|
Oh, you look new. I am, thanks. So, Dragon Age: Origins, huh? You know there’s another screenshot lp of this being done right now. With a female, rogue, archer, noble dwarf. I know. The last bit was a fluke, I swear. It just happened somehow. I found that after I’d made two chapters of this, and why ruin a good thing? A likely story. You’ve never done this before have you? Maaaaybe? … No. Shut up, other me. Anyways, this is another Dragon Age: Origins screenshot lp, because why not? You should actually check out the other one, though. It’s really funny and pretty different from this one. Not that this one isn’t also funny. Just a different funny. You’re babbling. Well, get used to that, other me! Strap in for terrible jokes and some analysis of characters and plot because I can’t seem to help myself. Whatever. Tell us about this game thing of yours. Bioware did it right? Aren’t they the kings of rpg’s or something? Absolutely. They also did the Mass Effect trilogy. That’s not necessarily a good thing…. That’s a matter of personal opinion. That was their sci-fi epic and this is their fantasy one. They’re pretty different, and I don’t just mean the genre! The themes are completely- Yawn. Bored now. Alright, we’ll just do a quick catchup on important factions before we start. You realize this game came out a billion years ago, right? We already know this stuff. Not everyone is as smart as you, okay? Jeez. So we have the holy trinity of fantasy races. Humans, elves and dwarves. Also we have the qunari and the darkspawn. That’s five. Congrats on counting. The humans are more or less your typical fantasy humans. Except they have weird titles like arl and bann instead of, I don’t know, duke and lord. They still have kings though. That’s stupid. They also have magic dogs called mabari. They’re pretty central to Fereldan culture. Not helping. *ahem* The dwarves, once again, are typical but with an added twist. They have a rigid caste system and some crazy dangerous politics going on. I hope you like politics. Dragon Age sure does. Meh. That sounds kind of cool, but I could do without politic whatevers. Everyone says that at first. The elves, in true LOTR fashion, used to be the uber race. Then they weren’t for some reason. (We’ll get to that in another game) By now they’ve been ground beneath humanity’s heel and are forced to live in alienage’s where they have no rights at all and can expect regular bullying from everyone around them. Jesus…. That’s dark. Oh, don’t worry! The Dalish are a group of elves that have heroically risen above all that. They live in forests and are working on reclaiming their lost culture. Aren’t most of them really angsty bandits? Um…. Maybe? That still sounds pretty dark…. Let’s uhh, move on to the qunari. Oh, like the cookie guy. *sigh* Yes. Like him. They live across the sea and have a really crazy caste system/matriarchal/triarchy thing going on. It’s pretty cool, though. They live in really rigid caste roles. It works okay for them (sort of?) but the problem is they want everyone to live this way. Which leads to issues. Isn’t that why Orlais, or Tevinter or whatever, was at war with them? Yeah, but Orlais isn’t important in this game. We’re only going to be in Ferelden for now. You’re talking about three different countries. Meh. What about these darkspawn. Is that really their name? Yes. Dumb. … Okay, yeah. But they’re really cool. They have this blight thing inside them that poisons everything around them and they have these giant dragons called archdemons that lead them. They spend their whole time bugging the dwarves underground and looking for an archdemon. When they find one, they all go to the surface and start a blight. Basically, they kill everything. Cheery. So they’re radioactive orcs? No…. But also yes. Also the blight is like a magical poison. I didn’t even ask about the blight. Ugh. Are we done yet? No. You haven’t even heard about the gray wardens! Or the mages! Or the templars! Okay fine, chatter away about your stupid wardens, but we’ve both read a lot of fantasy and I think we both know something about mages and magic knights. So maybe skip that, mmkay? No, no, these mages and templars are different from what you’re used to. Mages are locked away in towers as soon as their powers manifest. The templars act as their jailors, since they can nullify magic. They also try to make sure that mages don’t get possessed by demons. Okay, that’s a neat way to alter the ‘mage locked in a tower’ trope. Wait, they have demons too? Don’t we already have darkspawn? Two different things. Darkspawn are just blighted people/creatures. Demons are spirits that represent the negative parts of humanity (or reality sometimes). Demons are spirits of sloth, rage, etc while spirits represent things like love and kindness. They all live in the fade, which is a special magic dream-realm. Everyone except dwarves and tranquil goes there when they sleep. For some reason, dwarves are magic-proof (which is why they can mine lyrium) and tranquil are mages who’ve had their emotions all ripped out so they can’t use magic and enter the fade anymore (which is why they can enchant items). You’re making GBS threads me. Nope. All true. This is really complicated…. We’ll recap as we go through it all. You’re not asking about the lyrium. My head is already swimming, thanks. Also, you’re enjoying this way too much. Sadist. You’re not making this easy. Besides, lyrium is simple. It’s just magic rocks. It’s not the blood of a dead god or the planet’s consciousness made manifest or some other bullshit like that? Nope. Just magic rocks. Well, at least something can be simple. *snicker* … Shut up. And no spoilers in the thread, please. Chapter One: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3825547&pagenumber=1&perpage=40#post473952466 Rhymefire fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Jul 1, 2017 |
#
?
