Dragon age

I'm kind of surprised there isn't a thread on this one yet, or if there is I've missed it somehow.

After seeing the Bad Gamer series and all the love it got, I finally picked up Inquisition a couple weeks ago. Its just as good as everyone said, but no one I know IRL plays video games so I've got no one to talk about it with.

I've seen complaints about combat, but honestly I'm glad the AI is good enough that I don't have to micromanage my people. They can pretty much take care of themselves in a fight, unlike say in Mass Effect 2 when I would have someone die pretty frequently (Damn it Miranda use the box for cover, don't stand on top of it!). Plus, the story and chat with the team time was always my favorite part. So for me its like a mix of the things I liked most from Skyrim and Mass Effect put together.

Speaking of the team, apparently one of the few things Cassandra and Solas agree on is that I should spend less time dicking around exploring and more time getting on with the story. Varric never gives me crap about putting off the story guys. Blackwell and Sera seem to be becoming friends over their mutual antipathy for everything related to the nobility. Iron Bull and Dorian start flirting. Vivienne barely says anything. I've been trying to work out if specific combinations of people talk more than others. If there was anything I would really like to change, it would be to be able to turn up the frequency of party chat.

I've also really been enjoying the writing. The story missions and character interactions are well done, and the disagreements between characters don't feel forced to me. The minor characters can feel real too, I felt bad when I was too late to save Adan and Minaeve.

There's kind of a thread already, but that's mostly posting screen shots... Though it's turned into a discussion thread by now:

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It's in the wrong sub-forum, technically lol.

Speaking of the team, apparently one of the few things Cassandra and Solas agree on is that I should spend less time dicking around exploring and more time getting on with the story. Varric never gives me crap about putting off the story guys. Blackwell and Sera seem to be becoming friends over their mutual antipathy for everything related to the nobility. Iron Bull and Dorian start flirting. Vivienne barely says anything. I've been trying to work out if specific combinations of people talk more than others. If there was anything I would really like to change, it would be to be able to turn up the frequency of party chat.

There's a bug deeply ingrained in the game (I don't think they've ever fixed it) that glitches the frequency of party chat so it's very infrequent. There are some maneuvers to get around it, but I've never noticed a huge difference.

As for Vivienne, I found she talks a lot with Cassandra and sometimes with Blackwall. She's not too friendly/chatty on average anyway, which was probably the biggest disappointment DAI had to offer. I wanted to connect with her and get inside Viv's head more, but she's obviously a very guarded/ambitious woman and isn't looking to make deep emotional connections with everyone. Her companion quest later on is great, but sadly too condensed. A lot of the companion quests felt a little rushed imo, but hers especially needed more.

It felt a little irritating that the game's first obviously aesthetically African-looking person was kind of frigid and hard to get along with. That said, she's a fucking bad ass politician and I adored her from afar the whole game. xD

I've also really been enjoying the writing. The story missions and character interactions are well done, and the disagreements between characters don't feel forced to me. The minor characters can feel real too, I felt bad when I was too late to save Adan and Minaeve.

Minaeve was the only NPC person from Haven that I REALLY loved. She was so awesome... And I think she was the only one I couldn't save (and whoever the potions guy was, maybe). I couldn't find her.

It was kinda disappointing that the people you saved were replaced by new NPCs, and they basically become set dressings wandering around Skyhold after Haven.

As far as combat AI is concerned, it was pretty good. I just wish it was more customizable like in DAO and DA2. Other than that, it's fine. I just wish the two-handed warriors were a little less squishy. Their HP drops FAST.

Right now Vivienne and I are on neutral terms. She disapproved about my decision to ally with the mages, but was happy when I suggested that mages should be part of the Chantry.

I've been crafting my two handed teammates armor upgrades with lots of drakestone or summerstone, which takes care of that issue to some extent.

I'm tempted to buy a ton of plaid fabric and collect dragonling scales, then use the armor tinting function to make us all super tacky uniforms. Team Red and Plaid!

Sera's personal mission made me come pretty close to violating my "no revenge murder" policy, because seriously fuck that guy.

He wasn't trying to save his dying kid, scared and dangerously stupid, or whatever people do that makes Leliana want to murder them. He was just some unrepentant rich dick who wanted to screw over my girl Sera and her friends because he thought he was better than them and could get away with it.

I used my throne for the first time, and now I kind of want a replica for my apartment. I also bought Skyhold some new windows, which made me feel slightly guilty. Should I really be spending our hard earned savings on windows? But Josephine said we should make the place impressive for guests, so I suppose its okay.

Blackwall continues to be a ridiculously good guy. He was making a rocking griffon that I can only assume hes going to give to a sad refugee child to make them feel better. He and Sera's friendship continues to be delightful.

I managed to save Minaeve in my second playthrough. Had to pause a few times and look up a guide though.

