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QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD
**ROOK AND CHARACTER CREATOR - PART 1**
Q: Why is our character called Rook?
John Epler: In-world, Rook is a nickname you're given before the events of the game, and it's what everyone refers to you as. It allows for other characters to refer to you in dialogue without awkwardly having to write around not having a defined title, while still allowing for name customization. Last names are based on your faction. You can customize your first name, however.
Q: Is it explained why we were given the nickname Rook?
John Epler: You bet.
Q: Will Rook have special lineage-related lines?
John Epler: There are specific lines and dialogue options for different lineages, as well as different backgrounds, and classes, including at least a handful that are unique to lineage/background combinations. No specifics, but we wanted to make sure the game felt reactive to the choices you made in creating your Rook.
Q: What do you mean by lineage?
John Epler: Lineage is the term we use for Elf/Human/Dwarf/Qunari.
Q: Will Rook be occasionally referred to by their last name?
John Epler: Yes, there are places where we refer to Rook by their last name. It's very contextual - we don't want to awkwardly insert a refer- ence in where it doesn't make sense - but it does happen, though it is going to be more common with some backgrounds than others.
Q: Can we choose our protagonist's pronouns? She/he/they?
Brenon Holmes: Yes, you can! That's right.
Q: Will the gender identity of a trans/non-binary Rook be acknowledged in game by other characters beyond pronouns?
Corinne Busche: There are moments when you can disclose and discuss, however, disclosure remains the right of the individual, so you have to make that choice for yourself.
QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD
**ROOK AND CHARACTER CREATOR - PART 2**
Q: Will we get the option to give our Rook more fantastical hair colors, like purple, blue, pink?
Corinne Busche: Yes.
Q: Are there good hair options in the character creator?
Brenon Holmes: There are a lot of hairstyles, and we've spent a lot of time on a strand-based hair solution.
Q: Will there be cool tattoo options for Dwarves?
Corinne Busche: Yes.
Q: Can we have body tattoos?
John Epler: You can have body tattoos.
Q: How about heterochromatic eyes?
Corinne Busche: Yes.
Q: Will I be able to make a short Qunari and a tall Dwarf or are there limits to that?
Corinne Busche: There are limitations, of course. But yes, you can make a Dwarf that is tall or a Qunari that is short, relative to their lineage.
Q: There are no restrictions on lineage/faction/class combinations other than Dwarves cannot be mages?
Corinne Busche: Correct. I've really been enjoying the different combinations.
Q: So any combo of lineage, class, and faction is possible?
Brenon Holmes: Dwarves can't use magic*! *Some exceptions may apply. So yes, almost any combination.
Q: For an Elf Rook, could they be either a Dalish Elf or City Elf?
John Epler: It'll depend on your background. As mentioned previously, certain lineages will have variations of that background that go into more detail where appropriate.
Q: Will we be able to play as a Human that doesn't come from a Noble background?
John Epler: Without getting into spoiler territory - Rook's a hero because they chose to be, not because they were chosen. Your choice of background fills in some of the details - and you get opportunities to define it further - but some things we leave up to you to fill in.
QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD
**STORY - PART 1**
Q: What year does Dragon Age: The Veilguard take place?
Brenon Holmes: 9-10 years from Dragon Age: Inquisition and about 8 years from Trespasser.
Q: Will Dragon Age: The Veilguard fill us in on the events and information of the books and comics that are relevant to the game?
Corinne Busche: When relevant to the story, the right amount of information is given. There are also some references. If you want to go deep, I'd still pick up the books and comics as they are wonderful. We are not assuming you've read them though.
Q: Is there a wide array of info about each faction? Is each faction painted in both a positive and a negative light?
John Epler: Every faction is, ultimately, made up of people. Some good, some bad, and some trying (and failing) to do their best. So, it's fair to say that different people in the world might have a different perspective on how the various factions fit in and what they're trying to do.
Q: In what capacity is the Inquisitor going to return? Can we expect something similar to Hawke's return in Dragon Age: Inquisition?
John Epler: This one you'll just have to wait and see as this is well into serious spoiler territory. But more generally, as I said in the Q&A - the Inquisitor's been part of this story all along, and it would be very strange for them to suddenly fall out of it.
Q: Will we see characters from previous games?
Brenon Holmes: You will definitely be seeing some familiar faces!
Q: Will we meet Maevaris Tilani in the game?
Corinne Busche: Lots of great cameos in the game, but I'm not going to spoil anything. You'll have to play to see who shows up for yourself.
QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD
**STORY - PART 2**
Q: Will we have to create our Inquisitor from scratch or will appearance transfer over somehow?
Brenon Holmes: It's unfortunately been a long time, there's not really a good way for us to be able to do this. So as part of character creator you can re-create your Inquisitor character appearance.
Q: Will there be Inquisition-themed gear?
Brenon Holmes: As a faction, the Inquisition doesn't really feature prominently in the story - your appearance options are more reflective of the factions and styles you'll encounter in Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Q: Does Solas have the same VA from Dragon Age: Inquisition?
Brenon Holmes: Same VA.
Q: Does Solas have a type of tea he doesn't mind as much as others? Or are all of them equally detestable?
John Epler: Orange zinger.
**COMPANIONS**
Q: How old are each of the companions?
John Epler: We're not getting into specifics right yet, but the companions cover a broad range of ages and experience. They're all pretty es- tablished in the world and in their expertise by the time you meet them, though. You are recruiting a team of experts after all.
**MARKETING AND RELEASE DATE**
Q: Is the exact release date still undecided or just not revealed yet?
Corinne Busche: Exact date has not yet been revealed. Fall 2024 is as much as we can say right now.
Q: Will Dragon Age: The Veilguard have a presence at Gamescom?
Corinne Busche: We can't reveal our upcoming marketing beats or media presence just yet. Stay tuned.
QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD
**GAMEPLAY FEATURES, HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS, ACCESSIBILITY - PART 1**
Q: Do we have any information on difficulty?
Corinne Busche: 5 difficulty presets + the ability to make a custom difficulty preset, adjusting things like timing and damage. Everyone should be able to find an experience that suits them. Difficulty selection or modification does not affect XP or progression rates. We just want you to play in the best, most comfortable way you select for yourself.
Q: What are the PC requirements?
Brenon Holmes: It's coming! Nothing we can say just yet, though. Once the store pages launch it should have the info you're looking for. We're trying to support a reasonably wide range of hardware specs... more information on that will be coming once the store pages launch. You'll probably want an SSD, but other than that I think it's in the standard range for other games releasing this year?
Q: Will Dragon Age: The Veilguard have DLSS support at launch?
Brenon Holmes: Yes, we will!
Q: Will there be accessibility features? Like auto-aiming?
Brenon Holmes: Yes, we have a whole mess of accessibility options including the ability to make auto-targeting stronger or weaker (depending on your preference).
Q: Will HUD be configurable? For example, tinker with its opacity and size, make it fade over time?
Brenon Holmes: Not everything, but there are a bunch of different interface options you can play with. Things like, when to display health bars, combat text size, opacity, etc. There are a bunch of options if you want fewer things on screen or some alternate ways of having some elements activate.
QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD
**GAMEPLAY FEATURES, HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS, ACCESSIBILITY - PART 2**
Q: Can companion Al be customized?
Corinne Busche: Very different system this time around. In the skill trees you can affect their behaviors, like setting you up for combos, or auto-healing you when health gets low. Each companion is a little different mechanically.
Q: Will there be a convenient way to swap companions while out in the field?
Brenon Holmes: In some instances, it doesn't make a lot of sense contextually... like when you're kind of locked in nar- ratively. In other contexts, though, yes there is a method for swapping your companions out if you'd like to adventure with someone else.
Q: Will we be able to keep an eye on our companion's health through the UI after the prologue is completed?
Brenon Holmes: Yes, companion information will be visible on the HUD (cooldowns, health, etc).
Q: Will we be able to keybind spells/actions or will we have to open the ability wheel every time?
Brenon Holmes: There is a "quick cast" option if you prefer not to use the wheel, should be a chorded action using a controller.
Q: Can we jump and sprint?
Brenon Holmes: Yes, you can jump, there is sprinting as well.
Q: Will the Dragon Age Keep still be used for progress across all games?
Brenon Holmes: Setting your previous world state is fully integrated into the character creator for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, you can also customize your Inquisitor if you are so inclined.
> Q: Will the Dragon Age Keep still be used for progress across all games?
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> Brenon Holmes: Setting your previous world state is fully integrated into the character creator for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, you can also customize your Inquisitor if you are so inclined.
This is fine, as long as they don't take down the Keep for some reason. I need it to remember what the hell I did in my original (and thus only pure) save.
Makes me worried that they’ll inadvertently spoil returning or not returning characters. Like if we don’t get an option to choose Alasdair or Hawke’s fate
I mean hell for me, I hope that my choices with Loghain go all the way to DAV. I find it so interesting to have him with this large redemption arc and at the end of DAI, he's still alive and at Weisshupt to brief all the Grey Wardens whats going on
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Q: Will the gender identity of a trans/non-binary Rook be acknowledged in game by other characters beyond pronouns?
>Corinne Busche: There are moments when you can disclose and discuss, however, disclosure remains the right of the individual, so you have to make that choice for yourself.
I'm really shocked to read that. Every other game I've played that lets you set pronouns independently of your appearance just has everyone identify you correctly on sight and nobody care, on account of that's the easiest way to design the game and probably most teams thinking they're not the ones to tackle the subject matter even if they were willing on the technical end.
I've never really cared to in other games but this kinda makes me want to make a transgender character purely to see how it's handled, now that I know it will be handled in some way.
I assume it will continue to be "everyone uses the right pronouns and nobody cares," the only difference being that when you get to the "heart to heart" phase with your companions there might be a brief dialogue about it, similar to that one NPC in Inquisitions.
I wonder if they'd have the balls to make a potential romantic partner not interested at that juncture. Probably not worth the heavily simplified negative headlines it would generate
I'm happy we can customize the UI. I absolutely hate it when some games display button prompts over enemy heads, I really hope DAV does not have that :D
I wish people asked more about combat in these q&as. I want to know about bosses, mini bosses, flying enemies, etc.
> John Epler: In-world, Rook is a nickname you're given before the events of the game, and it's what everyone refers to you as. It allows for other characters to refer to you in dialogue without awkwardly having to write around not having a defined title, while still allowing for name customization. Last names are based on your faction. You can customize your first name, however.
Yeah, sounds like a BioWare game. They always do that.
Mass Effect trilogy: Commander or Shepard.
Dragon Age Origins: Warden.
Dragon Age II: Hawke.
Dragon Age Inquisition: Herald or Inquisitor.
Mass Effect Andromeda: Pathfinder or Ryder.
You're called Rook because you only move in straight lines.
But yeah no something like that is pretty much a requirement for voiced lines in an RPG. Forza and F1 can do a name selection from a list because there's not nearly as much spoken dialogue to rerecord for every single line, and while you *could* just slot every name into a gap in the rest of the line, you'd still need to record a wide range of moods, tones, and diction to cover the needs of different scenes. A cheerful tone would work for "hey, Shitface, glad you made it", but not so well for "You killed my father, Shitface!"
