mechaerik
Tuturuu!
Agreed, although I bumped the difficulty up towards the end.
Dragon Age III: Inquisition
- Thread starter Nintz
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Agreed, although I bumped the difficulty up towards the end.
civvver
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Actually I think it's more necessary on harder difficulties. Nightmare your party can die real fast if they don't stay out of harm's way. But on normal you can solo every fight except some bosses.
Actually people have completed nightmare solo games too, I have no idea how. I always get my butt handed to me but I play it for the rpg/story not the combat.
Nintz
King of the Britons
Really? Hm. I suppose I would guess they're running a really weird hybrid build, such as a Creation/Primal Mage with Arcane Warrior and Spirit Healer.
Nintz
King of the Britons
That... would be a very slow game. I finally forced myself to play a tank in the last playthrough, and it was almost painful. The last part with Loghain was even worse.
Disgustipated
Deity
Just noticed this thread after a short absence. And I agree. There was nothing wrong with the first game (it's maybe my second favorite RPG of all time). The 2nd game was complete arcade style combat garbage. They need to realize fans will be patient with a 2 handed sword swinging a realistic speed (unlike DA2 which had comical 2 handed sword animations). Skyrim is evidence of this. 2 handed weapons in that game are slow, as it should be. DA2 messed the speed of combat up very much. Skyrim is proof that slower combat can work.
I'm not very excited about DA3. It will be a wait and see approach for me. And more mage templar crap. Ugh. I am sick of that stuff. 2 did it to death. As the dwarf companion (his name escapes me) said at the end of DA2. I've had enough of mages and templars (I'm paraphrasing here). My main problem with this plot/story is this is a weakness in the Dragon Age universe. I never understood how if mages cannot be outside the circle of templars, how can you have mages in your party and be shooting off spells left and right? Highlighting a plot with mages and templars further opens this plot hole.
edit: I forgot my other major gripe about DA2 (aside from previously mentioned things like lack of dialogue, lack of areas, linear, too much combat- pretty much everything in the game actually
). Lack of stealth. I admit I almost never stealthed in DA:O, but sometimes it was nice to scout around. But I can't do it in DA2. A RPG without stealth? It's almost unheard of. And I just can't accept the lack of choices in the game. Even if I never stealth I want the ability to stealth. Yes I know you can stealth in DA2, but it only lasts like 6 seconds. And you can't move too far away from the rest of your party. Lack of choices = bad rpg in my opinion.
Disgustipated
Deity
Just one more post. I have more thoughts. Seeing as DA:O is my 2nd favorite rpg (behind Fallout New Vegas) I have lots to say.
Setting
Setting seems okay to me. Although I think the French accents will get on me after a while if they decide to do that (and if they didn't it would be weird if they no longer have french accents). Having Lelianna in this game would make up for it (although her accent is hard to understand, her voice is so pretty )
1.5 times DA:O isn't even pseudo open world. DA:O wasn't that big (Baldur's Gate was much larger for example). It's my only gripe about DA: O. No large outdoor areas to explore. They are trying to BS us by calling it pseudo open world.
Gameplay
Tactics are nice, but the flow and speed of 2 scares me. Frankly, I think they will screw it up. Why can't they learn from Skyrim? If the game is good enough, people will accept combat that somewhat obeys the laws of physics (yes I know rpg's don't really obey the laws of physics- characters doing all this stuff in full plate mail is ridiculous, but you get my drift).
3rd new character? There were already 3 classes. Do you mean a 4th class? Which brings up the skill trees in DA2. I don't like them. DA:O skill trees weren't the best, but they were better than the skill trees in DA2.
Not sure. Who cares about multiplayer. A game can sell well without multiplayer (back to Skyrim again, but even DA:O is another example). It will probably be implemented something like in X-com: Enemy Unknown. Separate from the main campaign, just battlefield type events.
No comment really. I have to wait and see if this is an improvement. I just hope they get rid of that stupid dialogue wheel. Good rpg's have lots of dialogue. Give the kiddies the ability to skip it if you want, but give us hard core RPG fans the dialogue we crave. I don't want an action game, I want an RPG, where I role play.
