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How'd they figure this out the first time?
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Mar 7, 2015 03:57
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Pick posted:How'd they figure this out the first time? All of that? They don't know it, per se. It's their best guess. If anyone in Thedas actually knows what the hell is going on with darkspawn and the Old Gods, it's Solas and friends. The Grey Wardens only know they found a way to seemingly kill archdemons and end blights. Everything beyond that is conjecture on their part.
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Mar 7, 2015 04:07
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Can anyone elaborate on why killing the Old Gods might be bad? I'm not sure I saw Solas explain, even cryptically. I know Morrigan commented that the world is becoming more "mundane" as old magics get snuffed out, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if you're an average resident of Thedas.
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Mar 7, 2015 06:06
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Reveilled posted:Can anyone elaborate on why killing the Old Gods might be bad? I'm not sure I saw Solas explain, even cryptically. I know Morrigan commented that the world is becoming more "mundane" as old magics get snuffed out, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if you're an average resident of Thedas. Imagine a blight without a convenient "kill this one darkspawn" weakpoint.
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Mar 7, 2015 06:14
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That's one thing that I've been wondering for a while, if the Darkspawn run out of Old Gods, what do they do then? Do they just meander about underground or what?
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Mar 7, 2015 07:24
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Geostomp posted:There were seven Old Gods. Including Origins, there have been five Blights, each ending with an Old-God-turned-Archdemon killed by Grey Wardens. Not counting Kieran, that leaves two dragon deities buried underground in stasis for the darkspawn to find and corrupt. One of which is apparently in the Western Approach, at the bottom of that collapsed mine near the dragon territory.
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Mar 7, 2015 07:28
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TARDISman posted:That's one thing that I've been wondering for a while, if the Darkspawn run out of Old Gods, what do they do then? Do they just meander about underground or what? It's noted in the series that this is one of those questions that senior Grey Wardens either lose a lot of sleep worrying about or try very hard not to think about. Sorry to be a broken record, but it's a recurring thing that no one actually knows anything substantive about the darkspawn. Those who might - Solas, Flemeth, and their peers - aren't talking.
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Mar 7, 2015 07:44
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Pick posted:How'd they figure this out the first time? The original blight happened for a really long time. If you go to the dragon age wiki there's loads of info on what they did, how they experimented, what they found, etc. If we visit the anderfels in the next game (rather than Tevinter) I'd love to go to a sleeping old god. That'd bring what the series is missing to me, I think, a bit of melodrama. It'd be like visiting the dead god in Mask of the Betrayer.
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Mar 7, 2015 12:19
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Yeah the First Blight lasted a long, long time and by the end people were getting desperate, trying ANYTHING they could and experimenting on all kinds of weird poo poo to try and find a way to defeat the Darkspawn. Eventually, somebody had the mad idea of "what if we drank this Darkspawn blood and see what happens" and the rest is history.
