Thomas Tibbs 5:05 minutes in and the game is already assuming the player is part of the mythical wider audience instead of someone who played the last few Bioware games.
darryl_m Smudboy made the point that both ME2 and DAII were pointless in the greater scheme of their respective franchises, and that they fail to set up anything of real importance or lasting effect.
A million times, a million billion trillion times in the lore "helmets with wings are grey warden helmets" start of this freaking game "huge line of templars with helmets with wings that they have never had on their helmets ever"
I had recently realised why Bioware's stories seem to make so very little sense. At some point (appears to be during the development of the first Mass Effect game) they've began purpously writing their stories so that it they would have more raw drama and irrational-emotional shenanigans at the expense of story cohesion and basic sense. It is most likely that Bioware does so in order attract more customers, as banale as it sounds. It becomes more and more obvious in their later games.
The same with Beyond 2 Souls, the "game" tries sooooo hard to make you fell sorry for Ellen Paige's character but it is not done through relatable and believable characters and scenarios, no instead we get rape scenes that make no sense and everyone around her is literaly the offspring of satan so that we can feel sorry for her, also, because the order of events is terrible put together, most potentially emotional scenes end up making no sense because we have no context of what happened before it got there
Suwat Saksri Rape scenes that make no sense? I thought it made sense. A underage naive girl in a sketchy bar in a back woods bar seems to make sense. I agree though that the order of events was terrible. If Quantic Dream wanted to keep switching time periods they should have switched between child and adult, but kept each chronological.
artemis2314 I can appreciate valuing character writing and trying to project a feeling of NPCs and especially PCs being actual people with actual personalities and not just robots to push plots and concepts. There's a few high-profile RPGs released this year that failed in those departments, and their devs could learn to value that. However I think starting with DA:O and really becoming an issue in ME2 they've sunken into this trend where they overfocus the small stories over the actually important world-shattering event that is established, eating up massive amounts of playtime and making the player wonder why they're farting around while the world is crumbling and people are dying. If you're going to do that,, then either tie in the majority of sidequests/subplots into the main quest or just don't have a main quest. I don't think anyone would care if the next Elder Scrolls game decided not to have a main questline...
What bothers me is how easily they handed you a leadership position based off the notion, "You have the mark." Wouldn't their cause be better in the hands of someone known amongst the clergy and templars, like Cassandra or Cullen? I get that we need to have a role because we're the player character but at the least make me feel like I earned it.
Worst part about Dragon Age: Inquisition for me was all of the fucking Red Lyrium placed everywhere. It never affected you or any of your party members. This kind of kills the point of it in my opinion as the Red Lyrium was hyped up to be this incredible source of power that had adverse affects on the mind and body. None of that is really shown in DA:I minus the Red Templars. It had the potential to be an interesting plot device and add some depth to the gameplay in certain areas, but all we got was a quest from Varric to destroy some Red Lyrium because why not?
+George Moose The bigger problem with the red lyrium was its prevalence. Up until DA 2, there was no red lyrium anywhere but in that one single statue you find in the mine. Suddenly in DA:I red lyrium is fucking everywhere with absolutely no explanation for how it spread so quickly. This breaks the game world by contradicting the way it was explained to work in prior games.
What bothers me a lot about this first boss fight... aren't pride demons supposed to be really though ? to have 1 be the first boss fight kind of force you to go to ridiculous levels of power later, especially given how the main character isn't trained in fighting against demons. Plus, didn't Cassandra slaughter demons and dragons really fast in her anime ?
Kamfrenchie Origin established them as continent-threatening antagonists. A pride demon-empowered Abomination was the end boss of the mage tower bit. 2 depowered them a bit, but they were still high-tier enemies that were kept at the ending of the game. 3... well just look.
Good thing Cassandra/Solas knew the mark would help solve the hole rather than say power it up even more with the energy in the hand. Considering the awesomely silly "I want to be a dragon" response at the start of DA II I'm a bit surprised none of the options to explain the glowing green hand involved to much masturbation.
The dragon comment by Hawke is even more silly considering one of their siblings just died, and Hawke doesn't seem all that affected by it. Personally, I find the aggressive options in DA2 are the best, but it makes the character seem bipolar as hell throughout the game, taking into account all the "neutral" dialogue options that simply sound so sincere that they don't sound neutral at all and could have been called Paragon Responses.
It's interesting (to me at lest). Right off the bat, my first thought was, "Wow, commenting on the color of the magic? That's *really* close to nit-pick territory." Immediately afterwards, however, two things occurred to me: 1) Smud's comments are still very much valid - this is notably inconsistent with the magic that we've seen in previous games, and the story/lore hasn't told us why. Heck, why are those staves glowing randomly in the first place? There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to them, nor does it look like they're doing anything except, well... glowing. Is it seriously, "Just to look cool"? 2) It demonstrates a certain lack of caring on Bioware's part. Even _magic in a fantasy setting_ needs some consistency to it, and this consistency has been neglected by the developers. If there are no rules to magic, then that magic becomes generic and boring (just look at the Harry Potter series #Micdrop #Shotsfired ). One the one hand, sure, we're talking about _the color of freakin' magic_, but on that same token, why was it so difficult for Bioware to keep _the color of freakin' magic_ consistent?
I noticed the similarities between Mass Effect and Dragon Age: First game: Impressive, a bit flawed but still holds up Second game: What was the point of the second game? Third game: The hell were they thinking?
+SMAXZO So true. However Dragon Age 2 could have led to a very good third game if the third game directly followed the end of Dragon Age 2 instead of throwing that entire plot setup out the window within the first 30 seconds of the game in favor of a much stupider plot that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere and leads to nothing of any value by the time the game is over. The only thing of note that happened in DA:I was the complete destruction of everything that made Dragon Age. Everything of note was retconned, from the way that magic worked, to the demons, to Flemeth.
I just finished the main game in a completionists manner. Doing every frikkin side quest and explored everything. It was my second time playing inquisition, so I knew how to play, just hadnt finished it once. I had the dragon age wiki open on the left side so i never missed anything and planned my decisions beforehand.I played DA:origins and DA:2 with all DLCs and exported my saves like a brave child. I wanted the best DA:I experience. My Save says I played for *280* Hours flat... _280_ jesus. In this 280 hours I commited to the main story maybe 20 hours or so? Rest of the 260 hours I spent on collecting plants which I dont need, Unlocking vistas in a Assassin's Creed manner, Collecting 200 shards to get resistances to elements which never hurt me anyway, killed one million great bears and wyverns respawning magically before my eyes , and read a whole book waiting on loading screens. .. After 100 hour mark, I tipped a point where I only pressed skip on conversations and read what is said in a fast manner, never read any codex entries anymore, and didnt give a single fig about what my companions behaved like, I gave up all my roleplaying manners, clicked the answers which enabled the most approval ratings so I dont miss out a companion side quest. I started changing my system's time settings to finish war table missions, and started duping unqiue items to sell because I declined to farm snoufleur skins for money to buy tier 3 schematics. Everything los all its meaning after a while. Nothing was fun anymore... Only thing which pushed me was the urge to finish this game so I can put it aside. It was more like a job than fun... I played all bioware games, old spritual predecessors or modern iterations. I played Baldurs Gate 1 +2, Icewind Dale 1+2 Neverwinter Nights 1+2 Jade Empire, SWTOR 1+2, I played DA:Origins, DA:2, I played Mass Effect 1+2+3 with imported Saves 3 Times over. Now after finishing DA:I I think I can judge it in comparsion to other Bioware games. One Word : _Hollow_
Without heistation : Mass Effect Trilogy. The amount of combined story value you get from the trilogy is just perfect. You get attached to your shepard very fast and live with him through 3 full game and DLC stories.Amazing.
