I've been re-playing Dragon Age: Origins and I was shocked how much things changed in writing in such a short period of time.
It's not the plot but the characters. Flemeth appears intelligent and commands respect without being a girl boss, even Morrigan does not appear as a girl boss despite her jabs at Alister - being voiced by Claudia Black does help.
It is also a lot grimmer, the 2 that die during the ritual to become wardens are made to be liked, the guy that was newly wed with a baby is killed by Duncan because he was afraid. The mages being turned tranquil or killed if they fail a test. You understand why but it is incredibly dark.
The writing is totally incompatible with what ever the DA: Vailguard is. in Origins we understand that killing an innocent father is ok in order to protect the world but in Vailguard it is a problem if you use the wrong pronouns?
I know all the woke leftist crap but did they ever read books or played games written before 2015?
Back in that era a game like DA:O inspired a certain amount of awe where I found it hard to fathom how much time and effort went into producing that kind of otherworldly experience. Nowadays I can usually see the man behind the curtain.
They really don't make them like they used to.
I like to compare the original Mass Effect with Andromeda. The latter's writing is so ham-fisted and amateurish it doesn't even feel like the same universe. Of course that doesn't even broach the technical issues with the game.
"My face is tired"
“Whom. And your god damn father…”
Delivered with all the enthusiasm of one of those bitches on the view having to read a legal notice 😒
That game was ass.
I've had the same feeling for a while now, I thought I was just getting old. Fantasy worlds and stories are not convincing anymore, there's less suspension of disbelief. I'm glad some recent exceptions like Rogue Trader and Baldur's Gate 3 exist though.
Same though if the writing is on point you can eventually lose yourself nevertheless.
Recently started Baldurs gate 3. I’m only barely off the ship though. Most of my gaming time goes to modded Skyrim
Can't stop coming back to your comment. Seeing man behind the curtain is the sign of innocence lost, immersion broken, real world casting shadow on the fantasy.
Sort of. Duncan kills him because after seeing the other guy die to the ritual the second one tries to back out, but he knows too much about the ritual at that point and Duncan can't let that information get out.
yep, too much bad PR of "yeah, btw you have to drink darkspawn blood and chances are good that you die"
would kill the already low recruitment numbers
Also that you only have about 30 years to live afterwards or you go completely insane as the taint from the darkspawn blood corrupts you completely. Any Warden that lives long enough to reach that number goes off to fight to the death instead.
Pretty sure it's and, not or. That's why they go into the Deep Roads, because they're going to more or less become Dark Spawn, so they head off to go down swinging.
As Woke as DA2 is, it still has the greatest mechanic in any of these party RPGs that I've never seen replicated.
Which is the Rivalry scale. As in, you can call your companions fucking idiots and not be forced to kowtow to their every bullshit whim to keep them happy or progress their personal quests. I don't have to choose companions based on my alignment or way I want to progress, but can pick ones that I enjoy personally or need the skills of.
It wasn't perfect, but it was such a huge game changer in terms of actual player freedom. Especially after Morrigan's fucking nonsense in the first game in terms of keeping her happy. The fact that every single game since hasn't replicated it shows how incompetent they are.
Also the accidental aesop of "there are no good mages, every single one will go into Blood Magic if they get a stubbed toe, the Tranquil Solution is the only safety from demons" in it still makes me laugh. Its just on the edge of when Woke was coming on that it was still capable of destroying its own platitudes. Like Anders literally bombing the church and killing the not-Pope (the only vaguely good person in the equation, if guilty of inaction and neutrality) just to force a Civil War after he failed to start a revolution is so on point with modern Leftism despite being older than most of their adulthood.
I disagree with the rivalry. Three's really not that many excuses for you as a warden to antagonize your companions because they don't really antagonize you. Dwarf is a dunkard sure but a kind soul, Sten is ruthless but understandably so, Morrigan is a bitch but throughout the game she learns to trust people (and you can tell her to fuck off in the end because you don't trust HER). Everyone else is very vanilla and have no reason to be antagonized.
The point isn't antagonizing them, its giving you the option to not have to completely agree with and compromise your own choices to make them happy. My character can be played as I want, with the choices I want to make, and I'm not actively gimping my companions and reducing my experience by doing so.
These types of games aren't about friends going on a merry stroll, its a major adventure full of politics and important decisions. I shouldn't be forced to spare the Rape Master 9000 because my only tank is a goody goody and will walk 10 steps backwards on his personal quest progression if I do. Its fine if he argues with me about it and I have to adequately defend my point of view, maybe even leaves if its a massive enough choice or repeated offense, but normally its just a binary "Morrigan Disapproves, go fuck yourself."
