[starbug]

At the recent Edmonton Expo, BioWare revealed some information about the upcoming Dragon Age III: Inquisition. More hints and minor reveals were unveiled via developer tweets:
- The protagonist will be human
- Players will be able to choose origins, though these will not be playable
- The chosen origin will have a significant impact on the story
- It was hinted that The Warden and Hawke may appear as NPCs.
- Flemeth will return
- We will learn a lot more about the Qunari in the next game
- While Dragon Age is not intended as a trilogy, certain narrative threads will be brought to a close
- BioWare is looking into ways to include previous choices without save imports
- "One level in Dragon Age III is as big as all the levels in Dragon Age II."
- Customization will be bigger than in Dragon Age: Origins and companion customization is confirmed
- It was hinted that players may be able to take control of a castle
- Players may see what became of some Dragon Age II companions
- It was said that a long-term aim beyond DA III was to move to "all four races as playable", though increased customization would be the focus in the meantime

Concept art can be found here, Images are pretty big.
http://blog.bioware.com/2012/10/20/first-look-dragon-age-iii-inquisition-concept-art/

Now what are peoples opinions on that fact we will most likely be human, but will have different origins. Now over on the DA Wiki and bioware forums people have been bashing Bioware for this, so can we keep from bashing the company please. Its their IP and story they can do what ever they want.

Now the human origin doesn't bother me at all, as i played as a human in the first one so i am completely fine with that. Now the fact they have hinted that the warden and Hawke may feature, i wonder how they will do it as they are trying to find a way without importing the save games from the last 2. I imagine it will be like the story book thing for Mass Effect 2 where you pick what happened but i wonder how they will get the characters appearances without the saved game.

Nice that we are getting companion customization back. Taking control of a castle hmm, bet i will be something like Neverwinter 2. I only hope that they have learned not to use the same maps over and over again and try to fob them off as different locations. I am hoping that they can do a good job with this. I know bioware has suffered a wee bit but i still like them.

[LordPomposity]

- The chosen origin will have a significant impact on the story

Well, it's nice to hear BioWare say that player choices will significantly impact the story. I'm sure we can all trust them on this, considering their track record with similar promises to date.

- BioWare is looking into ways to include previous choices without save imports

I'm not terribly worried about this. If I run into a plot development that contradicts a decision one of my characters made in DA:O or DAII, I'll just adjust my monitor's color balance to compensate.

[Scotty]

Considering that games consist of significantly more than the last fifteen minutes in most cases, I'd say Bioware's track record with making player agency important is pretty damn proven consistently.  Exhibit A: the rest of Mass Effect.

Seriously, this is not the thread to ***** about ME3's endings again.  Bioware took a huge hit from it on release, again on the release of the Extended Cut, and every day since both.  Give it a rest.

[LordPomposity]

Considering that games consist of significantly more than the last fifteen minutes in most cases, I'd say Bioware's track record with making player agency important is pretty damn proven consistently.  Exhibit A: the rest of Mass Effect.

The Rachni Queen was not in the last fifteen minutes, but as you say, this isn't about ME3. Nullification of player agency was actually (in my opinion) a much bigger problem in DA2 than it was in ME3. Despite ME3's ending, I'm glad I bought it and played it. I can't say the same of DA2.

DA:O was awesome, and maybe the recent trend in game quality will reverse itself with DA3. However, DA2 taught me to wait and see what the community reaction is post-release before giving EA any money (no matter how game-breakingly good the in-game items I'd get for pre-ordering are).

[starbug]

Exactly I don't want this turning into flame bioware and ME 3 thread, i loved ME 3, i think it's a great game. Now if people use this thread to complain about the ending I will request it locked. Time to move on from this issue.

Ok since flemeth is returning and maybe the warden, I wonder if morrigan and her baby storyline will be one of the few resolved. They are also using a new engine for this one I believe. I also hope ohgren and shale make a return, they were my 2 favourite characters.

[SpardaSon21]

Yeah, I heard they were using Frostbite 2 for DA3.

[Aesaar]

I like DA2 more than DA: O.  *dodges flak*

The only part of DA2 I hated was the repeated environments.  I found the characters better, since the only characters in DA: O I liked were Loghain and Sten.  The others bored the living **** out of me.  The story was better, especially Act 2, because Qunari are actually interesting, whereas it's almost impossible to get more boring than the Darkspawn.  The protagonist was better in that he/she expressed emotion, while the Warden in DA: O was less emotional than the Tranquil.  When DA: O called for someone to die, I had to choose between my character and Loghain, and I chose my character to die because I just couldn't build any sort of attachment to him.  In DA2, I actually liked my Hawke.

Also, DA: O painted itself as a spiritual successor to Balsur's Gate 2, hype it utterly failed to live up to.  DA2 painted itself as a successor to DA: O, and given that I thought DA: O was a massive disappointment, I didn't expect much and was pleasantly surprised.

[An4ximandros]

- "One level in Dragon Age III is as big as all the levels in Dragon Age II."

Not too hard is it?

 Personally after the whole Mass Effect 3 fiasco, I don't think I'm buying anymore Bioware games, it showed, to me at least, they lost their touch.
 Project Eternity is really my last hope for the revival of "Arbitrary Law" based RPGs.

[starbug]

Apart from the repeated sections of DA 2 I did like the storyline, DA origins was really just a normal RPG, didnt really do much different. The only major thing it did was the origin parts. I am willing to give DA 3 a chance as I think it has been in development longer than DA 2, for some reason they rushed to get DA 2 out fast which I think played a part in its problems. I would like it to be darker in tone, as the DA is ment to be a dark fantasy instead of a high fantasy. To me DA 2 wasn't that dark and gritty. As long as we don't get reused maps and my warrior can duel wield again I'll be sound as a pound :-)

[karajorma]

Nullification of player agency was actually (in my opinion) a much bigger problem in DA2 than it was in ME3.