Hemang Chauhan I would go for Baldur's Gate II for its D&D Ruleset and seriously good written stroy. KOTOR, NWN and Jade Empire play incredibely similiar and are all suberb. They just have different ruleset and settings but feel incredibely similiar. DA is my least favourite series. Although I liked the depth of Origins, Art Design and Freshness of DA2. Avaiting ME:Andromeda!
"And I'm looking rather predatorial right now, I bet I could probably eat you." "Then the danger is over?" "But not for you..." my favorite moment, haha.
To be fair, as I understand it, Red Lyrium poisoning is not instantaneous and takes some time. Both Bartrand and Meredith had suffered prolonged exposure but I would imagine that in those quantities it would be doubly dangerous.
Thelizardviking Maybe. But his insanity took somewhat longer to set in; I could be completely wrong though. The red templars are depicted as having to be exposed constantly but that might be a recon.
Thelizardviking I suppose one could argue that he was just really greedy... I mean we already get that from the narrative that he doesn't really want to hire mercenaries and share his profit with them. As for his relationship with Varric I don't know. He didn't seem to care about him that much either.
Well, I am seriously surprised you paid any attention to the plot. I have to say, I was way too bored with repetitive gameplay and generic side-quests to even try to generate something that even may come close to "paying attention" or "giving a slightest fuck". Tear into it Smud! I'll love watching every part of it!
What makes a good plot analysis? Because In the end we find out (partially) what solas knew and where he was from and his intent. Which is answered by how much he knows in 14:45. But the smudboy makes really good points on the lack of character exploitation! How could professional writers miss this?! Were they rushed?
The biggest Problem of DA:I's Story is the fact, that it is built upon a frikkin umiportant and small DLC of DA:2. It would have been different If DA:2 told the story of Legacy as its main story instead of this fucking Mage-Templar war who NO FRIKKIN BODY CARED ABOUT. This story is way too shallow to take itself so seriously. I dont care playing parent between my mage and templar children. I wanted to shout "get over it" to the NPCs all the time. DA:2 should have been about the Corypheus and its Connection to Darkspawn, the mage templar war should have been the DLC. This way it would have been more connected to the DA:Origins and to DA:I. It makes more sense in Scale too. DA1 -> Darspawn and Blight DA2 -> Origin of Blight, Old Magisters of the First Sin, DA:I -> Old Elven Gods and Core of Faith in Thedas. Perfect. Instead they told this stories in Companion quests and DLCs... *facepalm*
A proper story structure? What madness is this? :P Hell - even The Awakening foreshadowed magisters with the Architect. So why the HELL *wasn't* the story of DA2 about that stuff?
Loved your first take on the convoluted story prologue. I'm just missing the Cortez crash scene infamous "YAAAAARGH". I hope you find the appropriate moment to include it in one of the future installments. Keep up the good work, Smud!
Omg. Damn this story. When Cassandra asked ME what do I think or basically "which direction should we go?" I was like "Are you fucking serious? You're asking ME???"
this game introduction suffered because the game was meant to have only one race like DA2 But the inclution of other races made them take out origin stories (players where meant to choose the origin of their character besides it's class originally) while still on development. It was thanks to the bioware forums users that wanting to play as qunari even if the fucking race wasn't exposed enough through the games for people to actually roleplay as them. Writers were against this change but where forced to do it. And thats how we got amnesic mc for the prologue instead of a sustancial origin story to relate to.
1:55 & 2:44 & 9:01 - A previous game in a trilogy has little/no bearing on the third game? That is unprecedented. 2:00 - I hope that joke never dies. 4:32 - I lost it. 24:19 - ROFL
I did not expect this. (no Monty Python joke intended) Btw, your voice volume could've been a bit higher. --- Jeez, what's with Bioware and making their stories start in media res recently? ME3, DA2, DAI... ; I don't count ME2 since it started in media pointless.
ThePreciseClimber I had to Google what 'media res' meant. I can totally see that. Like every BioWare game these days feels like they just skipped the beginning of the game. In DAI there are even several references to characters that your character "knows" and you can state an opinion about them, but as a player you've never seen them. If only there was an actual origin story to play, that lead to visiting the Conclave instead of everything happening off-screen.
I remember actually I was in a skype with Smud when he asked me about the introduction. I believe I said, it plays it fast and loose but got the job done. I think upon reflecting this is Bioware's latest tactic in their story development especially during introductions. Keep the pace so fast that people don't have enough time to think or process what is going on so by the time its all over it all makes sense because at the end all the information is given to you at that point. So yeah, double dumbass on me for that!
Please continue analysing the plot of this game. Also the plot would have made more sense if you were dragged to Solas so that he could study you and after questioning you Solas brought you to Cassandra's base near the rift. The advantage of this is that Solas could explain how the magic would work without creating plot holes or looking stupid.
My body is ready for this. I do love though that Gaider has moved on from DA and that the Bioware forums are worse than ever. The mods don't devs and community managers don't even log on anymore due to the "toxicity" of some forumers. They drank the cool-aid hard after ME3's collapse.
