Dragon Age IV

+
Quick rule reminder so this doesn't get too far afield -
In particular, it is prohibited to:
  • write about political and world-view topics; this does not apply to discussions about topics connected with the worlds depicted in the CDPR products
 
I'll more than likely keep an eye on this and play it if/when it comes out.

I've always liked the Dragon Age series - yes, even the second one (it had PLENTY of issues but I still found two playthroughs worth of enjoyment in it). I thought Inquisition was a step in the right direction and earned back some trust BUT I also think they did a little...too much in that game.

It took me something like 140 hours to get through ONE playthrough plus the Jaws of Hakkon DLC (sidequests/tasks and such included).

140 hours...

I was so happy to be done with it and was so burnt out on DAI that I promptly uninstalled it right after exiting to the desktop and haven't touched it in years now. Every so often when I don't have anything new or interesting to play I think about revisiting it but then I stop and think....140 HOURS. That's how much time I'll have to commit to playing through it again...and so I don't.

I say all this because a big part of the fun of games like DAO, DA2, and others like Mass Effect 1 - 3 is that they offer up the possibility of experiencing the game again and again with different genders, races, classes, builds, and morality/romance choices...AND it's entirely viable to play through those games again and again because at the most they took maybe 30 - 50 hours to complete fully.

Looking down the barrel of a 100+ hour time commitment in order to experience DAI with another type of character is just....not appealing.

Thus, even though the trend in most RPGs these days is BIGGER & LONGER = BETTER, I kinda hope a new DA scales it back a bit in regards to it's size and time commitment.
 
I have to disagree with the comment on time commitment in general. If the time is high quality, then the more the better. I lived vicariously in the Skyrim world for thousands of hours.

However, I do agree with you in the case of DAI, because a lot of those hours I spent grinding for resources to make important upgrades. In addition, I spent dozens of hours closing portals, which after about ten of them, all started to seem like the same exercise. If the hundred-plus hours had all been like the Orlesian Ball, then that would have been great. But they weren't. So, I'd like a multi-hundred hour excursion, but not of the DAI type.
 
Both Inquisition and Andromeda were absolutely boring. Especially Andromeda. I'm not really sure about buying DA4. Bioware doesn't make those good ol' story driven RPGs like they use to. Their games are nothing more than glorified dating sims. All BW and their fans ever talk about now, are the romances in their games. I will definitely pass DA4. I have CDPR to replace BW and now Obsidian to replace Bethesda. I'm good.
 
Both Inquisition and Andromeda were absolutely boring. Especially Andromeda. I'm not really sure about buying DA4. Bioware doesn't make those good ol' story driven RPGs like they use to. Their games are nothing more than glorified dating sims. All BW and their fans ever talk about now, are the romances in their games. I will definitely pass DA4. I have CDPR to replace BW and now Obsidian to replace Bethesda. I'm good.
Bioware will maintain a special place in my heart, but I have to agree that fanbase obsession over romances has grown tiresome...to the point I couldn't care if they dropped them entirely in favor of deeper story elements. They've also proven they're pretty bad at openworld. It doesn't help MEA much, but if you largely ignore the openworld portions of DAI and focus on story and companion related stuff it becomes a much better experience. It's not TW3 level, but then there is no other game comparable to TW3 as a complete experience.
 
If the hundred-plus hours had all been like the Orlesian Ball, then that would have been great. But they weren't. So, I'd like a multi-hundred hour excursion, but not of the DAI type.
Yeah side quests being "kill things, get to ___insert location here__ and press x" gets old after 25 hours. DAI suffered mostly from too little central/important quests and too much fetch quests. The quest that were central to the story were actually really good, just not enough of the minute to minute of the whole game.
 
Last edited:
well I'm not holding my breath either .

DAI Story sucked . MEA feel half assed and Unfinished and the story was utterly boring (too much copy past) .

DAO that everyone praise , sucked for me . It crash so much..unplayable .

That left me with enjoying DA2 . which I did . no crash and Hawke was hilarious .

when they are done 'teasing' and 'lying' maybe I give a damn . Until then I have my eyes on Cyberpunk and maybe Outer World .............even though I'm not big on fallout (cose they crash Too !) .
 
