Larian Studios Forums General Chat After Seeing the new Dragon Age Trailer so glad BioWare didn't get to make Bg3

A lot of good details on how combat can work, especially that it is entirely up to the player to decide how tactical they want to be and how much they want to get out of the combat system:
https://www.gameinformer.com/exclus...ilguards-combat-abilities-skill-tree-and

3 skills ? Ahahah

I'm good with that. <shrug>

I very rarely ever use any more than a few of the active abilities provided in games. I'd rather have a few that are really fun to use than a whole bunch that I'll never use. You also get passive abilities and abilities to use outside of combat, and all the abilities get multiple upgrades. Seems entirely reasonable.

Yeah... It really sounds like this has all the hallmarks of a garbage combat system.

"Here's a nice wishy-washy and half baked solution, the worsto of both words".
Well suited for people who hate tactical combat AND couldn't spot a good action combat to save their lives, probably.

Personally I couldn't care less about the graphics as long as the gameplay and story are good.

One thing that kind of disappointed me, even though I expected it, is how they're dealing with what happened in previous games. Sounds like they're doing away with the Keep or whatever it's called that kept track of what you did.

It probably would've been too difficult to keep track of the minute details but I and probably others will wonder what happened to so and so from previous games.

I do agree. I didn't like the DAI system and it gave you 8 skills at least - and it was still not enough for me. I hate it, that they simplified it even more. I'm pretty afraid this will become a ME clone combat wise - and that is not, what I want in a game like DA.

I agree completely. It was so fun to randomly come across the results of your past actions in a new game.

Now there won't be any surprises because we're pretty much filling out a form first.

That really looks like garbage. They said the same thing about DA:I (just as tactical as you want it to be) but that game gave me a migraine whenever I tried to position my team tactically.

Not gonna say never... but I won't be pre-ordering this, and I will probably not be buying it at all until 2025 or 2026, after enough people have played it that I can get a sense of it that isn't tainted by hype.

I dunno about that. There seems to be 3 quickslot skills, but in the gameplay reveal they opened up their skill wheel during combat and it had room for far more than 3 skills.

How that actually plays out... I don't know. But it at least looked like you could swap in skills on the fly (If not directly use additional skills from the wheel)

I'm sure I won't care for the combat, but eh, I already feel like so many games don't need a combat system since it just feels (to me) like a drag inbetween the interesting bits. BG3 is an exception since I do actually enjoy the combat there, but generally, I separate games I value for its gameplay and games I value for its story and for the latter I usually just wish there was a way to skip combat entirely. I don't play DMC5 for its story and I don't play VTMB for its combat.

DA2's combat actually felt worse than DAO's to me. What a miserable experience to go through. It felt like they were adding filler by spamming the same enemies every night, it was horrible. It doesn't help that I hated the rest of that game.
DAI's was much more comfortable than its predecessors if only because it was pretty straightforward, to me.

Well, I'll just say this and leave it at that: as far as I am concerned, Bioware (or any other RPG developer) couldn't possibly create a combat system worse than the BG3 combat system, and as such if BG3's combat system can be tolerated then so can DA4's system.

They explained this by noting that because the game release time gaps between the games is so large it is very difficult to create a system to accurately read data from saves that old, created on very different game systems and engines. And furthermore, most people won't still have old saves anyway (I don't, for example). Seems reasonable to me.

Like I said I understand why they didn't do it. But it's not about having saves. They have a website Dragon Age Keep that kept track of your choices back to the first game.

And seeing how Varric is still in it and has been since the second game it would've been natural for me and others to ask about the characters from that game.

You are of course welcome to your opinion, but IMO Bioware has repeatedly created combat systems that are inferior to BG3, and its not even close. Even their best games had mediocre combat. I loved BG1 and 2, but the combat was not great. Kotor was awesome, but the combat was mostly just an exercise in face rolling. Jade Empire: awesome game, terrible combat (this was Bioware combat at its nadir imo). Dragon Age Origins had combat that I enjoyed, but even there it had flaws (and I like BG3 better). After DA:O party based combat has experienced strict decline.

I get that you really hate BG3, but I am struggling to relate to your claim here.

DA:I was the first Bioware game that I was unable to finish, primarily due to the degree to which I loathed the combat.

It's pretty easy to see actually:


They simply dislike turn based combat (And apparently real-time combat... So seemingly they hate all combat?)

As BG3's combat is turn based, it's natural they would dislike it.

Personally, the only kind of combat I dislike is RTwP, I think it's an abhorrent design that simply takes the worst aspects of turn based and real time and mashes them together into a terrible and frustrating experience (Though, this happens to be the "Classic" CRPG combat which leaves my desire to replay classics like BG1 and BG2 very much lacking)

Outside of that, TB or Real Time (In various forms) is mostly fine. Depending on how it's done. Most games don't particularly do either spectacularly (Though some modern games have been improving on turn based and mitigating one of the main complaints about the format by having all enemy characters act at the same time thus speeding up combat as a whole)

There were quite a few cRPG's prior to BG1 and BG2 that used turn based combat, so I do not think it is correct to call RTwP "classic" crpg combat. RTwP was more like a chapter in the story of cRPG rather than a full volume.

Examples: Wizardy (all of them), Might and Magic (all of them), Ultima I through V.

EDIT: actually, might and magic 6 through 8 had a hybrid turn base and real time system, but you could run it mostly turn based if so inclined.

Gold box games were turn based too.

Hence the quotations around "Classic"

It was used for some popular old titles and is what's used by more modern titles that attempt to be throwbacks to "Classic" CRPG's (With titles like Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity, DA:O etc)

They tend to look at the BG1/2 and NWN era where there was more RTwP and use that as their basis for their systems. Even if there was TB before and after it's usually an afterthought for their design... (PoE2 did eventually add in TB mode for example. But was initially only RTwP and PoE1 remains entirely RTwP)

Regarding the combat, I'm eager to give it a try and see for myself. But, since combat is not my priority in games, I only care that it's not too hard to handle or tedious/boring. Still subjective goals, though. I've tried various types, and it mostly has been fine, so we'll see with that game.

Regarding the keep, I understand the concerns. For the most part, I've seen people bothered by a restriction in the number of things to choose for, or for the spoilers it could provide when recapitulating in the beginning. Yet, I can understand that they went with that, I guess. It's set in Northern Thedas, 10 years or so after Inquisition. I don't expect that a great many choices in previous games are really relevant here. And there are maybe other technical aspects. For example, I'm not really sad to not have to use an online intermediary linked to an EA account (my personal preference).

As for the Keep as I said I didn't really expect them to include much or anything.

But they didn't have to put past characters in the game at all. They could've just mentioned them like they did in Inquisition. As I said Varric is still there so you could've asked about Merrill or Aveline for example.

@ Veilburner I'm going to precise one thing, because it seems to me you think that they didn't replace the keep with anything, so sorry if I misunderstood you. We won't be able to use the keep for this one, yes. But we will be able to choose certain things regarding past games at the start (Corinne Busche calls it a sort of "previously on Dragon Age"). We just don't know right now what those choices will be related to.