The only good news I've read so far. Although the time passing thing in DA2 might have worked if the environments changed more significantly over time. But overall the art design of DA2 was poor (settings were too clean, and not enough detail). More importantly the characters didn't change over time. So it just felt like the same time really.
I guess this is okay. Have to wait and see how it is implemented. I didn't care for the companion upgrades in DA2. And god forbid I forgot to get an upgrade during a certain act. I had to look them up to make sure I didn't miss any (I still missed one).
This is good I guess. It's the only thing that somewhat redeemed DA2. Seeing Alistair come in was a treat.
Plot
See my above rant. Varric saying "I've had enough of mages and templars" sums it up nicely. It's a plot hole having a mage in your party running around throwing spells left and right. Having a plot focus on this exclusively highlights this plot hole.
The first really excellent thing I've read about DA3. Let's hope they implement it even more than DA:O (which after the initial areas, your origin had little effect aside from a few dialogue options). But this is the greatest part of DA:O
By done are you saying neither character will get much mention in DA3? I'm okay with that. It avoids trying to figure out what is canon.
Setting
Setting seems okay to me. Although I think the French accents will get on me after a while if they decide to do that (and if they didn't it would be weird if they no longer have french accents). Having Lelianna in this game would make up for it (although her accent is hard to understand, her voice is so pretty
)1.5 times DA:O isn't even pseudo open world. DA:O wasn't that big (Baldur's Gate was much larger for example). It's my only gripe about DA: O. No large outdoor areas to explore. They are trying to BS us by calling it pseudo open world.
Gameplay
Tactics are nice, but the flow and speed of 2 scares me. Frankly, I think they will screw it up. Why can't they learn from Skyrim? If the game is good enough, people will accept combat that somewhat obeys the laws of physics (yes I know rpg's don't really obey the laws of physics- characters doing all this stuff in full plate mail is ridiculous, but you get my drift).
3rd new character? There were already 3 classes. Do you mean a 4th class? Which brings up the skill trees in DA2. I don't like them. DA:O skill trees weren't the best, but they were better than the skill trees in DA2.
Not sure. Who cares about multiplayer. A game can sell well without multiplayer (back to Skyrim again, but even DA:O is another example). It will probably be implemented something like in X-com: Enemy Unknown. Separate from the main campaign, just battlefield type events.
No comment really. I have to wait and see if this is an improvement. I just hope they get rid of that stupid dialogue wheel. Good rpg's have lots of dialogue. Give the kiddies the ability to skip it if you want, but give us hard core RPG fans the dialogue we crave. I don't want an action game, I want an RPG, where I role play.
The only good news I've read so far. Although the time passing thing in DA2 might have worked if the environments changed more significantly over time. But overall the art design of DA2 was poor (settings were too clean, and not enough detail). More importantly the characters didn't change over time. So it just felt like the same time really.
I guess this is okay. Have to wait and see how it is implemented. I didn't care for the companion upgrades in DA2. And god forbid I forgot to get an upgrade during a certain act. I had to look them up to make sure I didn't miss any (I still missed one).
This is good I guess. It's the only thing that somewhat redeemed DA2. Seeing Alistair come in was a treat.
Plot
See my above rant. Varric saying "I've had enough of mages and templars" sums it up nicely. It's a plot hole having a mage in your party running around throwing spells left and right. Having a plot focus on this exclusively highlights this plot hole.
The first really excellent thing I've read about DA3. Let's hope they implement it even more than DA:O (which after the initial areas, your origin had little effect aside from a few dialogue options). But this is the greatest part of DA:O
I'm not sure what you mean by done.
By done are you saying neither character will get much mention in DA3? I'm okay with that. It avoids trying to figure out what is canon.
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
They mean that you will be playing neither The Warden (your character in DA:O) or Hawke (your character in DA2) and will be playing a new character. The Warden will not play any significant role and Hawke will be minor at best probably.
Nintz
King of the Britons
I paraphrased. The basic gist was that they were for sure making it drastically larger than either previous game, and attempting to take heavy cues from a game like Skyrim.
I meant a third new protagonist. Origins had the Warden 2 was Hawke, 3 is a new player character.