Bioware will maintain a special place in my heart, but I have to agree that fanbase obsession over romances has grown tiresome...to the point I couldn't care if they dropped them entirely in favor of deeper story elements. They've also proven they're pretty bad at openworld. It doesn't help MEA much, but if you largely ignore the openworld portions of DAI and focus on story and companion related stuff it becomes a much better experience. It's not TW3 level, but then there is no other game comparable to TW3 as a complete experience.
I can't ignore the openworld portions unless I'm playing on easy. On Nightmare mode you have to do a lot of those open world portions just to level up.
 
I have to disagree with the comment on time commitment in general. If the time is high quality, then the more the better. I lived vicariously in the Skyrim world for thousands of hours.

However, I do agree with you in the case of DAI, because a lot of those hours I spent grinding for resources to make important upgrades. In addition, I spent dozens of hours closing portals, which after about ten of them, all started to seem like the same exercise. If the hundred-plus hours had all been like the Orlesian Ball, then that would have been great. But they weren't. So, I'd like a multi-hundred hour excursion, but not of the DAI type.
Well I wasn't talking about time commitment "in general".

I too have spent 500+ hours in Skyrim and hundreds of hours with games like Company of Heroes, the Total War series, and so on...even ended up with something like 150 hours in DAO.

The difference between the time commitment in DAI versus those games I've referenced is that it took 100+ hours to play through DAI ONE TIME.

My 500+ hours with Skyrim was divided up between 4 or 5 different characters using different races, classes, playstyles, and choosing different larger questlines dependent on the character (example: an assassin character doing the Dark Brotherhood, a Nord doing the Nord side of the civil war, etc). The time with DAO I had was comparable to DAI but again - that was split between 2 or 3 DIFFERENT characters, choices, etc.

Maybe it's because I'm older and don't have the luxury of sitting around all day playing games, maybe it's because I like to play all kinds of genres and so new, interesting games I want to play are coming out once or twice a month, but I just don't have the time or the attention span to put 100+ hours into A SINGLE playthrough of a game.

Overall, my point is that a game like DAI begs you to experience it more than once so you can see it from multiple angles with different classes, races, choices, world-states, and so on. Yet, the idea of committing 100+ hours EACH TIME to do so is just not appealing to me.
 
...there was still a story in both but the gameplay seriously lacked and they've moved from what was originally an RPG into that netherworld that's mostly action game.

I'll never, ever understand how that happened. Origins came out and was praised for being some kind of modern spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate and then 2 was just felt vastly different. Why didn't they capitalise on the goodwill the first game brought them? It's like they weren't happy it was successful.

The difficulty setting was a particular annoyance to me. They just made all enemies, including mages, incredibly tanky. The repeating waves of enemies meant you never knew when it was safe to use cool downs. Bloodmages could spam their abilities and were able to take out your party on their own in moments. They all had unlimited potions.

Trying to stop them using potions was a depressing task. I remember using stonefist to knock enemies to the ground when the potion hadn't even gotten close to their lips and they'd just fall to floor and lay there for a couple of seconds, while their health bar refilled anyway. You want them to have spammable health potions? Go on then, but at least let me counter act it. I'd have to simply guess when they'd use them, say at around 35% health then hope I could kill them before they got up and invinci-drink one.

DAI was better in some ways but the combat was still bad imho and the 'top down' view was poorly implemented. Sometimes it felt like a single player OnlineRPG with all the gathering.

Yeah, this isn't on my radar and given the colossal praise DAI got, I'm not sure I'd trust reviews that said it was great. I'd have to wait for word of mouth and Twitch footage.
 
Well I wasn't talking about time commitment "in general".

I too have spent 500+ hours in Skyrim and hundreds of hours with games like Company of Heroes, the Total War series, and so on...even ended up with something like 150 hours in DAO.

The difference between the time commitment in DAI versus those games I've referenced is that it took 100+ hours to play through DAI ONE TIME.

My 500+ hours with Skyrim was divided up between 4 or 5 different characters using different races, classes, playstyles, and choosing different larger questlines dependent on the character (example: an assassin character doing the Dark Brotherhood, a Nord doing the Nord side of the civil war, etc). The time with DAO I had was comparable to DAI but again - that was split between 2 or 3 DIFFERENT characters, choices, etc.

Maybe it's because I'm older and don't have the luxury of sitting around all day playing games, maybe it's because I like to play all kinds of genres and so new, interesting games I want to play are coming out once or twice a month, but I just don't have the time or the attention span to put 100+ hours into A SINGLE playthrough of a game.