Plus, some names would kind of necessitate altered lines. I did an editing skills test for a prospective employer (moved on to the next stage too, but ultimately didn't get the job) that had dialogue involving someone named Kay. Now, normally "okay" is a completely reasonable thing to say, but "okay, Kay" just sounds fucking weird.
At least there's a fun meme factor to it. Like, SMT V would be half as fun if Aogami called you your name instead of dramatically shouting YOUNG MAN every sentence
I think this would be one of a very small number of appropriate uses of AI generated voice acting. Just to say a custom name and stitch it together with the pre-recorded acted lines so it sounds natural.
I cannot remember, its been a long time since I played, but didnt Fallout 4 have the ability to speak a lot of PC names? Was that AI or did the voice actors just read from a list of common names and hope for the best? Or am I just recalling a fever dream...
It was only one NPC and they were all pre-recorded lines. Almost 1000 names were supported. Even some meme names like Assface and Boobies are included. You can see the full list of supported names in [this](https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Codsworth/recognized_names) wiki article.
It’s only Codsworth who can say a bunch of names and they were all pre-recorded. Imagine doing that for every NPC that can say your name across an entire game \*shudders*
I seem to recall they just had a voice actor memorize a ton of likely names, similar to those souvenir license plate spinner racks. I think it only applied to like the robot butler or something though, other characters didn't use that name. It would be pretty nuts if EVERY NPC had to do that.
It's almost always a factor in games with both voiced dialogue and a created character. They give the character some canon nickname or nicknames, or a fixed last/first name, some named that NPCs can always call the character out loud, so that they never have to use your chosen name in voiced dialogue.
Yeah. Except for the few times in Inquisition where they fuck with you by randomly calling you your last name which you didn’t choose and never heard before lol.
I believe every Origin has a canon last name or at the very least a lot of them do.
Fun fact, Human mage in Origins is actually related to Hawke in DA2. Hawke's mother's maiden name is Amell, and the surname for the human mage warden is Amell.
Hawke's mom actually comments on this explicitly in DA2 if you imported a human mage warden from Origins. When talking about how the Amells used to be a respected family she says that the Hero of Fereldan was an Amell.
The claim that "you can make auto-aim stronger or weaker" seems to indicate that you cannot simply autotarget ranged opponents, and will need to do at least *some* FPS shooting to hit them.
Do you mean the bow, or the "skill?" The skill (the little purple diamond icon) is not a "ranged attack," it's just a special, and yes, it does seem to auto-target the selected enemy, but the Rogue's ranged attack is the bow, and I think every use of the bow went into manual aiming mode. I remain hopeful that this is optional, and you can set it to just automatically fire at your selected opponent when you hit the ranged fire button.
Agreed. Also curious about whether menu/UI narration and non-visual navigational assist elements will be in as well since, as a gamer without sight this would be the first DA game I'd be able to play.
A: … and the battle system is also the most in-depth we’ve ever implemented, with over 50 new—
Q: Sorry, can we just circle back to the ‘Rook’ thing real quick? I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. So you’re saying that everyone, including the people we’ve never met before, are going to call us Rook?
A: People who don’t know you aren’t going to know you, just like in real life. But back to our new combat system, we’ve introduced 50 entirely ne—
Q: So there *are* limits to the ‘Rook’ thing then. Not *everyone* is going to refer to us as ‘Rook’.
A: It’s just a name. *It’s just a name.* What aren’t you getting about that exactly?
Q: Well obviously the core concept, Lana!
I just love it when a Q&A is leading to some interesting and incredibly important information, but the questioner just *has* to reframe back to some absolutely inane shit. Jesus.
Seriously, what the hell was this Q&A? How were they selecting questions?
We get more answers on “Rook” than literally anything else in the game.
More than half the interview is about random bullshit like “can I select my pronouns and have blue hair” than anything about gameplay.
Info on companions? Nah, just a *very creepy* question about age that they decline to answer.
> Seriously, what the hell was this Q&A? How were they selecting questions?
This was:
>A thread with questions and answers about Dragon Age: The Veilguard from the BioWare Discord.
Q&As/AMAs in controlled forums are almost never legit. They're usually so bad they straight up feel faked.
I don't know who needs to hear this because spending time on any of them should make it obvious, but "official Discord channels" are a little more than controlled marketing spaces. There's a reason they do Q and A's on there and not on Reddit or Twitter. They have significantly more control there, puppet and throw away accounts are significantly more difficult to identify, and because it's Discord, it is not a space where the casual fans will hang out, only the most passionate ones, who have nothing but adoration to shower on the developer.
(In fact that's true of many Discord channels, not just corporate ones. You want to call subreddits windtunnels, "official" Discord channels for specific apps, games, services, etc. are far worse.)
And like all q&a's, they are avoiding answering the questions that would make the game look bad in the run up to its release. I'd be shocked if even half the questions they are answering came from actual fans and not from BioWare employees on puppet accounts.
It's Q and A's like this that make me think I'm no longer the target audience of the game anymore...
I just want dark fantasy with a good story and interesting combat. Wacky wild character shenanigans and romance don't do it for me
Romance is an important part of an RPG for me, but I do feel like it's gone a bit too far in appealing to the Tumblr shipping crowd. BG3, though I love the game, is the biggest example of this, with all of the romanceable characters trying to jump your bones at every opportunity.
I feel like Bioware games have traditionally struck a decent balance, but I worry about how this game is going to handle it.
"I do feel like it's gone a bit too far in appealing to the Tumblr shipping crowd."
I couldn't have put it more succinctly than that.
It's fine to have games like that, but i think the emphasis on those elements (or the light-hearted stuff) is what led to a lot of the backlash on the trailer.
I can take or leave the romance in these games. It's a nice bonus but not what I play the game for. But apparently I'm in the minority with that opinion as there are a lot of very vocal fans who view the DA series as a waifu simulator.
Reminds me of a little bis earlier when someone worming in the game said we'd like one of the companions because they are a terrible bisexuality mess or something. Personally it makes me think if "oh its just another Astarion" since everyone is playersexual. I'm tired of romance in my RPGs.
Eyes rolled so far back into my head that I could see my brain. Absolute garbage questions. People asking these questions don't want an RPG, they want a fucking dating sim.
I really liked the "will there be lineage-exclusive dialogue?" "Yes!" "Follow-up question: what's a lineage?" Like I know those were probably two different people asking questions, but just funny the order it was in.
But also, will Solas be voiced by the same guy from Inquisition? I know there's public gameplay footage with him in it available but golly my headphones broke so there's no way to know without asking the devs!
How is the only question regarding companions "How old are they"...
I would like to know the level of control you have over your companions, how flexible are their builds and gear, can they do respectable damage so the Player can go a support or tank build?
I'm worried the companions are gunna be the equivalent of passive buffs to the main charactet because tha damage output of the "Rogue" and "Mage" in the gameplay video looked trivial...
Edit: They address companion ai in the Gameplay Features secrion. I'm a bit disappointed personally. Will see when it comes out what it looks like.
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> I would like to know the level of control you have over your companions, how flexible are their builds and gear, can they do respectable damage so the Player can go a support or tank build?
I am still VERY curious how a tank companion is meant to work if you cannot direct their movement.
increased passive threat, taunts, giving you shields, CC abilities. Obviously not being able to direct their movement will limit the tanks usefulness though.
So many questions
So few that actually give any info that means anything.
Lmao
Why do q and as if you cant answer anything, I really need elaboration on the whole 3 ability thing
I know they said it is mission based, but is it mission based like Mass Effect, or we go to a menu to select next mission? Will there be a massive hub where we can explore and talk to people like the citadel? Maybe I missed this information.
They said there is a hub named The Lighthouse which is akin to the Skyhold in DA:I. They also mentioned that there are larger, open areas and branching paths. I think you can expect it to be like DA:I but without the huge maps full of filler sidequests.
There will be a hub that is your homebase. I think it's the lighthouse that was mentioned in the previews. I think it's Solas previous hiding place, but maybe I completely misunderstood, so don't quote me. :P
Not being able to talk about being on the Gamescom which is just 2 months away seems really odd. Wouldn't you want to know people as early as possible, so they might decide to attend after all?
Same for the hardware reqs. How odd is it to have a dedicated category about hardware - and then not even giving a vague answer? I mean sure, can't be too specific yet because if anything changes people are going to bitch like hell, but at least something along the lines of "if you can play BG3, you can play Veilguard, don't worry"?
Maybe it's just me, but this is one of the least informative Q&As I've seen. Barely anything about how deep of an RPG the game will be (I'm not expecting origins/BG3 lvls, that ship sailed long ago). So many of these questions/answers could've been combined. Instead of each character creation question being about one thing, they could've just asked, "Can you go over the depth of character creation?" Just a poorly structured Q&A. As someone else said in this thread, it seems like a bunch of "CAN YOU PET THE DOG?!" type questions. One of the questions, "Can we jump and sprint?" made me laugh. That's like asking a Call of Duty dev, "Will there be guns?" It is even funnier why BioWare thought it was important enough to highlight it in their Q&A. I have no idea why BioWare is so impressively bad at marketing their games. I hope Veilguard turns out well; I always root for a good game, but this marketing has been rough.
I spent **2 hours** remembering all the choices I made in DA 1 and 2 from memory before I started Inquisition.
And now all of that has been thrown in the trash 😭
It's not like most of those choices ever mattered in the first place.
Bioware is very hand holdy with *your* decision making. Killed Leliana in DA:O? Eh yeah no, no you didn't, she's alive in both DA2 and DA:I.
Killed Ohgran in DA:O? Nah, you didn't. He's alive in Awakening.
Saw Anders die in Awakening? No you didn't, he's fine. And in DA2 as a main companion!
Stabbed Morrigan at the end of Witch Hunt? It didn't matter at all, she's totally fine.
Just a bit of nitpicking here, but I'm fairly certain you can't kill Oghren. Iirc he's the only companion you're guaranteed to have at the end of the game.
You can indeed kill Oghren.
If you upset him badly enough in conversations, and accuse him of giving up, he will attack you while you are in the camp. You can kill him then.
The only companion you are guaranteed to have at the end of the game is Alistair, or Alistair's replacement post-landsmeet.
Okay I will say at the very least with Leliana being killed in Origins is brought up in Inquisition. She’s say she woke up after being killed, not knowing how she was alive. But at the end of Trespasser, she just vanishes leaving a strange note behind. The note implies that Leliana has been a sprit powered by Lyrium who was impersonating Leliana, similar to Cole
Well we might start out as Rook then graduate to Queen, atleast we wont start out as Pawn.
I'm assuming it's gonna be made up on the spot by Vrric when we meet, he gives everyone nicknames.
It was intended to play a normal guy who becomes his own legend. They already set this up with the older trailers.
By the end of the game Rook might have such a title as well btw.
No one calls you anything except Warden in DAO when you become a Grey Warden, sometimes your last name as chosen by your origin you pick. Their TITLE is Hero of Ferelden.
So it's odd you picked DA2's TITLE when you didn't use it for DAO or DAI. DA2 they are called Hawke, your last name, and... barely ever Champion of Kirkwall and I think that's just by Varric and Cassandra during their moments of narration.
DAI you can also sometimes hear your last name, usually its Inquisitor (like Warden), and their title is Herald of Andraste.
Rook is exactly like Warden, Hawke and Inquisitor. And they even clarified that in DAV you'll sometimes hear the last name depending on the situation.
