control scheme could’t do. Maybe 3D is the issue, but I don’t see why it would be.

Part of it being the first actual RPG I ever played, and I think i was just at the right age when playing it to be like really affected by the storytelling. Also, despite the fact that the later games ruined most of it, I really like the setting and general lore that DA:O sets up! I know calling it my favorite game is... controversial, especially in these nerdy RPG spaces lol. But I just like it a lot!


Welp. Lol I guess this proves my point in a way, since I never even noticed the ceiling I don't really find it important.

The only complaint I have about DAO isometric controls are that you can't move the camera anywhere you want on the map. But other than that, it's pretty much the same as bg2... Party members are following you unless you tell them not to, but unlike earlier Bioware games (ahem Kotor) I had no troubles with it here

While I disagree, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I know plenty of people who adore DA:O. To me it was simply too shallow and too long. I always enjoy the more structured introduction, until the end of battle of Ostagar. And I find it really dull afterwards.

I wouldn't say it's my best, but I think it's the perfect blend of old and new when it comes to Bioware game design, and based on what came later I can safely say it's no small feat

You can see roofs but not very easily. I can't look up to see the jackass shooting me from the rafters.

I've run into a few situations where I wasn't able to see a roof without finding the "right" angle to do it with the camera. It's frustrating.

The one I remember best was in the Hunt the Devil quest, where choosing to help Karlach led to a fight, and one of the enemies (the female wizard) ran up into what looked like the sky. She stayed floating there, not doing anything and I couldn't target her. Eventually I found a location for the camera that showed she had climbed up on the roof. I could only see that from one particular location and camera angle that wasn't obvious.

I'm chalking that up to EA and assuming it will be fixed along with other camera glitches like the D20 crit "kill cam" view.

If you want to check out an enemy location just click on their portrait on the move order list. That will snap you right to them.

Its not actually about whether there is a roof or not in the game, its about free camera control which allows you to look up at any time you wish. Given the focus on verticality in BG3 one would think this would be natural and expected to have this ability.

Funny how everyone keeps comparing BG3 to DA and DOS and not Baldurs gate 1 or 2...its their sequel right? lol.
I think the roofs of BG2 look better than all of these games.Pretty good verticality too (for buildings).You have a great sense of scale with your characters. You can go inside a building and come back out at their top/lower floors.

What would you call the top 20 of the genre? And what do you mean by "the genre" in this case? If the genre is CRPGs (which I guess I would consider to be just about any western, non-action RPG), I think I'd definitely have it in the top 20. At one point, it was my 5th favorite game of all time, but too many good RPGs have come out since then, so now it's not. But still in the top 20, certainly.

It is.

Baldur's Gate 2
Planescape: Torment
Jagged Alliance 2
Fallout 2
Ultima VII
Darklands
Battle Brothers
Temple of Elemental Evil
Pathfinder Kingmaker
Fallout 1
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Divinity: Original Sin 1
Disco Elysium
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Underrail
Wastelands 3
Shadowrun Dragonfall
Shadowrun Hong Kong
Stygian
Arcanum
Tides of Numenera
Tyranny
Pillars of Eternity 1
Knights of the Chalice
Fallout Tactics
etc.

and that's on top of my head. I'm sure if I think about it calmly I'd be adding more.

If we are going to be less strict about definitions and include even other types of RPGs for which I have a very soft spot (immersive sims, management/tactical games, action RPGs with enough depth, etc) the list is going to expand considerably with stuff like:

System Shock 1 and 2,
Ultima Underworld 1 and 2,
Prey 2017,
Vampire Bloodlines,
Deus Ex,
Gothic 1 and 2,
Risen,
ELEX,
MAAAYBE even Risen 2 and 3 stretching it a bit (rough start but I ended up enjoying them a lot),
Witcher 1-to-3,
UFO Enemy Unknown (the original),
the modern XCOM 2 War of the Chosen,
Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre,
Battle of Wesnoth...

These are all games that all things considered I enjoyed way more than Dragon Age (and without a doubt more than its sequels).

Yeah most of those games would also be on my list, but I can't imagine putting something like Knights of the Chalice ahead of Dragon Age: Origins. You must have really disliked it! Heh.

Oh, somebody's talking about Dragon Age, so I'll put in my 5 cents.

Mages are better than Templars! I really want that in the future part of the series in Tevinter we can find a non-corrupted Ancient God and wake him up (not in the form of an archdemon). This is the best way to make Tevinter Imperium great again.
I went through the Inquisition specifically for the elf magician girl in order to romance Solas (the ending is great, I'm going to help him + there are such companions that a heterosexual man is better off playing for a girl)
The riddle of the Dark City (Golden City) also needs an answer.

I said everything, thank you everyone for your attention

It's more that KoTC despise the amateurish art had some of the best encounter design in the genre.

It'd be nice just to have a Sims-style thing of being able to page-up/-down the various levels without the game having to guess what you meant and getting it wrong.

DA:O was fun but it didn't hold my attention long enough for me to finish it. DA:I on the other hand is my favorite RPG of this style by far, but BG3 isn't even finished yet, and yes, you CAN get on roofs. I have in the Plundered Village. People are so fast about counting this game out and it's like Early Access doesn't mean anything. I'm sure this game will be good in its own right WHEN IT'S DONE.

i personalyl dont get the hype about DAO, it was a decent game but i dont understand why it was so outstanding to people.
I mostly remembered that the combat felt tedious but that was probably because i felt like enemies would constantly swarm past my melee characters.

I had the same issue with icewind dale, but in icewind dale i did stuff like stack those barrels they had everywhere to stop that from happening.
maybe i just misskilled my characters back then so i didnt have sleep or entangle... idk.

i dont know why people love it. the enemies always seemed realy uninspired to me and the best companion was a dog.

Shush you. It has nugs and is awesome. It's also the closest I've ever managed to get to tactical gameplay without being seriously pwned every time. D:

Soulsborne...
And Dishonored, tho Prey gave more crative tools like a gloo cannon.

As someone who does not have any form of nostalgic value in DA:O and installed/started playing it less than a week ago (thanks again, Abits!) - the graphics are fine, really. I was pleasantly surprised.

The combat however... Oh god, I am not sure whenever I just suck at it in general or if it is my severe distaste for real-time action in solo-player games showing but MAN... I played on the normal/standard difficulty, and I died so many times just trying to clear out the 3 bandit camps that I nearly lost it. ; _ ; And I don't even wanna talk about how long it took me to survive the night outside the haunted kid's castle. , _ ,

The entire thing about pausing live-action and being able to select ONE ability at the time when paused is driving me insane. I am at a point where I have to quick-save after pretty much every single encounter or dialog. XD (but that is not entirely due to difficulty, I am also having weird crashes, probably due to the game's age)

And regarding the camera management... Please no , _ , The scrolled-in option is making me motion sick and the scrolled-out option is clunky when out of combat. I personally absolutely adore the turn-based combat and camera angle in Xcom, DOS2 and BG3. Turnbased combat has really turned out to be something I am much better at than live-action . _ . I couldn't even finish The Witcher, Mirror's Edge or FF XV because I just can't handle the live action combat - I absolutely hate it. >.< So I ended up just watching the entire stories on YouTube instead.

