Dragon Age 3 announced.

[Blue-Hawk]

http://www.gamefront.com/dragon-age-3-inquisition-announced/

After reading this, I am still highly skeptical. After the poorly designed and implimented DA2, ME2 that left a bad taste in my mouth and the piss-poor ME3, DA3 might be on my avoid list, unless I can get it for $10 after 2-3 months like I was able with DA2.

Still BF3 wasn't that bad, but one game doesn't redeem them from a list of many other bad ones.

Anyone else feel this way? And yes, I know I'm the only one here that hated ME 2 and 3.

[Akaimizu]

Actually, I'm not so skeptical about DA3. Mass Effect went the way I completely expected it because I was well aware of the audience it was trying to cater to, and I believe it did it very well. It was classic *experimental* bioware trying to modernize the RPG and try to hide more and more of it under the covers to the point the player thinks they're playing an action game. A progression seen in certain Bioware games ever since Baldur's Gate.

Dragon Age 1 was an example when I *thought* I knew what audience they were trying to cater to. The more old school Bioware fans. When DA2 came out, I did understand that the core audience may have felt betrayed. Only ME should've went that way, not DA.

Still, because Bioware completely acknowledged this, and has responded to the feedback of the fans; I think they will indeed put forth the effort into appealing to the core fans for the 3rd iteration, but I expect a little compromise here. Why? Because they did gain some new fans with DA2 and I think they'll come up with something that adds a few DA2 interface ideas into the mix while allowing the complexities of DA1 to work. Also, I think they'll also sell this as a big main story, not one that feels more like an off-to-the-side story.

My hope is that Bioware moves forward being a company that works on a couple of titles at a time. One to cater to the old-school core audience (with the menus, the numbers for crunching and comparison, etc.), and one that allows them to do their Bioware experiment of trying hard to get gamers, who don't like RPGs due to their menus, daunting numbers, and such, to play a game that is *under the covers* an RPG. The ones that make people ask the question again as to what really is important to still be called a Role Playing game.

In my opinion, Bioware generally makes good games, but they make different ones for different tastes. They also really love to experiment with the formula because they are chasing a tough goal. I just think that in the case of DA2, they seriously missread their audience. I don't know how the disconnect happened. It's like the game changed hands partly through. They should've known (as the entire industry and media knew) that the first DA game initially sold for all those people who wanted a PC-centric spiritual followup to the Bioware that made Baldur's Gate 1&2, given that Mass Effect was specifically engineered for a totally different experience.

[Slidikins]

Just give me an environment larger than one city and I'll be satisfied. Seriously, that's all it takes. I can ignore the piss-poor writing in certain areas. I can ignore repetitive level design. Just don't put so much lore into a world and ignore 90% of it in your game.

[Akaimizu]

^ I hear you on that one. Thus why I said, they probably see to make it a proper full story, not something that feels like something off-to-the-side. They took major heat for that one.

[Outrider]

Man, I'm just starting on the third act of Dragon Age II and aside from the re-used environments it's really pretty good. It's clumsily designed at points ('Why do I need to get so much gear that my character can't actually use?', 'Why do my characters stop auto-attacking once they've defeated an enemey?', etc.) but it's basically just the original Dragon Age with faster gameplay and a more focused setting. It works for me.

That being said, I'd love to see the game set on a larger scale more akin to DA:O for the next game since the story will likely be on a grander scale than the setting-based story of the second game.

The Frostbite II engine can produce some very pretty visuals. This game could be gorgeous.

[TenebriS]

Man, I'm just starting on the third act of Dragon Age II and aside from the re-used environments it's really pretty good. It's clumsily designed at points ('Why do I need to get so much gear that my character can't actually use?', 'Why do my characters stop auto-attacking once they've defeated an enemey?', etc.) but it's basically just the original Dragon Age with faster gameplay and a more focused setting. It works for me.

That being said, I'd love to see the game set on a larger scale more akin to DA:O for the next game since the story will likely be on a grander scale than the setting-based story of the second game.

I fully agree on that, really looking forward Dragon Age III
I still finish 1 and 2 every few weeks again :P I enjoy both of them like they are. DA3 beeing a mix of em would really be interesting o:

[Sinue_v2]

Apparently, they're going to be taking a lot of cues from Skyrim this time around... which indicates to me that they're not really learning their lesson, but trying to copy somebody else's success after their "hey, lets turn our RPGs into action games so we can attract that Halo croud" initiative blew up in their faces.

[Outrider]

Apparently, they're going to be taking a lot of cues from Skyrim this time around... which indicates to me that they're not really learning their lesson, but trying to copy somebody else's success after their "hey, lets turn our RPGs into action games so we can attract that Halo croud" initiative blew up in their faces.

See... that's the part that would worry me.