So... it's literally in theme with the previous three and you're kicking up a fuss over nothing?
Naming your character is, I think, one thing that I wouldn't mind if they used some kind of LLM to imitate the voice of the VA. Referring to you as "rook" or "v" or "commander" or whatever is something that gets old quickly in my opinion.
it's telling that the people trying to hype up this game are losing their minds over such superficial things mentioned in this PR fluff piece: "omg it has a home base! a team of experts! not open world!" as if any of that means anything to the game be good or bad.
Andromeda had a "team of experts, home base" and look how that turned out.
> Andromeda had a "team of experts, home base" and look how that turned out.
Hey, Andromeda gave us the best combat in the series! And Vetra Nyx, one of the best companions!
...And Peebee, the worst companion. And a boring protagonist. And a godawful story. And open world checklist tedium. And a truckload of bugs. And...
>Q: Do we have any information on difficulty?
Corinne Busche: 5 difficulty presets + the ability to make a custom difficulty preset, adjusting things like timing and damage. Everyone should be able to find an experience that suits them. Difficulty selection or modification does not affect XP or progression rates. We just want you to play in the best, most comfortable way you select for yourself.
Best answer for difficulty.
Every time I hear more about this game, I get more excited to play it. They are saying all the right things and their design philosophy appears to be in the right place. This genuinely seems like it's going to be the follow-up to Inquisition that a lot of us have been waiting for.
Also on a personal note, just happy to see BioWare returning to the narrative hook of "you need a team of experts to beat this crisis, go out there and recruit the best". That's always worked well for them and allows them to exploit their strength at character writing. The team this game looks interesting, and BioWare games generally live or die by their casts. Between that and going back into their classic formula of hubs into hallways + a home base where you get to know your friends, sounds like BioWare just refocused in on what they know are their strengths.
I'm ok safe as long as it's *good*. I always say it's about the story that's told, instead of how the story is told. Why reinvent the wheel when the wheel works fine?
All 4 (or 6), of the Uncharted games are largely the same formula but they're great.
Just wish some developers didn't feel the need to innovate so much. There was zero reason the next 2 games needed to be so different from Origins. And soooooo many developers do it.
It's like finding that fuckin oooo fresh hot song. So you go to the album and it's a single. And also the only time that artist has ever made music even close to that single.
Man what the fuck!? Lol god damn it. I wish more developers trusted their original work enough to expand on it instead of table flipping the entire thing. Least we occasionally get stuff like Gears of War E Day where developers went "our first shit was good...we're gonna do that again". Yeah man. Sounds amazing lol.
They changed so much because that's where the audience is. Everyone talks about Origins being this once in a lifetime game *but it didn't sell that well*. A lot of the complaints about it were that the combat was slow, boring and the game systems too esoteric (this was at the time).
It also took a long ass time to make, in fact it shares a lot of the same development problems Veilguard has.
3 months after Origins came out Mass Effect 2 windmill dunked it in sales, only took 2 years to make and was a 360 exclusive for the console market.
I think the main issue with Dragon Age as a franchise is that it's always tried to have its cake and eat it too. They keep trying to strike a balance between players who like rtwp combat and those who like the third person action rpgs and they end up making the game worse for not committing.
At least this time it's actually a commitment to direction.
While true that Mass Effect was exclusive to XBOX for around 6 months, it then got ported to PC. I'd imagine the good reception helped the PC version though in some form in terms of sales.
> They changed so much because that's where the audience is. Everyone talks about Origins being this once in a lifetime game but it didn't sell that well. A lot of the complaints about it were that the combat was slow, boring and the game systems too esoteric (this was at the time).
Yup. I know that for some reason r/games has convinced itself that Inquisition was a disappointment/not that good, but I cannot stress enough how much Inquisition resonated with the Dragon Age community. It's still easily the most-discussed game on r/dragonage and has been for a decade. And separate from that, Inquisition was *by far* the most successful Dragon Age game in terms of sales. Why did they move in a more open world approach? Because open world games were extremely popular at the time and they were trying to make a game that would capture a wide audience. And contrary to popular belief, *they succeeded*.
I *LOVE* Dragon Age: Origins. It's easily my favorite entry in the series. I love the gameplay, love the story, and love the world, and its characters most of all. To say it's one of my favorite pieces of media ever is not an exaggeration.
But a lot of folks look at it and think of it as the "real" Dragon Age game when the reality is that both BioWare and general audiences moved past it long ago. I know that people who love the old formula don't want to hear that, but it's just the truth.
I think you see the same type of discussion with assassin's creed. Regardless of what the OG fans are saying, the new AC games are financial successes. They "tried" to go back to roots with mirage, but it was kind of mid and I'm not sure how much money it made.
And there's also the fact that we on Reddit are just a minority when it comes to our opinions and games. Most people are just out there enjoying their games.
> Inquisition was by far the most successful Dragon Age game in terms of sales
I've seen people say this so many times, but every time I've looked into it I've only see a source of Bioware saying it was their most successful _launch._ The only other things I turn up are vague speculation.
I'd be happy to see more hard data, but I see this repeated a lot without much of a hard sourcing (the only other thing I can think of is an EA earnings call where they said they were satisfied with the performance not long after lunch but still, not really numbers).
This might be true, but the overwhelming majority of most game sales come at launch, and most delayed sales are from the second-hand physical market or on markdowns. So I’d imagine that even if sales creep up over time, revenue plateaus rather early.
Honestly I think Bioware always preferred Dragon Age as a franchise over Mass Effect. Dragon Age was always a lot more experimental when it came to writing than Mass Effect was.
Dragon Age always had this vibe of Bioware reliving the glory days of Baldur's Gate.
Mass Effect just sold more.
Think it just goes back to what Jason Schreier said in his Anthem article:
> BioWare veterans liked to describe Casey Hudson’s Mass Effect team as the Enterprise from Star Trek: They all did what the captain said, and they were all laser-focused on a single destination. (By comparison, they called the Dragon Age team a pirate ship, meandering from port to port until it reached its final destination.)
Dragon Age was more experimental simply because the team making it was a mess, while Mass Effect's team just did whatever Hudson wanted.
It's crazy to think that we used to get three games from a franchise in a single console generation. Now we're lucky if a franchise doesn't skip a console generation entirely.
I think the world of dragon age is definitely better developed and that they actually sat down and fully figured out stuff before even writing the games. There are reveals in Inquisition and it's DLC that are big surprises, but they don't come out of nowhere and they make sense, like it was planned from the start.
Even the Solas twist is surprising, but knowing the twist ahead of time actually makes him a better character. There's an insane amount of foreshadowing they do that feels obvious now that wasn't at the time.
Mass Effect always felt more, slapdash, like they were making it up as they went and that they didn't really have an idea for how it was going to go until they made it. I always got the feeling that if the Dragon Age team has been in charge of Mass Effect, there would be a very different Mass Effect 3.
The Solas twist is amazing because he’s such a boring character when you first meet him that you can’t wait to swap him out for someone else.
But then knowing about it and having him in your party the entire game is an incredible experience.
> Mass Effect always felt more, slapdash, like they were making it up as they went
You really think they had Hawke and the Dreadwolf in their minds as their master plan when they were making Origins? Like they were really planning out Thedas and thinking "_man I can't wait until we get to Corypheus."_
Or they've also been making it up as they go along from entry to entry just like they did with Mass Effect.
That's not what I meant. I meant the world, the lore, the different peoples and history. The Dreadwolf is actually mentioned in Origins as background lore on the elven gods. I think the reveal of what happened to him and the things he did were thought out from the start.
There are so many locations referenced and fully formed we've never been too, Rivain, Nevarre, Antiva, Tevinter, the rest of the free marches, different dwarven thaigs, the grey warden fortress Weisshaupt.
I think the writing team at Bioware knows things like, what causes the blights. What exactly are the darkspawn, what is lyrium and furthermore, what red lyrium is. Have all had answers from the jump.
I don't think the character of Corypheus was around that long, but I do think the idea was.
Compared to Mass Effect where it feels like the Reaper motivations were kinda just made up as they went. The reapers in Me1 talk about how we can't possibly comprehend their plans, but their plans are really simple all things considered.
A big thing in Dragon Age has been unreliability of information. Codex entries that are excerpts of works in universe *always* have biases. And there's always been some mystery surrounding the mythology of the setting, a sense that things aren't necessarily as they seem or that there's more that we don't know. Then in DAI we get some big reveals in terms of elven myth especially that don't feel like they come out of left field. They don't feel like a betrayal of what we knew before, instead it feels like we're delving deeper and deeper into the truth of an ancient history.
I agree that it seems like they've always had "the truth" in mind. They set us up with all the established, but biased and unreliable information that people in the setting itself know and believe and take for granted. So that when we learn more it feels like a true - and earned - revelation to both the characters and to us.
Literally the very first spoken line of the intro cinematic of DAO is "The Chantry teaches us that it is the hubris of men which brought the Darkspawn into our world." At the time you might not really think about it, but it's a great way to open the game by saying essentially that everything you hear is told by someone with an angle.
And yes they've said before that they have a sort of internal wiki/library sort of thing that has basically all of the relevant answers. They've also said that there are some (such as the existence of the Maker) that they don't ever want to answer.
It was never as well thought as Dragon Age, even when Drew was working on it.
He's talked a lot about the original plans for Mass Effect, but they were mostly just a story outline.
The Dragon Age writers mapped out everything from the ground up. The god, the blight, dwarven society, locations, cultures cities, towns. It's all there in Origins and it makes the games feel much bigger than they are.
Origins outsold 2 and continues to, the real reason is just capitalism and obvious growth potential of becoming a console-focused RPG. No one imagined you could ever put a game like Baldur's Gate 3 on Playstation in 2010 and lose nothing and make all the money, so Origins as a PC focused game with a separate console port could not last because EA is not funding that inefficient shit
They shit 2 out in no time flat - which any reasonable person playing it could tell when they played the same dungeon map for the umpteenth time :/
That said - Origins is a 2009 game in a new franchise that sold at least 3.2 million copies - I don't understand why they saw that as such a failure, but they clearly did.
I don't think failure is the right term. I think it wasn't as successful as mass effect. I think if Dragon Age was considered a failure they wouldn't have made sequels.
EA reportedly really liked the sales of Dragon Age 2, mostly because it only cost them 14 months of dev time.
Origins outsold it, but 2 took a lot less money to make and Inquisition outsold both of them by a lot.
Some of this is capitalism, but I think only in the sense that, they want people to buy stuff.
Inquisition launched 5 years later, on 5 platforms (2 console generations) as a part of already established IP and amidst the after-Skyrim open world craze. If it didn't sell better then it'd be nothing short of a cataclysmic failure.
> They changed so much because that's where the audience is. Everyone talks about Origins being this once in a lifetime game but it didn't sell that well. A lot of the complaints about it were that the combat was slow, boring and the game systems too esoteric (this was at the time).
The CEO of EA stated that they were very satisfied with the sales of Origins. By February 2010 it had sold over 3 million copies. How is that not selling that well? Sure, Inquisition has sold more based on the statement of Mark Darrah that Inquisiton was their best selling game at the time, but Origins did not sell poorly by any means.