Especially as, as DA2 does actually quite well with it, often just blindly supporting and agreeing with them is the worst possible choice both for their growth and the world itself. The "rivalry" path is often telling them to cut their shit, get over themselves, and that "kill all templars/mages for existing" is not in fact a productive viewpoint right now.
But as it often happens, you are forced to baby them and tiptoe around their little hissy fits if you want to fully utilize them, as their "bonds" often lock both massive amounts of lore, completion of their arcs, and some form of mass power boost.
It's really a shame what happened to that franchise. It's probably in my top five or maybe even top three of series in which I spent the most hours playing, since it's when I really discovered game mods. I even bought some of the books that came out, trying to give it a sense of extended universe by presenting us with new characters in new areas.
But even as early as Dragon Age: Awakening, it seemed like the series was going downhill. The second game had quite a few good points, but they also made so many terrible decisions that it was a huge mixed bag. By the time Inquisition came around, I was checked out entirely.
It had so much potential, but they just dropped the ball entirely after the first game.
The first game was such a treat in terms of world building. It really scratches that old school Bioware itch. I truly believe it was the last game Bioware ever created. Everything that came after was a skin suit of the old team.
Origins was created by a family business, which was then sold off to a corporation which gutted and replaced all the parts. How badly do corporations have to fuck the world up before people start turning away from them?
The notion of Bioware as a family business is underscored pretty heavily for me by the manual for Shadows of Amn, in which the second page of the entire thing is a dedication to Daniel Walker, who died before the game could come out. You don't get that from big corporate, but rather from a team who genuinely gives a shit.
The problem came after some idiot showed that kids and young adults spent more time on videogames and not watching tv like boomers did, so all the propaganda got redirected to videogames.
Just like it happened with tv the change was indirect, by hiring the people that planned things behind the scenes so that actors could be easily replaceable. All the game journalists, the story writers, the voice actors, were picked from the pool of people that bought the communist propaganda and were ready to push the narrative.
The most recent example is how Kimmel's show was first canceled because he mocked Charlie Kirk's death but then they went back on their choice because some higher ups want the propaganda on tv.
This also explains why they're currently working to infest every level of anime.
exactly, Neftlix and the Visa/Mastercard censoring
The answer to this is always "no." Shitlibs only live in the immediate present and have absolutely no contextual information to present whatsoever with the sole exception of the information that is directly relevant to whatever their immediate goals are. They don't care about the past and are in fact trying to overwrite it as they push Year Zero. Anything that isn't applicable to or directly aiding this process is ignored or eradicated.
This is an ongoing problem with the mainstream-ification of D&D/TTRPGs. The original games were 1. games and 2. meant to evoke particular literature. Now D&D is a collaborative improv exercise to evoke...D&D. Or worse, a particular TV show. No one, from the newest player to the oldest designer, has read a book, let alone Conan or Elric.
I don't know if it's where it all started, but borderlands 2 feels like the pivot point in writing quality. the constant snark and nihilism seem to strike a chord with the terminally online, and the terminally online or who all the execs listened to. it didn't matter if the game was never supposed to be a comedy, nothing was allowed to be taken seriously anymore. everything had to have a wink and a nod.
A wink and a nod that's not-so-subtlely pointed against some fundamental christian value is the only kind of humour leftists understand or are legally allowed to laugh at. That's what happened.
not even the culture war stuff. Everything is stupid and ironic now.
They think nothing is serious anymore, and everything is fake on some level. it's why so many of them feel comfortable being hyperbolic and violent. they literally live in a world of "it's just a prank bro!"
They sure did: Harry Potter! And nothing else!
Anyway, Dragon Age: Origins was a game seven years in the making, made while Baldur's Gate was still fresh in the devs' minds and while they still wanted to make a game like that. Not only a game like that, but one set in a world of their own making without Wizards of the Coast breathing down their necks or charging them for the license.
Unfortunately, seven years is a long time. People often change. Or perhaps they become emboldened about what they really want. Whatever the case may be, I think it's pretty clear that at some point, Origins was not the game a lot of the devs and writers wanted to make, including Mike Laidlaw, David Gaider, and Jennifer Hepler. They did not want to make an old-school dark high fantasy spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate that took its narrative cues from A Song of Ice and Fire; they wanted something that looked more akin to what Joss Whedon would have made if he wrote a fantasy. Heck, that was already bleeding into a lot of the writing in Origins; if you were to look at interviews on the various companions, you'll see the writers claiming an awful lot of them were inspired by characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That was especially evident with Alistair, a wishy-washy frontline combatant who constantly cracks bad jokes to hide how insecure he is, and was written purely to appeal to a female mindset.