Just for fun: Dragon Age: Inqusition Plot Analysis, Plot Analysis At 2:10 "The game's plot has fallen apart before it even has started." Except there is nothing wrong with starting a sequel with some discrepancies to it's prequel if it is coherently explained afterwards in the plot how this discrepancy came about. It works like this: Plot 1 takes place in time A. Plot 2 takes place in time C. Between A and C there is a time B. During this time B the circumstances at the end of time A can change and thus the circumstances at the beginning of time C doesn't need to be identical to the circumstances at the end of time A. Therefore the circumstances at the end of plot 1 don't need to be identical to the ones at the beginning of plot 2. As long as the change between those two plots can result logically during the time between those two plots, there is no problem. Since such a thing hasn't yet been shown to be impossible, there is no basis yet to say that the plot has fallen apart before it has started. This will only be a problem if the plot doesn't at some point address this, something which can't be ascertained before analyzing the plot. At 2:42 "What's the point of Dragon Age 2?" What's the point of asking that question before Dragon Age 3 has even begun? At 3:23 The three "gladiators" aren't gladiators at all which can be clearly seen in the cutscene from 4:00 to 6:18 Their clothes just happen to be colored light beige but it can be clearly seen that they are made of cloth, the same color can also be seen on their belt which undoubtedly isn't skin. At 6:15 this even more palpably obvious. At 7:43 there is an investigate button so the insinuation at 7:54 that the confidence of the protagonist is out of place is out of place. At 8:52 "So whatever war or conflict that spawned at the end of Dragon Age 2, that was all about to resolve itself, proving that the events of Dragon Age 2 was in fact pointless." Except it lead to a lot of important people whom all died in the explosion to be at the same place at the same time so that they could all die in the explosion. If this hadn't happened, the plot would have been very different, proving that the conflict at the end of Dragon Age 2 and thus the events of Dragon Age 2 wasn't pointless. Also, since resolution of the conflict was hindered by the explosion, this means that the conflict at the end of Dragon Age 2 is likely to continue which would make the plot of Dragon Age 2, not pointless. At 15:22: "So the writers have her dangerously dug their own hole by using erroneous, question raising exposition, having us contemplate Cassandra's comments..." What seems to be established during Cassandra's introduction is that she doesn't trust the protagonist, given this and the fact that she knows about the wizard's theory about the mark, she probably doesn't trust (she believes in it but want to prove it wrong) the theory that the wizard had about the mark's abilities, she seems to looking for an excuse to kill the protagonist. Given what is shown about her character it is reasonable to hypothesize that the reason she doesn't explain the reasoning behind what she says about the mark and breach and their relationship is that she doesn't understand it or that she didn't listen to it. She probably is stupid and prejudiced which isn't very for a Templar who isn't important enough to die in a explosion, the situation that she is in has been shown to be an urgent one as well. Having us contemplate her comments isn't digging a hole if they are coherently explained afterwards, this is also a "show not tell" of her personality, character and attitudes. Everything else seems alright though, but you shouldn't fail to achieve the same standards you hold others to, especially when your mistakes can be easily spotted and rectified.
Paradoxarn DA2 was "not pointless" in a very weird way. The main point of DA2 (Templar/Mage shenanigans) feel like they were just skimmed over. A smaller-scale mission (Flemeth's fetch quest) as it turns out was much more important. And the Legacy DLC was the most important chunk of plot of them all. It's almost like a DAI prologue.
ThePreciseClimber Aka bad story telling. DA 2 pushes the stroy forward 10 years and sets some stuff up, but Hawke has absolutely no agency on any of it.
Luke Skywalker. Frodo Baggins. Captain James T. Kirk. Paul Atreides. King Arthur. All of these protagonists have some things in common modern writers would do well to remember. NONE of them were amnesiacs and ALL of them had previous backstories before their adventure began! Blank slates are just lazy. They don't allow you to imprint characterization any more than a film about nothing allows you to make up your own plot.
Of all of the things cut from the game that could have made it good apparently there was an entire subplot at the beginning where Cassandra is more suspicious of you instead of the bizarre I'm harshly interrogating but now I trust you situation
"Oh, smudboy, I'm a little surprised to see you... alive? " Joking aside - it's a relief to know that this is finally underway! And endless Warcraft references - I demand a Warcraft plot analysis!
I haven't started the videos yet but first I wanna say I appreciate finding videos that are specificaly abt the narrative of DAI, the criticism I've found was mostly about the mmo-like gameplay/bad open-world design (which is the worst offender of the game imo), but when playing the game I've also found I couldn't care less abt the plot at all either (nor abt the caracters tbh, although as most have stated some of them have good writing). I can't really explain it but DAI lost the 'dragon age' qualify/feeling I loved abt origins (and that was still somewhat present in the crap that was DA2)... Anyway sorry for the long comment, I need to vent abt that game wherever I can lol
Oh man, Plot Analysis of a game I haven't even played or have any desire to play it. Saw my friend playing it for few hours and half the time I was facepalming.
Bioware has become shit. I used to love their games, but not anymore. Last game I played from them was DA2, and you can kind of see why I stopped there.
I'm not sure I follow the whole "DA2 was meaningless" logic you start going off on at the start. I read into it as Kirkwall's events happened, mages and templars were fighting unabated, and Divine Justinia called the Conclave to try and settle the two groups differences before it escalated to a point where peace would be impossible. Which is where the Conclave is destroyed, and the Mage/Templar war re-ignites. Am I wrong in this? I was given no further information to assume otherwise. Also, I was under the impression that a person had to be exposed to Red Lyrium for a long amount of time (without ingesting it, just being around it) for it to seriously start affecting them, as Varric explains in Haven later on.
On your second point I believe Bioware is confused about this. Bartrend(sp?) seems to be affected by it upon touching it, while Varric who tossed it to him was not affected. My logic, although as far as I know there is no lore supporting it outright, is that red lyrium affects some faster than others. For your first point I believe it is open to interpretation, but I'm inclined to support smudboy.
StylesisTNA Lets just ignore the Red Lyrium for now, because honestly I feel it's pretty badly written overall. There's no solid rules to how it works and so it's all floaty and weird. As for the first point, are we meant to assume because the game didn't spell out exactly what happened since the end of DA2 and the start of DAI that nothing happened at all? That seems to be where Smudboy is coming from.
K Zen Yeah I agree with you on the Red Lyrium being poorly written. As far as Dragon Age 2 being meaningless, I admit I'm not entirely sure about what smudboy meant. However, imo DA2 was meaningless for a couple of reasons. 1. Your choices in DA2 have no affect on the plot of DAI. Everything occurs the same regardless of what you decided. Sure Hawke is in the game, but honestly Hawke's appearance feels like fan service, as Varric could have done everything that Hawke did. 2. The mage-templar conflict is brushed under the rug almost as soon as DAI begins. The game begins with peace talks, and the only mage and templar battles we see are either skirmishes between small forces that are not connected to their main groups (In the Hinterlands) and battles that occur as a result of Corphyesus. This virtually negates seemingly the whole purpose of DA2 which seemed to be setting up a mage-templar war. The only thing I find not completely meaningless to the overall arching plot of DA was the DLC that introduced Corphyesus. Even this DLC though actually had no real affect though on the story, after all if Hawke hadn't showed up Corphyesus still would have broken free. DA2 just does not impact the overall plot of the DA series. Sorry if this post was long, and I should add I enjoyed DA2, but from the perspective of its contributions to the series' narrative the game is meaningless.
I'm not sure why Cassandra's seemingly unsupported statements made you question her sanity. Yes, we don't know yet that Solas examined us, but rather than jumping to the conclusion that Cassandra is making things up, shouldn't you either reserve judgment or give her the benefit of the doubt since she's the one who doesn't have amnesia?
7:12 - To be fair, she _did_ say "_may_ grow until swallows to world." 7:41 - Asserting that it is killing him was pretty stupid, but saying that it "may be the key to stopping this" was just speculation. Or are you talking about her assertion that "there isn't much time?"