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Mar 7, 2015 12:36
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I will have to point out that Solas is ancient elven Satan, and Flemeth is an abomination, so if they were to say Hey don't kill the Old Gods, a bunch of people will just do the opposite.quote:"Long ago, a clan lived on the Silent Plains. It was a terrible, lonely place where the sun was forbidden to shine. Their Keeper had a coursing hound. They had run down deer and hares and wolves together when they were young. But they had grown old together, Keeper and hound, and now only dozed before the campfire, dreaming of hunts." The Dalish are dicks. Fangz fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Mar 7, 2015 |
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Mar 7, 2015 12:45
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Cythereal posted:Imagine a blight without a convenient "kill this one darkspawn" weakpoint. That doesn't really sound like a reason why killing the Old Gods is necessarily a bad idea, though, since there's not particular reason to believe that would be the consequence of them all being dead (as opposed to the darkspawn remaining aimless underground forever). So far as the people of Thedas are aware, there's no other way to end a blight, and also so far as they are aware, blights just don't happen without a wakened archdemon at the helm. The only apparent alternative to killing them we've seen is slotting their souls into unborn children, but honestly given who the people who think that's a swell idea are (Morrigan, Flemeth, Solas), I'm not in the least bit convinced that's a good idea for anyone who is not an immortal quasi-divine Mage/God mashup. Side note, it's not entirely clear what technological progress on Thedas is like, but it's seems roughly on schedule with Earth, in the high Middle Ages about two millennia after the founding of Rome/Tevinter. If the blights continue to happen every 200-400 years, they'll be fighting the Seventh blight with Maxim guns and line infantry or air strikes and rocket launchers. Of course they might just plateau at this point as most fantasy settings do, but if not there comes a certain point where clearing the deep roads and exterminating the Darkspawn altogether becomes a thing that can be done instead of a mad dream. Just to make sure I'm understanding the lore right, but my interpretation of what Solas said is the Dread Wolf sealed away the gods by tricking them into bugging out of Thedas and then locking the door behind them. So I would interpret that as that the Old Gods got sealed underground while the Elven Gods got sealed up in the Fade, by the Dread Wolf creating the Veil. Solas now wants to undo that for some reason, so he plans to tear down the veil. The reasoning for that is clear as mud, I feel like it can't be "the darkspawn ruined things" because he gives the orb to Corypheus, noted weird-rear end darkspawn badperson, so beyond that I'm left with "gently caress humans" which seems less likely to be a primary motivator for Solas, or "magic is dying on Thedas" which is plausible given that this is a comment Morrigan makes. Two things that stand out to me though: First, there's a conversation you can have with Solas about what the world would be like with no Veil, and from his description it sounds like a world in which willpower can shape the world, where beings, mages, and spirits have incredible powers to control reality. Which sounds great if you are an ancient Elven Wizard-God like Solas or Flemeth, not so much if you're most other people though. Second, we know that in the past Solas locked the Gods away, and he surely must have had a reason to do that, which really gives me the vibe that he's got some massively rose-tinted glasses on about how awesome it was back before he locked all the supermages/gods away and sealed up the source of their power. Which somewhat leads me to the position that the reason Solas (and Morrigan and Flemeth) think killing the Old Gods is a bad idea mostly boils down to "what happened to you Thedas, you used to be cool". In which case, 420 kill old gods everyday.
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Mar 7, 2015 14:00
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Quick question that has probably been asked loads of times, sorry. I loved DA:O to bits, and never played DA:2. Have finally built a new PC and DA:I is on my wishlist. I keep reading that the story's weak and it's like an offline MMO with collector quests etc. How far is that true? Is it just one of those criticisms that the gaming community has decided is the case but isn't really or is totally avoidable? Essentially I don't want to drop cash on a big ol' timesink.
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Mar 7, 2015 14:05
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The story is pretty short but it's quite dense. Whether it's good or not depends entirely on how attached you are to the setting. As for the rest of it - yeah, there's no lie there. The vast bulk of the game is large, relatively empty areas full of Kill 10 Bear Asses type stuff which has zero bearing on the main plot.