I got to the penultimate battle in the game and got so pissed off about it that I uninstalled the game and refused to ever touch it again. Meanwhile I've replayed the original Dragon Age many times. While DA2 had better characters, it completely lost the open feeling DA:O had in favour of leading the player around by the nose. I ****ing hate it when RPGs do that as it completely destroys the RP part of RPG.

[SpardaSon21]

I've never played DA2, but doesn't it give you the illusion that you can actually pick a side in the conflict between mages and Templars before ripping it away?

[LordPomposity]

I've never played DA2, but doesn't it give you the illusion that you can actually pick a side in the conflict between mages and Templars before ripping it away?

Exactly.

Spoiler:

If you side with the templars, the leader of the mages turns out to be a blood mage and turns into some kind of fat ugly thing with tentacles. He tries to kill you, so you kill him. Then the leader of the templars tries to kill you because she thinks you were corrupted when you killed the leader of the mages, so you kill her.

If you side with the mages, on the other hand, the leader of the mages resorts to blood magic as a last-ditch effort to defend himself from the templars (despite the fact that you're slaughtering templars on an industrial scale and the situation is not nearly dire enough to call for such an extreme response). After turning into some kind of fat ugly thing with tentacles, he tries to kill you, so you kill him. Then the leader of the templars tries to kill you, so you kill her.

Hawke walks out. Cut to Inquisitor-With-Horrible-Fake-Accent realizing that the guy she's been questioning (which has served as a frame for the story) doesn't have anything particularly useful to tell her. This carries much more symbolism than the writers probably intended.

[SpardaSon21]

That almost (but not quite) sounds worse than the ME3 ending.  It is certainly far, far worse than the Extended Cut ME3 ending.

[LordPomposity]

I think it was actually quite a bit worse. However, the influence of player choice in DA2 was not hyped up to nearly the extent as it was with ME3 (and AFAIK no DA2 designers made objectively false statements about the ending when promoting the game), so there was less backlash.

[Mort]

I liked DA2's writing and most of ME3's writing as well
"Brings up flame shield"

I still enjoy Bioware's games and look forward to DA3

[Scotty]

Most of ME3's writing is brilliant.  There's no shame in liking it.  Tuchanka in particular is amazing.  It's just the last 15 minutes that are terrible.  That and Kai Leng.  Most everything else is pretty great.

Haven't played DA2, though, so I can't chime in on that.  I just remember that DA:O was pretty good, and that both KOTORs were good in their own way (barring the incomplete ending on 2). 

Bioware has a pretty great track record of great games, even if they've stumbled a couple times lately.  I'm cautiously optimistic about this one.

[General Battuta]

KOTOR2 wasn't BioWare! And I'm posting this, with an exclamation point! Even though you probably know!

[TrashMan]

Most of ME3's writing is brilliant.  There's no shame in liking it.  Tuchanka in particular is amazing.  It's just the last 15 minutes that are terrible.  That and Kai Leng.  Most everything else is pretty great.

A bit mroe than that. Including a horrible begining.

But the game does have it's moments.

Haven't played DA2, though, so I can't chime in on that.  I just remember that DA:O was pretty good, and that both KOTORs were good in their own way (barring the incomplete ending on 2).

DA2 is utterly forgetable.
Not "garbage" (very few things really are), but it does fall quite far from what one might expect. 

[newman]

- "One level in Dragon Age III is as big as all the levels in Dragon Age II."

Considering the amount of copy/paste recycled levels in DA2, that's not saying much; almost like saying "one level in DA3 is as big as one level in DA2 which we then shamelessly recycled everywhere"

At any rate, after the horrible, horrible crapfest that was DA2, I'll need to see a lot of rave reviews before I'm convinced to spend my money on this.

While DA2 had better characters..

You must be the first person I've ever heard say that Frankly I found DA:O's characters better (not brilliant, but I can still remember them all, as opposed to DA2's). I mean you had your main character who was.. without character, totally bland. You had that elven Welsh girl that was annoying at the best of times, then Anders which I'm at a loss as to why he was written at all - you could probably cut him out without anyone noticing, completely boring and faceless. The only other one I remember is the completely cliche character of Isabella which was so obviously molded it was ridiculous - and not interesting in the least. Quite frankly I forgot the others. The game never had anyone as great as Shale. Hell even the boring little Lilliana would probably be the most interesting character in DA2, if they put her among that boring lot. Alistair or Morrigan could easily take up stand up comedy in the DA2 world, because characters in DA2 suck *that* much

It's actually the characters and story I have most of my gripes with in DA2. I also agree with the open feeling DA:O had completely destroyed in DA2. One of the biggest causes of that is the.. "ecological" level design (let's recycle everything!) which made the world bland and boring. And I disliked the console like combat too, but that's another story. The game could have been much more interesting with proper character and story writing and interesting level design, even if it retained the same combat model.

At any rate, there are a lot of people saying that Dragon Age 2 isn't a bad game, but it just isn't as great as DA:O. I personally don't subscribe to that line of thinking because I can honestly say I found the game boring to play, and that I haven't really enjoyed it at all. Liking or disliking a game is a matter of personal preference, of course, but for me DA2 was a plainly bad game that I have no desire to replay (I honestly can't remember the ending and am not sure I even finished the thing). I replayed DA:O many times, though.

[starbug]

Ok guys can we leave ME 3 ending out of this topic, seriously the ending situation has been done to death! Can we please just move on,  am i the only one who is getting fed up of hearing about it!