Hey Smudboy! What's going on man? I want to ask you something and you probably see this question a lot and you probably answered a lot of people, but i want to ask you, do you ever plan on doing a Dragon Age Origins Analysis? I only ask, because you did one for Mass Effect 1 and you love that game and you know that, every story has it's flaws, and i love seeing you point at flaws in stories even if they are GOOD stories, as they bring about good insight. Just wondering. :)
Peppridge Farm Remembers Isn't that the point of every game plot? To lazily make the player feel good even if it makes little sense and creates weaker characters and plot.
All this stuff with sentient magical tattoos sporting reality-warping powers seems like it would fit with the greater runes from Suikoden. ...I don't remember any supporting narrative structure in either of the previous two games for this, however. I wonder why would they want to introduce such a... potential gamechanger without any previous foreshadowing and build up. (As far as I remember, at least.)
7:14 Later on the game tells us that Solas already examined the green hand while the protagonist was unconscious. I mean you're right they let a lot of things in the open at the beginning but on the other hand it's a pretty boring thing if they told us everything already.
The intro was fine and I wasn't too annoyed by it. I do tend to enjoy stories which throw their audience into the middle of things and only expect you to know about the immediate threat at first. The instigating event was too retarded and weak for the story to be told conventionally anyway (random Joe walks in on some wannabe demigod's uprising and gains super powers,) so full on in media res was really the only viable solution (which Inquisition really wanted to do but for some reason didn't, settling instead for a mild case of "let's just cut the first two scenes and unveil them bit by bit for a cheap pay off". The stupid is too much to bear and should be ingested in small quantities at a time.) The stupid hits the hardest though when Corypheus is around, so basically at the end of the first and second acts and the entirety of the third act. Until he shows up I shall wait and observe.
You really need to up your mic volume by like.. tenfold. If I increase my sound levels to understand you, the random game sounds you throw in blast my ears off :s
I love this. And I also love bioware games but the overarching plot had also been a bit meh, so I'm glad you're doing this. It's like cinema sins for video games. :)
> They really retconned most of our decisions in TW2 You know what? Fuck choices in video games. Linear storytelling is much safer and and *can* result in a better-written narrative.
You're as nit picky as ever but it's been missed, somewhat. I was hoping that when you would eventually do these reviews, you would focus more on how although there are outcomes to your choices, they don't really affect the story. This seems to be more of game where they work on giving the player small choices, similar to a Tell Tale game, where you can pick who comes with you, but the same events happen with the same outcome, just with some different dialogue and possibly different solutions to problems which as mentioned earlier, results in the same outcome.
+User x By this guy, do you mean me? I'd argue such a technique was barely used in DAI, let alone well. I'd say it's closer to "fish out of water", and even that isn't done well. This is regards to setting: they could've tried a circular journey, a linear development, or a cross-cut over a large umbrella of places -- this is all a method of limiting the "arena" for a protagonist to exist (while avoiding the old Aristotelian "unity of place" concept.) I think we'd be more attached to Hawke/The Inquisitor, if we knew what about them was destroyed/lost, as they then go on their heroes journey into wherever. (Similar to how the initial problem/rising action introduces the character, we really don't care so much about them at first, aside from how they're presented (sometimes, not even as characters.))
+User x I hate in media res. But in media res has no place in a role playing game because when you start the game, you need to know your character's motivations, you need to know what the stakes are, how the world works, what your place in the world is, you need something to tie you to the world. This all has to be established before the world has any meaning to you, before you can take on your role within that world and act appropriately. An in media res story shoves you into the middle of the story before any of this has been established and completely prevents you from being able to take on a role.
oh boy starting a story with amnesia how classy also how the whole thing in the conclave(?) went down which you find out later was fucking hilariously ridiculous the whole scene with that old lady kickign that orb towards you and you jsut happend to conviently run by god was that awefull
"Do you really want to kill off the MC off in less than 5 minutes....please don't answer that."
I couldn't breathe.
2:00 minutes in and Smud already said "what was the point of dragon age 2?"
Thomas Tibbs 5:05 minutes in and the game is already assuming the player is part of the mythical wider audience instead of someone who played the last few Bioware games.
What about the comment on ME2...
LOL
darryl_m
Smudboy made the point that both ME2 and DAII were pointless in the greater scheme of their respective franchises, and that they fail to set up anything of real importance or lasting effect.
>"Now I am become Anders. Destroyer of plots."
Lel
A million times, a million billion trillion times in the lore "helmets with wings are grey warden helmets"
start of this freaking game "huge line of templars with helmets with wings that they have never had on their helmets ever"
Yeah that bugged me 2
The biggest sin of this intro is that playing it any more than once is excruciating and dull
I had recently realised why Bioware's stories seem to make so very little sense.
At some point (appears to be during the development of the first Mass Effect game) they've began purpously writing their stories so that it they would have more raw drama and irrational-emotional shenanigans at the expense of story cohesion and basic sense. It is most likely that Bioware does so in order attract more customers, as banale as it sounds. It becomes more and more obvious in their later games.
The same with Beyond 2 Souls, the "game" tries sooooo hard to make you fell sorry for Ellen Paige's character but it is not done through relatable and believable characters and scenarios, no instead we get rape scenes that make no sense and everyone around her is literaly the offspring of satan so that we can feel sorry for her, also, because the order of events is terrible put together, most potentially emotional scenes end up making no sense because we have no context of what happened before it got there
Suwat Saksri Rape scenes that make no sense? I thought it made sense. A underage naive girl in a sketchy bar in a back woods bar seems to make sense. I agree though that the order of events was terrible. If Quantic Dream wanted to keep switching time periods they should have switched between child and adult, but kept each chronological.
soulxhawk It's less that the scenes themselves didn't make sense its that there were two of them that played out almost identically.
Thanatos388 I'm trying to remember, what was the other rape scene besides the bar?
artemis2314 I can appreciate valuing character writing and trying to project a feeling of NPCs and especially PCs being actual people with actual personalities and not just robots to push plots and concepts. There's a few high-profile RPGs released this year that failed in those departments, and their devs could learn to value that.
However I think starting with DA:O and really becoming an issue in ME2 they've sunken into this trend where they overfocus the small stories over the actually important world-shattering event that is established, eating up massive amounts of playtime and making the player wonder why they're farting around while the world is crumbling and people are dying. If you're going to do that,, then either tie in the majority of sidequests/subplots into the main quest or just don't have a main quest. I don't think anyone would care if the next Elder Scrolls game decided not to have a main questline...
What bothers me is how easily they handed you a leadership position based off the notion, "You have the mark." Wouldn't their cause be better in the hands of someone known amongst the clergy and templars, like Cassandra or Cullen? I get that we need to have a role because we're the player character but at the least make me feel like I earned it.
Special snowflakes don't have to earn anything.Are you protagonist shaming?