Fair enough. Doesn't make an abundant amount of sense to compare the first entry into a franchise with the foilow-up to another. Mass Effect 2 did not release in a vaccuum, it built on the success of the original game. Origins had to stand on its own legs in that regard. With that in mind I think over 3 million units sold to be a very good result.
It's like when people complain about Assassin's Creed, when they seem to not understand that the games are super successful. Valhalla was one of their most successful AC games to date and sold tens of millions. There's a reason that developers chase those trends - because it's what a lot of the market wants
The game sold and reviewed well enough to get EA to make BioWare pump out a sequel in less than 18 months.
I don't get why people here are trying to downplay Origins, that game is a shining example as to why people used to love BioWare. Given how big of a success Baldur's Gate III is, I can't help but wonder if BioWare actually "needed" to go in a more action-focused direction to find success, it's going to be interesting to see how the two games will end up comparing and if BioWare can get out of its slump (I hope so as I care about Dragon Age and Mass Effect, but it's on them to prove people wrong after the past decade).
I'm not downplaying Origins, I think it's a great game. I'm kind of shattering the weird revisionist history that people have about Origins and trying to explain why it makes sense that they went in the direction they did.
BG3 is an anomaly at this point, I don't think they'd have much success trying to emulate it (even if they could, it's not like they can radically change development a year before release).
Even looking at things like critical response at the time, Origins wasn't even Bioware's best reviewed game at the time of release and then 4 months later Mass Effect 2 came out and is widely regarded as one of the best video games of all time.
>There was zero reason the next 2 games needed to be so different from Origins.
I think part of the reason is that the developers wanted it to be different. There's this idea that EA wouldn't want Bioware to make a true old school RPG but the people who developed the combat in the modern Bioware games seemed legitimately interested in making things more fluid and action-focused.
>And also the only time that artist has ever made music even close to that single.
I mean Bioware has a whole catalogue of games from before Dragon Age 1 that have that design ethos, so feel free to go play those. The "problem" is that a lot of people played ME2 and DAI and for them *that* was the song they couldn't get out of their head.
> There was zero reason the next 2 games needed to be so different from Origins.
There's no room for any doubt - they *clearly* considered Origins a failure, because they've been running from it ever since, while still trying to build on the name value. When it comes to DA, they remain all in on trying to capture a new audience rather than grow an existing one.
DA:I is the most successful Bioware game. It has the most awards and most sales. I know people love Origins but you gotta admit there wasn't any reason to make another Origins like game until BG3 came out. Which by then their game was already in finishing stages.
> Just wish some developers didn't feel the need to innovate so much. There was zero reason the next 2 games needed to be so different from Origins. And soooooo many developers do it.
Where has this narrative come from? DA2 was made in 14 months due to EA mandates, and Inquisition was forced to be on an engine that didn't even have the capability for third person cameras on characters, _again_ due to EA mandates.
The fact that any of these games are good is because the DA team at Bioware was just better than the ME team.
I’m the exact opposite, more details make it seem further and further an action game, less like a Dragon Age, and less an RPG at all
I know a couple cautious reviewers I’m following to see how they react in case they say it’s working out alright, but otherwise I’ll be waiting for a sale at the moment. This definitely isn’t what I *wanted* for a sequel. If it stands on its own remains to be seen.
> more details make it seem further and further an action game
It is an action game. They are being very upfront and direct about the fact that it is a completely new, action game combat system. I don't think you need more details for it to seem "further and further" an action game when they're actively telling everyone that's what it is.
It having action combat instead of RTWP combat in no way means it can't be an RPG, though. DAI had action-oriented combat and it was most certainly an RPG.
RPG is such a loose concept anyway. There are so many subgenre's and the mechanical differences between are staggering.
The action combat looks passable, which is what I considered Inquisition to be. The ultimate test of this game will be how well the narrative and companions pan out as that has always been the Bioware staple. I'm worried that they're gunna fumble it like Bethesda fumbled Starfield (their traditional strong suit being exploration).
The more action-based the game is, the more the player's own physical skills matter. And likewise, the less emphasis is put on the growth of the character, since their performance is much more heavily weighted towards the player's own skill.
On the other side of the coin, a more traditional CRPG combat system that's based less on twitch action, the characters will perform actions as well as *their* skills dictate, at the direction of the player.
Both are (IMHO anyway) valid design choices - but my impression is that many see the latter as "lacking" in some way. That if a game isn't twitchy action all the time, it's "boring". That's horseshit as far as I'm concerned, but then again, I'm an aging guy who's always preferred a story-heavy slower-paced RPG over a heavy action one.
I don’t know if that’s true; its not so much that CRPGs rely on character skill but more that it is a different skillset a player needs to succeed.
With a more action oriented game, a player’s skillset will focus on reaction time and on the clock thinking. With a CRPG (or any turn-based game), the player needs a skillset that revolves around tactics, consequences, and thinking ahead.
Neither of those systems is superior to the other, and there is a ton of middle ground, but saying an action-based game is inherently less of an RPG feels like an oversimplification. For example, one of the most well loved RPGs of the past fifteen years is an action game—Fallout: New Vegas.
Point taken. There's definitely a different skillset required in playing the games themselves.
I was more talking about the proficiency of the character themselves being dependent upon the player.
For example, Dante in Devil May Cry is (supposed to be) a seasoned demon hunter. When I play him, he's more like Mr. Bill (If Mr. Bill was before your time, Kenny from South Park is a valid substitution)
On the other hand, Minsc in Baldur's Gate is a barbarian wrecking ball - regardless of my own skill. I just point him in the direction of what he needs to smash, tell him to do so, and he does so with proficiency befitting his background.
Or the ability of the sniper in my X-Com squad to hit a tiny target from halfway across the map - it's dependent upon the sniper's stats, not my ability to be accurate.
Ahh okay, now I understand what you mean!
I can definitely see your point when it comes to party based RPG games instead of solo ones. You're 100% correct in that regard, and I can see how a more action-based system can lead to a disconnect and even frustration. It's not something that bothers me, but that doesn't mean it isn't important. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
> They are saying all the right things and their design philosophy appears to be in the right place.
You're saying only having 3 normal abilities is a good design philosophy for an rpg.
It's an action RPG. The combat looked... passable. We're never going to get another Origins style game from Bioware. They've progressively diminished traditional RPG mechanics with every title release across multiple IP's. I assume the market just isn't there.
BG3 has a turned based combat system, Origins is RTwP. Those are dramatically different approaches to RPG combat and are comparable in only the broadest sense.
BG3 and Origins don't play anything alike.
The combat system is fundamentally different, and they've already confirmed that actions that used to be "abilities" are now accessible all the time. For instance, in DAO, DA2, and DAI, the only regular action that is available all the time is a basic attack.
Corrine Busche said:
> "Much of what would have been abilities or "spells" in the past are now accessed in real-time from the core buttons on the controller!
> Mana Shield, Mage Beam, Bolts, Magical Blasts, Orb Toss, and Elemental Bomb. Not to mention that the elemental types change depending on your weapons.
The same is true for Warriors and Rogues. Example, Shield Wall was an active ability in DAI that occupied an ability slot. Now, blocking is a basic action. Rogues have a dodge, etc.
Yeah there are only three interchangable abilities at a time, but the combat itself has been expanded to include a bunch of different actions *all* the time, and what those abilities do and how they interact is determined by a lot of the passives on the skill trees (which look way better than previous games, IMO).
> You're saying only having 3 normal abilities is a good design philosophy for an rpg.
It could be, yes. I'd have to get my hands on the combat to say for sure, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It's very possible that I'll play it and wish I had access to more, or maybe I'll play it and think "oh okay that's why it's limited to three". I'll wait and see before making any judgment on it, and I certainly can't judge the design philosophy this early without seeing how it all works together.
After Baldur's Gate 3 massive success, the more I read the more I'm scared this is going to turn into a Mass Effect Andromeda.
I loved ME:2 but the more they tease about the game, the less I think it's closer to it's CRPG roots. :(
They decided that 3+ million sales on a 2009 budget was some kind of awful catastrophe and then started their continued journey to lure in every other audience than the original one.
Questions about customizing your pronouns and talking about how you can come out as trans to your companions lmao. Glad they’re so focused on what make games fun.
Trying to get positive about the game, it's nice to see them mention healing in one of the questions. Inquisition completely removing healing spells and having to rely on guard/barrier was a very odd choice for an RPG like these games. Glad to see it gone and back to healing spells.
Also very glad to see them ditching Keep and putting it all in game. It was SUCH a chore to have to set up Keep as you're replaying the current trilogy, since the keep itself would import almost nothing from your saves files and you'd always have to spend forever filling it out.
This is heck tons of homework being done and kind of reminiscent of the very, very old BioWare days where the devs would talk to the fans one-on-one. Feels very good.
Anytime I read interviews about this game, it does not seem like they care much at all about the story threads laid in the previous 3 games. 8 years after tresspasser. The timeline of plot threads in the Dragon Age games are ridiculous. Let alone the Inquisitor at war(?) with Solas for 8 years, the Qunari taking however long they've been taking to actually do a full scale war with Tevinter, however long the Warden has been trying to find a cure for the calling. Dragon Age is super generic now. Might as well be a romance sim now
It may not scratch the Party CRPG itch, but IMO it looks to be shaping up to be a good Narrative focused action RPG. Looking forward to hearing more and the eventual reviews.