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Mar 7, 2015 14:14
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Anae posted:Quick question that has probably been asked loads of times, sorry. This was basically my situation before getting this game. DA:O was one of my favourite RPGs (I probably spent over 500 hours on it, total), I didn't touch DA2 and got DAI with no small degree of trepidation a few weeks ago. I liked it! I think the "MMO questing" complaint is a bit overdone, frankly. Very few of the quests are actually "kill 10 x" in the MMO style of "there's loads of these but you only have to kill a few". To give an example, you get a quest at one point to kill some bad templars. When you get the quest, it pops up in your quest log with "templar lieutenants killed 0/6" which certainly looks like a standard MMO kill quest, but the key difference, I'd say, is that there are only six of them and you have to kill all six to clear the area out, at which point they don't come back. I think that's qualitatively diffrerent from a "kill 10 x" quest in an MMO, it's just an MMO-style way of representing a type of quest that is common in almost every RPG, which is "kill [bosses] in [dungeon/area]". The actual collection quests come in two forms, there's the ones which are actually MMO-style repeatable gathering quests in the vein of "collect 10 iron from the hills in this area" where there are multiple nodes and you activate the nodes for mats, which you then turn in back at camp. Those are a tiny part of the game and are absolutely, entirely 100% skippable with absolutely no reason at all to do them (they reward power but you'll have that in spades from other quests). The other type are open world collectathon quests, which have much more in common with collecting hidden items in games like GTA, Saints Row, or Assassins Creed. There's bits and bobs "hidden" around the maps, and you can pick them up as you travel around, and go hunting for ones you are missing. Again qualitatively different from MMO collection quests, but not everyone's cup of tea. These too are entirely skippable, though you get actual benefits in the form of loot (much of which is actually very useful if you choose not to craft) for completeing some, and two companions give quests which require you to find things for them. Speaking of crafting, that too is different from most MMOs in that the gear you can craft is actually useful, if you are careful to collect mats. Crafted gear will outperform drops from monsters, so it's rewarding if you enjoy it, but definitely not needed at standard difficulty. And as to the story, well, the way I see it DA2 is basically a giant bloated prologue to this game. There's so much of this game's story that basically depends on you having played DA2 or at least knowing the plot and characters of that game pretty well to get anything more than a barebones overview of the major plot points. The game's setup, major friendly NPCs, major villain and one half of his minion force (and their leader) stem directly from the events of DA2. There's also a bunch of other people who show up who are from various books in the setting. I found this a bit grating, they shoved pretty much every single person from previous Dragon Age works into this game, and didn't make much effort to make you care about them, seemingly assuming that you'd be invested in them because you'd probably already know who they were. If you're not going to play DA2, read the dragon age wiki on its plot, as well as the Legacy DLC. For all its flaws, I still enjoyed the game, albeit much, much less than Dragon Age Origins.
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Mar 7, 2015 15:15
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The game is only remotely close to an MMO if you're a completionist sperg. For example, most characters in your party have a collect ten bear asses quest. It's to up their approval - ie something you'd want to do concretely tied to a goal of theirs that would let you know you like them, so you can get them to open up after you've been mean to them. If you're friendly with them and/or support their politics, there's no reason to do them at all. There's a dude who gives you a number of "kill ten bear" style quests in the first area - he's in charge of a group of refugees and they're all concrete things that those guys need done and if you do them he can join team inquisition. There's a bunch of pointless shards and other things littering the map but really this game has about.... 80% more content than it needs? I skip whole areas on replays. Some of the random side-quests are weak (although always motivated) but hey - if you're bored, DON'T DO THEM. You really don't have to. So if you are capable of playing a game in a way you choose to play it, you'll enjoy DAI. If you're a slave to getting 100% and those cheevos, well you might not enjoy DAI but to be honest I'm not sure what games you would enjoy. either way it's a gently caress of a lot better than ubisoft.
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Mar 7, 2015 17:18
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Reveilled posted:Which somewhat leads me to the position that the reason Solas (and Morrigan and Flemeth) think killing the Old Gods is a bad idea mostly boils down to "what happened to you Thedas, you used to be cool". Basically this is how I saw it. He created the veil and locked the gods away and all that and then took a nice long nap and when he woke up things weren't how he intended, so now he's like "Welp, that didn't work. Let's throw everything away and start over." Anae posted:Quick question that has probably been asked loads of times, sorry. There is a rather high ratio of side quests to main story content, but you can skip most of them with no impact on the story.