Oh.. oh my god, I am, I'm so sorry.
Cassandras Casting couch
😇
@@omiorahman6283 Gave me a good chuckle xD
Dao do the same, but yall don't mention it. Cause it's great game
Worst part about Dragon Age: Inquisition for me was all of the fucking Red Lyrium placed everywhere. It never affected you or any of your party members. This kind of kills the point of it in my opinion as the Red Lyrium was hyped up to be this incredible source of power that had adverse affects on the mind and body. None of that is really shown in DA:I minus the Red Templars. It had the potential to be an interesting plot device and add some depth to the gameplay in certain areas, but all we got was a quest from Varric to destroy some Red Lyrium because why not?
+George Moose The bigger problem with the red lyrium was its prevalence. Up until DA 2, there was no red lyrium anywhere but in that one single statue you find in the mine. Suddenly in DA:I red lyrium is fucking everywhere with absolutely no explanation for how it spread so quickly. This breaks the game world by contradicting the way it was explained to work in prior games.
What bothers me a lot about this first boss fight... aren't pride demons supposed to be really though ? to have 1 be the first boss fight kind of force you to go to ridiculous levels of power later, especially given how the main character isn't trained in fighting against demons.
Plus, didn't Cassandra slaughter demons and dragons really fast in her anime ?
Kamfrenchie Origin established them as continent-threatening antagonists. A pride demon-empowered Abomination was the end boss of the mage tower bit.
2 depowered them a bit, but they were still high-tier enemies that were kept at the ending of the game.
3... well just look.
huckmart 99 Wait what? The desire demons no longer appear?
emytzu There's a statue of one in the distant background in the Fade. That's it.
Good thing Cassandra/Solas knew the mark would help solve the hole rather than say power it up even more with the energy in the hand.
Considering the awesomely silly "I want to be a dragon" response at the start of DA II I'm a bit surprised none of the options to explain the glowing green hand involved to much masturbation.
PregnantOrc "Why is your hand glowing?" "Uh....I've been spanking the one-eyed champ one too many time."
The dragon comment by Hawke is even more silly considering one of their siblings just died, and Hawke doesn't seem all that affected by it. Personally, I find the aggressive options in DA2 are the best, but it makes the character seem bipolar as hell throughout the game, taking into account all the "neutral" dialogue options that simply sound so sincere that they don't sound neutral at all and could have been called Paragon Responses.
It's interesting (to me at lest). Right off the bat, my first thought was, "Wow, commenting on the color of the magic? That's *really* close to nit-pick territory." Immediately afterwards, however, two things occurred to me:
1) Smud's comments are still very much valid - this is notably inconsistent with the magic that we've seen in previous games, and the story/lore hasn't told us why. Heck, why are those staves glowing randomly in the first place? There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to them, nor does it look like they're doing anything except, well... glowing. Is it seriously, "Just to look cool"?
2) It demonstrates a certain lack of caring on Bioware's part. Even _magic in a fantasy setting_ needs some consistency to it, and this consistency has been neglected by the developers. If there are no rules to magic, then that magic becomes generic and boring (just look at the Harry Potter series #Micdrop #Shotsfired ). One the one hand, sure, we're talking about _the color of freakin' magic_, but on that same token, why was it so difficult for Bioware to keep _the color of freakin' magic_ consistent?
Alright everyone, grab your popcorn bags, this is gonna be a ride.
I noticed the similarities between Mass Effect and Dragon Age:
First game: Impressive, a bit flawed but still holds up
Second game: What was the point of the second game?
Third game: The hell were they thinking?
+SMAXZO So true. However Dragon Age 2 could have led to a very good third game if the third game directly followed the end of Dragon Age 2 instead of throwing that entire plot setup out the window within the first 30 seconds of the game in favor of a much stupider plot that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere and leads to nothing of any value by the time the game is over. The only thing of note that happened in DA:I was the complete destruction of everything that made Dragon Age. Everything of note was retconned, from the way that magic worked, to the demons, to Flemeth.
ME:3 is aeons better than DA:I.
DA:2 Threw away DA:Origins, DA:I Threw away DA:2.
The second Mass Effect game is the best one.
@@KaNoMikoProductions Nah
I just finished the main game in a completionists manner. Doing every frikkin side quest and explored everything. It was my second time playing inquisition, so I knew how to play, just hadnt finished it once. I had the dragon age wiki open on the left side so i never missed anything and planned my decisions beforehand.I played DA:origins and DA:2 with all DLCs and exported my saves like a brave child. I wanted the best DA:I experience.
My Save says I played for *280* Hours flat... _280_ jesus. In this 280 hours I commited to the main story maybe 20 hours or so? Rest of the 260 hours I spent on collecting plants which I dont need, Unlocking vistas in a Assassin's Creed manner, Collecting 200 shards to get resistances to elements which never hurt me anyway, killed one million great bears and wyverns respawning magically before my eyes , and read a whole book waiting on loading screens. ..
After 100 hour mark, I tipped a point where I only pressed skip on conversations and read what is said in a fast manner, never read any codex entries anymore, and didnt give a single fig about what my companions behaved like, I gave up all my roleplaying manners, clicked the answers which enabled the most approval ratings so I dont miss out a companion side quest. I started changing my system's time settings to finish war table missions, and started duping unqiue items to sell because I declined to farm snoufleur skins for money to buy tier 3 schematics. Everything los all its meaning after a while. Nothing was fun anymore... Only thing which pushed me was the urge to finish this game so I can put it aside. It was more like a job than fun...
I played all bioware games, old spritual predecessors or modern iterations. I played Baldurs Gate 1 +2, Icewind Dale 1+2 Neverwinter Nights 1+2 Jade Empire, SWTOR 1+2, I played DA:Origins, DA:2, I played Mass Effect 1+2+3 with imported Saves 3 Times over. Now after finishing DA:I I think I can judge it in comparsion to other Bioware games. One Word : _Hollow_
this is the most accurate mirror reflection of my own, and the few i know who played, experience. Sad
So, amm... which Bioware game is your favorite?
Without heistation : Mass Effect Trilogy. The amount of combined story value you get from the trilogy is just perfect. You get attached to your shepard very fast and live with him through 3 full game and DLC stories.Amazing.
ArseneGray And your second favorite game/series from Bioware?
Hemang Chauhan I would go for Baldur's Gate II for its D&D Ruleset and seriously good written stroy. KOTOR, NWN and Jade Empire play incredibely similiar and are all suberb. They just have different ruleset and settings but feel incredibely similiar. DA is my least favourite series. Although I liked the depth of Origins, Art Design and Freshness of DA2.
Avaiting ME:Andromeda!
So M.A.R.K. the Dragon age equivalent to S.A.M. with the main character being there only to be a designated bearer for the do-it-all story
McGuffin.
I don't think that's what a mcguffin is.
"And I'm looking rather predatorial right now, I bet I could probably eat you." "Then the danger is over?" "But not for you..." my favorite moment, haha.