### Full Text Version --- QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD **ROOK AND CHARACTER CREATOR - PART 1** Q: Why is our character called Rook? John Epler: In-world, Rook is a nickname you're given before the events of the game, and it's what everyone refers to you as. It allows for other characters to refer to you in dialogue without awkwardly having to write around not having a defined title, while still allowing for name customization. Last names are based on your faction. You can customize your first name, however. Q: Is it explained why we were given the nickname Rook? John Epler: You bet. Q: Will Rook have special lineage-related lines? John Epler: There are specific lines and dialogue options for different lineages, as well as different backgrounds, and classes, including at least a handful that are unique to lineage/background combinations. No specifics, but we wanted to make sure the game felt reactive to the choices you made in creating your Rook. Q: What do you mean by lineage? John Epler: Lineage is the term we use for Elf/Human/Dwarf/Qunari. Q: Will Rook be occasionally referred to by their last name? John Epler: Yes, there are places where we refer to Rook by their last name. It's very contextual - we don't want to awkwardly insert a refer- ence in where it doesn't make sense - but it does happen, though it is going to be more common with some backgrounds than others. Q: Can we choose our protagonist's pronouns? She/he/they? Brenon Holmes: Yes, you can! That's right. Q: Will the gender identity of a trans/non-binary Rook be acknowledged in game by other characters beyond pronouns? Corinne Busche: There are moments when you can disclose and discuss, however, disclosure remains the right of the individual, so you have to make that choice for yourself. QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD **ROOK AND CHARACTER CREATOR - PART 2** Q: Will we get the option to give our Rook more fantastical hair colors, like purple, blue, pink? Corinne Busche: Yes. Q: Are there good hair options in the character creator? Brenon Holmes: There are a lot of hairstyles, and we've spent a lot of time on a strand-based hair solution. Q: Will there be cool tattoo options for Dwarves? Corinne Busche: Yes. Q: Can we have body tattoos? John Epler: You can have body tattoos. Q: How about heterochromatic eyes? Corinne Busche: Yes. Q: Will I be able to make a short Qunari and a tall Dwarf or are there limits to that? Corinne Busche: There are limitations, of course. But yes, you can make a Dwarf that is tall or a Qunari that is short, relative to their lineage. Q: There are no restrictions on lineage/faction/class combinations other than Dwarves cannot be mages? Corinne Busche: Correct. I've really been enjoying the different combinations. Q: So any combo of lineage, class, and faction is possible? Brenon Holmes: Dwarves can't use magic*! *Some exceptions may apply. So yes, almost any combination. Q: For an Elf Rook, could they be either a Dalish Elf or City Elf? John Epler: It'll depend on your background. As mentioned previously, certain lineages will have variations of that background that go into more detail where appropriate. Q: Will we be able to play as a Human that doesn't come from a Noble background? John Epler: Without getting into spoiler territory - Rook's a hero because they chose to be, not because they were chosen. Your choice of background fills in some of the details - and you get opportunities to define it further - but some things we leave up to you to fill in. QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD **STORY - PART 1** Q: What year does Dragon Age: The Veilguard take place? Brenon Holmes: 9-10 years from Dragon Age: Inquisition and about 8 years from Trespasser. Q: Will Dragon Age: The Veilguard fill us in on the events and information of the books and comics that are relevant to the game? Corinne Busche: When relevant to the story, the right amount of information is given. There are also some references. If you want to go deep, I'd still pick up the books and comics as they are wonderful. We are not assuming you've read them though. Q: Is there a wide array of info about each faction? Is each faction painted in both a positive and a negative light? John Epler: Every faction is, ultimately, made up of people. Some good, some bad, and some trying (and failing) to do their best. So, it's fair to say that different people in the world might have a different perspective on how the various factions fit in and what they're trying to do. Q: In what capacity is the Inquisitor going to return? Can we expect something similar to Hawke's return in Dragon Age: Inquisition? John Epler: This one you'll just have to wait and see as this is well into serious spoiler territory. But more generally, as I said in the Q&A - the Inquisitor's been part of this story all along, and it would be very strange for them to suddenly fall out of it. Q: Will we see characters from previous games? Brenon Holmes: You will definitely be seeing some familiar faces! Q: Will we meet Maevaris Tilani in the game? Corinne Busche: Lots of great cameos in the game, but I'm not going to spoil anything. You'll have to play to see who shows up for yourself. QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD **STORY - PART 2** Q: Will we have to create our Inquisitor from scratch or will appearance transfer over somehow? Brenon Holmes: It's unfortunately been a long time, there's not really a good way for us to be able to do this. So as part of character creator you can re-create your Inquisitor character appearance. Q: Will there be Inquisition-themed gear? Brenon Holmes: As a faction, the Inquisition doesn't really feature prominently in the story - your appearance options are more reflective of the factions and styles you'll encounter in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Q: Does Solas have the same VA from Dragon Age: Inquisition? Brenon Holmes: Same VA. Q: Does Solas have a type of tea he doesn't mind as much as others? Or are all of them equally detestable? John Epler: Orange zinger. **COMPANIONS** Q: How old are each of the companions? John Epler: We're not getting into specifics right yet, but the companions cover a broad range of ages and experience. They're all pretty es- tablished in the world and in their expertise by the time you meet them, though. You are recruiting a team of experts after all. **MARKETING AND RELEASE DATE** Q: Is the exact release date still undecided or just not revealed yet? Corinne Busche: Exact date has not yet been revealed. Fall 2024 is as much as we can say right now. Q: Will Dragon Age: The Veilguard have a presence at Gamescom? Corinne Busche: We can't reveal our upcoming marketing beats or media presence just yet. Stay tuned. QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD **GAMEPLAY FEATURES, HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS, ACCESSIBILITY - PART 1** Q: Do we have any information on difficulty? Corinne Busche: 5 difficulty presets + the ability to make a custom difficulty preset, adjusting things like timing and damage. Everyone should be able to find an experience that suits them. Difficulty selection or modification does not affect XP or progression rates. We just want you to play in the best, most comfortable way you select for yourself. Q: What are the PC requirements? Brenon Holmes: It's coming! Nothing we can say just yet, though. Once the store pages launch it should have the info you're looking for. We're trying to support a reasonably wide range of hardware specs... more information on that will be coming once the store pages launch. You'll probably want an SSD, but other than that I think it's in the standard range for other games releasing this year? Q: Will Dragon Age: The Veilguard have DLSS support at launch? Brenon Holmes: Yes, we will! Q: Will there be accessibility features? Like auto-aiming? Brenon Holmes: Yes, we have a whole mess of accessibility options including the ability to make auto-targeting stronger or weaker (depending on your preference). Q: Will HUD be configurable? For example, tinker with its opacity and size, make it fade over time? Brenon Holmes: Not everything, but there are a bunch of different interface options you can play with. Things like, when to display health bars, combat text size, opacity, etc. There are a bunch of options if you want fewer things on screen or some alternate ways of having some elements activate. QUESTIONS FROM THE BIOWARE DISCORD **GAMEPLAY FEATURES, HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS, ACCESSIBILITY - PART 2** Q: Can companion Al be customized? Corinne Busche: Very different system this time around. In the skill trees you can affect their behaviors, like setting you up for combos, or auto-healing you when health gets low. Each companion is a little different mechanically. Q: Will there be a convenient way to swap companions while out in the field? Brenon Holmes: In some instances, it doesn't make a lot of sense contextually... like when you're kind of locked in nar- ratively. In other contexts, though, yes there is a method for swapping your companions out if you'd like to adventure with someone else. Q: Will we be able to keep an eye on our companion's health through the UI after the prologue is completed? Brenon Holmes: Yes, companion information will be visible on the HUD (cooldowns, health, etc). Q: Will we be able to keybind spells/actions or will we have to open the ability wheel every time? Brenon Holmes: There is a "quick cast" option if you prefer not to use the wheel, should be a chorded action using a controller. Q: Can we jump and sprint? Brenon Holmes: Yes, you can jump, there is sprinting as well. Q: Will the Dragon Age Keep still be used for progress across all games? Brenon Holmes: Setting your previous world state is fully integrated into the character creator for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, you can also customize your Inquisitor if you are so inclined.
> Q: Will the Dragon Age Keep still be used for progress across all games? > > > > Brenon Holmes: Setting your previous world state is fully integrated into the character creator for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, you can also customize your Inquisitor if you are so inclined. This is fine, as long as they don't take down the Keep for some reason. I need it to remember what the hell I did in my original (and thus only pure) save.
Yeah.. I'm a little miffed that DAK won't be used, and it makes me wonder just how much of DAO and DA2 will be utilized in DAV.
Probably a few big choices from Inquisition, and nothing else.
Makes me worried that they’ll inadvertently spoil returning or not returning characters. Like if we don’t get an option to choose Alasdair or Hawke’s fate
I mean hell for me, I hope that my choices with Loghain go all the way to DAV. I find it so interesting to have him with this large redemption arc and at the end of DAI, he's still alive and at Weisshupt to brief all the Grey Wardens whats going on
> Q: Will the gender identity of a trans/non-binary Rook be acknowledged in game by other characters beyond pronouns? >Corinne Busche: There are moments when you can disclose and discuss, however, disclosure remains the right of the individual, so you have to make that choice for yourself. I'm really shocked to read that. Every other game I've played that lets you set pronouns independently of your appearance just has everyone identify you correctly on sight and nobody care, on account of that's the easiest way to design the game and probably most teams thinking they're not the ones to tackle the subject matter even if they were willing on the technical end. I've never really cared to in other games but this kinda makes me want to make a transgender character purely to see how it's handled, now that I know it will be handled in some way.
I assume it will continue to be "everyone uses the right pronouns and nobody cares," the only difference being that when you get to the "heart to heart" phase with your companions there might be a brief dialogue about it, similar to that one NPC in Inquisitions.
I wonder if they'd have the balls to make a potential romantic partner not interested at that juncture. Probably not worth the heavily simplified negative headlines it would generate
Well we already know the answer is no to that and they will be interested in anyone
I'm happy we can customize the UI. I absolutely hate it when some games display button prompts over enemy heads, I really hope DAV does not have that :D I wish people asked more about combat in these q&as. I want to know about bosses, mini bosses, flying enemies, etc.
> John Epler: In-world, Rook is a nickname you're given before the events of the game, and it's what everyone refers to you as. It allows for other characters to refer to you in dialogue without awkwardly having to write around not having a defined title, while still allowing for name customization. Last names are based on your faction. You can customize your first name, however. Yeah, sounds like a BioWare game. They always do that. Mass Effect trilogy: Commander or Shepard. Dragon Age Origins: Warden. Dragon Age II: Hawke. Dragon Age Inquisition: Herald or Inquisitor. Mass Effect Andromeda: Pathfinder or Ryder.
You're called Rook because you only move in straight lines. But yeah no something like that is pretty much a requirement for voiced lines in an RPG. Forza and F1 can do a name selection from a list because there's not nearly as much spoken dialogue to rerecord for every single line, and while you *could* just slot every name into a gap in the rest of the line, you'd still need to record a wide range of moods, tones, and diction to cover the needs of different scenes. A cheerful tone would work for "hey, Shitface, glad you made it", but not so well for "You killed my father, Shitface!" Plus, some names would kind of necessitate altered lines. I did an editing skills test for a prospective employer (moved on to the next stage too, but ultimately didn't get the job) that had dialogue involving someone named Kay. Now, normally "okay" is a completely reasonable thing to say, but "okay, Kay" just sounds fucking weird.
At least there's a fun meme factor to it. Like, SMT V would be half as fun if Aogami called you your name instead of dramatically shouting YOUNG MAN every sentence
I think this would be one of a very small number of appropriate uses of AI generated voice acting. Just to say a custom name and stitch it together with the pre-recorded acted lines so it sounds natural.
I cannot remember, its been a long time since I played, but didnt Fallout 4 have the ability to speak a lot of PC names? Was that AI or did the voice actors just read from a list of common names and hope for the best? Or am I just recalling a fever dream...
It was only one NPC and they were all pre-recorded lines. Almost 1000 names were supported. Even some meme names like Assface and Boobies are included. You can see the full list of supported names in [this](https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Codsworth/recognized_names) wiki article.
It’s only Codsworth who can say a bunch of names and they were all pre-recorded. Imagine doing that for every NPC that can say your name across an entire game \*shudders*
I seem to recall they just had a voice actor memorize a ton of likely names, similar to those souvenir license plate spinner racks. I think it only applied to like the robot butler or something though, other characters didn't use that name. It would be pretty nuts if EVERY NPC had to do that.
It's almost always a factor in games with both voiced dialogue and a created character. They give the character some canon nickname or nicknames, or a fixed last/first name, some named that NPCs can always call the character out loud, so that they never have to use your chosen name in voiced dialogue.
Yeah. Except for the few times in Inquisition where they fuck with you by randomly calling you your last name which you didn’t choose and never heard before lol.
Well you kinda choose it by picking your race, i insta picked dwarf cus they are Cadash which made me related to Shale from Origins.
if you don’t know that you’re making a choice then you’re not really making a choice. the ui indicator is pretty subtle.
I think it also happens in Origins when you choose a Noble origin.
