Dragon Age Series

[logincrash]

Finished my anti-Mage playthrough. Decided against playing as a Mage because I used my Coulsand Warrior DAO save this time.

da2 mageslayer playthrough.jpg

► Show Spoiler

total anders death.jpg

meredead.jpg

you kneel to noone.jpg

The game's really bad. Why'd I waste hundreds of hours on it?

[Tangerine]

Finished my anti-Mage playthrough. Decided against playing as a Mage because I used my Coulsand Warrior DAO save this time.

► Show Spoiler

The game's really bad. Why'd I waste hundreds of hours on it?

You were warned against doing it.

[logincrash]

Finished my anti-Mage playthrough. Decided against playing as a Mage because I used my Coulsand Warrior DAO save this time.

► Show Spoiler

The game's really bad. Why'd I waste hundreds of hours on it?

You were warned against doing it.

I mean, over the course of my life. I've done at a minimum half a dozen 100% playthroughs. That's at least 300 hours gone.

[logincrash]

Started Inquisition.
Frankly, it's impressive how much worse every subsequent game gets.
The cutscenes are locked to 30 FPS, if you can believe it.

[rusty_shackleford]

Started Inquisition.
Frankly, it's impressive how much worse every subsequent game gets.
The cutscenes are locked to 30 FPS, if you can believe it.

Have you played Andromeda?

[Niggler]

Started Inquisition.
Frankly, it's impressive how much worse every subsequent game gets.
The cutscenes are locked to 30 FPS, if you can believe it.

Have you played Andromeda?

Don't

[logincrash]

Started Inquisition.
Frankly, it's impressive how much worse every subsequent game gets.
The cutscenes are locked to 30 FPS, if you can believe it.

Have you played Andromeda?

You know that I have.
What is this question even supposed to be?

[rusty_shackleford]

Started Inquisition.
Frankly, it's impressive how much worse every subsequent game gets.
The cutscenes are locked to 30 FPS, if you can believe it.

Have you played Andromeda?

You know that I have.
What is this question even supposed to be?

I was going to ask how you thought Andromeda compared to Inquisition

[logincrash]

Have you played Andromeda?

You know that I have.
What is this question even supposed to be?

I was going to ask how you thought Andromeda compared to Inquisition

Worse writing, worse characters, worse art direction, worse soundtrack, worse voice acting.
Better exploration, marginally better combat.

[jebacdrkac]

Dragon Age 2 is pretty bad and rushed, but I'd still take it over Inquisition and Failguard

[logincrash]

Everybody looks so ******* greasy, holy ****!
And everybody has puffy faces, like they've been stung by bees.
Especially Solas. It looks like he had a bad allergic reaction to something.

so ***.jpg

They for sure sculpted his cheekbones down for Veilguard.

[logincrash]

I'm like 15 hours in. The environments are very nice to look at, now that they aren't in 720p and 20 FPS thanks to my new PC. It's a shame there are millions of ******* everywhere.
The writing quality is all over the place. Sera looks and sounds like an orc and her character is all tumblr quirk chungus. Vivienne looks horrific with her sheboon lips and bald head but she's somehow the best written and voice acted character yet.

[Killagain665]

sheboon lips

This is amazing. Needs to be a new sticker or emote or something.

[logincrash]

Inquisition must've cost EA a fortune. It's ******* huge. I'm like 45 hours in and I haven't done the third major story mission yet.
It was intended to be an MMO, for sure. The enormous open areas, the mounts, the UI. And EA was pushing for always-online gay ******** like Anthem at the time.
It's a surprise EA hasn't killed BioWare off, considering how expensive their games are. SWTOR cost like, what, $200-300 mil? And then Anthem was a total flop. Then the development hell of DA4 and then it flopping even harder than Anthem.
@Roguey, you're our resident behind-the-scenes expert. Am I off on this?

[rusty_shackleford]

Inquisition must've cost EA a fortune. It's ******* huge. I'm like 45 hours in and I haven't done the third major story mission yet.
It was intended to be an MMO, for sure. The enormous open areas, the mounts, the UI. And EA was pushing for always-online gay ******** like Anthem at the time.
It's a surprise EA hasn't killed BioWare off, considering how expensive their games are. SWTOR cost like, what, $200-300 mil? And then Anthem was a total flop. Then the development hell of DA4 and then it flopping even harder than Anthem.
@Roguey, you're our resident behind-the-scenes expert. Am I off on this?

The game was massively different just a year before release, I was surprised at how much they changed in such a short period.

You were able to claim outposts and recruit people to guard them, send them out on missions, etc., Way too much that I've forgotten to list. I remember seeing this video after playing it and being shocked at how different it was.

Dragon Age Inquisition : Live Demo Gameplay. PAX Prime 2013
PAX Prime 2013: Dragon Age III: Inquisition

So if I had to guess, the reason it has a bunch of open world areas is because those were supposed to be filled with a bunch of content.