That sounds frustrating. Have you considered playing on easy? There's no shame in it.

I'm in the same camp as you with DAO being one of my favorite games of all time. But I enjoyed it for the story, for the companions, and for origins, not for combat. Combat was super tedious unless you were playing a mage and at least had cool spells at your disposal. But I also really loved DA2, which I know is rare, and absolutely hated Inquisition, which is also rare heh.

I think the good thing DAO and all dragon age games did was the over-the-shoulder camera. BG3 camera feels very restricting when you are trying to zoom into your character and the cut off from the sky makes me dizzy. I tend to want to push further to see whats there in the sky. It might not be a tactical gimmick but more the feeling of the option given which only goes half-way. If the option to view the characters from the back is there, then why not go all the way and add WASD controls and a full camera view.

Yess, WASD + full camera third person mode would be very nice.

Agree with you both about DA:O. Love that game, and do not at all agree it was shallow in any way. Very interesting story, very interesting characters. I am very strongly in favor of classes and hate classless systems, so the game being weak on classes was my only complaint. However, I disagree on combat. I found DA:O combat to be the perfect iteration of RTwP combat, and thoroughly enjoyed how it worked in that game. Very engaging, dynamic, and easy to handle. Also, I did enjoy DA2 as well, but also DA:I, so the DA franchise now is my favorite overall franchise for modern, party-based cRPGs.

Yeah DA:O story and combat were both really engaging to me.

I love DA:O too, but I actually liked the characters and character stories in Dragon Age II a little more.

For me there is a happy medium between complete sandbox/faceless protag games like Elder Scrolls and completely linear fixed actor narratives such as Final Fantasy, that the better Bioware games typically hit for me. And especially because of the time frame Dragon Age II takes place over, I really like the way they could let characters develop over a long period of time.

As for combat in any RPG and D&D in particular, the D&D rule set is not very engaging, 5e classes are built to have 2 or 3 tricks with most mobs designed to work around them.
Combat in Dragon Age: Origins was the best of that series but combat became little more than a weird combo system, with little choice on your end as to how you 'solve the puzzle' of an encounter.

So far in the BG:3 EA, I'm pretty satisfied by the combat so far, with the caveat that from first level to fourth you haven't really hit the levels in D&D that turn your characters into superhuman death dealers. There's a reason E6 Rules where a thing.

Yeah I have always been very puzzled with many people's reaction to DA2. I found it to be a really good game. I completely agree about how irritating it was to have the level designs being constantly reused. But we also know why that happened, because EA forced Bioware to rush the game out the door. But other than that issue, the game was very good.

The biggest problem I had always DAO is how it becomes very easy to play after a few hours, regardless of the level of difficulty.

I think DAO combat was just a little too slow for my tastes, DA2 of course went the other way and made everyone a squirrel on caffeine, DAI was a happy medium between the first two games, but for me they cut out so many skills and spells that already after the 1/3 of the game I felt like I stopped progressing, I've never finished the game. But overall I agree that their RTwP implementation was good, and I do generally like it more as long is it doesn't fall into press X and stuff go boom category.



Same actually. I loved DA2 cast. I also loved the fact that it stepped away from the typical Bioware power fantasy and gave us a protagonist that basically failed at everything, and yet they still managed to keep the story engaging. The conversations might have been sillier and shorter than Planescape Torment, but it got a lot of undeserved hate in my opinion.

Slow is just how I like it.

There is a lot I actually liked about DA2 over Origins. I think the story, setting, and characters are all more interesting. It also had a distinct visual identity, so aesthetically was more enjoyable for me than the first game.

Even the shift from a RTwP tactical RPG to an RTwP action / tactical hybrid RPG was okay with me. DAO was tactically not a very sophisticated game, so there wasn’t much lost.

My biggest problem was how terrible the fights are. Every single fight happens in waves. Every. Single. One. Except a few like dueling the Qunari leader, of course. But you can never just fight a group of thugs in an alleyway. You fight them and their ten buddies who were just hanging out on the nearby rooftops AND their ten friends who also hang out on rooftops but arrive late to parties. It is ridiculously gamey, really breaks my immersion, and makes fighting feel like a chore. It’s the only reason I couldn’t play that game more than once.

The class system wasn't bad, you could pick a class and 2 subclasses, there were tons of customization there. The only thing it lacked were multiclasses.

Also liked the fact that you had to complete quests to unlock the subclasses.

Running same locations again and again doesn't help either. And spikes, spikes everyfookinwhere, Kirkwall was gobbo wet dream.

Okay I can grant that combat encounter design having some issues versus the combat system being bad. Combat system was awesome for me. But yeah the waves of enemies got really old pretty quickly.

Okay, sure. I liked the subclasses and their attached quests too. I just wish they had a slightly greater variety of classes (nowhere near as many as D&D or even PoE) but more importantly more exclusive distinction among the classes, so you can't just load up a character with abilities from every other class.

Yeah this is what I meant by saying repeat use of level designs.

There are faster combat MOD to install to make it more fast paced. And there are item mods and class mods to enhance the game quite a bit and give it more flavor. The story is kind of a cliche tho, and would not make it by todays standards.

Ill go on a limb and say that BG3 combat is also kind of tedious. There is always a best move per turn, and it seems to always (for my mage) to be Hex - scorching ray. So i would say that there is more or equal to do in combat any given time in DAO given the real time combat.

I was worried that's how BG3's combat would end up, but so far I've been balancing using my mages between crowd control and damage which is what I would expect at this level, with the other classes it runs into the same problems that are inherent in 5e

But I'm really not comparing BG3 to the Dragon Age series but with BG:2 (and DOS a little), I liked the combat in Shadows of Amn but it had two kinds of encounters, the first, your enemy has a gimmick that you can either counter or not, or the late game which is all the wizards spamming protections and debuffs while the grunts deal with mobs until the war of attrition allows them to attack the boss. I think that's fun but there's a big gap between the two that I think the combat in BG3 and DOS cater to.

The problem for me with DA2 is how much hp the mobs have in relation to the damage the team is doing.
The fights aren't even tough, I'd say most of the deaths in DA2 were caused by friendly fire.

I think that along with the waves mechanic was honestly just an attempt to pad out the game time. DAO is a loooong game. DA2 is less so, which is understandable considering the truncated production. DA2 was only about 70 hours for me as opposed to the well over 100 hours for a DAO playthrough, but I would have been more than okay with a 40 to 50 hour game with better designed encounters. I imagine BioWare / EA thought many of their fans might feel cheated, though.

This I think speaks a lot to the MMO-ification of CRPGs these days, just inflate your characters stats and then make the mob's hp goes up to match it, while the mechanics never really change. This was all I could think about with DA:Inquisition which was just "watching cooldowns the game".

