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I ain't doing spoiler tags for an eight-year-old game.kilus aof posted:Just pointing out how stupid it is to put the "real" ending of the game as a DLC ensuring barely anyone plays it. Ehh, Trespasser is more of a post-script and setup than a "true ending" DLC. All the major plot threads in DA:I are resolved in the game itself. If anything it's less of an ending since it goes out of its way to roll back some of the changes made to the world in DA:I for the sake of re-establishing the status quo. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 17:56
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I find DAI without Trespasser an extremely unsatisfying game. I guess you're right that it's straightforward but it's boring as hell, there's nothing really to the conflict. It just sucks. Trespasser is basically where they segued all the interesting poo poo to, so DAI just feels like a 60 hour prologue to the actual story. I wish it was in the main game without being dlc, but it's integrated well enough as is.
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Mar 29, 2023 18:03
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Trespasser feels like the real meat because the plot beats have more personal investment, but I think that's mostly down to Corypheus being just kind of a poo poo villain. He's this sad-sack transplant out of time with no real connection to the player, and he barely manages to accomplish anything the entire game. There is never a moment past the prologue where the Inquisitor feels threatened or on the back foot. You just galavant around, easily foiling his schemes and chumping the poor guy until he finally drops dead. He might be the most pitiable nemesis in video games.
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Mar 29, 2023 18:11
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Skippy McPants posted:I ain't doing spoiler tags for an eight-year-old game. Understood, I'll wait until I'm done with the game to discuss it here then.
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Mar 29, 2023 19:25
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Skippy McPants posted:Trespasser feels like the real meat because the plot beats have more personal investment, but I think that's mostly down to Corypheus being just kind of a poo poo villain. Even though he's one of the people who started the entire Darkspawn problem (as it currently exists anyway) he might have been playing someone else's game even then, whether he knew it or not. He's extremely dangerous but he lacks actual agency.
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Mar 29, 2023 19:29
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The dumb thing about Corypheus being such a crap villain in Inquisition is that he was already a fantastic one in Dragon Age 2's DLC. His boss fight is also probably the best one in the series too, unlike in Inquisition where he goes down like a sack of potatoes. It's just like the Architect being set up and sidelined and Harbinger in Mass Effect being reduced to a cameo in ME3. Bioware is terrible at consistently using villains. So I don't have high hopes for Dreadwolf unfortunately. Nephthys fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 19:34
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Corypheus had an interesting idea...and then they did nothing with it. Play Pillars of Eternity 1 for the idea but executed well and fully. Also just good, general advice - POE1 is a much better game than DAI.
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Mar 29, 2023 19:37
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Corypheus seems simultaneously to be all powerful, swaying entire factions that should be capable of uprooting the order of the whole region where the game takes place, and also a total nonentity, who achieves nothing tangible and is mostly absent. This is because the world of DAI isn't a world at all, it's a series of lifeless tableaus that feel entirely disconnected from the story. So the narrative they try to build regarding Corypheus falls flat, and it is easy to forget that there even is a plot and a villain at all for long periods of time.
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Mar 29, 2023 19:40
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DA:I is a sad victim of the open world fad.
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Mar 29, 2023 19:51
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Mr. Neutron posted:DA:I is a sad victim of the open world fad. I am almost kind of glad we are so far removed from DAI's release. When it came out, it was a massive success, a "return to form" after the "disaster" of DA2. Surely if DA4 had come out on the heels of DAI, it would have been built exactly the same way with the same lovely, lifeless open world. I never liked Inquisition, even back then. BioWare should stick to their own lane and leave that kind of RPG to Bethesda. They're clearly not good at it. See Andromeda a couple years later for even more confirmation.
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Mar 29, 2023 20:04
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Except open world is not a fad now, but the default, good luck!
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Mar 29, 2023 20:07
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NikkolasKing posted:I am almost kind of glad we are so far removed from DAI's release. When it came out, it was a massive success, a "return to form" after the "disaster" of DA2. Surely if DA4 had come out on the heels of DAI, it would have been built exactly the same way with the same lovely, lifeless open world. Hard disagree. Just because Inquisition had a bad villain doesn't mean it's a bad game. I still thought it was fantastic and for as cynical as I try to be about this series, it really is intensely frustrating that Bioware could have just made Inquisition 2 and still have a hit game on their hands.