To be fair, as I understand it, Red Lyrium poisoning is not instantaneous and takes some time. Both Bartrand and Meredith had suffered prolonged exposure but I would imagine that in those quantities it would be doubly dangerous.
StarduskLP Prolonged exposure? Bartrand immediatly betrayed both Varric and Hawke as soon as he touched it.
Thelizardviking Inconsistencies!? In a Bioware story?! Whodathunkit?
Thelizardviking Maybe. But his insanity took somewhat longer to set in; I could be completely wrong though. The red templars are depicted as having to be exposed constantly but that might be a recon.
Thelizardviking I suppose one could argue that he was just really greedy... I mean we already get that from the narrative that he doesn't really want to hire mercenaries and share his profit with them. As for his relationship with Varric I don't know. He didn't seem to care about him that much either.
Looking back I think the bulk of the Mage Templar war was going to be delt with in the canceled DA2 expansion Exalted March.
Glad to see you making another plot analysis.
"I'm confused"
Can someone mod this dialogue option into every single conversation that happens in the game?
Well, I am seriously surprised you paid any attention to the plot. I have to say, I was way too bored with repetitive gameplay and generic side-quests to even try to generate something that even may come close to "paying attention" or "giving a slightest fuck".
Tear into it Smud! I'll love watching every part of it!
Cassandra's accent is German-Slavic. Leliana's is French.
What makes a good plot analysis? Because In the end we find out (partially) what solas knew and where he was from and his intent. Which is answered by how much he knows in 14:45. But the smudboy makes really good points on the lack of character exploitation! How could professional writers miss this?! Were they rushed?
The biggest Problem of DA:I's Story is the fact, that it is built upon a frikkin umiportant and small DLC of DA:2. It would have been different If DA:2 told the story of Legacy as its main story instead of this fucking Mage-Templar war who NO FRIKKIN BODY CARED ABOUT. This story is way too shallow to take itself so seriously. I dont care playing parent between my mage and templar children. I wanted to shout "get over it" to the NPCs all the time. DA:2 should have been about the Corypheus and its Connection to Darkspawn, the mage templar war should have been the DLC. This way it would have been more connected to the DA:Origins and to DA:I. It makes more sense in Scale too. DA1 -> Darspawn and Blight DA2 -> Origin of Blight, Old Magisters of the First Sin, DA:I -> Old Elven Gods and Core of Faith in Thedas. Perfect. Instead they told this stories in Companion quests and DLCs... *facepalm*
A proper story structure? What madness is this? :P
Hell - even The Awakening foreshadowed magisters with the Architect. So why the HELL *wasn't* the story of DA2 about that stuff?
Loved your first take on the convoluted story prologue. I'm just missing the Cortez crash scene infamous "YAAAAARGH". I hope you find the appropriate moment to include it in one of the future installments. Keep up the good work, Smud!
Omg. Damn this story. When Cassandra asked ME what do I think or basically "which direction should we go?" I was like "Are you fucking serious? You're asking ME???"
this game introduction suffered because the game was meant to have only one race like DA2 But the inclution of other races made them take out origin stories (players where meant to choose the origin of their character besides it's class originally) while still on development. It was thanks to the bioware forums users that wanting to play as qunari even if the fucking race wasn't exposed enough through the games for people to actually roleplay as them. Writers were against this change but where forced to do it. And thats how we got amnesic mc for the prologue instead of a sustancial origin story to relate to.
1:55 & 2:44 & 9:01 - A previous game in a trilogy has little/no bearing on the third game?
That is unprecedented.
2:00 - I hope that joke never dies.
4:32 - I lost it.
24:19 - ROFL
I did not expect this. (no Monty Python joke intended)
Btw, your voice volume could've been a bit higher.
---
Jeez, what's with Bioware and making their stories start in media res recently? ME3, DA2, DAI... ; I don't count ME2 since it started in media pointless.
"In media pointless" i love you
ThePreciseClimber I had to Google what 'media res' meant. I can totally see that. Like every BioWare game these days feels like they just skipped the beginning of the game. In DAI there are even several references to characters that your character "knows" and you can state an opinion about them, but as a player you've never seen them. If only there was an actual origin story to play, that lead to visiting the Conclave instead of everything happening off-screen.
I remember actually I was in a skype with Smud when he asked me about the introduction. I believe I said, it plays it fast and loose but got the job done. I think upon reflecting this is Bioware's latest tactic in their story development especially during introductions. Keep the pace so fast that people don't have enough time to think or process what is going on so by the time its all over it all makes sense because at the end all the information is given to you at that point.
So yeah, double dumbass on me for that!
I love you Smudboy! Keep up the great work, I do enjoy these plot analysis's.
Please continue analysing the plot of this game.
Also the plot would have made more sense if you were dragged to Solas so that he could study you and after questioning you Solas brought you to Cassandra's base near the rift. The advantage of this is that Solas could explain how the magic would work without creating plot holes or looking stupid.
Moar Smudboy, moar ! We want moar !
My body is ready for this. I do love though that Gaider has moved on from DA and that the Bioware forums are worse than ever. The mods don't devs and community managers don't even log on anymore due to the "toxicity" of some forumers. They drank the cool-aid hard after ME3's collapse.
Just for fun: Dragon Age: Inqusition Plot Analysis, Plot Analysis
At 2:10 "The game's plot has fallen apart before it even has started." Except there is nothing wrong with starting a sequel with some discrepancies to it's prequel if it is coherently explained afterwards in the plot how this discrepancy came about. It works like this: Plot 1 takes place in time A. Plot 2 takes place in time C. Between A and C there is a time B. During this time B the circumstances at the end of time A can change and thus the circumstances at the beginning of time C doesn't need to be identical to the circumstances at the end of time A. Therefore the circumstances at the end of plot 1 don't need to be identical to the ones at the beginning of plot 2. As long as the change between those two plots can result logically during the time between those two plots, there is no problem. Since such a thing hasn't yet been shown to be impossible, there is no basis yet to say that the plot has fallen apart before it has started. This will only be a problem if the plot doesn't at some point address this, something which can't be ascertained before analyzing the plot.
At 2:42 "What's the point of Dragon Age 2?" What's the point of asking that question before Dragon Age 3 has even begun?
At 3:23 The three "gladiators" aren't gladiators at all which can be clearly seen in the cutscene from 4:00 to 6:18 Their clothes just happen to be colored light beige but it can be clearly seen that they are made of cloth, the same color can also be seen on their belt which undoubtedly isn't skin. At 6:15 this even more palpably obvious.
At 7:43 there is an investigate button so the insinuation at 7:54 that the confidence of the protagonist is out of place is out of place.