DA:2 clearly was rushed out the door, (in traditional black isle fashion) but they still prioritized the story which is also what I prioritize in these games so I wasn't too bothered by lack luster combat or the reused dungeon assets.

DA:I has dull conquest mechanic where we gather materials repeatedly in same fashion each map. Storywise was good but tedious tasks (not just the table of cooldowns itself) and camera control in tactical mode... aargh Too grindy.

As a fan of Dragon Age II I actually was more disappointed than anything by the story in Inquisition, the entire through line of the series up to this point had been around the conflict between the chantry and mages, something which is diffused offscreen before the game even starts in Inquisition when some Ancient Evilâ„¢ comes and derails the most interesting part of the plot. So between that and the showy but hollow combat, it didn't really leave me with a urge to replay it or any sequel that might come.

Edit: Who am I kidding, I'll still be there day 0 for Dragon Age IV. I hope they learn from their mistakes, if they even see them as such.

I recently replayed that too, and found its biggest problem was with how irritating it was: not the major bits, by which I mean the setting, story, characters were great, the combat theoretically okay; the irritation started with the re-use of areas. In comparison, the belated ending of Divinity 2 did the claustrophobic feeling really well, everything taking place in Aleroth where you felt confined but the city was interesting and varied and the atmosphere changed significantly from one bit to another. Even the ruined and overrun bits had their own charm, something DA2 lacked.

The "theoretically okay" combat quickly became incredibly annoying with its notorious three-waves-of-abseiling-goons and the worst thing you could do was to increase the difficulty from easy: it didn't make it harder, just just made the irritation more protracted.

But mostly it was the small stuff. The designs and visuals looked ugly and uglier, they were angular and jarring in the same way as Half Life 2, which was like that deliberately, to create unease. But DA2 felt like it was trying to be edgy. The soundtrack was horrible and rather than creating an atmosphere it just pissed me off. I turned off the music and it improved my experience a lot. What I couldn't turn off were minor sound effects, even the weird metallic "neh-eh-eh-eh" you got when opening the menu sometimes felt enough to make me want to throw my computer out the window.

In short, a good game marred by terrible presentation.

DA:O is my favorite game, but I'm biased by the fact that it was the first game I played after taking a 15 year break from gaming! Some fantastic mods out there that vastly improve the graphics and speed up combat (by lowering hit points and increasing damage). The whole Dragon Age trilogy shines for me mostly due to all the character development and writing. Actual gameplay is a mixed bag for all three.

Divinity Original Sin 1 is my favorite RPG for gameplay . . . absolutely love the tactical combat and beautifully crafted encounters and quest design was top notch. I'm one of the minority who feels that Larian dropped the ball on DoS2 and that it is inferior to DoS1 in virtually every way. DoS2 combat was a mind numbing bore compared to DoS1. . . and the story and quests of DoS1 (while very generic and often corny) were much better written, structured, and tied together than DoS2. I could go on.

So far Baldur's Gate 3 is promising to have the gameplay quality of DoS1 and the storytelling, cutscenes, and character writing of Dragon Age . . . . pretty much a perfect combination, for me anyway!

I replay DA:O quite a lot. I often just play through each of the origin stories instead of completing the full game. Mini origin runs.

I've never made it through Dragon Age 2. I just get frustrated with it at some point and just stop playing.

I've now played through DA:I two times. There is a lot of tedium but it's tedium I don't mind. I get the exact same feeling from Mass Effect: Andromeda. It's not great but it keeps me occupied and I can find some enjoyment in it.

The incredible irony is this new BG3 is being compared to either DOS2 or DAO...but not the previous games, BG1 and BG2...quite sad really.

DA2 was much more tolerable by turning the difficulty down to easy: normal/hard just makes it more tedious; and by turning off the music as the soundtrack is awful.

Inquisition I liked but it did suffer from the same thing as ME did from ME2 onwards, it was a bit too actiony and having to go through the various boss' shields and biotics and what-not was a tedious grind. Andromeda was okay, it just lacked some polish and it was obvious it'd been abandoned before it'd even launched.

Oranges is still the best of the Dragon Ages though; and ME the best of the Mass Effects. God I feel like an old fart saying "the first and least accessible one was the best".

I think I did that with Inquisition; as much as I hated the transition to action in 2, it's Inquisition that made me truly frustrated. Especially that I heard they'd brought back "tactical" view... only for it to be possibly the poorest port from console I've ever seen, the controls dreadful and the combat MMO-like. I loved the combat in DA:O, it reminded me of BG2.

I think DA:O is a great game and I recently fired it up for rerun, but it's just really dated now IMO. It's passable, but I find it funny how one can claim it has better control, camera and just about any technical aspect than 2020 games, including BG3.

Yes, I had to make a new game with an easier difficulty. The difference was huuuuuuge. O.o From being way too hard (for me) to being way too easy. X'D

But I'll finish the story on my easy game, and then try again on the normal difficulty. Might just be a getting-used-to issue

Really really disagree. Dao controls are grrat

It has alot better control than BG3. Try running around playing your character instead of click-to-go, and also try to look up at the ceiling or the sky...!

right now it would be better not having the option to zoom in over the shoulder, because it is so frustration how limited it is.

I guess one thing i gotta commend DAO on is that at least one of tis female party members had a nice cheesecake design.

One more issue i just remembered was reading through the background material first and figuring the setting, as in the land, was cool. Ferelden sounded like Celtic Russia / Slavic Scotland set in Argentinia somehow , recently formed nation from loose tribal confederacies and everyone worships Dogs somehow.

And then in the actual game it was ye olde england all over again.

It was pretty much entirely described as such though. Feudal, wet and smells of dog. They even got in a dig at our food. Sigh.

Even putting aside the blatant awfulness of the level design, visual design, combat structure design and so on, the story of DA2 is still awful in itself. The narrative-gameplay integration is non-existent. Every character is an unsympathetic cardboard cut-outs. Companions are blatantly designed for the sake of shippers and fetishists. But most importantly: Nothing you do in the game matters. Not only is the game 100% on rails, you're not even the conductor. Your character drives not a single moment of the plot. Nothing important happens because you choose to do something. You're only ever responding two what the real players of the story do.

The game is a clear example of the computer-game-rpg equivalent of a GM who wants to write a book rather than play an rpg. The writers of DA2 wanted to tell a story and the player is a barely tolerated nuisance that they chose to write around rather than include in that story. They should have just made a straight-forward linear action game with one of their real protagonists as the main character rather than pretend that the player character has a place in story.

If anyone thought the background material sounded more like "Celtic Russia / Slavic Scotland set in Argentinia" (what even) than England then they don't know much about England, to be honest.

How dare they criticise our cuisine, nothing can beat corgi on a stick!

I end up doing this for most RPGs I play. I rarely find a game that has combat that is interesting and fun, so turning it down to easy just makes for a better experience with the game. And the music always gets muted because I am hearing impaired and need every bit of help I can get to hear the things I need to hear in the game.