Then again, if it's still all about controlling a party of adventurers and they're just talking about giving us one large world to explore in real-time, that could be fun.

(Though I don't really know what action-rpg initiative went wrong for them. Do you mean Mass Effect?)

[Palle]

EA have a hard time publishing games I even want to pirate at this point.

[Akaimizu]

See... that's the part that would worry me.

Then again, if it's still all about controlling a party of adventurers and they're just talking about giving us one large world to explore in real-time, that could be fun.

(Though I don't really know what action-rpg initiative went wrong for them. Do you mean Mass Effect?)

Well, actually, Mass Effect worked even better than their earlier attempts. Jade Empire, while a neat take, was a bit more broken (in the player's favor this time) in which a player could easily exploit and highly simplify combat halfway through. Made the arena challenge, and everything after that stupidly easy and a nearly 1 move affair. I still liked the game, but mainly for the style, atmosphere, and the kung fu mysticism mix.

But Baldur's Gate was Bioware's first triumph at simplifying a tougher engine situation, and masking away RPG elements from the player. Still, that was at a different level. They were the first to capture so much that went into table-top RPG mechanics into a computer game in which many dice rolls were hidden from the player that caused all kinds of effects in and out of combat. In that one, the player could turn on Verbose mode which would unhide the hundreds of dice rolls to show the player how impressive the engine really was. I believe, to a degree, Knights of the Old Republic had some of that capability as well.

So I always understood that the strive to bring the RPG to a wider audience who hates the amount of Number crunching (on the player's part) that goes into playing RPGs, and yet still statisfy the role-playing experience was a Bioware mantra from the beginning. This has been their known code for nearly 14 years now. So in the strive to do so, they're bound to have a few missteps, mainly in terms of how their audience reacts to it. It's not an easy ball to balance, much like it took a number of Elder Scrolls games to finally bring their complex RPG and make it acceptable to a mainstream audience as well as their core. The difficulty in accomplishing that (also due to the technology) was easily seen by those of us who were there at Morrowind or prior to that.

But I also think Bioware got themselves in a bit of a stick in which they have difficulty appealing to the older core audience (who pretty much came in with Baldur's Gate and considered that nearly perfect in execution) and to the newer audience (they want) who loves their RPGs that don't behave like the number-crunching detail of RPGs. (Similar to the difference between Daggerfall/Morrowind and Skyrim, where the prior games were much more stuck on the player's knowledge of the numbers to help promote the on-screen action). Still, I'm shocked there are people that didn't see that coming with Mass Effect, being that it was born with the idea of an RPG masked under an action-game premise (a couple of steps beyond Knights of the Old Republic and only one step beyond Jade Empire but with guns) where Dragon Age started as a spiritual succcessor to Baldur's Gate, but with a darker tone.

But then again, I played all the Bioware games leading up to it and if you did, the push towards different engines was way more gradual, but consistent. I was just thrown a bit of a loop with DA2 because I expected it to not follow (in any way) towards the direction of ME and simplifying the interface more for the action user. Especially since DAO was a major step back to an older-style Bioware engine. You'd think they purposely catered to that crowd, and would stick with it for that series.

I think the one thing Bioware hasn't truly obtained was that monumental game (what they want) that manages to capture both the core older RPG audience and the action gamer who is open to playing a role-playing game without the heavy dose of numbers and stuff or difficult situations where a slight lack of intricate knowledge would kill off your entire team. Though a bigger mistake of knowledge will still kill them off, build depending.

This became way more evident as I started to see reviewers (who never really played that much Baldur's Gate) try to give impressions of their preview copies of Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition. The current previews play just like the beloved Baldur's Gate games, but at least behaves better on today's machines. The problem is, they really see many new gamers (who never played it) being completely turned off the game as it does little to cater to anything but the core original audience. So it does prove that Bioware's idea is sound to try to push beyond that. I'm still excited to still see them try, but also do what they need to do in order to keep both audiences around. Right now, it seems they have to separate the games as they haven't truly accomplished it in 1 game. At least for a number of people.

Me. I'm glad to be right between the 2 extremes, so I'm enjoying most of their releases a lot more than those who sit either squarely in one or the other group, or lean heavily to just one side.

[Outrider]

I'm not saying Mass Effect was a misstep; I think it's a great series. I just imagine that's what Sinue was referring to since he mentioned Halo and I found it weird that somebody would consider such a successful series as something that "blew up in their faces." I might have misread that, though.

Honestly, I've yet to have too many serious issues with Bioware's titles when looking at them as entire products. Sure, some of their sequels are radically different than their predecessors, but they're still very good games. Maybe they're not the games anybody was expecting, but the gameplay, writing, and presentation are still top-notch. Even when it comes to silly narrative hiccups like in Mass Effect 3, or the recycled environments in Dragon Age II, the rest of the game is still so well-done that it's hard to be too upset about it in the long term.