[logincrash]

Inquisition must've cost EA a fortune. It's ******* huge. I'm like 45 hours in and I haven't done the third major story mission yet.
It was intended to be an MMO, for sure. The enormous open areas, the mounts, the UI. And EA was pushing for always-online gay ******** like Anthem at the time.
It's a surprise EA hasn't killed BioWare off, considering how expensive their games are. SWTOR cost like, what, $200-300 mil? And then Anthem was a total flop. Then the development hell of DA4 and then it flopping even harder than Anthem.
@Roguey, you're our resident behind-the-scenes expert. Am I off on this?

The game was massively different just a year before release, I was surprised at how much they changed in such a short period.

You were able to claim outposts and recruit people to guard them, send them out on missions, etc., Way too much that I've forgotten to list. I remember seeing this video after playing it and being shocked at how different it was.

Digiexpo 2013 - Dragon Age: Inquisition Gameplay

So if I had to guess, the reason it has a bunch of open world areas is because those were supposed to be filled with a bunch of content.

You can still capture outposts. There's at least two - one in the desert and one in the rainy area. And you recruit Inquisition agents that lower the time needed for your advisors to complete missions that you assign them. It hasn't all gone to waste.

[mercerxiv]

Tbh the whole franchise can be summed up in a very fast rundown:

• 1. DAO: the one that was good, that started the franchise, and probably responsible for most fans among non mentally ill people. It was and still is the best exemplar of what Dragon Age was and what people were willing to buy into. Very solid, even though already had a bit of degenerate **** (Lelliana and Zevran among companions), and some chips on their shoulder (mostly in regards of liberal tendencies when touching on power structures and relationships like dwarven caste system, dalish, templars and mages). Still, it did still a good enough job to score something like an 8-9/10.

• 2. DAO:Awakening: was still a fairly solid DLC, with some interesting plot and characters. Anders first introduced there was actually a fairly decent character. Similar to DAO otherwise. The last Dragon Age entry if you ask me.

• 3. DA2: lol, lmao even, this was probably the first big neon sign telling us about the future of Bioware. Look into the core people behind it, and what they say. Massively expanded race gay communism agendas, fundamentally changed a number of established characters, and was (as we can now establish) a typical shitshow that you get when you put a bunch of tallentless shitlib hacks in charge of a project. Ended up having troubled development and came out as a half-baked mess with lots of bugs and copy-paste. This is the point where I would say Dragon Age was already over. Still kept the more gory aesthetic, although did a weird visual redesign that I personally found to be a downgrade in every sense from a more grounded one in DAO. There's a lot more to be done to bash on this entry, but people here I'm sure already did. Scores something in the area of 3/10 as a Dragon Age game, maybe 4/10 as just a game. It was still a horrid mess and signaled the overarching shift from RPG gameplay towards more of a action rpg-lite with gameplay just being really a dressing to gay romance.

• 4. DAI: as a game, it was a massive improvement over DA2. If I had to rate it simply as a videogame divorced from its franchise it would probably land a comfortable 6-7/10. It was more stable, clearly better fleshed out and developed, the story arc for the most part did the job of getting you through the game, and even the sandbox of gameplay+world was not bad at all. We still have all the gay race communist problems, although for now still mostly focused on faggotry, but already starting to smuggle in ********, as a rather obscure side character for now. Still, it did a markedly better job at trying to be Dragon Age than DA2 did, hence the better overall sentiment, but it came again with another redesign (I'd say an improvement over DA2, but still a downgrade from DAO), and the gameplay was still on the long slide towards what we will see in the next entry. Crafting system was a neat idea in theory, but was mostly a detriment to the game due to undermining a lot of the cool and unique loot, making quest rewards mostly feel unexciting and more in line "oh, more junk to store and never use, or straight pawn off". As a Dragon Age entry I would give it a middling 5/10. It tried, and it did some things well enough, but it was already well downstream from the franchise losing most of its identity and appeal.

• 5. DA:V. I will be brief here. Gay race communism problem finally taking the center stage it knew it has always deserved and blossoming in all of it's... putrescence? Full disclosure - I've refused to even pirate this ****, so all I'm about to say is from internet clips and videos of people playing it. There is barely anything left of Dragon Age in here, since something else has taken the main stage, DA here is more of a wrapper they put over this turd. Mobile game-like gamplay and UI, writing with levels of cringe dangerous for health, and very confused visual style and overarching setting. Is it a ****** romcom? Is it a corny action flick for modern audiences? Who knows, I sure don't. Easily 1/10 and it owes that 1 to simply being an executable that can run and render graphics on the screen without crashing. Which is I guess a lot in the modern games industry.

So TL;DR is: only DAO and maybe DAO:A matters for the purpose of discussing the franchise. Everything after DAO and most definitely after DAO:A can be considered a separate franchise altogether for all intents and purposes.

[logincrash]

Look how they ****** up Corypheus.

just **** my **** up.jpg

They gave him regular dude eyes, lmao.

[Tangerine]

DA:I's biggest crime is putting you in charge but not letting you exercise any real authority.