I was pleasantly surprised with DA2 (as in: it was way better than I was told it is), but yeah, it does have a lot of problems. I actually didn't hate the story - I'm not much of a fan of "plight of the common man" stories, but it was a nice break from saving the world. Templars vs mages was way overdone over the course of the series, but that's more of Inquisition's problem (that it did the same story again). But yeah, now that I think about it, there was little in terms of player/character agency in DA2.

As for characters... I have to agree, with the exception of Varric. Varric is possibly my favourite character from the series. I won't forgive DA2 for what it did to Anders though. I liked him in Awakening and then... yeah. Aveline was ok if bland and Merrill was tolerable if stupid.

When I'm talking to NPCs in Baldur's Gate 3, I often get these strong Dragon Age: Origins vibes. I love it.

I used to say exactly the same thing about Anders until I replayed Awakening earlier in the year and found I didn't like him nearly as much as I remembered. Maybe it's because that depiction of him in DA2 had contaminated his character forever, but it felt more a case of "yeah, now I know what you're about". I now feel that they didn't change his personality, they just expanded on what was already there.

I liked most of the other characters in DA2; perhaps Merrill more than most in that I understood that general vibe of being good at something but lacking the common sense and general life experience to know whether or not it's worth pursuing and alienating everyone in the process. ahem. The one who irritated me the most was Isabela who seemed to be both pointlessly and implausibly flaky.

If only we could have Shale back

Oh, man, I loved Shale!

Know what would be cool? In FR canon, Minsc was petrified for a bunch of years, and that's why he's still alive now. And many people think he's gonna be a companion in BG3. I kinda wish we could get Minsc AS A STATUE in this game. Animated, of course. It would be like Minsc-Shale.

Don't forget the cooking: "put everything into a pot, cook until a uniform grey"


The characters in DAII were the best written in the series to me, better on average than in Mass Effect I'd go so far as to say, they all have a 'fatal flaw' that undoes them but which they strive to overcome, very Romantic, and unlike in most wish fulfillment rpg stories, not all of them succeed. I wish more games had the guts to do that to you.

I also think that a character like Anders has become much more interesting in our current culture, considering we're all having a national dialogue on the nature of Justice.

Andromeda and Inquisition both feel like first drafts to me, Andromeda much more so, but in both they seem to have taken the first idea and because of time constraints just run with it without refining it, or linking it thematically with everyone's story.

Oh no... I do intend to replay DA:O (though not very soon, I have a massive backlog). I wonder if I'll have the same impression.

In general, I liked the whole story with Justice and Anders saving a spirit friend... I'd also be ok with his character struggle being the Vengeance thing. Just not... most of what DA2 did to his character. Edgy terrorist, basically.



I liked how Varric cared for Merrill and arranged for her to not be mugged, haha. It was a nice bit.

Isabela was the only companion in DA2 I didn't have good relation with (almost no interaction). Which bit me in the end, because having high friendship with her (and doing her companion quest?) allowed Hawke to sell her out... I was so salty I coudn't do it.



Maybe I'm a pragmatist, but I'm of the unpopular opinion that obligatory "character flaw" is very overrated. I'm not advocating for Mary Sues, of course, but not every character needs internal struggles, dark past, a crippling flaw, psychological trauma, emotional drama etc. etc. I personally like strong (psychologically) characters that aren't prone to brooding and drama. Or just... fun characters.

Squeak! Her sarcasm doesn't match Minsc tho :P

There's nothing necessarily pragmatic about being a well adjusted individual :p, But I agree with you for the most part, as a fan of comics the grimdark 90s which was so 'hardcore' was insufferable to go through, but I think a distinction should be made between stories involving trauma and stories that wallow in it, all stories are about travelling from point A to point B in order to complete a quest. If your character arcs don't feed into the overall narrative then it's as you say, a sort of writerly onanism, but if everything is thematically linked around these motifs then it should enrich it.

Related to this was the personality system that Hawke had, which depending on your responses to situations, would set Hawke's personallity from serious, aggressive, or flippant. I personally thought this was a good compromise in the era of voiced protagonist and wish it was expanded upon instead of paired down. You could make a Hawke who didn't have time for this emo shit or avoided it with humor, and for the most part they didn't shower you with numbers and confetti to let you know what sort of person on the Renegade/Paragon binary you were working towards like ME and KotOR did, making you more liable to actually 'roleplay' instead of gamifying morality.

Oh, I'm not saying no stories should even involve any kind of drama - but rather that writers shouldn't see it as a "necessary for good writing" checkbox. Same with character development - it's widely believed that if "a character is the same as it was in the beginning of the story, it's bad writing". With which I completely disagree. (Of course, there's also the matter of the definition of "character development". I'm not saying characters should learn absolutely nothing from their experiences - but some great shift in personality/views should be reserved for the stories where it actually has merit.)

I do like stories which have subtle thematic connections between the main characters. Though it's hit or miss for me when it comes to the execution - as much as I love Brandon Sanderson's work and The Stormlight Archive in general - I can't stand the ridiculous amounts of emotional drama and trauma all the protagonists go through. It's very clearly the theme of the series (when it comes to main characters), but it's something I suffer through while rolling my eyes every time a character has a mental breakdown (read: often). Especially disappointing that the author had previously written about how it's not fun to read such stuff. (To paraphrase in short.)

I did have my Hawke sarcastic. But the dialogue wheel was a huge step back, along with voiced protagonist. It kind of worked for Hawke since it was "half-origin" (so to speak), but I still found most of the "nice" and "aggresive" options quite caricatural. Of course, it's still better than to only have "good" and "evil" choices...

I wouldn't say MMOs did that. It was happening before 99.

Origins was designed to be a spiritual successor to BG and BG2.

Inquisition was not. And it's tactical camera was shit. I really like the game, but by god porting FROM console to PC is the absolute best way to f up your combat system and camera controls. Oh and the UI. UI for console game is usually tripe.

So what you're saying is that well written characters are good and poorly written characters are bad, I can agree, if you're writing characters just as a flaw to artificially add drama to a story, that's a problem.
As a fan of Star Trek you'll find no argument from about 'character development' being necessary for a story, Star Trek is a show about ideas, it's about the interplay of philosophies and how men and women of reason deal with problems, that said if a character from Star Trek doesn't change after years on the frontier of space, that's development in itself, it takes a lot of effort not to change too. I'm also a fan of Star Wars, which is all about a fantasia and the heroes who hero in it, if the characters in Star Wars didn't grow and develop during the course of their quest, then the story being told is a big waste of time.