The big reason I don't want them to make Dragon Age III into something like the Elder Scrolls titles is because I don't like those games. Granted, that has more to do with my taste (and the fact that they are not well-made games) than anything else, so it's entirely possible Bioware could pull off a great open-world RPG.

[Akaimizu]

I don't think Bioware will put the emphasis on (complete fantasy world simulation) as Elder Scrolls attempts and does.

I happen to love Elder Scrolls and everything they're trying to do with the series because I love to have at least 1 game franchise give me that aspect of putting me in a fantasy world simulation with which I can touch, manipulate, create, and deal with things at my own desire. It is also my opinion that they are well-made for their goals as it is (by far) harder to do what Bethesda is doing than any other RPG series on the planet. No other engine requires as much playtesting and bugtesting because of the level of depth, and insane objects utilized, in their simulation engine. Not to mention, no other franchise allows me to completely create a fiction class of my design in such a way that nobody else on the planet thought of it. Truly a game for those who enjoy putting their own narrative, creations, and input into the experience.

I don't think Bioware is about that, nor are they trying to emulate that idea. So I think those who don't enjoy what Bethesda serves up, has nothing to worry about.

[amtalx]

If they take the narrative quality from DA:O and the combat system from DA2, I'm sold.

[Sinue_v2]

I'm not saying Mass Effect was a misstep; I think it's a great series. I just imagine that's what Sinue was referring to since he mentioned Halo and I found it weird that somebody would consider such a successful series as something that "blew up in their faces." I might have misread that, though.

That probably was a bit misleading, as I was referring more to the Dragon Age series than I was Mass Effect. Still, I'm probably just that rare bird that loves micromanagement - sorting through half a dozen pairs of pants to see which ones are shiniest and arranging them on my party by priority of who I use the most and who would get the most out of them. I like having a large array of branching skillsets from which to customize my character.. finding unique builds that either make an easy game tougher, or exploit some strange combination that the developers hadn't balanced for. Real-Time combat is fine, but I like being able to "pause" the action and issue commands to my party... and I like a silent protagonist whom communicates without putting words in my character's mouth.

I don't like the "streamlining" that Bioware has been doing to their games, and I feel that their "intuitive" UI's are really just constricting. Bethesda has been following a similar path, but at a much slower pace - and to a point it can be forgiven considering the huge open worlds they're trying to create. I understand they don't have the resources to put all of the weapons, armor, and goodies in Skyrim that they could in Morrowind... and that (given how buggy the games already are) that it's too easy to completely break the game by crafting spells and items outside of a constricted pre-set selection of enchantments. (My lady bosmer Nereverine had a pair of swords called Heaven & Earth crafted with the souls of the Tribunal gods - a wakizashi which had infinite duration paralyze and a Katana that stole 100% of damage in health. I only ever had to actually fight when facing enemies with reflect enchantments.)

With ME it probably hurt less than with DA, because DA had a lot of choice over race, class specialization, equipment, etc. ME never really a lot of that even right from the start... although it did have exo-planetary exploration which, despite how horrid some people thought the Mako exploration areas were, it gave a sense that you were in a large and expansive universe... not just a series of linear shooting corridors and hubs.

Also, I resent the trend towards the "Michael Bay" method of game development. BIG explosions, BIG action, BIG drama!... (little bit of substance). I've really liked Bioware's ability to tell a narrative, but it seems to have taken a back seat in MEIII and DA II to the spectacle of the whole thing. Bethesda can't tell a narrative like that, and I wonder how much of that is due to the amount of freedom they give the players which may be antithetical to a cohesive and well paced story. Even Obsidian had issues with it, despite New Vegas being a much more compelling tale than FO3. While I wouldn't mind seeing DA III giving the players much more freedom to explore and develop their character, I don't want to see them give the player so much freedom that we loose that wonderful narrative that marked their earlier titles.

[McLaughlin]

If they take the narrative quality from DA:O and the combat system from DA2, I'm sold.

Pretty much this, although I thought DAII was pretty well written as well. The combat was a massive step forward from DA:O. I also want more DLC in the vein of DAII's, although a large expansion type deal like Awakening would be neat.

The main character has to be voiced, though. Hawke is more personable than the Warden by orders of magnitude, and another silent protagonist would seriously put me off the game.

Looking forward to more information, at any rate.

Edit: I would disagree, tentatively, with the idea that Bioware's story-telling is trending towards the Call of Duty model of EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHERE. ALL THE TIME. You need only look to Shepard's scenes with Liara's time capsule and Garrus's shooting challenge atop the Prisidium. Those are very intimate, personable interactions with no explosions or fabricated drama, well written and executed, and they aren't the only examples.