Bioware is nothing close to the company it used to be - EA being the destroyer of IP's for the quick buck - but wow was I shocked at how trash the new Dragon Age game looks.
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I hear most of the team left BioWare from the original DA. The Art alone looks like a mix between Fortnight and Overwatch. Cartoonish, sanitized pablum and nonsense. A bit of a change from the Grimdark realism of the original games - even up to Inquisition - that we all fell in love with.
Boy, imagine what they could have done with the BG IP. Yikes.
While I'm not fond of the artwork and indeed a lot of devs are not with BioWare anymore, I don't think, it's good form to bash a company in another companies forum. Time will tell, if the new DA game is any good or not and I will hold my vote until the final game has released. Just because I don't like the artwork, I won't trash the game based on one trailer I don't like the artwork of nearly all jrpgs, but a lot of them are classics. At least Scout Harding is a companion, so that is good.
"We are all stories in the end. Just make it a good one."
From the trailer alone, the end parts that seemed to be actual in-game footage did look slightly better than the "Not representative of the game" cinematic stuff.
Overall, artstyle is the least of my concerns when it comes to a Bioware game. I'll want to see the writing before I judge anything (My hopes aren't high given Bioware's recent stuff, but I can always be surprised)
fwiw, here are some leaks from last year that show off the Art style and combat: https://imgur.com/a/J2xVQlT (No real spoilers and it just looks like DAI artstyle and it' looks to be more of a aRPG)
I just hope they conclude whatever story they've been building up since DA2/DAI.
BioWare giving a huge middle finger to the folks who have been playing the DA games since 2009. (Much like Larian did with the original BG characters, but admittedly not as badly.)
That having been said, I'll play it once the modders have fixed it. It's on my Steam wishlist, maybe someone will gift it to me like they did BG3 so I won't have to spend any money on it.
I already knew and even said here before that Bioware's dead, but I didn't expect the trailer to be THIS bad. The cartoonish art, the Marvel like humour and the presentation of the characters are a complete turn-off. This doesn't look like a dark fantasy whatsoever. Currently four times more dislikes than likes, lol. RIP.
There's some actual gameplay video out tomorrow apparently (11th June). I'm reserving judgement until then though I wont be holding my breath given the state of gaming these days.
That dragon monster at the end looked pretty cool. After an hour or so of playing any game, the graphics "wow" factor kind of wears off on me. For example, NWN II is just fine, despite its age. It makes me wonder, what if they made a game with graphics like South Park? Maybe then I'd complain, at least for a little while.
Still, Bioware has always been Load/Black album era Meh-tallica. At best, it's a decent introduction to the good stuff, often made by somebody else. At worst, it's that stuff industry-processed into something for people who don't actually quite LIKE that stuff. And some incarnation of Bob Rock had been with them from the very beginning, ensuring that they'd always chase the lowest common deniminator, whatever the price. Remember that even Baldur's Gate only came to be when Interplay suggested doing a party-based D&D game rather than the MMORPG/RTSish game they were pitching to them -- two of the biggest trends you could chase mid 1990s. I mean, Origins was pitched as a "back to the roots" kind of project barely an European Football Championship after BG had shipped. That's their story in a nutshell.
So if gameplay shown makes this the first time that you're confused about a Bioware title -- welcome to the club after twenty odd years. That's been in their DNA all along: "We want Call Of Duty's / Fortnite's / Whatever's Currently Popular audience now!" The reason that BG3 at all exists is precisely, bingo, Bioware. And not in a "good" way.
So if gameplay shown makes this the first time that you're confused about a Bioware title -- welcome to the club after twenty odd years. That's been in their DNA all along: "We want Call Of Duty's / Fortnite's / Whatever's Currently Popular audience now!" The reason that BG3 at all exists is precisely, bingo, Bioware. And not in a "good" way.
This is my read as well. I think they look at a lot of spreadsheets of what's the most popular thing and then they mold whatever they are currently making into an aspect of that. So by that metric this trailer/new art style probably makes sense to them because what's more popular than Fortnight/Overwatch/League of Legends.
Thankfully they skipped Roblox/Minecraft and went to the third most popular game on the list. Ha!
I've heard the actual gameplay is quite a bit better, and darker and that this reveal trailer is the result of a marketing team that is fully up themselves. I guess we find out in the next few days.
Every Dragon Age game is different though. Tone changed from DA:O => DA2 => DA:I.
That’s been the strength and weakness of the series, as if you really liked one, you probably didn’t like the others that much.
The trailer didn’t look appealing to me either, but none of DA trailers did. I am more interested in seeing the game proper… well, curious would be a better word. I am not particularly fond of any of the DA games, and didn’t like BioWare game since Mass Effect2 so I don’t expect for things to change now.
Every Dragon Age game is different though. Tone changed from DA:O => DA2 => DA:I.
That’s been the strength and weakness of the series, as if you really liked one, you probably didn’t like the others that much.
The trailer didn’t look appealing to me either, but none of DA trailers did. I am more interested in seeing the game proper… well, curious would be a better word. I am not particularly fond of any of the DA games, and didn’t like BioWare game since Mass Effect2 so I don’t expect for things to change now.
Not only the tone. Bioware had been band-wagon jumpers all along. But more recent David Gaider shared a bit of additional insights why Origins was bound to be a one-off in terms of mechanics. Even if Bioware themselves had wanted to keep the formula (which was meant to be a throwback to BG) -- contributing to veterans such as Brent Knowles to leave for good earlier on.
In a sense, the only constant they build their company around to bank upon was their writers... Everything else has always been up for completely grabs and kept simple, with the goal of aggressively targeting non-RPG players. Until a few of those writers felt pissed and left as well. Writers are of some importance to any narrative piece of work. But in mechanically lighter games, they carry the bulk of the experience -- see visual novels at that most extreme. https://www.eurogamer.net/david-gaider-claims-bioware-quietly-resented-writers
Probably for the better what's happened ten years ago with initially mainly crowdfunding and the growing indie scene with digital distribution. Oh, and play SKALD, it's cheap and fun!
Varric's hair colour gets darker with each game, it seems.
Honestly, adopting the "hope is the first step on the path to disappointment" mentality is real healthy these days. ~3 years of waiting for BG3 to get what we got was already disappointment enough, and Bioware haven't made a good game since DA2 (yes, I consider ME3 and DA:I bad for many reasons). To be fair, a lot of fault does lie with EA rather than the devs themselves (back then the Zeschuk/Muzyka duo was still around, and the writers haven't gone off the deep end quite yet), and EA is still there, looming, shoving its rotting tendrils up whatever orifice it can get to.
As for the trailer, it's "let's play a 'spot the modern gaming trends' game" to a stupid degree. Yes, Origins' Manson trailer was really... something... back in the day, but you had to appreciate the sheer ridiculousness of it all. And then, since Inquisition, everything and everyone look like they're straight out of a YA novel, glossy and inoffensive. Boring.
I liked the trailer, and I’m excited to discover the game. I enjoyed seeing companions and factions that were in Tevinter Nights (the tone there was dark enough for me) and The Missing. I’ll sure watch the gameplay reveal with interest.
The gameplay trailer today looked a lot better than the trailer yesterday tbh. It migh tactually be a decent game. I don't like the action fighting style, but I think, most people prefer it. And I hope it has a bit more substance than DAI. It certainly has that griettier and darker look again, which is good.
"We are all stories in the end. Just make it a good one."
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