|
Corypheus does mess up the entire world in a really big way, it's just that the worst of it is at the end of Act One and most of the game is a process of you fixing the damage. But like, even though the final boss fight sucks, I think he's pretty formidable. He infiltrated Tevinter politics and formed a cult that brought the country to the brink of war against Ferelden, ruined the Templar Order, completely enslaved the ancient order of Grey Wardens to demon worship bar one or two who escaped...these are big deals in the setting, especially since the Wardens are basically the Hero Protagonists from the first game.
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 13:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 00:02 |
|
|
Well, Corypheus' introduction sequence is also the precise point the main plot loses all direction and urgency. Also he looks bad, like a cheap action figure. Harbinger, TIM, Shadow Broker all have pretty strong concepts behind them which they fully commit to even with limited screen time. Corypheus is a literal amalgam of Dragon Age's Bad Things - a zombie, a wizard, a satanist, a golem - all thrown together, and he just kinda wanders about Thedas being a dick until the PC finally gets around to euthanising him.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 13:32
|
|
|
I thought the Architect was the best DA villain in the Origins DLC because the nature of his villainy was ambiguous and you could choose to work with him even over the objections of your token dwarf. Plus creepy, articulate, interesting etc.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 13:34
|
|
|
The best Dragon Age villain is the unnamed stone elemental thingie at the end of Dragon Age 2's first act where you have to hide behind pillars to dodge its laser blast.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 13:51
|
|
|
As far as Bioware villains go it's pretty hard to beat Martin Sheen. That's an unfair advantage.Android Blues posted:The best Dragon Age villain is the unnamed stone elemental thingie at the end of Dragon Age 2's first act where you have to hide behind pillars to dodge its laser blast. I finally realized midway through the fight that I could hide (line of sight and/or cover physics aren't guaranteed in a videogame in my defence) but I was already pretty decimated as a party. Probably could have cued up Benny Hill music for the rest of the fight for how much I was running around trying to avoid him. For all the crap that DA2 gets I found there were way more interesting and tougher battles than DAI. Never played Origins.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 14:58
|
|
|
Lt. Danger posted:Well, Corypheus' introduction sequence is also the precise point the main plot loses all direction and urgency. Also he looks bad, like a cheap action figure. I am almost certain that Corypheus was hit with Bioware Overcorrection Syndrome where players complained about how Kai Leng consistently thwarted Shepard in an undeserved way in ME3, so their solution was to have him pose no threat or sense of urgency for the Inquisitor whatsoever. It feels like he was totally cut out from a story beat altogether.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 15:09
|
|
|
Both Mass Effect and Dragon Age had cool and interesting that they chose to ignore. Dragon Age takes place in a newly liberated country with its former colonial master still next door and powerful. The government is still trying to establish legitimacy. Mass Effect has a delicate balance of power disrupted by the arrival of a new upstart power. Darkspawn and Reapers are both boring and silly. This is my biggest fear for Andromeda: a set up based around exploration and discovery being scuttled in favor of epic battles against scary looking monsters.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 15:16
|
|
|
I actually like the direction that Dragon Age is taking. After Origins I thought they would keep tortuously returning to the Grey Wardens + darkspawn + oh no they're building A SECOND Archdemon! trope, but they've taken a totally different route through Inquisition and expanded on the setting in an interesting way that doesn't feel too unnatural. It's the antithesis of everything we've heard about Andromeda, where it seems like they're just relabeling everything from Mass Effect in a new galaxy and failing to say anything new or interesting about it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 15:25
|
|
|
Corypheus was a cool as gently caress villain whom Inquistion squandered. Like, he's this guy who thought he'd go visit Heaven and then found out that God didn't exist and, hey, Heaven is a hosed up place filled with monsters - so he set out to become God himself and correct what he saw as a universal error. edit: Then he flails around for a bit, accomplishes nothing beyond getting himself vaporised at least once, and then gets himself put down in one of the most anticlimactic final fights in history Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Dec 21, 2016 |
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 15:44
|
|
|
People talk about DA in the ME thread, and ME in the DA thread. Is there an in-joke I'm missing here.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 15:46
|
|
|
prometheusbound2 posted:Darkspawn and Reapers are both boring and silly. This is my biggest fear for Andromeda: a set up based around exploration and discovery being scuttled in favor of epic battles against scary looking monsters. How in the world will this not happen.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 15:57
|
|
|
there is a 200% chance MEA will have powerful galaxy ending antagonists
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 15:59
|
|
|
Moola posted:there is a 200% chance MEA will have powerful galaxy ending antagonists gently caress we just got here man can we at least take our coats off before we gotta leave to save the galaxy
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:25
|
|
|
Moola posted:there is a 200% chance MEA will have powerful galaxy ending antagonists I believe they've already said this isn't the case, and it's a more personal story. No big galactic threats, just trying to carve out a place for yoomanity to live and survive.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:26
|
|
|
I'm hoping for an idiocracy plotline where we show up in this galaxy and everyone is retarded and we become defacto rulers
