What Are You Playing: 9 Years since the Last Dragon Age

[GloatingSwine]

TBH I just lean into maximum officer.

Noble Officer. I am far too important to do things for myself.

Yes, Yes I do take every single opportunity to have Abelard introduce me.

My current battle strategy is:

Spoiler: Cheeeeese!

Show

Cassia and the RT both have Seize the Initiative to give them extra turns, Cassia uses hers to use Bring it Down on Idira who uses Prescience on Cassia and Forewarning on Abelard and sets up some Prey. RT uses his on Abelard who uses Brace for Impact with the Get into Cover upgrade which gives everyone an extra turn with 3 move, Cassia moves up everyone else stays behind her. RT is a Master Strategist so comes up first, places zones, uses You Serve Me, Voice of Command, and Air of Authority on Cassia, then Bring it Down. Now we have handed out 10 extra turns and an additional +25 or so bonus stats to Cassia and she has about 200 willpower. All her damaging moves scale with willpower so you can see where this is going. She uses Lidless Stare to annihilate a large section of the encounter almost certainly triggering High Momentum, bounces the turn back to the RT and immediately gets a Finest Hour which lets her rampage around the battlefield using Lidless Stare and Held in my Gaze to delete almost everything and almost certainly get back into High Momentum, uses Finest Hour to pass onto Idira who should now be buffed by Share the Spoils and empties her sniper rifle into anything that isn't dead yet.

Quite a lot of the time entire encounters die before the first turn of the first character is over. Also Cassia has about 120 wounds at this point because there's a talent that makes that scale with willpower as well.

And when Cassia's actual turn comes up You Do Something and Air of Authority means she has 6 AP and a staff that makes the first navigator power not consume her attack for the turn.

Emperor's Own Delete Button.

[Anonymouswizard]

Honestly the RT being anything but an Officer feels weird to me, especially as it's the archetype that focuses on fellowship. Noble would make a lot of sense, but as 40k tends to show Psykers as the ones being corrupted all the time the idea of being an incredibly Dogmatic one appealed to me.

Plus there's a VERY nice female psyker portrait to use.

I'll probably do an Iconoclast run at some point, but to me it feels like it's against the spirit of 40k. So it's Dogmatic first, with as much Willpower as the game lets me stack.

[Rynjin]

Surprised you went Pyro instead of Sanctic for your Dogmatic Psyker.

[Anonymouswizard]

Surprised you went Pyro instead of Sanctic for your Dogmatic Psyker.

IIRC Heinrix is Biomancy/Santic, so I'll likely have easy access to those powers later on. I may or may not take it over Telepathy, but I shall smite the enemies of the Emperor with His holy flames!

It's not overly synergistic with Officer role-wise, but Pyromancy runs off one of the primary Officer characteristics and so it works well enough.

I actually wanted Telekinesis, but that's not an option. Late game abilities to move enemies around would be grand, especially on an Officer.

[Rynjin]

I was pretty peeved about the lack of Telekinesis...then baffled by the staff I found in Act 4 that requires Telekinesis.

[Errorname]

Started up a new Dragon Age: Origins playthrough, and I really do love the Origin concept. I get why it's not standard practice, it is a ton of work to implement, but it's very cool.

Also interesting to play through this game in a post-Baldur's Gate 3 world, since this was sort of Bioware's version of the same concept.

[GloatingSwine]

Plus there's a VERY nice female psyker portrait to use.

The Male Commissar portrait is the only one for me. Imagine going into space with anything less than the most glorious moustache possible?

I was pretty peeved about the lack of Telekinesis...then baffled by the staff I found in Act 4 that requires Telekinesis.

It was in some of the early/beta versions but they've taken it out and not removed the staff. It might come back with one of the DLCs.

[Anonymouswizard]

Started up a new Dragon Age: Origins playthrough, and I really do love the Origin concept. I get why it's not standard practice, it is a ton of work to implement, but it's very cool.

Also interesting to play through this game in a post-Baldur's Gate 3 world, since this was sort of Bioware's version of the same concept.

I am surprised by how much people praised the conversations in BG3 as mini cutscenes and said that it was the way forward for WRPGs. Because when I played I immediately realized that it's been done before, and actually pretty well, and there was a reason many studios abandoned it.