I'll keep my mouth shut about certain companions until you've finished all of their quests.

I would be sad, not quite Mordin Solus level sad but still pretty sad, if bad stuff happened to my dude Blackwall, or Sera, or pretty much anyone except Viv.

I don't hate her or anything, but if there was ever a "pick a teammate to die" type situation then sorry Viv.

I feel bad for not liking Vivienne because WoC are so damn rare in games and Indira Varma did an amazing job as her VA. When you first meet her in the game I thought she was great, bu then...maybe I didn't take her in my party enough, I just found that when I did, she made snarky 'mean-girl' comments to my party-mates which I didn't really like. It probably doesn't help that I disagreed with her about the Circles, too; I see them as having been maybe an ok attempt to deal with the issue, but I don't think it's feasible to go back to them after everything that's happened.

I wonder if the DLC will go on sale at Christmas...I haven't got any of them yet but I really want Jaws of Hakkon and Trespasser especially, and probably the dwarf one too.

I gotta say all three DLC were worth it imo. The dwarf DLC revealed some pretty big implications about the DAU, so I wouldn't discount that one. Plus the deep roads levels were pretty spectacular/huge.

There's A LOT of content in the first two DLC, less in Trespasser, but it's still the best one.

I wish Viv had been more relatable too. It was a little disappointing for their first obviously African character was a disagreeable alpha bitch. Like, she was a total goddess but most dumb asses are gonna write her off completely.

Vivienne's interactions with Cass, Blackwall, and Dorian are pretty great. I love that she and Dorian constantly try to out-sass each other.

I don't think I've ever brought her and Dorian out together, I'll have to give that a try.

I really like Vivienne's introduction, so for me its too bad that I don't like her as much now.

ETA: Thinking more about it, part of the issue might be that Vivienne, a black character, was given the pro-Circle position. Her experience with Circle life wasn't bad, but she seems to gloss over that its essentially a choice between a lifetime of imprisonment and slavery, or being lobotomized. Just because her prison was nice, doesn't make the system okay.

Based on the ruins the old elves spent at least 60% of their time carving wolf statues. They loved them some wolf statues.

Well, a lot of the side dialog concerning Blackwall suddenly makes a lot more sense. I was wondering during the mission why he wasn't affected.  

My attempts to make Leliana a bit less murder happy have finally paid off. You didn't murder that woman, good for you Leliana. I was worried about her being in contention to be the new Divine, because I could see that not going well. But now I think I would be okay with it.

Whoever on the development team in charge of the makeup really needs to tone it down in the future. Its a bit ridiculous when the dwarf scout who was just fleeing from an ogre looks like she just stepped out of a Glamour Shots studio. Cass also doesn't strike me as someone who would wear quite that much rouge to go hunt demons. Oddly enough Vivienne is someone I could see getting done up for combat, and she wears the least of any of the major female characters.

I tried to turn makeup completely off for my character, but she still looks like shes got a serious lip gloss addiction.

I just finished the prologue section in Origins, and its super disappointing to have a silent protagonist. Its such a massive step backwards, and I don't understand the logic behind it at all. Mass Effect from the same studio came out before DAO and had a great central performance. I'm finding it really difficult to connect with my girl when everyone else is talking and she just stands there staring off into space like an emotionless husk. The dog has more personality. Either have no one talk, or everyone.

Why give her a voice so she can constantly yell inane stuff during combat, but not say her lines?

Thiazin Red wrote:I just finished the prologue section in Origins, and its super disappointing to have a silent protagonist. Its such a massive step backwards, and I don't understand the logic behind it at all. Mass Effect from the same studio came out before DAO and had a great central performance. I'm finding it really difficult to connect with my girl when everyone else is talking and she just stands there staring off into space like an emotionless husk. The dog has more personality. Either have no one talk, or everyone.

Why give her a voice so she can constantly yell inane stuff during combat, but not say her lines?

I can certainly empathize with you on this, and yet I've discovered that having a silent protagonist, as in Origins, makes it a lot easier for me to get into replaying the game. So, I've finished playing DAII and Inquisition. If I go back to replay DAII with a new Hawke, but decide to go with a male again, I'll be seeing my new character but I'll be hearing my old character Martigan Hawke in every line. It's jarring for me, especially because I loved Martigan.

It's a little like playing Fallout 4 and hearing Garrus speaking out of the mouths of half the population of the Commonwealth...

Granted, I can play a female Hawke, which means one more replay before that voice becomes anchored to that specific character in my mind. Inquisition, fortunately, offers four voices, so I can still play one more male character and he won't sound like my Elf Inquisitor Yevriel. (Of course, that's pretty far down the list of priorities - I've already got a female Qunari waiting to be played...and I just started playing The Descent DLC with Yevriel)

So the obvious solution is just that BioWare has to hire even more voice actors and add a ton of extra memory to their games. Easy, right?