Jul 1, 2017 20:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 16:58 |
|
|
For I don’t know what reason, Steam isn’t co-operating with some of my screenshots, so I’ll just recap the 15 pictures we skipped. We’re an adorable, badass dwarven princess. We’ve just been named commander and there’s a proving (more on that later) being held in our honour. Also we got promoted just in time to lead an expedition into the deep roads for … I actually don’t know. We’ll find out later, though. Not this update later, later later. It’s like our birthday, but better. Tagging along will be our best friend/bodyguard Gorim. He can also be your lover if you play a girl, but we’re not doing that. We just walked into our brother Bhelen’s room and look what we found!   What a nice lady. She’s actually the sister of your character if you pick the dwarven commoner origin, but we’re doing a dwarven noble so for now she’s just a lady hanging out in our brother’s bedroom.   Gorim makes a good point here. We could just charge in, but I want to show off Orzammar a little first. PC: You’re right. Let’s go see the proving’s first. Gorim: I can’t wait to see who’s fighting today.   Some noble jerk is harassing a scholar right on our doorstep. Naturally we intervene. We run the nasty nobleman off and sic Gorim on him for good measure. Apparently, he’s an assassin too? The scholar gives us this gem.  Now I feel like a jerk. Thanks.  There are also a bunch of shopkeepers on our way to the provings, but they’re not selling anything useful. Still, they have some fun dialogue.  As you can see, there are some pretty bitchy options.  Yay, we found our brothers! Hi brothers!  Trian: Especially since duty requires that you attend our king father during the feast today. Have you so little respect for him to disregard his wishes on a day set aside for you? Gorim: Lord Harrowmont told me we wouldn’t be needed for hours at least-   Bhelen: You’re on your own. I’ve been dealing with him all afternoon. Trian: What exactly is that supposed to mean?  Trian: As heir to the throne, it is my duty to impart wisdom and judgment to those who need it.  Trian: Stubborn, aren’t you? When I’m king, I’ll help you get over that. Come, Bhelen. Way to be vaguely threatening. As you can see, Trian’s a whole bunch of fun.  Bhelen: We can only hope. Perhaps we should get going? There are two ladies standing around checking out Gorim. Maybe we can get our buddy laid!  Gorim: I’m flattered, ladies, but I’m not a noble. I’m a knight of the warrior caste. Care to share with the rest of us? Teli: Warrior caste isn’t bad…   Mardy: Not exactly, my lady. Gorim: They’re noble-hunters, my lady. Because a man takes his caste from his father, they hope to bear a noble lord’s son. If a noble-hunter succeeds, she is raised up to join the house as a concubine to care for her son. It bring new swords to a house, so many nobles look favorably on such women… I have to admit, this is a really nice way of giving us a crash course in dwarven castes and politics. We could just read the codex entries, but this is more fun.  Gorim: Well, men will be men. Even your brother Bhelen has had his dalliances. We know this Gorim. We met her earlier, remember? Teli: Perhaps you could tell him we’re here.  If we were playing a male character, we could have a threesome with those two and have a baby. It’s the little details that make it such a fun game.   Gorim may be a little bit more frustrated than he let on that the fine dwarven ladies slipped through his fingers. Sad, isn’t it? We tried to get our buddy laid and ended up blue balling him and giving our brother a threesome (or possible foursome.) This pattern is one that will be repeated in Dragon Age. Mostly because we suck at being heroes.   Fainting merchant is the best merchant. Hands down. Don’t correct me on this, I will fight you.     The proving we’ve been hearing so much about are a bit bloodier than the name would suggest. It’s basically a kickass gladiator deathmatch. Except not really. They don’t actually have ‘knocked out but not dead’ animations, so it looks like we’re just slaughtering everyone. The giant blood sprays don’t help.  I love how skeptical he looks. Awwwww. Just like our brothers, he’s rocking the beard. That’s the one great thing about dwarves. They can have braids in their beards, but still look manly as poo poo.   Just let me hit people, drat you!  This is also a sneaky combat tutorial. Sort of. They don’t actually give you any instructions or tips, but in any other game it would be.   