[Roguey]

Inquisition must've cost EA a fortune. It's ******* huge. I'm like 45 hours in and I haven't done the third major story mission yet.
It was intended to be an MMO, for sure. The enormous open areas, the mounts, the UI. And EA was pushing for always-online gay ******** like Anthem at the time.
It's a surprise EA hasn't killed BioWare off, considering how expensive their games are. SWTOR cost like, what, $200-300 mil? And then Anthem was a total flop. Then the development hell of DA4 and then it flopping even harder than Anthem.
@Roguey, you're our resident behind-the-scenes expert. Am I off on this?

It always had that mandatory multiplayer component, but it was never intended to be an MMO. All the MMO-like quests are just time-padding Ubislop cheap content. And the worst of it is in the first area, the other maps aren't nearly as loaded with it. It's recommended to bee-line the main story in the Hinterlands.

The Old Republic had a rocky start, but it became a money printer after it went free to play. Its success is the reason why Bioware was able to **** around for so long with Veilguard and it took some of the sting out of Anthem's loss. EA eventually got so fed up with this that they splintered TOR off into Broadsword to light a fire under Bioware. Just one of those unfortunate facts that when a game company has unlimited money, they'll just spin their wheels for eternity (see also Valve, Roberts Space Industries, Ghost Story Games, and 3D Realms with Duke Nukem Forever until they actually ran out of money with no finished product to show for it).

[DrSneed]

The qunari designs in 2 mogged the **** out of the origins models

DA:I's biggest crime is putting you in charge but not letting you exercise any real authority.

sorry that would be doin a heckin wish fulfilment

[J1M]

please stop reminding me of when she had a cameo in basically every single video game made

can only imagine the total number of cocks she sucked for that

Sucking **** to get your awful D&D self insert put into a game that was made only out of obligation to EA. Grim.

Doubt any game devs were forward enough to require her to do that. They were probably chuffed just to be adjacent to Dr. Horrible girl.

[J1M]

May I ask why this series holds such importance to many on this forum? I played Inquisition back in 2019, and I never understood why it’s held in such high regard here. The combat felt boringly spammy and leaned too much into the “press A to awesome” territory. The writing and the game’s politics didn’t interest me much either. The world hubs felt too confined and close to each other to feel like a true open world, and they were terribly barren and empty.

I didn’t notice the ultra-woke elements others have pointed out, but I did find it strange that my male Inquisitor’s only straight romance options were either a butch tank or an Indian-looking secretary. I got near the end of the Trespasser DLC but gave up because I couldn’t stomach how hard it was—even on normal difficulty, and I started it right after finishing the main story and side quests.

I never played Dragon Age 2 or Origins, but I’ve read that Dragon Age 2 was rushed and mediocre. So, I don’t see how Veilguard would have been any different after the mess that was Inquisition. It got delayed multiple times, and much of the original pre-reveal content was scrapped and redone. Why were people even concerned about this irredeemable garbage of a “game,” knowing the direction the series had been heading since Dragon Age 2? It’s not like BioWare hadn’t already been ******** the bed after the Mass Effect 3 ending disaster.

Origins was a strong foundation that was a potential successor to Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate. With different decisions they could have had Witcher or Baldur's Gate 3 levels of success with the franchise.

[J1M]

Guys I just watched the disney star wars movie and it sucks, I'm not sure why people like star wars?

The general assumption I find here is that only Origins was good. DA II is debatable, and Inquisition... uh, Idk dude. It wasn’t overly bad, but nothing spectacular either. Also, I forgot to mention the lighting felt kind of off—maybe because they used the Battlefield FPS engine for a semi-open world RPG? Not sure about the exact technical details. I still can’t believe people were actually comparing it to The Witcher 3 for the best recent RPG crown at the time

Debatable? Dragon Age 2 is one of the worst games ever made.

[J1M]

Started a Dragon Age 2 playthrough. The writing is already so bad. The "Sarcastic" dialogue options are peak reddit, but from a decade ago.
The UI is such soulless dogshit. The graphics somehow look flatter than in Origins.
Leandra (Hawke's mom) is such a ******* ****, holy ****.

Jokes on you the sarcastic dialog is the only interesting part of the game.

[Killagain665]

Started a Dragon Age 2 playthrough. The writing is already so bad. The "Sarcastic" dialogue options are peak reddit, but from a decade ago.
The UI is such soulless dogshit. The graphics somehow look flatter than in Origins.
Leandra (Hawke's mom) is such a ******* ****, holy ****.

Jokes on you the sarcastic dialog is the only interesting part of the game.

Just like politics. To be right wing today just be a left wing person from 10 years ago. It's the most interesting thing how that is what is in video games today too. Like Jimmy Kimmel or David Letterman stand up bit but with a fantasy story all around it.

[jebacdrkac]

DA:4 if every Bioware employee didnt turn into David Gayder

[Valter]

DA:4 if every Bioware employee didnt turn into David Gayder

wtf is this

[jebacdrkac]

DA:4 if every Bioware employee didnt turn into David Gayder

wtf is this

Alistair laughing at two *******

[Oyster Sauce]

DA:4 if every Bioware employee didnt turn into David Gayder

wtf is this

Alistair laughing at two *******

Where's Alistair?