Dragon Age II has an A plot and B plot, 'A' plot is about the Hawke family's struggle to make it in Kirkwald, 'B' plot is about the growing tensions between first the City and the Qunari then the Templar's and the Mages. 'A' plot requires character development because it's story about characters, 'B' plot doesn't, because it's a story about conflicting ideas, how your MC interacts with B plot should, if written well, be informed by his 'A' plot development.
I think we're talking about the difference between drama and melodrama, a melodrama is about empathetically connecting with a fatalistic narrative, drama is about a struggle against fate...I'm making that up, but it sounds good...right?
Don't get me wrong, I like the dialogue system in DA II more because I saw a germ of something that could make the railroaded nature of Bioware conversations more mutable. Old RPGs were about blank slates that you project you're own roleplaying onto, they're cyphers, that's their strength and their weakness because it also means the world has to treat them as everything, which ends up meaning they lack any real depth. The modern RPG takes a middle route between fixed MC and a Cypher MC by making your character a limited number of states, you don't get to make them whatever you want but you also get more interesting interactions with a world that can be written around them more, like a refugee from Ferelden or a commander in the Terran Space Navy. I could really go on about this because it's very interesting to me but it's a little off topic now.

I'm sure HP bloat was a thing before MMOs as was the tank-damage-healer trinity, but MMOs started wagging the dog on this one I think, because they were so popular and because they're designed never to end meaning your characters are spending most of their lifetimes number chasing, so power creep becomes a feature instead of a bug.

I think I only ever used the tactical camera during the dragon fights in Inqusition. And that was mostly because they jumped and flew all over the place and it was easier to keep track of.

Inquisition is such a mess of a game, because I really like parts of it, but it always falls short. The gameplay looks and feels good for a while, until you realize how limited it is at higher levels. As an exclusively PC player, the consoleification of the UI makes me want to rip my eyes out. The levels are beautiful and feel fun to explore... for the first hour. Then you realize you have 15 more shards to look for and a bunch of quests that need to be finished at the war table. Waiting for hours of real life time to finish an annoying sidequest feels wrong on so many levels.

The main story is just one interesting hook that falls flat after another, and the final boss fight is honestly one of the worst boss fights I've ever sat through. Corypheus was such a disappointing villain. Say what you want about DA2, at least the final fight with Meredith looked cool. The Solas reveal was neat and all but then you had to pay for the DLC ending that actually set up the plot for the next game.
I like most of the characters, but then their personal quests never really feel rewarding, and most romances felt awkward too. The returning characters from previous games are completely botched (a redemption arc for Cullen but Leliana becomes bitter and cold? Really?) and worst of all, there's NO ZEVRAN CAMEO.

...I still played it for like 200 hours tho.

To be honest i must agree with most people here ...
Dragon Age: Origins, and Baldur's Gate 3 cannot be compared for many, many reasons ...

But on the other hand, that game have its qualities ... and there is lot quality in it ... and i dont see any reason to not inspire a bit from sucessfull titles.

On the other hand, this adwice should be rather send toward BioWare. :-/
Cant say i didnt enjoy inquisition ... cant say i did enjoy Dragon Age 2 ... but they both dont even reach the ankles of DA:O. :-/

I wouldn't say a story about characters necessarily needs character development. Unless by "story about characters" one specifically means "a story about how a person changes/hero's journey". Otherwise? Imo it should be on case-on-case basis (this character is forever changed by certain events, the other has stable personality and remains mostly the same).



Hmm... I don't know? :P I was just using a popular/everyday definition of "drama", not a "proper" one. As in "a dramatic situation" or something along the lines. For the characters it might make sense in the context of the story (they really have been through a lot of bad stuff), but for the reader it's still "incessant drama" (no matter whether the emotional outbursts are realistic and grounded in backstories, they're still annoying to read through... unless someone enjoys that, I suppose).



Yes, this is something I've thinking about a lot. The Protagonist Spectrum (as I call it). I'm actually planning a long post on it in the context of BG3, though it probably won't be soon, haha. (Procrastination...)

I've always preferred a fully voiced hero. In games where every character except yours speaks, it feels like my character is severely handicapped. The best example is the metro series, especially the last part.

Origins has the best camera and movement out of all CRPG's I've played.

The snappy responsive mouse wheel to quickly switch between an immersive OTS exploration view and a top down tactical combat view is perfect.

Moving just feels easy in DAO.

I had hoped to use this as an example of how character arcs are not the same as character development or how a character changing over the course of a story isn't the same as a character arc.What you're describing is like a Jim Jarmusch film, or certain slice-of-life narratives. John McClane, James Bond, and Captain Kirk are (in most cases) characters whose stories are about overcoming challenges with their character unscathed, a perfectly valid character arc. I would also avoid equating emotional trauma with changes in character, that might be what turns you off but its hardly a big part of genre fiction, which I think it's safe to say most RPGs qualify as.Look forward to it, this topic is very much what interests me about videogame storytelling. I was personally let down by the interesting direction Larian took wtih DOS:II with multiple characters with their own storylines and character traits, but none of them really went far enough to feel either like a character you seriously effected, or as a character with a compelling story you're 'diving' through.

It's gotten very annoying. The reason you have a silent protagonist is so you can get crazy dialogue trees, but if everyone else is voiced you're right back to the two or three variations so they can superficially respond then put you back on topic.
To be fair a lot of RPGs have done both, I'm thinking Deus Ex and KotOR, but between the new Fallout games, and late era Bioware, it's clearly no longer a priority.

I've never been particularly bothered by the silent protagonist mechanic, and I realize it may be basically a necessity in any game where there are simply too many possible permutations for the "main character", but at the same time I've seen very few cases that manage to make it feel jarring as BG3 does currently... And I think after a while I even understood why.

It's mostly because of all the unnecessarily long and awkward shots at our main character:

- not saying a word for seconds
- being framed by the camera for way longer than he really needs to.
- being overly expressive and having way too pronounced body language, to the point of looking like a mime/parody.
- also, quite frankly, being a bit of a wimp. Constantly acting squeamish and/or scared like a kitten at any given chance.

I meant not a specific type of narrative (like slice-of-life), but that any story that isn't specifically about character's journey/change could be valid either having it or not - regardless of the genre. For me, genre and approach to character change are - or should be - mostly independent. (So you could have a silly adventure with lots of character development or a serious, grounded, maybe emotional story where characters stay mostly the same.) And you may right that I conflated "character arc" with "character development", perhaps erroneously.

I used trauma as a source of change as an example, of course it's not always linked.

To get back on track - my main point was that an author shouldn't feel obligated to give every character a "flaw" just because it's considered "good writing". Same with character development. It should be either a) something the author specifically wanted to write about (or simply thought it would be interesting/cool) or b) a "natural" consequence of how the story/character works (a character is betrayed by his best friend and becomes distrustful of people). Imo it's entirely valid to not have those and the work of fiction to be no worse for it.

+1

Sometimes a character is changed by circumstances, at others they alter circumstances through their constancy and drive. Neither are inherently interesting, it is not what is done but rather how and more importantly why.

I've been thinking about it as well and arrived at the same conclusions. You hit the nail on the head with all of these points. (This should go to some thread on this topic, tbh. Larian should see this.)

The easiest way to fix it would be to just keep the camera at the NPC we're conversing with most of the time and only include short shots at our PC from time to time. If that. That would solve like 90% of the "silent protagonist weirdness", I think.

Your point about overacting is a very important one and unfortunately not as easy to fix - but imo it very much should be addressed. Characters acting theatrical might be ok with isometric view, but it's terrible in cinematics. Cinematics mean we DON'T need overly obvious visual cues. We can see the characters very well and everything unnatural/jarring is painfully apparent.