At 8:52 "So whatever war or conflict that spawned at the end of Dragon Age 2, that was all about to resolve itself, proving that the events of Dragon Age 2 was in fact pointless." Except it lead to a lot of important people whom all died in the explosion to be at the same place at the same time so that they could all die in the explosion. If this hadn't happened, the plot would have been very different, proving that the conflict at the end of Dragon Age 2 and thus the events of Dragon Age 2 wasn't pointless. Also, since resolution of the conflict was hindered by the explosion, this means that the conflict at the end of Dragon Age 2 is likely to continue which would make the plot of Dragon Age 2, not pointless.
At 15:22: "So the writers have her dangerously dug their own hole by using erroneous, question raising exposition, having us contemplate Cassandra's comments..." What seems to be established during Cassandra's introduction is that she doesn't trust the protagonist, given this and the fact that she knows about the wizard's theory about the mark, she probably doesn't trust (she believes in it but want to prove it wrong) the theory that the wizard had about the mark's abilities, she seems to looking for an excuse to kill the protagonist. Given what is shown about her character it is reasonable to hypothesize that the reason she doesn't explain the reasoning behind what she says about the mark and breach and their relationship is that she doesn't understand it or that she didn't listen to it. She probably is stupid and prejudiced which isn't very for a Templar who isn't important enough to die in a explosion, the situation that she is in has been shown to be an urgent one as well. Having us contemplate her comments isn't digging a hole if they are coherently explained afterwards, this is also a "show not tell" of her personality, character and attitudes.
Everything else seems alright though, but you shouldn't fail to achieve the same standards you hold others to, especially when your mistakes can be easily spotted and rectified.
Paradoxarn DA2 was "not pointless" in a very weird way. The main point of DA2 (Templar/Mage shenanigans) feel like they were just skimmed over. A smaller-scale mission (Flemeth's fetch quest) as it turns out was much more important. And the Legacy DLC was the most important chunk of plot of them all. It's almost like a DAI prologue.
ThePreciseClimber Aka bad story telling. DA 2 pushes the stroy forward 10 years and sets some stuff up, but Hawke has absolutely no agency on any of it.
I don't know but i thought that the weird effects of red lyrium happens with continuous exposure to it.
Luke Skywalker. Frodo Baggins. Captain James T. Kirk. Paul Atreides. King Arthur.
All of these protagonists have some things in common modern writers would do well to remember. NONE of them were amnesiacs and ALL of them had previous backstories before their adventure began! Blank slates are just lazy. They don't allow you to imprint characterization any more than a film about nothing allows you to make up your own plot.
I like this game but man the beginning is a rocky start at best.
It's like a mistress roulette video
Of all of the things cut from the game that could have made it good apparently there was an entire subplot at the beginning where Cassandra is more suspicious of you instead of the bizarre I'm harshly interrogating but now I trust you situation
So glad I stumbled across this video. Your content is hilariously honest! Subbed.
05:36 - track name is "The Wiggler" by Leo Wright
That alliteration was beautiful.
13:20 - so Cassandra DID consult a mage about rift and glowing hand.
Protagonist's face at 19:45, perfect "Really? Really?" face.
Good to have you back on track. I've been waiting ages for this.
"Oh, smudboy, I'm a little surprised to see you... alive? "
Joking aside - it's a relief to know that this is finally underway! And endless Warcraft references - I demand a Warcraft plot analysis!
I've been waiting for this! The circle will be completed.
The first game where I want the entire party to die eclipse style
I want a game with Donovan from berserk
Got to wonder if you have considered doing a plot analysis of Dragon Age: Origins since you did one for all 3 Mass Effects.
couldn't finish the game.. lost its "dragon age" quality...was the last straw.. dropped the game and the the developer..
How they lost the dragon age quality?
Shibari technique? Huh, never thought Cassandra's into bondage.
I haven't started the videos yet but first I wanna say I appreciate finding videos that are specificaly abt the narrative of DAI, the criticism I've found was mostly about the mmo-like gameplay/bad open-world design (which is the worst offender of the game imo), but when playing the game I've also found I couldn't care less abt the plot at all either (nor abt the caracters tbh, although as most have stated some of them have good writing). I can't really explain it but DAI lost the 'dragon age' qualify/feeling I loved abt origins (and that was still somewhat present in the crap that was DA2)... Anyway sorry for the long comment, I need to vent abt that game wherever I can lol
Oh man, Plot Analysis of a game I haven't even played or have any desire to play it. Saw my friend playing it for few hours and half the time I was facepalming.
Yeah I play it to learn how to make unlikable red shirts
*EVE-RY-ONE!*
Bioware has become shit. I used to love their games, but not anymore. Last game I played from them was DA2, and you can kind of see why I stopped there.
Glad you are doing this again... Plot analysis is what you do best.
I feel like you are improving yourself with every new video :D Keep up the good work! or else!
She did say may grow, the word "may" implies that she doesn't really know if that will happen
YES
I'm not sure I follow the whole "DA2 was meaningless" logic you start going off on at the start. I read into it as Kirkwall's events happened, mages and templars were fighting unabated, and Divine Justinia called the Conclave to try and settle the two groups differences before it escalated to a point where peace would be impossible. Which is where the Conclave is destroyed, and the Mage/Templar war re-ignites. Am I wrong in this? I was given no further information to assume otherwise.
Also, I was under the impression that a person had to be exposed to Red Lyrium for a long amount of time (without ingesting it, just being around it) for it to seriously start affecting them, as Varric explains in Haven later on.
On your second point I believe Bioware is confused about this. Bartrend(sp?) seems to be affected by it upon touching it, while Varric who tossed it to him was not affected. My logic, although as far as I know there is no lore supporting it outright, is that red lyrium affects some faster than others. For your first point I believe it is open to interpretation, but I'm inclined to support smudboy.
StylesisTNA Lets just ignore the Red Lyrium for now, because honestly I feel it's pretty badly written overall. There's no solid rules to how it works and so it's all floaty and weird.
As for the first point, are we meant to assume because the game didn't spell out exactly what happened since the end of DA2 and the start of DAI that nothing happened at all? That seems to be where Smudboy is coming from.
K Zen It just seems like there's an entire game missing in between II & DAI where you try to resolve the conflict.
ThePreciseClimber But the conflict seems like it's barely begun, no? Is there a time frame given between the events in Kirkwall and the start of DAI?
K Zen Yeah I agree with you on the Red Lyrium being poorly written. As far as Dragon Age 2 being meaningless, I admit I'm not entirely sure about what smudboy meant. However, imo DA2 was meaningless for a couple of reasons. 1. Your choices in DA2 have no affect on the plot of DAI. Everything occurs the same regardless of what you decided. Sure Hawke is in the game, but honestly Hawke's appearance feels like fan service, as Varric could have done everything that Hawke did. 2. The mage-templar conflict is brushed under the rug almost as soon as DAI begins. The game begins with peace talks, and the only mage and templar battles we see are either skirmishes between small forces that are not connected to their main groups (In the Hinterlands) and battles that occur as a result of Corphyesus. This virtually negates seemingly the whole purpose of DA2 which seemed to be setting up a mage-templar war. The only thing I find not completely meaningless to the overall arching plot of DA was the DLC that introduced Corphyesus. Even this DLC though actually had no real affect though on the story, after all if Hawke hadn't showed up Corphyesus still would have broken free. DA2 just does not impact the overall plot of the DA series. Sorry if this post was long, and I should add I enjoyed DA2, but from the perspective of its contributions to the series' narrative the game is meaningless.