We’re going to be playing as a rogue archer. Normally we’d want a meat shield, but since this is one-on-one, that’s not so important. As this guy charges us, we resort to the archer’s main tactic: shooting people point blank in the face. We wipe the floor with five or so people and then move along. Time to stop dicking around and meet the nobles.   Here’s Duncan. Hello there, buddy. He’s only here right now because he wants to recruit someone for the grey wardens. He was probably only let in because tomorrow we’re going on an expedition to kill some baddies in the deep roads. Dwarves don’t really like non-dwarves being in their cities.  He comes across as less jerkish in the dwarf noble, elven commoner and mage prologues. There, he saves the day. In every other prologue he just kind of shows up and blackmails you into becoming a grey warden. In the human noble origin, he literally drags you away from your dying parents (refusing to help bring them to safety) and blocks all attempts to contact your brother and tell him that everyone he ever loved (except you) has been murdered.  He doesn’t have much to say. He mostly just chatters about the grey wardens and how awesome they are and how we should totally join. Moving on to our dearest father.     This is the only important piece of dialogue in the whole conversation. It’s really just chatter.  Trian is less pleased about our promotion.  Bhelen: Interesting. I would have been at the feast, but Trian had need of me… Trian: The world does not stop and start with your meager achievements. Not even tonight. Now, do you have some purpose in bothering us? Okay, ouch. Is there a reward for bitchiest dwarf noble or something? PC: Father wants you. Trian: Of course he does. We must discuss strategy before tomorrow’s battle. Bhelen, stay here and stroke the new commander’s conceit if you like, but then get to bed.  Bhelen: Is it also his right to secure power at the expense of everyone around him? PC: You sound serious, Bhelen. Bhelen: Unfortunately, I am. Trian has begun to move against you. I never thought his much-proclaimed honor would allow him to act on his jealousy.  PC: That seems a little far-fetched. Bhelen: I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t overheard him giving orders to his men.    Whatevs. We’re not worried. Such is dwarven life. Bitching and backstabbing.   It’s nice that you can avoid the darkspawn, but what about the rest of us, Duncan?   We’ve got ourselves a quest! Or at least, an objective besides “kill whatever moves.”   It’s worth it to always have a rogue in the party just to get the xp from traps and locked stuff. It’s just little bits here and there, but it adds up.  Our first look at darkspawn. These are the main baddies of the game.  Well, we’ve found the first scout, but where is everyone else?   So, did the scouts set these traps behind them? Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, but moving right along.  Apparently we look less badass than I thought we did.     You too? Really? What about us looks like we’d be good darkspawn snacks? We’re wearing friggin plate armor! We’ve got weapons and everything. Cut dialogue: He’s looking for the shield. We are too. There’s a natural conflict of interest here.   He doesn’t appreciate our sharp wit.  Now where could they have gotten that from?  By dicking around with some ballistas we blow a hole in the wall and open up the path forward. We’ll get back to that, since we still don’t have the shield.   It takes a little puzzle (step on the strange tiles), but the sarcophagus opens in a burst of light. This is one of the rare examples where the fantasy-thing-of-olden-days is weaker than stuff that was made today. It’s nice to see. I’ve always thought it odd when a sword that’s been lying in a tomb for a century or so is better than the knife you made yesterday with the most advanced techniques and materials.  Okay, I was expecting the darkspawn, but the wolf? Not so much. Is it their pet? How did it get down here? We’ll never know.  Don’t tempt fate, Gorim! It’s like you want to be ambushed.  See, now look what you did! Narrative causality made you predict the fact that we’d find our dead brother, Trian! No spoilers, Gorim!    Now isn’t the time for your snark, shorty. Bhelen: Dead by your hand! See? Gorim: My lady is innocent! Harrowmont: Ser Gorim, your loyalty makes you a useless witness. It falls to others to tell the story. You, scout, what happened here? Scout: Trian and his men were here early. It seem they’d done battle with the darkspawn.  That’s the face of a pissed off dwarf. She’s even cracking her knuckles! What you’re not seeing is where she stabs the guy to death with the famed murder knife. I missed it. Sorry! Benot: I think we’ve seen enough.  