And yeah, about being a wimp... It would be great to be able to choose "demeanor" (sensitive, stoical, aggresive, fearful...) in character creation, but I'm not sure how feasible it would be.

I made a new thread for this tangent. Character agency, characterization, and the illusion of choice are all really interesting topics in RPGs. I hope you continue this discussion.

https://forums.larian.com//ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=729285&

I wonder, if direction is a problem, rather then lack of VO. I never minded silent protagonist in those first person RPGs, like Fallout:New Vegas, or OuterWorlds. KOTORs, Jade Empires, DA:O did feel more awkward, even if it never bothered me too much.

I think using standard shot/reverse/shot editing might be an issue here - in films we cut between characters to be able to see them as they speak. It is however off, to cut back to our character, only for him/her to just stand like a lifeless puppet.

For all you Dragon Age fans here, have you viewed this take based on recently released DA4 information?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsHkG-Y-kZs

As a huge fan of that franchise, I would be very interested in the thoughts of other fellow DA diehards.

Dragon Age Origins is my favorite game of all time. But I think fans are just grasping at straws at the moment (or gathering clicks/views). Bioware has released nothing but some concept art . . . which could mean anything or nothing . . . I find it silly to read too much information into it. DA 4 is still at least 2 years away. I'd rather spend my time playing other games and I'll get excited about DA4 closer to the release.

DAO is my favorite game of all time too, and this game does remind me of it in many ways, but gaming culture, standards, etc. have moved on. I don't expect Larian - or any other company, including BioWare - to make a game I'll like better, but that's okay! I still have Origins; I can replay it whenever I want (about once a year or so). And I can enjoy the new stuff too, even if it'll never live up to my ideal.

I have a book of concept art for The Force Awakens that probably has as much bearing on the sequel trilogy as this clip show will on the next Dragon Age. I get the feeling Bioware is more doing PR after a generation of stumbles than anything.

Have you even seen the video? Or any of the multiple similar videos including a great series of them from Jackdaw? There is way more than just concept art. There are in-game shots and other materials. There is also plenty of commentary from the game's developers and additional bits from subsequent social media posts.

Anyway, perhaps I should word my question differently. As someone who is very excited about DA4, I would be interested in the thoughts of any others who are similarly excited about DA4.

I'll be very interested in how DA4 continues the storylines, as I do quite like the world-building, and enjoyed how the DAI story played out.

It's unfortunate that EA forced Bioware to use the Frostbite engine from DA2 onward; it was obviously more capable of building interesting environments, but it derived from shooter heritage, and has somewhat moved the DA series away from its RPG heritage as a result; not to mention the complete loss of user-content tools that resulted.

My personal preference is that companies don't keep trying to stuff SP and MP into the same package; I feel that the modes often compromise each other, and would much prefer more focused games. It didn't necessarily work out too well at Bethesda ( FO4/FO76 ), but I will be interested to see how well CDPR manages their SP and MP Cyberpunk titles.

In general, I think I'll always cut Bioware some slack, because they have produced some of the games I have most enjoyed; I'm also glad to hear that Mass Effect isn't completely dead, as I actually enjoyed ME:A once I finally played it, well after the launch prolems. The only recent game of theirs I haven't bothered with is Anthem, because it really isn't a SP game or an RPG in any way. They probably could have made an interesting Bioware-DNA game from the World-IP ( or even a Bethesda-Style open-world SP game ), but they chose to make a MP-shooter, which is just not my thing.

Thank you. Interesting. This is the kind of discussion I was hoping for.

From those videos I got the sense that DA4 will move around a lot within the setting instead of being mostly located in one area. Seems to me like they are trying to have the game world be very large but avoiding being an empty or pointless open-world like what large parts of DA:I ended up being. I also like the diversity of characters they seem to be working on, diversity in personality and motivation, that is.

It's been one of my biggest wishes to get from an RPG a very large open world, that is a wholly devoted to a dense urban setting. For this reason, I liked how DA:2 was constrained for the most part to a single city and It's why I'm so looking forward to seeing the "Baldur's Gate" in BG:3.

I found Inquisition's story and world, a bit bland in the end, without a lot of the depth of its previous installments (in fact, jettisoning the build up of those two games in the first act), but thanks to Dorian's insights into the Magisterium, I had fully expected DA:4 to deal in depth with Tevinter politics and the clash between the empire and the Qunari. of course if DA:4 was set mainly in the Captial of a Fantasy Byzantium that would press all my buttons. But I have a lot of experience being disappointed in this regard (Cyrodill anyone?), I can only hope they've learned to revel in their own world building instead of stymieing to set things to zero so as to not scare off newbies, in my experience feeling out of my depth in a fantasy setting is half the fun.

Next gen ? nope, the universe in DA looks too narrow, make me think about DOS (divinity original sin the first) yeah the camera may be better, but i think rpg are better played in TPT, tpt makes crpg more easier to play, and when you get more powers, it is like there is a lack of thrilling, i don't feel like a player but more like a spectator of the game, like if my choices doesn't matter, yeah i know i can pause to send another spell, but for me it is irritating to pause each time, and if you pauseto late because you didn't want to kill that f****** dragon you tried to subue for 1 hour (pillars of eternity) , it's break the rythm of the game, in tpt, you have the full movement in display, it is like you playa true rpg in reallife, you choose your decision carefully, if tpt was implemented in pillars of eternity and Pathfinder, it wasn't for nothing, even DOS 1 and 2 are tpt and they were both SUCCESS.
THERE is even an rpg on tpt,but it is french but it was one of the most played game in France, Dofus, and it used 2D design.
No, Dragon age isn't the future of a crpg, what makes the future of crpg is:
- the replayability
-a lot of choices
- a lot of characterisation ( a lot of races and classes, powers, the size of the party, the more the combination the better)
-the differents settings
-the story, a well introduced story that build the world too
- the number of lvls ( 15 too low, 30 enough)
-the multiplayer (not making it into an mmorpg, but playing with five other players ? perfect)
-TPT or first person(skyrim)

the game who met those prerequisites will be the next gen between 2020 and 2030, maybe it won't be that, but a game using virtual reality if the support get better in the next decade.

Well from what I've seen so far DA4's story seems to be exactly about Tevinter and the Qunari. I also am very interested in such a story. Furthermore, the art showcases a strong female Qunari character as a possible companion.

I suppose Inquisition is sort of typical of Dragon Age: really compelling characters, technically complete lore, enough side-quests, potentially nice-looking world (thinking specifically of the Hinterlands in DAI) but ultimately it's just missing something. I can't say what it is but the world is lacking immersion somehow, it feels quite ephemeral.