Pretty much. While the writing team seemed to hint that there may be a return of both characters in a theoretical Dragon Age 4, Dragon Age 3 will not have any more than a passing mention of either.
PhroX
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Huh..I missed this thread too. Ah well, as someone who's a fan of both games (IMO, they both had their flaws, but nothing major enough that I didn't thoroughly enjoy them), I'm almost certainly going to buy 3 when it's released, but I'm a little worried about some of the features listed...
If it means more ridiculous French accents like the ones in MotA (especially the guy who tries to steal the wyvern kill), then it should be amusing...
Why? Whats the obsession with open world? If I want that I'd play an Elder Scrolls game. I play Bioware RPGs for the story and characters, not the wandering around ignoring the main plot.
Please tell my this is a typo and it's the other way round. Origins had the right level of speed for the combat, but the "tactics" involved mindless healspam like a bad MMO. 2 has accelerated to silly levels, but by fixing healing and making enemies attack from all directions mid combat actually meant you had to think a little about how to mitigate damage and use crowd control (not saying it was particularly complex, but it was a step up from the first). Now it looks like we're going to have everything super fast and mindless...
Sure, always expecting this. Not gonna complain. In fact, I like this. Having the same guys saving the world every time gets tedious
Not a bad thing unless it actually interferes with the single player (yes ME3, I am talking about you...). Having the option to go multiplayer is nice. Being forced to in order to properly finish the game is not.
As long as it looks OK and doesn't kill my system, I couldn't care less what engine it uses.
Meh. Sure DA2 overdid the reuse of environments, but doing it a bit doesn't bother me and totally avoiding it seems a waste of dev time.
Good, but could be better.
Kinda goes without saying. Fans would've killed Bioware had this not been there.
Again, kinda obvious. I just hope there's more "sides" you can join than just those two.
Good. The origins in, well, Origins, were crap - glorified tutorials which made effectively no difference to the game. Relegating them to background story is good,
Expected given the new character and setting. They could hardly bring in your old characters without annoying people by having them act in a way that didn't quite match how people had played them...
So overall...I'm a little worried about the gameplay side of things. That said, I'm sure I'll like it (the only Bioware RPG I haven't is the NWN OC), it's more a worry it'll be good rather than great.
If it means more ridiculous French accents like the ones in MotA (especially the guy who tries to steal the wyvern kill), then it should be amusing...
Why? Whats the obsession with open world? If I want that I'd play an Elder Scrolls game. I play Bioware RPGs for the story and characters, not the wandering around ignoring the main plot.
Please tell my this is a typo and it's the other way round. Origins had the right level of speed for the combat, but the "tactics" involved mindless healspam like a bad MMO. 2 has accelerated to silly levels, but by fixing healing and making enemies attack from all directions mid combat actually meant you had to think a little about how to mitigate damage and use crowd control (not saying it was particularly complex, but it was a step up from the first). Now it looks like we're going to have everything super fast and mindless...
Sure, always expecting this. Not gonna complain. In fact, I like this. Having the same guys saving the world every time gets tedious
Not a bad thing unless it actually interferes with the single player (yes ME3, I am talking about you...). Having the option to go multiplayer is nice. Being forced to in order to properly finish the game is not.
As long as it looks OK and doesn't kill my system, I couldn't care less what engine it uses.
-No re-used environments.
Meh. Sure DA2 overdid the reuse of environments, but doing it a bit doesn't bother me and totally avoiding it seems a waste of dev time.
Good, but could be better.
Kinda goes without saying. Fans would've killed Bioware had this not been there.
Again, kinda obvious. I just hope there's more "sides" you can join than just those two.
Good. The origins in, well, Origins, were crap - glorified tutorials which made effectively no difference to the game. Relegating them to background story is good,
Expected given the new character and setting. They could hardly bring in your old characters without annoying people by having them act in a way that didn't quite match how people had played them...
So overall...I'm a little worried about the gameplay side of things. That said, I'm sure I'll like it (the only Bioware RPG I haven't is the NWN OC), it's more a worry it'll be good rather than great.
Nintz
King of the Britons
I actually agree. As someone who only played Skyrim for a couple of weeks (as opposed to months on end) I was dissapointed by this announcement. I'm hoping it doesn't detract though.