I'm not sure why Cassandra's seemingly unsupported statements made you question her sanity. Yes, we don't know yet that Solas examined us, but rather than jumping to the conclusion that Cassandra is making things up, shouldn't you either reserve judgment or give her the benefit of the doubt since she's the one who doesn't have amnesia?
YESSS!!! He's is back!!!
Take it down!
Took your sweet fucking time
Man I've been looking forward to this! :D
7:12 - To be fair, she _did_ say "_may_ grow until swallows to world."
7:41 - Asserting that it is killing him was pretty stupid, but saying that it "may be the key to stopping this" was just speculation.
Or are you talking about her assertion that "there isn't much time?"
it's just like mass effect 3. who wrote this shit? The dialogue is laughable.
4:32 in that title's defense, the protaganist got better :3
Why does Cassandra sound like a female Tommy Wiseau who is perpetually on the verge of tears?! Her voice is tearing me apart man...
You are tearing me apart marked one
Interesting how the dlc actually explained how solas knew the mark would work on closing portals
Hello there 480p, it's been a while. How have you been?
5:26
We need him Cassandra 😏
Cassandra :😨
Cu queen :in our army
I imagine the ending sounding like Fat Bastard: "Get in my belly!"
Can't wait for more
What is up with Bioware's recent trend of the second installment of games not mattering in the grand scheme of things in their respected franchises?
IT BEGINS.
5:58
Metal Gear?!
Valikdu A surveillance camera?
huckmart 99
A Hind D?
Hey Smudboy! What's going on man? I want to ask you something and you probably see this question a lot and you probably answered a lot of people, but i want to ask you, do you ever plan on doing a Dragon Age Origins Analysis? I only ask, because you did one for Mass Effect 1 and you love that game and you know that, every story has it's flaws, and i love seeing you point at flaws in stories even if they are GOOD stories, as they bring about good insight. Just wondering. :)
You are fucking awesome.
I 'm glad to have played the game without buying it. After a cave simulator, Bioware made a badly written grindding one. And it took them 4 years...
Is it just me or has bioware resorted to creating stories that boost the egos of players??? God damnit..
Peppridge Farm Remembers Isn't that the point of every game plot? To lazily make the player feel good even if it makes little sense and creates weaker characters and plot.
They did a 180 with the dominatrix
All this stuff with sentient magical tattoos sporting reality-warping powers seems like it would fit with the greater runes from Suikoden.
...I don't remember any supporting narrative structure in either of the previous two games for this, however. I wonder why would they want to introduce such a... potential gamechanger without any previous foreshadowing and build up. (As far as I remember, at least.)
7:14 Later on the game tells us that Solas already examined the green hand while the protagonist was unconscious. I mean you're right they let a lot of things in the open at the beginning but on the other hand it's a pretty boring thing if they told us everything already.
The intro was fine and I wasn't too annoyed by it. I do tend to enjoy stories which throw their audience into the middle of things and only expect you to know about the immediate threat at first. The instigating event was too retarded and weak for the story to be told conventionally anyway (random Joe walks in on some wannabe demigod's uprising and gains super powers,) so full on in media res was really the only viable solution (which Inquisition really wanted to do but for some reason didn't, settling instead for a mild case of "let's just cut the first two scenes and unveil them bit by bit for a cheap pay off". The stupid is too much to bear and should be ingested in small quantities at a time.)
The stupid hits the hardest though when Corypheus is around, so basically at the end of the first and second acts and the entirety of the third act. Until he shows up I shall wait and observe.
I've been looking forward to this. :D
You really need to up your mic volume by like.. tenfold. If I increase my sound levels to understand you, the random game sounds you throw in blast my ears off :s
Eat the the elf
lockonU What, you mean like that troll in Witcher 2? In a form of elf & onion soup?
ThePreciseClimber Nah, not soup. Serve the elf with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Rance is good at eating elves
Oh boy here we go.
Finally!
I love this. And I also love bioware games but the overarching plot had also been a bit meh, so I'm glad you're doing this. It's like cinema sins for video games. :)
The wait is finally over
Allah be praised, I will check this out later.
Your qunari looks like the character from the Force Unleashed.
Oh i have been waiting for this :D
Oh joy, bioware forgetting continuity, get the pop corn out everyone this is going to be good.
DO WITCHER NEXT PLEASE THANK YOU!
MassEffectReaper So how flawed are they?
ThePreciseClimber Ya you've got a good point.
ThePreciseClimber Everything has some flaw in it (even if very tiny). ; )
> They really retconned most of our decisions in TW2
You know what? Fuck choices in video games. Linear storytelling is much safer and and *can* result in a better-written narrative.
Cassandra is not stupid
You're as nit picky as ever but it's been missed, somewhat. I was hoping that when you would eventually do these reviews, you would focus more on how although there are outcomes to your choices, they don't really affect the story.
This seems to be more of game where they work on giving the player small choices, similar to a Tell Tale game, where you can pick who comes with you, but the same events happen with the same outcome, just with some different dialogue and possibly different solutions to problems which as mentioned earlier, results in the same outcome.
So, this guy has never heard of "in media res".
+User x By this guy, do you mean me? I'd argue such a technique was barely used in DAI, let alone well. I'd say it's closer to "fish out of water", and even that isn't done well. This is regards to setting: they could've tried a circular journey, a linear development, or a cross-cut over a large umbrella of places -- this is all a method of limiting the "arena" for a protagonist to exist (while avoiding the old Aristotelian "unity of place" concept.) I think we'd be more attached to Hawke/The Inquisitor, if we knew what about them was destroyed/lost, as they then go on their heroes journey into wherever. (Similar to how the initial problem/rising action introduces the character, we really don't care so much about them at first, aside from how they're presented (sometimes, not even as characters.))
+User x I hate in media res. But in media res has no place in a role playing game because when you start the game, you need to know your character's motivations, you need to know what the stakes are, how the world works, what your place in the world is, you need something to tie you to the world. This all has to be established before the world has any meaning to you, before you can take on your role within that world and act appropriately. An in media res story shoves you into the middle of the story before any of this has been established and completely prevents you from being able to take on a role.
wasnt there a time skip between DA2 and DA:I
artmanxp Yeah... and it seems like they skipped Dragon Age III in which the Mage/Templar war took place... :P
oh boy starting a story with amnesia how classy
also how the whole thing in the conclave(?) went down which you find out later was fucking hilariously ridiculous the whole scene with that old lady kickign that orb towards you and you jsut happend to conviently run by god was that awefull