Overall, my point is that a game like DAI begs you to experience it more than once so you can see it from multiple angles with different classes, races, choices, world-states, and so on. Yet, the idea of committing 100+ hours EACH TIME to do so is just not appealing to me.
I think that the two of us are illustrating a bit of the challenge developers face in making RPGs that reach superstar status, like the Witcher 3. I completely agree with you that it's nice to be able to have the ability to play through the main campaign / story in a game, with something less than an epic number of hours. It does make a huge difference for the ability to experience the game from a number of different perspectives. On the other hand, I also love having the opportunity to engage in dozens or even hundreds of hours of side content, to immerse myself in the character's world if I want to (like Skyrim).

The Witcher 3 was one of the few games that managed to accomplish both of these, so I know that CDPR has the skills to pull it off. We'll see what they come up with.
 
I'll never, ever understand how that happened.
It's pretty simple.
Action games sell more copies.

If your #1 goal is the most money for the least effort DA2 makes perfect sense.
I think they only reason they backtracked a bit (not enough) on Inquisition was the backlash from 2. And even they they added TONS of filler content (collect this, that, the other thing) and kept the combat far more "action" then "RPG".

I keep saying, a story-line and a few dialog choices don't make a game an RPG but various companies keep putting out games with little more then that then can't figure out why the RPG crowd doesn't but them.
 
Last edited:
DAO was the best game i ever played ( before TW3 ) i don`t hate DA2 or DAI as much as others seem too. DA2 had the worst companions ever , i mean Varric and Aveline are some of my all time favs but i hated the rest with a passion . Don`t get me started on how stupid Merrill and Fennris are . I am sure i will buy DA4 when it comes out.
 
Anthem will flop and Bioware will downsize and eventually go belly up and rightfully so. after the doctors left its been one shitshow after another.

Inquisition had the worst korean MMO type combat i have ever seen, and all the girls looked ugly. no thanks not interested in DA4.

I was in the Closed alpha of Anthem. If they fix the flying issues and the latency issues that game is not going to flop and it's going to make them tons of money.

[No politics, please.]
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I was in the Closed alpha of Anthem. If they fix the flying issues and the latency issues that game is not going to flop and it's going to make them tons of money.

[No politics, please.]

is it actually good? cause all i saw was a tropical level and cgi cutscenes masked as an RPG
 
is it actually good? cause all i saw was a tropical level and cgi cutscenes masked as an RPG


well the combat was fantastic. They managed to make it way more RPG ish than shooter, however that being said the closed alpha was seriously limited so i could be wrong.

From what I played the story was very intriguing and the javelin i got to play didn't feel like you'd have thought. It feels like you're controlling a person not an iron man suit.

Flight mechanics were pretty bad for mouse and keyboard and hundreds of posts were made about it on the closed alpha forums.

all in all it's a solid game from what I can tell. I souldn't suggest pre ordering it though like I did. We should punish EA for delivering bad games for the past few years.
 
I was in the Closed alpha of Anthem. If they fix the flying issues and the latency issues that game is not going to flop and it's going to make them tons of money.

[No politics, please.]
I'm skeptical on numerous dimensions, but I hope that you're right. With the screw-ups that Bethesda has been making lately, we really need somebody to step up and help CDPR carry the torch for these types of major RPG-ish game releases. That used to be Bioware. Maybe it can be again.
 
Yeah I have no interest in this or anything EA/Bioware does at this point. To be honest even Origins (which was the high point of the series) wasn't that great in retrospect and mostly succeeded due to a lack of competition in the RPG field at the time, the Dragon Age series and Bioware just went downhill from there.

As much as I liked the earlier Bioware I think their time has passed, the Bioware of today is not the Bioware of years past, I think the Bioware name is well past it's expiry date, it is time to let the studio die and let the few talented members who still remain find work in better studios while those who dragged the Bioware name through the mud get left in the cold.
 
I'm skeptical on numerous dimensions, but I hope that you're right. With the screw-ups that Bethesda has been making lately, we really need somebody to step up and help CDPR carry the torch for these types of major RPG-ish game releases. That used to be Bioware. Maybe it can be again.
I'm pretty psyched to get my hands on Anthem but I don't think it's going to sate typical SP-RPGers appetite as it's a MP COOP looter shooter with an RPG-light story being played out in a personal hub. While combat in the openworld can be soloed it is designed around group play, so it's hard to say how much fun it will be for the lone wolf player.
 
Top Bottom