Err... what? The combat of DA:O was all about managing threat with your tank, setting up powerful combinations, buffs, de-buffs, moving rogues to backstab, etc. It actually forced you to think more than most RPG's I've played. Yes, healing was important, but if you have a well-speced tank, it becomes drastically less important. In 2, I literally had 1 rogue and 3 mages in my party (normal, obviously. Probably wouldn't work at higher difficulties). Anders healed, everyone else skill spammed. There was no thought. None. Every single battle was the same. I was usually able to kill an entire wave before part 2 showed up. Even thefirst boss battle played the same, just moving my mages around to different corners of the room.
Honestly, I would rather we go back to the first system. Some fine-tuning is necessary obviously, especially the typical reliance on healing you mention, but I thought most of the system worked well for me.
Disgustipated
Deity
I prefer the first system, but yes I'll admit too many heals were required (I played the level above normal I forget what it was called). This turned my mage with an array of many cool spells into a heal-bot spamming one heal spell over and over after every cooldown. (or alternating between mass heal, regeneration etc.). So in order to see all the pretty spell effects I have to bring 2 mages. Which leaves room for Lelianna for rogue and my tank. I wish I could have 5 party members. It's nice to have a warrior dps like Ogren or Sten (although I sometimes have them be the tank).
And I agree having multiple mages in DA2 is very powerful. Having my main be the mage on my second playthrough made things very easy (I took Anders or Merrill as well).
I would be "okay" if they got rid of healing all together and just had potions. It frees up your mage to do other cool stuff.
And yes I agree open world isn't the be all and end all, it is still pretty cool to be able to explore. Yes I've played 5 times as much Dragon Age as I have Skyrim. I mainly only use Skyrim as a reference because it is proof that combat doesn't need to be arcade style fast and still be able to sell millions of copies. DA:O is a small world, you can't argue with that. And 1.5 times isn't open world. Bioware is high if they expect us to believe that. And there's no sense filling up the world with pointless animal attacks. I just like to have large outdoor areas to explore. DA:O lacked this, and the Wounded coast in DA2 was lacking as well.
And I agree having multiple mages in DA2 is very powerful. Having my main be the mage on my second playthrough made things very easy (I took Anders or Merrill as well).
I would be "okay" if they got rid of healing all together and just had potions. It frees up your mage to do other cool stuff.
And yes I agree open world isn't the be all and end all, it is still pretty cool to be able to explore. Yes I've played 5 times as much Dragon Age as I have Skyrim. I mainly only use Skyrim as a reference because it is proof that combat doesn't need to be arcade style fast and still be able to sell millions of copies. DA:O is a small world, you can't argue with that. And 1.5 times isn't open world. Bioware is high if they expect us to believe that. And there's no sense filling up the world with pointless animal attacks. I just like to have large outdoor areas to explore. DA:O lacked this, and the Wounded coast in DA2 was lacking as well.
civvver
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I don't want an open world either just more zones with variety. Origins was fine in that regard. 2 wasn't, you were in one city with the occasional trip to the shore or mountains where the elves were and those zones were extremely small.
I liked combat in origins except that it basically required you to have a dedicate mage healer which meant you either used wynn for every fight or turned morigan (or the warden) into a heal bot and didn't get to use their cool mage spells. Mages have probably the coolest talent trees with the most spells and a variety of effects but you have to have a dedicated healer and there's not enough mana to spam spells and heals. Sucks.
It also pigeonholed you into having a tank. That doesn't necessarily mean warrior with a shield, but it did mean someone with high mitigation like a super high dex rogue or a 2h champion or shale in tank mode.
So when it comes right down to it two spots of your 4 man party must be filled by heals and tank. Kinda ruined your options there. I think they could fix this in 3 by making heals cost way less mana, or by giving heal type abilities to more classes like lifesteal on a rogue or something, or by making cc a viable option vs tanking and healing.
I liked combat in origins except that it basically required you to have a dedicate mage healer which meant you either used wynn for every fight or turned morigan (or the warden) into a heal bot and didn't get to use their cool mage spells. Mages have probably the coolest talent trees with the most spells and a variety of effects but you have to have a dedicated healer and there's not enough mana to spam spells and heals. Sucks.