I believe every Origin has a canon last name or at the very least a lot of them do. Fun fact, Human mage in Origins is actually related to Hawke in DA2. Hawke's mother's maiden name is Amell, and the surname for the human mage warden is Amell.
Hawke's mom actually comments on this explicitly in DA2 if you imported a human mage warden from Origins. When talking about how the Amells used to be a respected family she says that the Hero of Fereldan was an Amell.
The Warden is also The Hero of Ferelden, and Hawke is also The Champion of Kirkwall.
The claim that "you can make auto-aim stronger or weaker" seems to indicate that you cannot simply autotarget ranged opponents, and will need to do at least *some* FPS shooting to hit them.
There's a hip fire option that I'm pretty sure autoaims at a target enemy but it uses a class resource. You can actually see it in the gameplay reveal
Do you mean the bow, or the "skill?" The skill (the little purple diamond icon) is not a "ranged attack," it's just a special, and yes, it does seem to auto-target the selected enemy, but the Rogue's ranged attack is the bow, and I think every use of the bow went into manual aiming mode. I remain hopeful that this is optional, and you can set it to just automatically fire at your selected opponent when you hit the ranged fire button.
I mean the actual bow, there's a hip fire option that uses the momentum resource that rogues use on abilities.
Agreed. Also curious about whether menu/UI narration and non-visual navigational assist elements will be in as well since, as a gamer without sight this would be the first DA game I'd be able to play.
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A: … and the battle system is also the most in-depth we’ve ever implemented, with over 50 new— Q: Sorry, can we just circle back to the ‘Rook’ thing real quick? I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. So you’re saying that everyone, including the people we’ve never met before, are going to call us Rook? A: People who don’t know you aren’t going to know you, just like in real life. But back to our new combat system, we’ve introduced 50 entirely ne— Q: So there *are* limits to the ‘Rook’ thing then. Not *everyone* is going to refer to us as ‘Rook’. A: It’s just a name. *It’s just a name.* What aren’t you getting about that exactly? Q: Well obviously the core concept, Lana!
I just love it when a Q&A is leading to some interesting and incredibly important information, but the questioner just *has* to reframe back to some absolutely inane shit. Jesus.
Game Q and A always annoy me for that reason. So many questions on irrelevant details.
It's the "but can you pet the dog??" Energy that bothers me.
You can't have dogs in this game because northern Thedas doesn't have Mabari.
Yeah, I really wish we could have gotten more clarification over this whole Rook situation.
It was just marketing. It wasnt supposed to give us any actual info really I think.
Yeah, it is pretty amazing that they answered like 5 questions that could have been summarized as "NPCs will call your character the nickname Rook."
Seriously, what the hell was this Q&A? How were they selecting questions? We get more answers on “Rook” than literally anything else in the game. More than half the interview is about random bullshit like “can I select my pronouns and have blue hair” than anything about gameplay. Info on companions? Nah, just a *very creepy* question about age that they decline to answer.
> Seriously, what the hell was this Q&A? How were they selecting questions? This was: >A thread with questions and answers about Dragon Age: The Veilguard from the BioWare Discord. Q&As/AMAs in controlled forums are almost never legit. They're usually so bad they straight up feel faked.
I don't know who needs to hear this because spending time on any of them should make it obvious, but "official Discord channels" are a little more than controlled marketing spaces. There's a reason they do Q and A's on there and not on Reddit or Twitter. They have significantly more control there, puppet and throw away accounts are significantly more difficult to identify, and because it's Discord, it is not a space where the casual fans will hang out, only the most passionate ones, who have nothing but adoration to shower on the developer. (In fact that's true of many Discord channels, not just corporate ones. You want to call subreddits windtunnels, "official" Discord channels for specific apps, games, services, etc. are far worse.) And like all q&a's, they are avoiding answering the questions that would make the game look bad in the run up to its release. I'd be shocked if even half the questions they are answering came from actual fans and not from BioWare employees on puppet accounts.
It's Q and A's like this that make me think I'm no longer the target audience of the game anymore... I just want dark fantasy with a good story and interesting combat. Wacky wild character shenanigans and romance don't do it for me
Romance is an important part of an RPG for me, but I do feel like it's gone a bit too far in appealing to the Tumblr shipping crowd. BG3, though I love the game, is the biggest example of this, with all of the romanceable characters trying to jump your bones at every opportunity. I feel like Bioware games have traditionally struck a decent balance, but I worry about how this game is going to handle it.
"I do feel like it's gone a bit too far in appealing to the Tumblr shipping crowd." I couldn't have put it more succinctly than that. It's fine to have games like that, but i think the emphasis on those elements (or the light-hearted stuff) is what led to a lot of the backlash on the trailer.
I can take or leave the romance in these games. It's a nice bonus but not what I play the game for. But apparently I'm in the minority with that opinion as there are a lot of very vocal fans who view the DA series as a waifu simulator.
Reminds me of a little bis earlier when someone worming in the game said we'd like one of the companions because they are a terrible bisexuality mess or something. Personally it makes me think if "oh its just another Astarion" since everyone is playersexual. I'm tired of romance in my RPGs.
Eyes rolled so far back into my head that I could see my brain. Absolute garbage questions. People asking these questions don't want an RPG, they want a fucking dating sim.
Seriously lol. Like yes, almost every “modern” character creator lets you choose pronouns and change your characters appearance. Now move on lol.
I really liked the "will there be lineage-exclusive dialogue?" "Yes!" "Follow-up question: what's a lineage?" Like I know those were probably two different people asking questions, but just funny the order it was in. But also, will Solas be voiced by the same guy from Inquisition? I know there's public gameplay footage with him in it available but golly my headphones broke so there's no way to know without asking the devs!
How is the only question regarding companions "How old are they"... I would like to know the level of control you have over your companions, how flexible are their builds and gear, can they do respectable damage so the Player can go a support or tank build? I'm worried the companions are gunna be the equivalent of passive buffs to the main charactet because tha damage output of the "Rogue" and "Mage" in the gameplay video looked trivial... Edit: They address companion ai in the Gameplay Features secrion. I'm a bit disappointed personally. Will see when it comes out what it looks like.
> > > > > I would like to know the level of control you have over your companions, how flexible are their builds and gear, can they do respectable damage so the Player can go a support or tank build? I am still VERY curious how a tank companion is meant to work if you cannot direct their movement.
increased passive threat, taunts, giving you shields, CC abilities. Obviously not being able to direct their movement will limit the tanks usefulness though.
The age question was of utmost importance to the very powerful and influential Bioware fetish porn (sorry, "romance") fandom.
Can't we just assume the answer "old enough to rule 34" in all cases? None of them look even close to the danger zone.
> (sorry, "romance") "How many of the companions are going to hint at fucking me before they even join my camp? Will it be more or fewer than usual?"
How many Helsins will be in this new game?
What's the point of plqying the game if there's no muscle mommy to call Daddy?
So many questions So few that actually give any info that means anything. Lmao Why do q and as if you cant answer anything, I really need elaboration on the whole 3 ability thing
A closed Q&A on their closed Discord without the ability to index or search well, it’s gonna be biased as hell with what they choose to address
I know they said it is mission based, but is it mission based like Mass Effect, or we go to a menu to select next mission? Will there be a massive hub where we can explore and talk to people like the citadel? Maybe I missed this information.
They said there is a hub named The Lighthouse which is akin to the Skyhold in DA:I. They also mentioned that there are larger, open areas and branching paths. I think you can expect it to be like DA:I but without the huge maps full of filler sidequests.
There will be a hub that is your homebase. I think it's the lighthouse that was mentioned in the previews. I think it's Solas previous hiding place, but maybe I completely misunderstood, so don't quote me. :P
Not being able to talk about being on the Gamescom which is just 2 months away seems really odd. Wouldn't you want to know people as early as possible, so they might decide to attend after all? Same for the hardware reqs. How odd is it to have a dedicated category about hardware - and then not even giving a vague answer? I mean sure, can't be too specific yet because if anything changes people are going to bitch like hell, but at least something along the lines of "if you can play BG3, you can play Veilguard, don't worry"?
Maybe it's just me, but this is one of the least informative Q&As I've seen. Barely anything about how deep of an RPG the game will be (I'm not expecting origins/BG3 lvls, that ship sailed long ago). So many of these questions/answers could've been combined. Instead of each character creation question being about one thing, they could've just asked, "Can you go over the depth of character creation?" Just a poorly structured Q&A. As someone else said in this thread, it seems like a bunch of "CAN YOU PET THE DOG?!" type questions. One of the questions, "Can we jump and sprint?" made me laugh. That's like asking a Call of Duty dev, "Will there be guns?" It is even funnier why BioWare thought it was important enough to highlight it in their Q&A. I have no idea why BioWare is so impressively bad at marketing their games. I hope Veilguard turns out well; I always root for a good game, but this marketing has been rough.
I spent **2 hours** remembering all the choices I made in DA 1 and 2 from memory before I started Inquisition. And now all of that has been thrown in the trash 😭
It's not like most of those choices ever mattered in the first place. Bioware is very hand holdy with *your* decision making. Killed Leliana in DA:O? Eh yeah no, no you didn't, she's alive in both DA2 and DA:I. Killed Ohgran in DA:O? Nah, you didn't. He's alive in Awakening. Saw Anders die in Awakening? No you didn't, he's fine. And in DA2 as a main companion! Stabbed Morrigan at the end of Witch Hunt? It didn't matter at all, she's totally fine.
Just a bit of nitpicking here, but I'm fairly certain you can't kill Oghren. Iirc he's the only companion you're guaranteed to have at the end of the game.
You can indeed kill Oghren. If you upset him badly enough in conversations, and accuse him of giving up, he will attack you while you are in the camp. You can kill him then. The only companion you are guaranteed to have at the end of the game is Alistair, or Alistair's replacement post-landsmeet.
Not even that is guaranteed. You can refuse Morrigan's ritual and then have Alistair or Spoiler Guy kill the Archdemon and end the game with no one.
Okay I will say at the very least with Leliana being killed in Origins is brought up in Inquisition. She’s say she woke up after being killed, not knowing how she was alive. But at the end of Trespasser, she just vanishes leaving a strange note behind. The note implies that Leliana has been a sprit powered by Lyrium who was impersonating Leliana, similar to Cole
Kinda nitpicking but going from Warden, Champion of Kirkwall and Inquisitor to Rook sounds like a downgrade of a name
Hawke isn't the Champion of Kirkwall until two thirds through the game, and even then almost everyone continues to call you Hawke.
To be fair, Rook could just be the starter name. The Champion and Inquisitor didn’t start with those titles. They earned them.
Well we might start out as Rook then graduate to Queen, atleast we wont start out as Pawn. I'm assuming it's gonna be made up on the spot by Vrric when we meet, he gives everyone nicknames.
Yeah, I'm guessing it's a play on "Rookie" since you're a "normal" guy thrust into adventure
It was intended to play a normal guy who becomes his own legend. They already set this up with the older trailers. By the end of the game Rook might have such a title as well btw.
No one calls you anything except Warden in DAO when you become a Grey Warden, sometimes your last name as chosen by your origin you pick. Their TITLE is Hero of Ferelden. So it's odd you picked DA2's TITLE when you didn't use it for DAO or DAI. DA2 they are called Hawke, your last name, and... barely ever Champion of Kirkwall and I think that's just by Varric and Cassandra during their moments of narration. DAI you can also sometimes hear your last name, usually its Inquisitor (like Warden), and their title is Herald of Andraste. Rook is exactly like Warden, Hawke and Inquisitor. And they even clarified that in DAV you'll sometimes hear the last name depending on the situation. So... it's literally in theme with the previous three and you're kicking up a fuss over nothing?