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Mar 29, 2023 20:11
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orcane posted:Except open world is not a fad now, but the default, good luck! Yeah, I was gonna say, open-world action RPG homogeneity is even more prevalent now that when DA:I came out. In 2014 DA:I didn't have nearly as much in its wheelhouse to compete with. Now it's got stuff like Witcher 3 and Elden Ring to try and match. Good loving luck achieving that even with Bioware at its peak, let alone where they're at in 2023. Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Mar 29, 2023 20:17
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DAI's open world is actually pretty good imo. The worst problem is bear rear end fetch quests but you can mostly ignore those. It avoids the worst sins of modern copycat open world design: - Towers you have to climb to open the map - Tons and tons of icons marking every little thing everywhere - Story progress gated by hunting down little macguffins (shards are totally optional) And in that open world there are cool locations. Abandoned castles and battlefields and such. I think you'd actually miss out on some worldbuilding if it was more linear like DAO. The zones generally feel like they could be real places out in the countryside. A real urban zone would have been nice though. This is all giving me the itch to replay the series
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Mar 29, 2023 21:50
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VostokProgram posted:(shards are totally optional)
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Mar 29, 2023 22:06
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Yeah I'm pretty sure I never finished the shards
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Mar 29, 2023 22:09
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VostokProgram posted:DAI's open world is actually pretty good imo. The worst problem is bear rear end fetch quests but you can mostly ignore those. It avoids the worst sins of modern copycat open world design: Yeah the key to DA:I is to just do the story quest of whatever area you're in, and ignore everything else unless you want to do it. I like collecting the codexes as well because a lot of those drop interesting lord dumps. Any fetching stuff is purely to taste though. I'm thinking of doing another play soon as well. It's been a while.
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Mar 29, 2023 22:34
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steinrokkan posted:Corypheus seems simultaneously to be all powerful, swaying entire factions that should be capable of uprooting the order of the whole region where the game takes place, and also a total nonentity, who achieves nothing tangible and is mostly absent. This is because the world of DAI isn't a world at all, it's a series of lifeless tableaus that feel entirely disconnected from the story. So the narrative they try to build regarding Corypheus falls flat, and it is easy to forget that there even is a plot and a villain at all for long periods of time. Corypheus lifting Haven effortlessly into the sky at the end of Inquisition was a cool scene but it raises even more questions, Why didn't he just walk over to Skyhold and do the same thing, he could have just hurled the castle into the sun or smashed it into the ground.
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Mar 30, 2023 19:00
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Open world is pretty subjective to tastes; I preferred DA2 because you got to know Kirkwall and all its corners and hidey-holes over the three Acts. It's a terrible, crime-filled, apostate-mage full, random bandits landing from the sky city, but it's your terrible city and home. Skyhold doesn't do enough to really endear me to it and I mostly curse how long it took for me to travel to some parts of it even with fast travel.
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Mar 30, 2023 19:15
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Skyhold is easier to navigate if you remember there's no fall damage. So with the exception of your room, you can just bail off of everything and keep going.
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Mar 30, 2023 19:28
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ApplesandOranges posted:Open world is pretty subjective to tastes; I preferred DA2 because you got to know Kirkwall and all its corners and hidey-holes over the three Acts. It's a terrible, crime-filled, apostate-mage full, random bandits landing from the sky city, but it's your terrible city and home. Skyhold is just so empty.
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Mar 30, 2023 19:31
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SubponticatePoster posted:Skyhold is easier to navigate if you remember there's no fall damage. So with the exception of your room, you can just bail off of everything and keep going. I did that all the time and it still felt like just going to talk to some people took extra time. Why are you in your inconvenient barn that I have to jump off my keep and still run 10+ seconds to, Blackwall?
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Mar 30, 2023 19:38
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ApplesandOranges posted:I did that all the time and it still felt like just going to talk to some people took extra time. Why are you in your inconvenient barn that I have to jump off my keep and still run 10+ seconds to, Blackwall? he's very sad 
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Mar 30, 2023 19:42
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ApplesandOranges posted:I did that all the time and it still felt like just going to talk to some people took extra time. Why are you in your inconvenient barn that I have to jump off my keep and still run 10+ seconds to, Blackwall? 