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Mar 7, 2015 17:38
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Thanks all for the really in-depth replies, that's exactly what I wanted to know. I'll give it a bash. Edit: just found you can get it for $24 through the Mexico Origin store at the moment instead of the £50 I would have paid otherwise so am definitely checking it out for that price. Thanks for the info again everyone. Anae fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Mar 7, 2015 |
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Mar 7, 2015 17:45
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Solas's opposition to killing the Old Gods comes from side banter stuff where he questions Blackwall's assumption that killing all the Archdemons will end the blight. It's way too low key to be just a lie to serve some ulterior motive. It seems to me more suggestive that Solas has good reason to think it wouldn't work but is resigned to not be believed.
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Mar 7, 2015 18:25
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Fangz posted:Solas's opposition to killing the Old Gods comes from side banter stuff where he questions Blackwall's assumption that killing all the Archdemons will end the blight. Solas, in general, hates it when people try to do things without considering the potential consequences.
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Mar 7, 2015 18:28
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What would be cool is if you could wake up an Old God and recruit it to your side. Have a hosed up dragon to pimp around Thedas on. and that dragon was Hawke, finally fulfilling his dream I just want to ride on Smaug's wings, essentially.
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Mar 7, 2015 18:31
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Cythereal posted:Solas, in general, hates it when people try to do things without considering the potential consequences.  Be the change you want to see in the world, Solas.
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Mar 7, 2015 19:02
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Solas is kind of a weirdo. I think when he gets in your face after the well, the two best ways to gain approval for him is to either tell him that you're going to change things for the better, and if that doesn't work keep trying... OR tell him that you want to put things back exactly the way they are. I don't think it's just him admiring you sticking to your guns, I think he's just really conflicted. To be honest, I know he has a plan (probably to destroy the veil and reconnect the fade) but I think he's honestly confused if he should go through with it, since his last plan (creating the veil) didn't go so well.
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Mar 7, 2015 20:22
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poptart_fairy posted:As for the rest of it - yeah, there's no lie there. The vast bulk of the game is large, relatively empty areas full of Kill 10 Bear Asses type stuff which has zero bearing on the main plot. I've seen this thrown around a lot and yet... there are only two quests like that. Both in the Hinterlands. The bear claws one and the ram meat one. Unless you're counting Requisitions, but those aren't quests and are infinite and completely ignorable besides.
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Mar 7, 2015 20:27
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Offkorn posted:I've seen this thrown around a lot and yet... there are only two quests like that. Both in the Hinterlands. The bear claws one and the ram meat one. Every quest zone has some generic fetch/kill quest which are also in the requisitions (Spider Anti-Venom on the coast anybody?) There's very few sidequests or plot relevant quests in the game. You can take over forts or do requisitions which have zero effect on the story and minor effect on the zone. Perhaps the best sidequest in the entire game is emptying the dam to destroy the veil which changes the mood of the setting. All the other zones are straight up static set pieces that repopulate with friendlies instead of enemies.
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Mar 7, 2015 20:42
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In Wicked Eyes, how could I have reunited Celene and Briala? I got the locket, showed it to both of them, then when it came down to it took Gaspard down without implicating Briala. The game's acting as though I told Celene what Briala had been up to (had an option to apologise to Solas about it) and I didn't get an option to get them back together. Should I have gone with the three-way-truce? Also why does Solas's formal gear hat clip so horribly through his face?
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Mar 7, 2015 20:58
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Thor-Stryker posted:Every quest zone has some generic fetch/kill quest which are also in the requisitions (Spider Anti-Venom on the coast anybody?) That's a Requisition. Requisitions are not quests. They are a mechanic to allow you to gain Power if you really need it, and since you should never need it there's no reason to ever look at them.
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Mar 7, 2015 21:20
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cams posted:People have tested patch 6, right? Do we know if one-iteming chests still works? Patch 6 beta is really focused testing; like it doesn't have patch 5 content included. It's about key/mouse mapping, auto attack, performance and more tactical mode stuff. I can't say what will or won't end up in release patch 6, since release patch 5 didn't match beta patch 5. Amulets of power exploiting doesn't work anymore post 5 or 6; so far other stuff still has a chance to respawn if you come back to the chest.