And I suspect that growing divide within Bioware is why DAO's original lead, Brent Knowles, departed shortly after the game's release. He had his ideas for how the series should look, and most everyone else had others, and while he might have been able to tard wrangle them for most of DAO's development, either he was losing out or he did not want to work with these people anymore. Especially with EA now looming over the company, seeing no value in an old-school fantasy RPG, and wanting everything to be more like Mass Effect. Which I'm sure the other DA devs wanted to copy as well.
That's what I think anyway. The devs were hostile to Origins throughout DA2's development, throwing shade at it in every interview, which leads me to think they were indirectly attacking Knowles and that his parting was not a friendly one. It's also why they sought to distance DA2 from DAO by giving it a wildly new art direction that only a bunch of blue-haired faggots would think looked good, and wrote the game as a soft reboot of the franchise where a huge bomb would be dropped onto the setting, changing it irreversibly...after only one game in.
After this play Witcher 2. There's some absolute brutal parts to that game.
Thematically, The Witcher series always felt like what Dragon Age desperately wanted to be, including Origins, but never had the guts to fully commit to. Or possibly the talent.
At least witcher ended without the woke overflow.
They're fixing it now with the next witcher game in name only.
That being said, you could see woke writing in Witcher 3 already. It was odd how different writing was between the start of the game to mid game..
Yeah i know. Writing in w3 is a mess and bad parts of it are simply ignored by many mainstream influencers and their audience. I still enjoyed the game though at the time i was more forgiving towards this sort of meddling.
Same and the 2 DLCs had good writing with nothing woke.
Yeah, it was sad watching CDPR rise and fall in real time.
I liked Witcher 2, my favorite in the series. I'm also assuming that Bioware took inspiration from Witcher on how to handle the elves.
Well, I guess I don't have to be ashamed that I liked Dragon Age Origins. Even though the writer was someone who's now a truly horrendous douchebag.
Not sure about the writer, I assume he is woke?
Origins had things like religion not being evil and even offering help and sanctuary and templars are holy warriors that are need it. Family has value, being a father is a good thing. People that are oppressed can still be evil. Understanding why someone did something bad does not excuse their behavior and attornment is required.
This on top of women not being just girl bosses or men being dumb and weak.
It highlights how much morals changed on the left in a relative short amount of time. How the left turned in some hateful mockery of what they used to be.
I assume the writer was one of those who changed?
There were multiple writers, though I'm going to guess AntonioOfVenice is specifically referring to David Gaider. Gaider, despite having left Bioware sometime after Inquisition, recently resurfaced online as an internet tough guy to start talking smack against everyone disliking The Veilguard. He also started throwing shade at the Mass Effect team, claiming they were shown favoritism by EA over the DA team and they treated him badly during his time working on the story for Anthem (with all his contributions to it left on the cutting room floor). All the while proclaiming he was one of the few stalwart heroes at Bioware trying to uphold the old-school RPG principles of yore when the company wanted to turn more to action games. Even though he was one of the many onboard with the changes DA2 was making to the series with its "press a button, something awesome has to happen" design "philosophy."
Honestly, Gaider's been coming across as a bitter old man lashing out in anger over the fact that his precious Dragon Age franchise so sharply declined. And that it's obviously all everyone else's fault.
If he defends Veilguard he is a lost cause. Who in their right mind would defend that pile of crap - from story to combat to pronouns and cringe dialogue to crappy artistic direction - that game is unsalvageable.
Funnily enough, he later on issued out his own complaints about The Veilguard, admitting he didn't care for the art direction, the gameplay, and the lack of choice transfers from previous games. So it's okay when he criticizes the game, but not others, particularly those of a certain political bend that doesn't match his.
Extremely woke. And obnoxious at that. I couldn't believe it was the guy who wrote a game that I found enjoyable. Note that the whole "slavery" thing in the game was a bit heavy-handed (regarding it as the ultimate evil), but that's the sort of Woke Lite you also see in GOT.
He may have changed, or maybe he can compartmentalize his wokeness and he's actually able to write something that appeals to normal people.
I’ve been meaning to play the original game. I guess the same thing happened that’s happened to a lot of studios
I dreamt that one day I would work at Bioware. Now we have pronouns and trans stuff. Sure the world is ending but lets not misgender.
Play origins, it's the only Dragon Age I liked. It created the world, the world is great. Making something from scratch with so much cool stuff was awesome.
The story itself is nothing amazing but the characters and world building are great. Read the codex entries.
Also, Claudia Black. She plays Morrigan similar with Aeryn Sun
Maybe the woke stuff saved you, because game companies are not a great place to work.
Cool! I love Farscape