It also pigeonholed you into having a tank. That doesn't necessarily mean warrior with a shield, but it did mean someone with high mitigation like a super high dex rogue or a 2h champion or shale in tank mode.
So when it comes right down to it two spots of your 4 man party must be filled by heals and tank. Kinda ruined your options there. I think they could fix this in 3 by making heals cost way less mana, or by giving heal type abilities to more classes like lifesteal on a rogue or something, or by making cc a viable option vs tanking and healing.
When I played DAO with my Elven mage (Energy specialist), my party consisted of Alistair or Ogren, Leliana or Zevran and almost always Wynn over Morrigan. My group was noticeably more tender when Morrigan was subbing for Wynn.
civvver
Deity
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That's my point exactly, Wynn was almost mandatory unless you were able to level morrigan to equal footing or the warden. Which also meant you had to pick the mages over the templars in the mage tower too so she wouldn't abandon you. Which I always would side the mages regardless out of principle, but still!
Also the combat animations in origins suck completely. Even though 2 was too arcade, anime style at times, I much prefer those animations. The dwarf 2h swing is atrocious.
So for 3 let's hope for a middle ground and combat that lets you level a party any way you want. Or at least a ton of companions to choose from so if you do have to keep the holy rpg trinity (warrior, mage, priest archetypes) you can choose from several of each. I wouldn't have minded too much having to use a healer in origins if I could've picked from several vs only wynn.
mechaerik
Tuturuu!
I really disliked Morrigan; I ditched her immediately upon receiving Wynne.
I also really dislike the DA2 combat animations; in DAO the weapons looked like they had real weight, but in 2 it was like they were all made of paper mache.
Nintz
King of the Britons
Bump with a new video.
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...-dragon-age-inquisition-39-s-development.aspx
It appears that the Dev team is focusing immensely more on the story aspects of the game, as compared to number 2, something that gives a little hope to me. The fact that they are quite concerned with save game importing as well makes me think they are definitely not going to risk a ME3-esqe "You Choices Matter" debacle.
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...-dragon-age-inquisition-39-s-development.aspx
It appears that the Dev team is focusing immensely more on the story aspects of the game, as compared to number 2, something that gives a little hope to me. The fact that they are quite concerned with save game importing as well makes me think they are definitely not going to risk a ME3-esqe "You Choices Matter" debacle.
Akka
Moody old mage.
The fact that Bioware is keeping a rather low profile about it, that they've been working on it for a while now, and considering the beating they've taken with DA2, TOR and the ending of ME3, I tend to think they are honestly putting a lot of efforts to make DA3 actually good.
I'm not ready to place any bet though, because whatever their intentions, I'm afraid they still have the mentality of desperately trying to "reach a wide audience" instead of building on their core fans, and the shadow of EA is weighting heavily on them.
But they seem to have got a real wake-up call from their disastrous last few releases, and are starting to actually pay notice to the criticisms.
We'll see, but I have higher hopes from it than I had for ME3 and DA2.
(though I am between twenty and thirty more hyped about The Witcher 3 in any cases)
I'm not ready to place any bet though, because whatever their intentions, I'm afraid they still have the mentality of desperately trying to "reach a wide audience" instead of building on their core fans, and the shadow of EA is weighting heavily on them.
But they seem to have got a real wake-up call from their disastrous last few releases, and are starting to actually pay notice to the criticisms.
We'll see, but I have higher hopes from it than I had for ME3 and DA2.
(though I am between twenty and thirty more hyped about The Witcher 3 in any cases)
civvver
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ME3 was a good game though. I didn't like the atmosphere as much as ME2, the whole world ending thing hung over every conversation like a wet blanket, the mood was too somber. But the gameplay was better than 2, the level design was good, the story was good, I think most people liked it. I didn't think the ending was even that bad.
Akka
Moody old mage.
ME3 was a mix of very good parts spoiled by a colossal wasted potential.
And the ending was just as bad as it's famous for, and then some.
And the ending was just as bad as it's famous for, and then some.