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Mar 7, 2015 21:23
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Fangz posted:I will have to point out that Solas is ancient elven Satan, and Flemeth is an abomination, so if they were to say Hey don't kill the Old Gods, a bunch of people will just do the opposite. For some reason, this popped into my head.  funakupo posted:Patch 6 beta is really focused testing; like it doesn't have patch 5 content included. It's about key/mouse mapping, auto attack, performance and more tactical mode stuff. Does this mean that we will actually be able to map all of our active abilities to the radial menu? Bored fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Mar 7, 2015 |
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Mar 7, 2015 22:12
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The Inquisition section of the Keep seems to be slowly updating with new options, but continues to be incredibly buggy and inconsistent about what it does and does not list as options. Hopefully that will clear up by the time the next game/expansion is announced.
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Mar 7, 2015 22:20
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I found by making sure I was loading end game states in-game, saving them again, then going to the Keep and copying the Playthrough state to Editable ones then loading that version in the Tapestry, pretty much all of my options showed up for all playthroughs. Basically following this: http://forum.bioware.com/topic/542720-tutorial-dragon-age-inquisition-tapestry/ Still a little buggy, but much less.
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Mar 7, 2015 22:28
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Just got through the Fade on my second playthrough, this time with Warden Alistair instead of Frenchie Whatshisname. It was quite a bit better this time around, I had Sera, Dorian, and Bull along with me, which is apparently team sensible when it comes to whether keeping the people who stop blights around is a good thing, and all of their reactions to the events were much more enjoyable than my last time through with Cassandra, Vivienne and Solas. Also, Alistair was funny and personable, as usual, though it felt like they missed an opportunity for [Sarcastic] Hawke and Alistair to play off one another a bit more given their similar senses of humor. His comment about Morrigan at the end gave me the same nostalgic smile he had. It's a shame the events of both Origins and Inquisition, with how diverse the potential outcomes now are, mean he'll probably never show up again.
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Mar 8, 2015 00:56
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Reveilled posted:It's a shame the events of both Origins and Inquisition, with how diverse the potential outcomes now are, mean he'll probably never show up again. They put the effort in for this game and it won't be much different for the next. Alistair/Loghain/Anora as ruler, right? And mostly if Alistair's a Warden then Loghain's king. If Alistair's king then Loghain's the warden or Stroud is bland placeholder. I wouldn't be surprised if they kept on pulling out that bunch in varying combinations for a while (plus Hawke, who isn't going away any time soon unless you killed her off). Apart from that it's godbaby/no godbaby and they pretty much wrote that whole deal out. Loghain even being available continues to be a delightful surprise to me. Alistair being king really does neuter the Fade choice in Inquisition. Player character from last game (lovingly recreated in the new character creator, if you're anything like me) or, um, moustachey guy from the last game? Gee I dunno
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Mar 8, 2015 01:10
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eating only apples posted:They put the effort in for this game and it won't be much different for the next. Alistair/Loghain/Anora as ruler, right? And mostly if Alistair's a Warden then Loghain's king. If Alistair's king then Loghain's the warden or Stroud is bland placeholder. I wouldn't be surprised if they kept on pulling out that bunch in varying combinations for a while (plus Hawke, who isn't going away any time soon unless you killed her off). Apart from that it's godbaby/no godbaby and they pretty much wrote that whole deal out. Well, at this point Alistair is either: A: King of Ferelden B: A washed-up drunk C.i: Dead at the hands of a Fade Demon C.ii: Dead* at the hands of a Fade Demon (*no body found) C.iii: Dead* at the hands of a Fade Demon (*actually dead but still alive for bullshit reasons, Leiliana-style) D.i: Leading the Wardens of Orlais back to Weishaupt for a big barney over control of the order D.ii: Returning alone to Weishaupt for a big barney over control of the order Which is obviously not an insurmountable challenge to overcome and put him back in, but when you flip it around and imagine that if you had a part for Hawke's-Warden-Friend-from-Inquisition, you have to write and voice four characters, Stroud, Alistair, Loghain and some other random if they're all dead or otherwise