It's nice to know that our murderous rage issues run in the family. That actually explains quite a lot about dwarven politics. King Endrin Aeducan: I will not drag my daughter back to Orzammar in chains without hearing from Frandlin Ivo. We actually fought against him in the provings. There’s an option to give him the proving’s reward even though you win. We didn’t, but it really doesn’t make a difference. Either way, he does this. Frandlin Ivo: He … He did my lord. It was … terrible. Prince Trian didn’t stand a chance. Afterwards, my lady stripped his signet ring. I missed it, but Bhelen throws him a really threatening look at that first hesitation. Gorim: You treacherous bastard! King Endrin Aeducan: Silence, Gorim.  Maybe we can appeal to his common sense and basic decency!   No reason to not be polite even though we’ve been chucked in jail for no reason.   I’ll say. Bhelen hosed us up real good. Gorim’s being exiled and stripped of his caste. We’re going to be sent off into the deep roads to face death by darkspawn. Bhelen’s a real piece of work, and we’ll be seeing more of him later. For now though, this is goodbye. I wish I could say that this is the most politics we’ll have to deal with in this game, but it’s not. Oh no, this is just a primer for the real stuff. There are more details to Bhelen’s plot, but it’s convoluted and involves an assembly and planting evidence and poo poo. We’ve hit the important points. Truthfully, the details of why this works so freakishly well don’t matter. All we need to know is that it worked.     Ah well, we tried to warn you.  Looking badass even in a tattered dress.   I know, I know, it doesn’t smell so good down here. All the loot we got from earlier is gone. We’ve got nothing except a sword and a shield. And our belt, for some reason. That may be a bug in my game. I’m not sure why the devs would take away everything BUT the belt.  These spiders are friggin HUGE. As tall as we are!  Maybe we could just chill here for a bit? It’s a cool hideout. As you can see, we found a bow and some armor, but we have no shoes. :frown:  This happens whenever you walk through a spiderweb. They’re pretty easy to go around, but it can be really irritating if you get caught in a spiderweb during a fight. Especially because they’re hard to spot until you’re right beside them.  We stumble across an old pal! And his idiot. He’s only in the dwarven kingdom. If he didn’t expect dwarves, frankly I have no idea what he was expecting. Anyways, Duncan is sympathetic to our plight.   It’s adorable how she’s looking up like that.  Poor girl’s going to get a crick in her neck.We join the wardens and are whisked away to their base. Ostagar! We also get to meet the king, since he’s here for some fight thing that’s happening in the morning. A war or something? Who knows.    Awww, he’s just a starry-eyed man-child at heart.    Wait a minute, we still don’t have shoes? Duncan made us walk all this way without shoes. Jerk.  If you’re a human noble, this is where he takes your dog away. He gives it back later though, but still. Ouch.  That’s the end of our prologue. Yay! Cut dialogue (they’ll talk forever if you let them, and these updates are long enough, thanks): There is going to be a massive battle here tomorrow. The darkspawn may have eased up on the dwarves, but that’s only because they want to kill everything on the surface now. Maybe they got tired of bumping their heads on low cave ceilings or something. The battle is why the king is here. Don’t ask me why Duncan was playing with us dwarves when he should have been here helping prepare or something. I have no idea.  Still no shoes. Rhymefire fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Jul 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2017 21:43
|
|
|
Rhymefire posted:Oh, you look new. No kidding. That is an insanely long first update, I don't know who would have the patience to go through the whole thing, but it's not me. You clearly put a lot of midwifecrisis fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Jul 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2017 23:39
|
|
|
Yeah, thing about "I happened to miss 15 screenshots so here is a recap"? Don't do that. If you can't replay a bit of the beginning of the game, you probably don't have what it takes to complete a screenshot LP. Also that OP is horribly unfunny and uninformative at the same time. That had to take some effort. I'd suggest lurking around here a bit, see how LPs are made. And running your next effort through the Sandcastle.