I suppose I felt the same way about Oblivion's portrayal of Cyrodiil: I liked it a lot, actually, and contrary to what a lot of people claimed, there was enormous variation in its terrain, from the snow-covered mountains in the north to the tropical swampland in the south, the sandy beaches in the west to the rolling green hills in the east, sprawling forests in the middle, mountain passes, more (albeit cookie-cutter, somewhat) forts and caves and so on than you could shake a stick at. But while it had all of those things it was just a bit... bland. It's hard to say exactly why because it should have worked but didn't. Same with the characters, so many really individual people, more complex relationships than you might expect, actually quite detailed personality traits, schedules and so on. I think it set the bar high and then missed it, and while it was actually pretty well done in a lot of areas it didn't excel in any. Fortunately when running it on the PC nearly all of it is fixable with a huge array of mods to sort out the economy, scaling, to make the cities actually interesting, the Unique Landscapes mods to make those unique areas actually unique. Maybe that was the problem: the scope was too big so the creativity was spread too thin. And there's only so much that can be accomplished with world-builder software to fill in the gaps.

The Qunari are possibly my least favourite race in DA. It didn't help that they altered appearance so much between Origins and Inquisition.

Having said which, my current DA:I character is a female Qunari mage.

I would expect such disregard for the Qun from a profligate like you, its as expected as your fixation on proving our strictures wrong, what are you afraid of? You all live purposeless lives of self-gratifying indolence and waste....for now, Panahedan.

That's a pretty accurate assessment of Oblivion but the real let down of that game for me came from the Imperial city, It felt like such a ghost town, and unlike a place like Vivec, it had no real character. The game I want is one where the whole map of Oblivion is just the city, and maybe some suburbs, with each settlement being like a district in that city, Bruma's where all the northmen live, there's a 'grey town' that all the dark elves congregate. Less bog-standard Romanesque vaulting and more HBO "Rome", a living decadent city. I don't mind if the map area is smaller, my druthers would be to condense everything into a form that actually makes a more interesting urban setting.

As for Inquisition, I think a lot of Bioware games are made by their secondary material, by which I mean the characters, companions, and side-quests that carry you along with the A plot, I found this happening in Dragon Age II, Mass Effect: 2 and Dragon Age Inquisition, and I think each are examples of how it can go right and wrong at the same time.

For Mass Effect 2 the story was mostly about finding skilled companions and dealing with their problems so they can go on a suicide mission. That was good because for the most part the companions where well written, some could even have history with Shepard that deepened their story, the problem though was that the A Plot became little more than a footnote in the narrative, very little happens in ME:2 that has great consequence on the over arching conflict of an invasion by Ancient Evilâ„¢, I think this is one of the things that lead to Mass Effect 3's pacing issues, because they had to establish the stakes and cost of a prolonged and hopeless conflict with the Reapers with only vague foreshadowing coming before.

Dragon Age II was interesting because it seeds plot points in every character's story that eventually come together in a climax you might not have seen coming and in fact have no control over, very Romantic, It starts out as a story about being an outsider in Kirkwall, as you Tony Montana your way into the halls of power, there's a first conflict between a corrupt city you're trying to save, and an authoritarian ideology that believes freedom is a pretense to abuse, a conflict that mirrored in every characters personal quest and in the overarching narrative of the story: the conflict between the Chantry and the Mages, who operate in a similar dynamic. *Spoiler Alert* fear breeds contempt and our denouement sets up a 'Civil War' between Templar, Chantry, and Mage...

Or not, Dragon Age: Inquisition's opening takes place after a summit between Templar and Mage forces is literally blown up by the arrival of an Ancient Evilâ„¢...ho hum, there was an interesting possibility of you believing you were an Herald of Andraste, which could have played into some kind of narrative of Faith in conflict with Magic or Cynicism as our Ancient Evilâ„¢ literally tries to enter Heaven "the easy way" but half way through the game you're pretty much told what to think on these issues. This wouldn't be such an issue if, like you've stated, the companions had more interesting stories to tell, but at least for me I found most of them to be pretty insufferable, (And I like DA:2!), they're personal narratives seem to happen coincidentally to the story of Inquisition instead of as a consequence of it. But that's just me.

Well that's certainly me, but now on to my DA characters...

I think we share a similar view if DA:I. However, because I so love RTwP and hate TB games, and there are so few RTwP cRPGs these days, I was willing to overlook DA:I's problems and enjoy it rather immensely for what it is.

As for TES, surprisingly I found Oblivion way more enjoyable than Skyrim. I finished Oblivion, but have yet to finish Skyrim.

Yeah I have a love-hate relationship with the Qunari. And for me it doesn't help that the Qunari are portrayed physically to be so immense to be somewhat unrealistic. How does any other humanoid even come close to surviving, let alone competing, with such massive brutes in combat? And don't even get me started on the mechanics of Qunari-human/elf sex.

I really enjoyed the Qunari in DAO and DA2. I don't remember what role they played in DAI though. Physical appearance aside, they are very interesting.

I try not to get too hung up by fantastical evolutionary biology, much like how the Klingon's from the original series of Star Trek changed later, I won't make a big deal of it if the games don't. As for their role in the story of Inquisition: not much, apart from reminding the player they're a big player up north. Iron Bull as a companion gets a romance and a story involving him choosing to follow the Qun or look out for his comrades. I think there was a DLC that had a Qunari plot but I can't remember a thing about it.

well they are the only interresting race from that setting and also probably the only realy interresitn concept...

this game sounds cool, when does it come out?

In between Cyberpunk 2077 and Half-Life 3.

Don't forget Knights of the Old Republic 3

Why this discussion is so long? DA:O would have been a good game if not for its extremely bland story: "Hordes of murder hobos kill everything and everyone, just because, and only one person can stop them." The writer of this crap should stop working in the gaming industry. The only way it can be appealing, if you never ever played any other CRPGs and evil for the sake of evil hordes are somehow a refreshing plot to you.

According to the most recent EA earnings report, no earlier than 2022. But my guess would be first half of 2023.

Agreed. That's the 'love' part of my love-hate relationship with them.

But I also thing DA has done some nice things with their elves and dwarfs to make them more unique and different from D&D.

A game doesn't need a complicated or convoluted plot in order to be good.

Dragon Age Origins and DLC was really great.. the companions were varied and fun. The second one was not great but the combat felt great,

Inquisition was abysmal.. its over obsession with religion ruined it for me and the charaters companions mirrored current BG3, they were all horrible, fighting with each other 24/7, they also had a straight white male agenda thing going on in bioware at the time as well so all male romances were horrid, and for me that's what ruined it.

i agree that a game doesnt need a convoluted plot , but considering how DAO got hailed as the second coming of CRPGs and somehow praised for its story, i figure that the central badguy plot might actually need some more nuance to it.

Well that's kind of the thing about Dragon Age: Origins, the main threat, the darkspawn and archdemon, are not as important as the world they are trying to destroy. The biggest conflicts outside of battling monsters are political ones, and despite you running around the country, desperately trying to convince people to help you, everyone's is tied up in their own drama or conflict. Your actions and decisions then decide who your allies in the final battle will be, and what your companions will think of you. The reason people like the plot of DA:O so much is because the characters you meet, and your own investments with the happenings of the world, make you care what happens to it. And that makes the darkspawn threat an actual threat.

