Gaming The Inquisition's Here and It's Here To Stay: The Dragon Age Series

I... have absolutely no recollection of playing Awakenings, so I'm doubting I ever played DA2 or DA:I as I'm doing replays...

 

I only played Origins years ago and decided to get back to catching up with others. Only got to the Deep Roads in DA:2 so far, but I forgot how amazing the DA universe had been. Taking the old human/dwarf/elves trio and turning them into something much more complex, especially the with the underlying threats of the darkspawn and Fade spirits. Still not enough dragons, which I remember was the same issue with Origins (maybe I'm spoiled by GoT?), but that is easy to forgive when the rest of the plot is top-notch.

I don't even remember anyone discussing DA2 when it came out (DA:I yes; I'm guessing that was more popular?). But so far DA2 is pretty awesome despite its boring title. I'm having a hard time chosing companions because most of them seem interesting and the banter is still as clever as Origins.

For those of you who played Origins more than once, is it worth replaying the game under different species/classes? Is it significantly different?

 

The origin stories themselves are the biggest points of divergence for different species/class combos. Beyond the origins it’s just what choices you make that can make things differ pretty significantly, but said choices aren’t really fixed by those.

As for DA2 it was a buggy shambles at release and I think the design decisions (many rooted in the ultra-short development cycle) put a lot of folks off even moreso than the bug-induced issues. I’m personally not a fan, but I have known some people who really enjoyed it. I guess that makes it the contentious entry?

 

Ah, that's interesting, and makes sense. I haven't run into many noticable bugs yet (probably because the game's been patched so much at this point), but it definitely does have the appearance of something hastily put together. The layout of most locations (houses, caves, mines, etc) are just repeats of the same thing over and over again. And a lot of the codex text is from Origins, giving a strange sense of deja vu. Despite this, the characters and quests have been a lot of fun, even if the stakes are much lower than in Origins. Almost like DA:2 is a long sidequest.

Have not finished it yet, but I really like the development of the Qunari in this one. I'm hoping for a giant Qunari invasion, but I have a feeling I may be disappointed because the main Mages vs Templars plot does not seem to care about them so far.

 

Same. Where would my Thedas be without its heroic savior Jim “the” Elf?

 

I was really hoping Awakenings was going to lead somewhere, but it ended up being irrelevant outside of introducing Anders and Justice.

 

Ten years of waiting and it looks amazing!

 

Looks like we’re going the Mass Effect 2 route.

Hope its good.

 

Your Origins died a long time ago, son.

 

20 years since Origins?

 

Not that long, 15 years.

All right, that doesn't help much.

 

A meaningless pre-rendered trailer that means **** all aside from what the marketing department thinks people want. I’m putting no stock in it in either direction.

 

This trailer looks like it's for the new Fortnite season or whatever. Holy **** just how far has Bioware fallen? Also Dreadwolf was a way better name for a game than Veilguard.

 

You'll all be able to complain more about the gameplay on Tuesday.

 

I have a feeling that coming out a little over a year after Baldur's Gate III is going to do this game no favors.

 

The gameplay might be the only highlight for me here if it turns out this is a representative tone piece; I’m willing to forgive a lot in an RPG if I have fun in combat.

Yeah that is absolutely going to be literally everyone’s point of comparison.

Edit:

Actually I just remembered that despite the BioWare name what we’re really talking about is the studio that put out Anthem (remember Anthem? I didn’t!), and then lost a lot of their creatives through departures and layoffs… so, yeah, this is probably going to be bad.

 

I thought I'd be interested in a new Dragon Age game but man that art style....

 

When the Veilguard thing came out a few days ago i originally thought it was a coop game in addition to Dreadwolf.

I really wish i had been right.

 

Bioware should give up on making videogames

 

If this one fails they probably will and it's unlikely to be a voluntary decision.

 

Is this DA4 then, or a spin-off?

 

DA4 for us, DA-it-better-work-or-we're-dead for Bioware.

 

This looks fine, the first look for older games looked different then main product.