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2017 23:50
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:Yeah, thing about "I happened to miss 15 screenshots so here is a recap"? Don't do that. If you can't replay a bit of the beginning of the game, you probably don't have what it takes to complete a screenshot LP. Yeah, exactly this. Also I can't make heads nor tails of what's going on, and I've played Dragon Age before. It's not enough to just take a bunch of screenshots, write a bit of dialogue and call it a day. You've got to make sure it makes sense without all the moving parts, the sounds and the voices. For example, who is the brother of the main character? What even is the main character's name? How'd you get from the fainting merchant to the other guy, and who is that other guy?
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2017 00:09
|
|
|
Thanks for the critiques, everyone. I'll see if I can fix it up and analyze some of the other lp's properly this time. Would it be bad form to take this thread down while I do that? I don't want to take up any space on the forums if it's just going to site here and confuse people while I learn how to do this properly.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2017 00:16
|
|
|
Rhymefire posted:Thanks for the critiques, everyone. I'll see if I can fix it up and analyze some of the other lp's properly this time.  No, seriously. Just close the thread and let it lie. People will get it and avoid it. Once it's posted there's really no way to delete it short of the mods gassing it, and that's only done in extreme cases. Everyone else has already said everything worth saying; Sandcastle,  , read other peoples' LPs to get a feel for how things should (but not necessarily must, mind you) be done and try again when you feel comfortable. At least you're willing to learn, so that's a start. People tend to come in here fresh, faceplant, and then scared off when the Quality Control goons descend upon them, so don't get discouraged. Dragon Age 1 is one of those games that kind of begs multiple LPs just to explore all the different origin stories and how they affect the game.But honestly, unless you have a drat good reason for it, I'd actually suggest picking a different character origin because Inferior's already planted their flag firmly in Dwarven Female Noble territory so a second LP of that might be belaboring the point. But it's your choice dude.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2017 00:57
|
|
|
nine-gear crow posted:But honestly, unless you have a drat good reason for it, I'd actually suggest picking a different character origin because Inferior's already planted their flag firmly in Dwarven Female Noble territory so a second LP of that might be belaboring the point. But it's your choice dude. To get specific to a DA:O LP, I agree with this 100%. The game has a lot to show off, and doing the same thing as what's currently going on isn't going to do much, especially since an LP like this is going to take years (Inferior's started in March '15, and still has a ways to go).
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2017 01:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 16:58 |
|
|
No, I'm one of those crazy people that get motivated when they're given feedback. If I'm going to do this, I'd like to do it right. I'm going to take your advice and do the lurking/sandcastle/reading that I really should have in the first place. I may have gotten a bit too excited, but at least this is good experience for me!  And honestly, I'd be worried if there weren't any Quality Control goons, so all's good.I'm definitely going to do a different origin, too. Thanks for everything.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2017 01:46
|
|