If you actually wanted more nuance to the darkspawn though, the entire Awakening DLC did that pretty well (from what I remember, it's been a while). Too bad the sequels kinda stopped giving a shit about the darkspawn, beside Corypheus, though. DA2 and Inquistion really had too many interesting plot threads to follow and they both went with some of the most boring ones for their main plot in the end, bah.

You could also play that one DLC where you play as the darkspawn horde storming Denerim and killing all of you allies lol.

Yes, but unfortunately those are not well explored. Whole middle between Battle of Ostagar and before Landsmeet puts everything on hold, for couple linear “dungeons” which simply aren’t very good or interesting. In spite of “grey” morality conflicts there are extremely one sided (why would anyone side with Templar’s?). They are also rather generic, while still having massive lore dumps. World and people are poorly define, and fragmented and it doesn’t come together. So no, I never felt darkspawn was a threat to anyone AFTER Battle of O.

Lol, did we play the same game? I mainly ran with Varric, Cassandra amd Vivienne (sometimes swapped to Solas or Dorian). Banter was witty, sarcastic and rather friendly.

That's the beauty of having a lot of companions, you can form a clique with the ones you like :p

And none of them had a tadpole, therefore they were not forced to work together. All celebrated together (well, beside you-know-whom) at the end, friendship sparked lol

The best summary

Like, did everyone somehow forget that in BG2 different companions would argue with each other constantly and then fight each other to the death?

Very good point, I honestly don't understand the criticism of a character being 'unlikable' , that goes for companions and player characters. A clash of personalities can be as interesting as a bromide of backslapping and mutual admiration can be uninteresting.
Plus it gives your characters places to go during the story!

No unfavorable comparisons to the old Baldur's Gate games are allowed, now that Baldur's Gate 3 has become the New Enemy In The East.

Next-gen my butt.

When it came to DA2, I remember being fond of the rivalry/friendship relation meter. Sure, it did lock one out of chasing off companions, outside of specific events, but it did give me reason to keep people around whose boots I did not find so tasty.

It also meant I could progress a relationship without having to be a companion’s twice venerated, maker’s chosen sworn sister.

I find myself being a DA II apologist around here for because of the interesting things DA II did with some of the more problematic aspects of NPC-PC interactions, such as making it possible to disagree with someone without it ending their story progression.
I might have gone off on this topic in another thread

The rival\ friendship was really really good. it's a shame we never got a more evolved version of it. I think that although it might not work for every game, for the right settings it is the superior approval system for companions.

If we talk about games in general then I agree, but if we're talking about RPGs specifically then the plot is everything, which is why in my view slashers like Diablo, Dark Souls and other games with stats without substance are not RPGs (they are action games with RPG elements). On the other hand, I consider Star Control 2 a real open world RPG despite it doesn't have formal stats (you can become more powerful by upgrading your ship instead) because it has very well made plot with choices and consequences.

It was poorly implemented in DA2, as if each of your companions has no pride and self-esteem. As if they don't have their own views and opinions. It looked strange and stupid to me. They didn't leave even when there was maximum disagreement. Worst of all, you might have started romance with them. It was funny just to watch Anders and Fenris. Fun interaction.

My opinion is that rivalry is good, but only if it reflects correctly on the relationship between you and your companions.

How about Neverwinter Nights 1 in regards to diplomacy? More referring to how you can talk to an ice dragon and have an in depth conversation without it trying to kill you.

With DA it's like... you just fight it? Though I do like how you talk to the OTHER dragon with that cult (but it's classic "evil" so meh). But what about the MAIN dragon in the game? I also like Logan's personality when you really examine what he's doing, but the game won't point it out for you. He does what he does because he's afraid. While Alastor only wanted blood and vengeance. Unfortunately they kind of drop the ball and don't reintroduce them after the point you decide their fates. Feels like there should have been a very difficult but not impossible compromise option. Considering they're kind of on the same side in the grand scheme of things. I would have liked to actually take the grey warden himself down a notch or two with challenging him about what he does. How he outright murders a family man just for not joining.

If we're looking at things from a diplomatic/challenge the other people level then look at how the first Deus game does it (NOT human revolution. The FIRST one). You outright go "You did this. Why did you do that. What are the options. Why take any side at all. It's complicated and we're all working together even if I'm also having to go against you." It's because even if the game has sides it focuses on challenging people individually. Key word. Challenge. The dice roll system is supposed to represent that. But it's losing something in the process.

Some games have different speeches depending on wherever a roll will succeed or fail. Which means having to know what is said before the roll. The only way to work that in is to add a new speech after a roll (that you can't roll on) that states "Success" or "failure". This way we'd know if we say the RIGHT things or the WRONG things. Wording is extremely important. Are we supposed to pretend we say things emotionally and out of control on failed rolls when it has the same words? Numbers alone just aren't showing this.

I like DA. But I much prefer BG2. Both have a similar way of exploring the world. BG2 however, even if dated, does it in a much more "multiple approach" way. With much more going on in locations. Which also have various outcomes depending on your decision. DA is more like "Point A and options A or B" and that's basically it. It's not as "complex" compared to how BG2 does it. Verdict is still out in regards to 3, due to being a very unfinished game. So far, as it stands, bit too "black and white" for my liking. Hopefully that will change once we get to Baldur's gate itself.

It would be amusing, getting to see the voice actor stutter and stumble over their lines whenever they fail a persuasion or deception roll.

I'm not sure about this one, there's a pretty dramatic point in the game where one of your companions can abandoned you, as for the others, the game takes place over a very long period of time, during which it's pretty clear that your cadre has their own ambitions and goals they pursue completely unrelated to the Hawkes.

As for Rivalry and Romance I don't really see the contradiction. Human interaction doesn't function on a binary like many games reduce it to, moreover I've been waiting for a relationship system in a game that entertains the possibility that people can have asymmetrical relationships or dissonant views of a single person.

Not same plz. In DA2, you had to literally hate each other to start a relationship, not just "slightly disagree". Without the right amount of "rivalry" points, you literally didn't have enough hatred for each other. It's still was two sides, just opposite. To make it the way you want, you need to remove the "approval system". But for people who want to know for sure that they will have this ‘romance’, it makes all more difficult. The approval system gives you a guarantee, not a vague hope. That's why it's easier and more convenient.

Know for sure they will have this 'romance'? I think you're looking at this the wrong way, it shouldn't be something you expect it should be a consequence of roleplaying, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by guarantee, but it seems to be a lot like what I'm talking about with the 'gamification' character relationships

What I can agree with you is the situations in games where you are inconsistent with either your disapproval and your approval, few games think that point gains should contribute to the totality of the relationship they're part of, instead of a tug of war between two extremes,

i.e. a scenario where you are fully in favor of an altruistic apostate mage, your approval goes way up, then you learn he's also a maleficarum and host to a demon, your approval goes way down, in lesser games your relationship with that person will end up in the middle, near where you started, in a better game, these two states don't detract from the other.