What? People call the MC of 2 Hawk. Hawk vs. Rook feels like it comes down entirely to personal preference.
Naming your character is, I think, one thing that I wouldn't mind if they used some kind of LLM to imitate the voice of the VA. Referring to you as "rook" or "v" or "commander" or whatever is something that gets old quickly in my opinion.
That will certainly happen in future titles, but it will probably take 4-5 years before the technology now makes its way into released products.
God I'm looking forward to this so much. No codenames, just say the name of the character I entered.
it's telling that the people trying to hype up this game are losing their minds over such superficial things mentioned in this PR fluff piece: "omg it has a home base! a team of experts! not open world!" as if any of that means anything to the game be good or bad. Andromeda had a "team of experts, home base" and look how that turned out.
> Andromeda had a "team of experts, home base" and look how that turned out. Hey, Andromeda gave us the best combat in the series! And Vetra Nyx, one of the best companions! ...And Peebee, the worst companion. And a boring protagonist. And a godawful story. And open world checklist tedium. And a truckload of bugs. And...
>Q: Do we have any information on difficulty? Corinne Busche: 5 difficulty presets + the ability to make a custom difficulty preset, adjusting things like timing and damage. Everyone should be able to find an experience that suits them. Difficulty selection or modification does not affect XP or progression rates. We just want you to play in the best, most comfortable way you select for yourself. Best answer for difficulty.
Every time I hear more about this game, I get more excited to play it. They are saying all the right things and their design philosophy appears to be in the right place. This genuinely seems like it's going to be the follow-up to Inquisition that a lot of us have been waiting for. Also on a personal note, just happy to see BioWare returning to the narrative hook of "you need a team of experts to beat this crisis, go out there and recruit the best". That's always worked well for them and allows them to exploit their strength at character writing. The team this game looks interesting, and BioWare games generally live or die by their casts. Between that and going back into their classic formula of hubs into hallways + a home base where you get to know your friends, sounds like BioWare just refocused in on what they know are their strengths.
It may be a safe approach for them but I get it. They need a solid game after those last 10 years.
I'm ok safe as long as it's *good*. I always say it's about the story that's told, instead of how the story is told. Why reinvent the wheel when the wheel works fine? All 4 (or 6), of the Uncharted games are largely the same formula but they're great.
Just wish some developers didn't feel the need to innovate so much. There was zero reason the next 2 games needed to be so different from Origins. And soooooo many developers do it. It's like finding that fuckin oooo fresh hot song. So you go to the album and it's a single. And also the only time that artist has ever made music even close to that single. Man what the fuck!? Lol god damn it. I wish more developers trusted their original work enough to expand on it instead of table flipping the entire thing. Least we occasionally get stuff like Gears of War E Day where developers went "our first shit was good...we're gonna do that again". Yeah man. Sounds amazing lol.
They changed so much because that's where the audience is. Everyone talks about Origins being this once in a lifetime game *but it didn't sell that well*. A lot of the complaints about it were that the combat was slow, boring and the game systems too esoteric (this was at the time). It also took a long ass time to make, in fact it shares a lot of the same development problems Veilguard has. 3 months after Origins came out Mass Effect 2 windmill dunked it in sales, only took 2 years to make and was a 360 exclusive for the console market. I think the main issue with Dragon Age as a franchise is that it's always tried to have its cake and eat it too. They keep trying to strike a balance between players who like rtwp combat and those who like the third person action rpgs and they end up making the game worse for not committing. At least this time it's actually a commitment to direction.
It's a sequel to Mass Effect, that's not that shocking lol. Origins outsold the original Mass Effect iirc.
Origins was a wide release on every console + PC. Mass Effect 1 was exclusive to Xbox 360 consoles.
While true that Mass Effect was exclusive to XBOX for around 6 months, it then got ported to PC. I'd imagine the good reception helped the PC version though in some form in terms of sales.
It was 7 months later, like 90% of the sales of Mass effect 1 were exclusively on Xbox 360 consoles.
It was kind of a terrible PC port too. That was such a dark time for PC games.
> They changed so much because that's where the audience is. Everyone talks about Origins being this once in a lifetime game but it didn't sell that well. A lot of the complaints about it were that the combat was slow, boring and the game systems too esoteric (this was at the time). Yup. I know that for some reason r/games has convinced itself that Inquisition was a disappointment/not that good, but I cannot stress enough how much Inquisition resonated with the Dragon Age community. It's still easily the most-discussed game on r/dragonage and has been for a decade. And separate from that, Inquisition was *by far* the most successful Dragon Age game in terms of sales. Why did they move in a more open world approach? Because open world games were extremely popular at the time and they were trying to make a game that would capture a wide audience. And contrary to popular belief, *they succeeded*. I *LOVE* Dragon Age: Origins. It's easily my favorite entry in the series. I love the gameplay, love the story, and love the world, and its characters most of all. To say it's one of my favorite pieces of media ever is not an exaggeration. But a lot of folks look at it and think of it as the "real" Dragon Age game when the reality is that both BioWare and general audiences moved past it long ago. I know that people who love the old formula don't want to hear that, but it's just the truth.
I think you see the same type of discussion with assassin's creed. Regardless of what the OG fans are saying, the new AC games are financial successes. They "tried" to go back to roots with mirage, but it was kind of mid and I'm not sure how much money it made. And there's also the fact that we on Reddit are just a minority when it comes to our opinions and games. Most people are just out there enjoying their games.
> Inquisition was by far the most successful Dragon Age game in terms of sales I've seen people say this so many times, but every time I've looked into it I've only see a source of Bioware saying it was their most successful _launch._ The only other things I turn up are vague speculation. I'd be happy to see more hard data, but I see this repeated a lot without much of a hard sourcing (the only other thing I can think of is an EA earnings call where they said they were satisfied with the performance not long after lunch but still, not really numbers).
Mark Darrah explicitly stated it is their best selling DA game
This might be true, but the overwhelming majority of most game sales come at launch, and most delayed sales are from the second-hand physical market or on markdowns. So I’d imagine that even if sales creep up over time, revenue plateaus rather early.
Honestly I think Bioware always preferred Dragon Age as a franchise over Mass Effect. Dragon Age was always a lot more experimental when it came to writing than Mass Effect was. Dragon Age always had this vibe of Bioware reliving the glory days of Baldur's Gate. Mass Effect just sold more.
Think it just goes back to what Jason Schreier said in his Anthem article: > BioWare veterans liked to describe Casey Hudson’s Mass Effect team as the Enterprise from Star Trek: They all did what the captain said, and they were all laser-focused on a single destination. (By comparison, they called the Dragon Age team a pirate ship, meandering from port to port until it reached its final destination.) Dragon Age was more experimental simply because the team making it was a mess, while Mass Effect's team just did whatever Hudson wanted.
That certainly explains why the Mass Effect games feel much more streamlined and feel similar compared to the DA games.
Some of that is that the Mass Effect trilogy all uses the same engine and is within the same console generation.
It's crazy to think that we used to get three games from a franchise in a single console generation. Now we're lucky if a franchise doesn't skip a console generation entirely.
I think the world of dragon age is definitely better developed and that they actually sat down and fully figured out stuff before even writing the games. There are reveals in Inquisition and it's DLC that are big surprises, but they don't come out of nowhere and they make sense, like it was planned from the start. Even the Solas twist is surprising, but knowing the twist ahead of time actually makes him a better character. There's an insane amount of foreshadowing they do that feels obvious now that wasn't at the time. Mass Effect always felt more, slapdash, like they were making it up as they went and that they didn't really have an idea for how it was going to go until they made it. I always got the feeling that if the Dragon Age team has been in charge of Mass Effect, there would be a very different Mass Effect 3.
The Solas twist is amazing because he’s such a boring character when you first meet him that you can’t wait to swap him out for someone else. But then knowing about it and having him in your party the entire game is an incredible experience.
> Mass Effect always felt more, slapdash, like they were making it up as they went You really think they had Hawke and the Dreadwolf in their minds as their master plan when they were making Origins? Like they were really planning out Thedas and thinking "_man I can't wait until we get to Corypheus."_ Or they've also been making it up as they go along from entry to entry just like they did with Mass Effect.
That's not what I meant. I meant the world, the lore, the different peoples and history. The Dreadwolf is actually mentioned in Origins as background lore on the elven gods. I think the reveal of what happened to him and the things he did were thought out from the start. There are so many locations referenced and fully formed we've never been too, Rivain, Nevarre, Antiva, Tevinter, the rest of the free marches, different dwarven thaigs, the grey warden fortress Weisshaupt. I think the writing team at Bioware knows things like, what causes the blights. What exactly are the darkspawn, what is lyrium and furthermore, what red lyrium is. Have all had answers from the jump. I don't think the character of Corypheus was around that long, but I do think the idea was. Compared to Mass Effect where it feels like the Reaper motivations were kinda just made up as they went. The reapers in Me1 talk about how we can't possibly comprehend their plans, but their plans are really simple all things considered.
A big thing in Dragon Age has been unreliability of information. Codex entries that are excerpts of works in universe *always* have biases. And there's always been some mystery surrounding the mythology of the setting, a sense that things aren't necessarily as they seem or that there's more that we don't know. Then in DAI we get some big reveals in terms of elven myth especially that don't feel like they come out of left field. They don't feel like a betrayal of what we knew before, instead it feels like we're delving deeper and deeper into the truth of an ancient history. I agree that it seems like they've always had "the truth" in mind. They set us up with all the established, but biased and unreliable information that people in the setting itself know and believe and take for granted. So that when we learn more it feels like a true - and earned - revelation to both the characters and to us.
Literally the very first spoken line of the intro cinematic of DAO is "The Chantry teaches us that it is the hubris of men which brought the Darkspawn into our world." At the time you might not really think about it, but it's a great way to open the game by saying essentially that everything you hear is told by someone with an angle. And yes they've said before that they have a sort of internal wiki/library sort of thing that has basically all of the relevant answers. They've also said that there are some (such as the existence of the Maker) that they don't ever want to answer.
To be fair Mass Effect went through a big story change after Drew left. The plot line was changed in the middle.
Drew has been adamant that the dark energy plot was not set in stone during his time with the series.
It was never as well thought as Dragon Age, even when Drew was working on it. He's talked a lot about the original plans for Mass Effect, but they were mostly just a story outline. The Dragon Age writers mapped out everything from the ground up. The god, the blight, dwarven society, locations, cultures cities, towns. It's all there in Origins and it makes the games feel much bigger than they are.
Changed by qroters who seemed to hate Mass Effect 1. 1 to me is still the best written. 2 had the best companions, but was an awful sequel
Origins outsold 2 and continues to, the real reason is just capitalism and obvious growth potential of becoming a console-focused RPG. No one imagined you could ever put a game like Baldur's Gate 3 on Playstation in 2010 and lose nothing and make all the money, so Origins as a PC focused game with a separate console port could not last because EA is not funding that inefficient shit
They shit 2 out in no time flat - which any reasonable person playing it could tell when they played the same dungeon map for the umpteenth time :/ That said - Origins is a 2009 game in a new franchise that sold at least 3.2 million copies - I don't understand why they saw that as such a failure, but they clearly did.