indisposed, I start to think they're likely to draw a line under Grey Warden Alistair and only have him show up if he's the monarch of Ferelden, if even then. The battle within Weisshaupt sounds like a set up for a piece of media outside of the games, in which case it'll follow Bioware's canon and Alistair is king in that one. But I can't say I'd be anything but thrilled if the next Dragon Age revisited the wardens, covering those events with either Hawke, Stroud, Loghain or Alistair as your primary NPC sidekick. EDIT: Also, with the Hero of Ferelden investigating the effects of the Calling herself and how to stop it, I can't help but wonder if part of the original plan there was for the Origins PC to be Hawke's friend, provided they were not dead. Maybe they thought having you design two NPCs' faces was too much, or they couldn't work out how to voice a voiceless character, but the connection between the quest and the Hero's own investigation seems telling, and the idea of your characters from the previous games teaming up seems a little too wonderful to imagine it didn't cross their mind, plus the idea of having to choose between Hawke or your PC from Origins to die. Though, that'd be Hawke every time. I can't shake the idea of a Lucasarts-style meta joke where the Hero communicates with you either by writing responses on paper implausibly quickly, or by an actual Origins dialogue tree popping up and you have the entire conversation with yourself. Inquisition's too serious for that of course. Reveilled fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Mar 8, 2015 |
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Mar 8, 2015 01:33
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The only way Hawke having anything to do with the wardens makes sense is if his or her sibling gets conscripted (can that only happen to Bethany? I forgot.) Otherwise, Hawke running out to challenge the Warden leadership makes no sense. His/Her motivation seems to be "They used Blood Magic once! I hate Blood Mages! Well, time to travel across an entire content and lead a war on an organization I know next to nothing about because they used BLOOD MAGIC!!" basically what I'm saying is that Hawke died in the fade Digital Osmosis fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Mar 8, 2015 |
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Mar 8, 2015 01:48
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Digital Osmosis posted:The only way Hawke having anything to do with the wardens makes sense is if his or her sibling gets conscripted (can that only happen to Bethany? I forgot.) Otherwise, Hawke running out to challenge the Warden leadership makes no sense. His/Her motivation seems to be "They used Blood Magic once! I hate Blood Mages! Well, time to travel across an entire content and lead a war on an organization I know next to nothing about because they used BLOOD MAGIC!!" I figured Hawke goes to the Anderfels to tell the Wardens there what happened in Orlais and gets caught up in whatever's going on there, not start a one-man war on the Order.
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Mar 8, 2015 02:10
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I envision a scenario where whoever died as a physical body in the fade was immediately possessed by a thing given them the easy option of same voice no matter the face. Whoever went to Anderfels gets gunned down in the opening credits of whatever game or expansion gets set up there. Both then end up definitively gone at the end of the game, or in a role where they don't pop up beyond a single line of dialogue about them.
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Mar 8, 2015 02:26
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This game they also introduced a mechanic where people can generate Spirit replicas of themselves (see Cole, and Justinia), so they can potentially use that to resurrect characters from the dead if they need to in a future game.
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Mar 8, 2015 02:48
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SgtSteel91 posted:I figured Hawke goes to the Anderfels to tell the Wardens there what happened in Orlais and gets caught up in whatever's going on there, not start a one-man war on the Order. Getting caught up in conflicts bigger than him/herself by being at the wrong place at the wrong time is the Hawke life experience.
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Mar 8, 2015 03:00
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Geostomp posted:Getting caught up in conflicts bigger than him/herself by being at the wrong place at the wrong time is the Hawke life experience. Basically this. There should be a mod that replaces the DA2 soundtrack with the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme on a loop.
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Mar 8, 2015 03:43
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 Awkward Zombie started playing DA:I and is doing that thing that all of us who played the first games did.
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Mar 8, 2015 06:06
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