Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Dragon age Origins - Next gen RPG

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 Evil™, 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 Evil™...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 Evil™ 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.