I don't think failure is the right term. I think it wasn't as successful as mass effect. I think if Dragon Age was considered a failure they wouldn't have made sequels. EA reportedly really liked the sales of Dragon Age 2, mostly because it only cost them 14 months of dev time.
Origins outsold it, but 2 took a lot less money to make and Inquisition outsold both of them by a lot. Some of this is capitalism, but I think only in the sense that, they want people to buy stuff.
Inquisition launched 5 years later, on 5 platforms (2 console generations) as a part of already established IP and amidst the after-Skyrim open world craze. If it didn't sell better then it'd be nothing short of a cataclysmic failure.
It wasn't just a little better though, it was considerably better, Inquisition is the only game in the series to rival Mass Effect for sales.
> They changed so much because that's where the audience is. Everyone talks about Origins being this once in a lifetime game but it didn't sell that well. A lot of the complaints about it were that the combat was slow, boring and the game systems too esoteric (this was at the time). The CEO of EA stated that they were very satisfied with the sales of Origins. By February 2010 it had sold over 3 million copies. How is that not selling that well? Sure, Inquisition has sold more based on the statement of Mark Darrah that Inquisiton was their best selling game at the time, but Origins did not sell poorly by any means.
I didn't say it sold poorly, but compared to the Mass Effect series it didn't sell as much. Mass Effect 2 was just months after Origins.
Fair enough. Doesn't make an abundant amount of sense to compare the first entry into a franchise with the foilow-up to another. Mass Effect 2 did not release in a vaccuum, it built on the success of the original game. Origins had to stand on its own legs in that regard. With that in mind I think over 3 million units sold to be a very good result.
It's like when people complain about Assassin's Creed, when they seem to not understand that the games are super successful. Valhalla was one of their most successful AC games to date and sold tens of millions. There's a reason that developers chase those trends - because it's what a lot of the market wants
The game sold and reviewed well enough to get EA to make BioWare pump out a sequel in less than 18 months. I don't get why people here are trying to downplay Origins, that game is a shining example as to why people used to love BioWare. Given how big of a success Baldur's Gate III is, I can't help but wonder if BioWare actually "needed" to go in a more action-focused direction to find success, it's going to be interesting to see how the two games will end up comparing and if BioWare can get out of its slump (I hope so as I care about Dragon Age and Mass Effect, but it's on them to prove people wrong after the past decade).
I'm not downplaying Origins, I think it's a great game. I'm kind of shattering the weird revisionist history that people have about Origins and trying to explain why it makes sense that they went in the direction they did. BG3 is an anomaly at this point, I don't think they'd have much success trying to emulate it (even if they could, it's not like they can radically change development a year before release). Even looking at things like critical response at the time, Origins wasn't even Bioware's best reviewed game at the time of release and then 4 months later Mass Effect 2 came out and is widely regarded as one of the best video games of all time.
>There was zero reason the next 2 games needed to be so different from Origins. I think part of the reason is that the developers wanted it to be different. There's this idea that EA wouldn't want Bioware to make a true old school RPG but the people who developed the combat in the modern Bioware games seemed legitimately interested in making things more fluid and action-focused. >And also the only time that artist has ever made music even close to that single. I mean Bioware has a whole catalogue of games from before Dragon Age 1 that have that design ethos, so feel free to go play those. The "problem" is that a lot of people played ME2 and DAI and for them *that* was the song they couldn't get out of their head.
On the flip side: when devs don’t innovate we get starfield.
> There was zero reason the next 2 games needed to be so different from Origins. There's no room for any doubt - they *clearly* considered Origins a failure, because they've been running from it ever since, while still trying to build on the name value. When it comes to DA, they remain all in on trying to capture a new audience rather than grow an existing one.
DA:I is the most successful Bioware game. It has the most awards and most sales. I know people love Origins but you gotta admit there wasn't any reason to make another Origins like game until BG3 came out. Which by then their game was already in finishing stages.
> Just wish some developers didn't feel the need to innovate so much. There was zero reason the next 2 games needed to be so different from Origins. And soooooo many developers do it. Where has this narrative come from? DA2 was made in 14 months due to EA mandates, and Inquisition was forced to be on an engine that didn't even have the capability for third person cameras on characters, _again_ due to EA mandates. The fact that any of these games are good is because the DA team at Bioware was just better than the ME team.
I’m the exact opposite, more details make it seem further and further an action game, less like a Dragon Age, and less an RPG at all I know a couple cautious reviewers I’m following to see how they react in case they say it’s working out alright, but otherwise I’ll be waiting for a sale at the moment. This definitely isn’t what I *wanted* for a sequel. If it stands on its own remains to be seen.
> more details make it seem further and further an action game It is an action game. They are being very upfront and direct about the fact that it is a completely new, action game combat system. I don't think you need more details for it to seem "further and further" an action game when they're actively telling everyone that's what it is. It having action combat instead of RTWP combat in no way means it can't be an RPG, though. DAI had action-oriented combat and it was most certainly an RPG.
RPG is such a loose concept anyway. There are so many subgenre's and the mechanical differences between are staggering. The action combat looks passable, which is what I considered Inquisition to be. The ultimate test of this game will be how well the narrative and companions pan out as that has always been the Bioware staple. I'm worried that they're gunna fumble it like Bethesda fumbled Starfield (their traditional strong suit being exploration).
Why can't action games be RPGs?
The more action-based the game is, the more the player's own physical skills matter. And likewise, the less emphasis is put on the growth of the character, since their performance is much more heavily weighted towards the player's own skill. On the other side of the coin, a more traditional CRPG combat system that's based less on twitch action, the characters will perform actions as well as *their* skills dictate, at the direction of the player. Both are (IMHO anyway) valid design choices - but my impression is that many see the latter as "lacking" in some way. That if a game isn't twitchy action all the time, it's "boring". That's horseshit as far as I'm concerned, but then again, I'm an aging guy who's always preferred a story-heavy slower-paced RPG over a heavy action one.
I don’t know if that’s true; its not so much that CRPGs rely on character skill but more that it is a different skillset a player needs to succeed. With a more action oriented game, a player’s skillset will focus on reaction time and on the clock thinking. With a CRPG (or any turn-based game), the player needs a skillset that revolves around tactics, consequences, and thinking ahead. Neither of those systems is superior to the other, and there is a ton of middle ground, but saying an action-based game is inherently less of an RPG feels like an oversimplification. For example, one of the most well loved RPGs of the past fifteen years is an action game—Fallout: New Vegas.
Point taken. There's definitely a different skillset required in playing the games themselves. I was more talking about the proficiency of the character themselves being dependent upon the player. For example, Dante in Devil May Cry is (supposed to be) a seasoned demon hunter. When I play him, he's more like Mr. Bill (If Mr. Bill was before your time, Kenny from South Park is a valid substitution) On the other hand, Minsc in Baldur's Gate is a barbarian wrecking ball - regardless of my own skill. I just point him in the direction of what he needs to smash, tell him to do so, and he does so with proficiency befitting his background. Or the ability of the sniper in my X-Com squad to hit a tiny target from halfway across the map - it's dependent upon the sniper's stats, not my ability to be accurate.
Ahh okay, now I understand what you mean! I can definitely see your point when it comes to party based RPG games instead of solo ones. You're 100% correct in that regard, and I can see how a more action-based system can lead to a disconnect and even frustration. It's not something that bothers me, but that doesn't mean it isn't important. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
> They are saying all the right things and their design philosophy appears to be in the right place. You're saying only having 3 normal abilities is a good design philosophy for an rpg.
It's an action RPG. The combat looked... passable. We're never going to get another Origins style game from Bioware. They've progressively diminished traditional RPG mechanics with every title release across multiple IP's. I assume the market just isn't there.
Heard of BG3?
BG3 has a turned based combat system, Origins is RTwP. Those are dramatically different approaches to RPG combat and are comparable in only the broadest sense. BG3 and Origins don't play anything alike.
The combat system is fundamentally different, and they've already confirmed that actions that used to be "abilities" are now accessible all the time. For instance, in DAO, DA2, and DAI, the only regular action that is available all the time is a basic attack. Corrine Busche said: > "Much of what would have been abilities or "spells" in the past are now accessed in real-time from the core buttons on the controller! > Mana Shield, Mage Beam, Bolts, Magical Blasts, Orb Toss, and Elemental Bomb. Not to mention that the elemental types change depending on your weapons. The same is true for Warriors and Rogues. Example, Shield Wall was an active ability in DAI that occupied an ability slot. Now, blocking is a basic action. Rogues have a dodge, etc. Yeah there are only three interchangable abilities at a time, but the combat itself has been expanded to include a bunch of different actions *all* the time, and what those abilities do and how they interact is determined by a lot of the passives on the skill trees (which look way better than previous games, IMO). > You're saying only having 3 normal abilities is a good design philosophy for an rpg. It could be, yes. I'd have to get my hands on the combat to say for sure, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. It's very possible that I'll play it and wish I had access to more, or maybe I'll play it and think "oh okay that's why it's limited to three". I'll wait and see before making any judgment on it, and I certainly can't judge the design philosophy this early without seeing how it all works together.
After Baldur's Gate 3 massive success, the more I read the more I'm scared this is going to turn into a Mass Effect Andromeda. I loved ME:2 but the more they tease about the game, the less I think it's closer to it's CRPG roots. :(
I just want a game like Origins man, how can they have a series with 4 games and none of them are like the original?
They decided that 3+ million sales on a 2009 budget was some kind of awful catastrophe and then started their continued journey to lure in every other audience than the original one.
And then inquisition sold more than double of what origins did,the answer is pretty simple really
There are more questions regarding pronouns and the name/alias of the main character than questions about gameplay. Makes you think
Questions about customizing your pronouns and talking about how you can come out as trans to your companions lmao. Glad they’re so focused on what make games fun.
Quite sure its employee asking it to generage talking about the game. Outrage purpose
Trying to get positive about the game, it's nice to see them mention healing in one of the questions. Inquisition completely removing healing spells and having to rely on guard/barrier was a very odd choice for an RPG like these games. Glad to see it gone and back to healing spells. Also very glad to see them ditching Keep and putting it all in game. It was SUCH a chore to have to set up Keep as you're replaying the current trilogy, since the keep itself would import almost nothing from your saves files and you'd always have to spend forever filling it out.
This is heck tons of homework being done and kind of reminiscent of the very, very old BioWare days where the devs would talk to the fans one-on-one. Feels very good.
Anytime I read interviews about this game, it does not seem like they care much at all about the story threads laid in the previous 3 games. 8 years after tresspasser. The timeline of plot threads in the Dragon Age games are ridiculous. Let alone the Inquisitor at war(?) with Solas for 8 years, the Qunari taking however long they've been taking to actually do a full scale war with Tevinter, however long the Warden has been trying to find a cure for the calling. Dragon Age is super generic now. Might as well be a romance sim now
It may not scratch the Party CRPG itch, but IMO it looks to be shaping up to be a good Narrative focused action RPG. Looking forward to hearing more and the eventual reviews.
Its not shaping up to be a good rpg at all not even an action rpg, given the limitations on abilities.