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:28
|
|
|
I hope the big galaxy-ending threat this time is the product "Mass Effect: Andromeda" and no more ME games are made ever again. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:28
|
|
|
Guaranteed if this game is a "personal story" that means they're just gonna widen the arc for the plot and it means that the galaxy ending threat will just show up in the very end of the game to set up the sequels.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:29
|
|
|
"This is our home now, and we must protect this house" -ME:A2 brought to you by Under Armor
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:31
|
|
|
Codependent Poster posted:I believe they've already said this isn't the case, and it's a more personal story. No big galactic threats, just trying to carve out a place for yoomanity to live and survive. lol if you believe them
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:38
|
|
|
YA BOY ETHAN COUCH posted:"This is our home now, and we must protect this house" -ME:A2 brought to you by Under Armor I'd be cool with a "This is my house. I have to defend it" Home Alone story where you and your team have to rig up inventive and perhaps hilarious booby traps across various planets because your team otherwise isn't strong enough to beat the big bad enemies.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:40
|
|
|
YA BOY ETHAN COUCH posted:"This is our home now, and we must protect this house" -ME:A2 brought to you by Under Armor "De Reapers are ze gratest opponen' I ever face in ze octagon." - Under Armor's George St. Pierre.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:42
|
|
|
Moola posted:there is a 200% chance MEA will have powerful galaxy ending antagonists This time it's humanity.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:45
|
|
|
Corypheus is basically what happens when you put into practice "the galaxy doesn't need some huge persistent thread, just let me chill with my space bros" criticisms of ME. Games like these need a prime mover, if not on the galactic-destroying scale then at least very urgent to the player, so that people have something to move them from point to point in the story and don't just feel aimless.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:47
|
|
|
Trast posted:This time it's humanity. well we are an invasive species
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:51
|
|
|
Corypheus isn't really evidence that you can't avoid having a prime motivating force in a game, it's more evidence that having a bad one and then providing the player with no interesting outlets to be one themselves or to craft a role for them to play in the world in lieu of a persistent threat motivating them, loving sucks.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 16:58
|
|
|
Trast posted:This time it's humanity. thats deep
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:03
|
|
|
it would actually be really cool if it turns out that its the humans who turn full rear end in a top hat in me4 and a human who puts humanity above all else becomes the main antagonist and you have to fight him and his followers and i just realized im describing the illusive man and cerberus
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:17
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:Well they just pulled another Virmire choice in TOR's new expansion, so don't count on it. How stupid has TOR gotten anyways? I mean the plot was always stupid but around the time the sith emperor defeated both the Republic and the sith with the super duper mega empire I just gave up and was happy Disney declared all this bullshit non canon.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:20
|
|
|
I'd heard DAI was cobbled together from leftover scraps of an MMO so it shouldn't really be a surprise Corypheus and the main through-line of the plot are undercooked. I don't think people really notice or care because i) DAI is a massive step-up in gameplay and graphics from the previous Dragon Age games and ii) it is a harem anime
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:22
|
|
|
The more peril the world is facing doesn't make a game more motivating to play. That's dumb. Hell itself invading Earth and tearing apart the land is the main plotline of Oblivion, and coincidentally extremely garbage and unfun. The worst part of the game, for sure. Games, like books, don't need artificially amped up stakes to grab a person's attention. Good characterisation, an interesting world, almost everything else is more important. A plot doesn't need to be impending disaster to be compelling, intricate or interesting.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:26
|
|
|
Dragon Age II's best concept was having the PC and friends not necessarily be the lynchpin of a world-changing story and more a bunch of people trying to survive and advance in a lovely situation Hopefully they can separate that from the bad parts of it
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:30
|
|
|
Jeza posted:The more peril the world is facing doesn't make a game more motivating to play. That's dumb. Hell itself invading Earth and tearing apart the land is the main plotline of Oblivion, and coincidentally extremely garbage and unfun. The worst part of the game, for sure. Games, like books, don't need artificially amped up stakes to grab a person's attention. Good characterisation, an interesting world, almost everything else is more important. A plot doesn't need to be impending disaster to be compelling, intricate or interesting. agreed the more cloakas a game has that i can gently caress tho, the better its gonna be that is important
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:30
|
|
|
Jeza posted:The more peril the world is facing doesn't make a game more motivating to play. That's dumb. Hell itself invading Earth and tearing apart the land is the main plotline of Oblivion, and coincidentally extremely garbage and unfun. The worst part of the game, for sure. Games, like books, don't need artificially amped up stakes to grab a person's attention. Good characterisation, an interesting world, almost everything else is more important. A plot doesn't need to be impending disaster to be compelling, intricate or interesting. The point isn't what the stakes are, but how urgent and interesting those stakes feel. In Gone Home you're trying to find out what your family's been up to the last couple days, yet the plot points of that game are way more memorable to me than anything that happened in say, the Division, which sometimes I forget I actually played. But in the absence of a really engrossing story or characters, you at least need a prime mover to keep you going from beat to beat, or else the entire thing will feel aimless and lacking direction.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:32