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Mar 30, 2023 20:10
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Skyhold is, i think, very emblematic of inquisition's perhaps biggest problem: it's just too drat big for no reason! I mean it looks cool, the pan up to it is pretty deece when you first get there, but it's just so much flash and no substance. Half the upgrading you do is changing the curtains, there are like twelve dudes total living in it, and you have to crisscross it a million times to do everything. Compare to the campsite from origins. Did it look fancy as hell? No. Was it great at its job? Definitely. Same problem with areas like the hinterlands. The actual content it has could've been put in an area a tenth the size, and it would still have looked big and impressive when you got there. The extra 900% map is literally just filler, not even factoring in that some of the content i mentioned is arguably filler as well.
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Mar 30, 2023 20:17
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SubponticatePoster posted:Skyhold is easier to navigate if you remember there's no fall damage. So with the exception of your room, you can just bail off of everything and keep going.  Phosphine posted:Skyhold is, i think, very emblematic of inquisition's perhaps biggest problem: it's just too drat big for no reason! Lowkey, one of the things I liked most about ME: Andromeda was the Tempest. The Normandy 2 was dope, but man did it take a while to do a check-in with every NPC.
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Mar 30, 2023 20:31
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/\/\goddamnit!!! SubponticatePoster posted:Skyhold is easier to navigate if you remember there's no fall damage. So with the exception of your room, you can just bail off of everything and keep going. 
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Mar 30, 2023 20:32
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I have no idea how you get to Cullen's tower without jumping off Leliana's balcony.
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Mar 30, 2023 20:48
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It's just across the field and up some stairs in the wall
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Mar 30, 2023 20:54
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Soonmot posted:/\/\goddamnit!!
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Mar 30, 2023 22:54
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Skyhold was cool but why didn't they ever have a scene where it gets invaded? It's a castle! lemme defend my cool castle
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Mar 30, 2023 23:10
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The siege of Haven was one of the highlights of the game and the only time Corypheus wins anything. I kept waiting for the sequel but Cory is a serial failure.
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Mar 31, 2023 00:14
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Pattonesque posted:Skyhold was cool but why didn't they ever have a scene where it gets invaded? It's a castle! lemme defend my cool castle
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Mar 31, 2023 20:58
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Having a second siege chapter would have been a better setup to the final fight I think. It would have felt more climatic and been a fun callback to the one at Haven, which I really liked on every playthrough. If they'd been able to get a second big setpiece siege at Skyhold, the whole place would have felt more justified from a gameplay perspective too.
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Mar 31, 2023 21:18
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I picked up DA2 on sale from Steam. Are there any decent mods for it, or is just the usual  Big Titty/Make Isabella's Skin Whiter type poo poo?
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Mar 31, 2023 22:33
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There should be a mod called like the LItany of something that adds an item you can hotbar that wipes all the monsters out so you can stop dealing with the trash waves once you've had your fill with the buttons
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Apr 1, 2023 00:14
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Dipping my head in to say the choice about your Vallislin is one of the hardest I've made in a RPG. But in the end my Lavellan did it which made what happened immediately afterwards even more brutal. I love how you can see the exact moment you can see Solas' walls crumbling and then he desperately scrambles to rebuild them. It's nice to see a Bioware Romance be complicated and tragic and interesting.
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Apr 1, 2023 01:23
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Paul Revere 3000 posted:I picked up DA2 on sale from Steam. Are there any decent mods for it, or is just the usual Hey now, there's also 'make Isabela wear less' because she's already a character who doesn't wear pants.
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Apr 1, 2023 02:47
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Paul Revere 3000 posted:I picked up DA2 on sale from Steam. Are there any decent mods for it, or is just the usual Some mids make her titles bigger and make her whiter at the same time. One stop shopping!
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Apr 1, 2023 02:50
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FoolyCharged posted:Some mids make her titles bigger and make her whiter at the same time. One stop shopping! "More Attractive Isabela" mod (mod makes her skin white, her hair blonde, and her eyes blue with no other changes)
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Apr 1, 2023 04:36
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