|
|
|
Jeza posted:The more peril the world is facing doesn't make a game more motivating to play. That's dumb. Hell itself invading Earth and tearing apart the land is the main plotline of Oblivion, and coincidentally extremely garbage and unfun. The worst part of the game, for sure. Games, like books, don't need artificially amped up stakes to grab a person's attention. Good characterisation, an interesting world, almost everything else is more important. A plot doesn't need to be impending disaster to be compelling, intricate or interesting. this
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:32
|
|
|
Zzulu posted:agreed 
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:41
|
|
|
Jeza posted:The more peril the world is facing doesn't make a game more motivating to play. That's dumb. Hell itself invading Earth and tearing apart the land is the main plotline of Oblivion, and coincidentally extremely garbage and unfun. The worst part of the game, for sure. Games, like books, don't need artificially amped up stakes to grab a person's attention. Good characterisation, an interesting world, almost everything else is more important. A plot doesn't need to be impending disaster to be compelling, intricate or interesting. For real. I also don't feel that the sense of urgency is even really lacking in DAI. Much of the game is about gathering political and military power so that you can meet Corypheus' next move head on, which dovetails neatly into guiding the player towards exploration and sidequests without creating that dissonance of "wait, why am I exploring the Emerald Graves when the bad guy is threatening the world?" Like, I'm not sure how much more urgent it could actually be in a lot of cases. Act 2 features a full-on civil war that is ravaging an empire and will go on until you step in to stop it. What's the escalation point from that? A continental civil war but everything is on fire and they kidnapped Josephine? In the same act of the game you have to stop Corypheus from taking over the entire Grey Warden order by turning them all into possessed patsies like he did the Lord Seeker. In the setting, that's a huge, huge deal, they're the only credible defense against the Blight and have existed uninterrupted since the Ancient age. If the Wardens are gone, the next Blight (and they're arriving sooner each cycle) will wipe out all civilisation guaranteed, so the stakes are literally "the fate of the world" and that's not even the only main quest in Act 2.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:45
|
|
|
Zzulu posted:it would actually be really cool if it turns out that its the humans who turn full rear end in a top hat in me4 and a human who puts humanity above all else becomes the main antagonist and you have to fight him and his followers and i just realized im describing the illusive man and cerberus Bioware is going to try to top Martin Sheen's TIM by making the bad guy your father, Clancy Brown.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:45
|
|
|
Lt. Danger posted:I'd heard DAI was cobbled together from leftover scraps of an MMO so it shouldn't really be a surprise Corypheus and the main through-line of the plot are undercooked. I don't think people really notice or care because i) DAI is a massive step-up in gameplay and graphics from the previous Dragon Age games and ii) it is a harem anime DAINQ was never an MMO it just felt like it due to the massive areas and collection quests. It was a total over-correction from DA2's smaller scale and areas. Early DAINQ builds focused more on environmental destructibility that Frostbite is capable of. There are descriptions of quests from early builds that feature things like: "Burn the ships of this Qunari raiding party" and instead of going to an interactable object in the environment to trigger a cutscene in which the boats are burned, you just cast fireball or use a fire effect on the actual ship in the game world which starts a Far Cry style fire. At some game show they demoed a battle for one of the Strongholds in the desert where you're getting pummeled by ranged archers on a bridge so you literally create an Ice Wall for cover and then knock down the bridge like a Battlefield physics object. I think the battle still exists in game but it's literally the only example of that kind of thing because Bioware hasn't innovated beyond Neverwinter Nights in their design yet. AngryBooch fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Dec 21, 2016 |
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:49
|
|
|
Android Blues posted:For real. I also don't feel that the sense of urgency is even really lacking in DAI. Much of the game is about gathering political and military power so that you can meet Corypheus' next move head on, which dovetails neatly into guiding the player towards exploration and sidequests without creating that dissonance of "wait, why am I exploring the Emerald Graves when the bad guy is threatening the world?" I honestly didn't feel like things were very urgent, though. You can write stakes that feel like they should be a big deal but if the game doesn't present them to you properly or really immerse you in them then it's hard to get very excited. The game featured lots of great zones but precisely because your adventures were so far flung and disconnected it felt like hardly any area was really important or in the thick of these big world-changing events, especially since the only sense of the world as it all connected together was simply a map on a table and because of videogame limitations keeping any particular place from being more than sparsely populated.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 00:02 |
|
|
Ryder Sr is a stand-in for Shepard. Hijacked by alien technology gone awry, he tries to destroy the universe. By killing our father, we prove that we are ready to move on. This is allegory for the franchise as a whole. Games are art.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2016 17:57
|
|