I should give DA:O another playthrough. City Elf Rogue, obviously.

The Male Commissar portrait is the only one for me. Imagine going into space with anything less than the most glorious moustache possible?

Why on earth would I play a man?

Although I would totally be down for a Queen Amidala hairdo on my next run.

[warty goblin]

I am surprised by how much people praised the conversations in BG3 as mini cutscenes and said that it was the way forward for WRPGs. Because when I played I immediately realized that it's been done before, and actually pretty well, and there was a reason many studios abandoned it.

I think the difference in technology available now and when Origins released is pretty salient. BG3's facial tech is good enough to convey emotion effectively, and they do a pretty good job of camera work and editing. My recollection of Origins is that it... doesn't really manage that. Really, I mostly recall playing the human noble origin, and watching my daddy Eddard Stark's tragic death scene get elevated into surrealist comedy by the blood decal under him disappearing and reappearing with every change in camera angle.

I'm also not sure anybody has abandoned it so much as it's expensive and hard enough that a fair number of smaller studios aren't capable of it. It requires full 3D, which means a lot of semi-recent cRPGs using 2D backgrounds really can't. But Bioware hasn't ever stopped, Larien pretty clearly prefers it, they used cutscene type dialog in Divinity 2: Ego Draconis (and it's seven zillion versions) and Dragon Commander. Even Solasta does it, although with their severely potato shaped character models they maybe shouldn't have.


And I have to say, why people go for cutscene type dialog. Gaming is generally a visual medium, and a zoomed out view of two models maybe making default gestures at each other is not exactly visually compelling.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think the difference in technology available now and when Origins released is pretty salient. BG3's facial tech is good enough to convey emotion effectively, and they do a pretty good job of camera work and editing. My recollection of Origins is that it... doesn't really manage that. Really, I mostly recall playing the human noble origin, and watching my daddy Eddard Stark's tragic death scene get elevated into surrealist comedy by the blood decal under him disappearing and reappearing with every change in camera angle.

I'm also not sure anybody has abandoned it so much as it's expensive and hard enough that a fair number of smaller studios aren't capable of it. It requires full 3D, which means a lot of semi-recent cRPGs using 2D backgrounds really can't. But Bioware hasn't ever stopped, Larien pretty clearly prefers it, they used cutscene type dialog in Divinity 2: Ego Draconis (and it's seven zillion versions) and Dragon Commander. Even Solasta does it, although with their severely potato shaped character models they maybe shouldn't have.


And I have to say, why people go for cutscene type dialog. Gaming is generally a visual medium, and a zoomed out view of two models maybe making default gestures at each other is not exactly visually compelling.

I was actually thinking of the ME3/DAI era for the really mature version of it, and while BG3 is a lot better than that it's still clearly a LOT of work that many games don't need. I suspect that at best the standard will be what Owlcat's doing: 3D environments that allow you to do dramatic cutscenes while keeping conversations in the overhead view. It's a genre which trends towards long scripts*, and so there's going to be a tension between having nicer dialogue scenes and having all the dialogue you want.

Plus there's something odly charming when top down RPGs try to show battles and the characters act as if they were using the combat engine.

* Disco Elysium would likely not have been possible with cutscene dialogue, and I think benefits from the somewhat detached view.

[SerTabris]

Now, if this portends them doing the same thing with the female protagonist path next year, that'll be another story. That I'd be happy to toss a decent amount of extra money at them for. But not The Answer, not without some major improvements.

Hmm, not sure what I'd do if that one happened. It feels a bit weird to buy a game when I only want to play the DLC for it and not the base game.

Gongaga Jungle feels like it's going to be the area that bugs me the most on a replay. I'm okay with it so far on the first time through, but it's big, dense, maze-like, and is kind of giving me Dragon Age: Inquisition area vibes, which is not a compliment coming from me. (Inquisition is the one Bioware game I've played but never been able to finish a re-run of because of its giant areas.)

I definitely relate, there. I figure, Bioware was about as good at doing open-world areas as Bethesda was at writing interesting companions. Which... yeah.

Started up a new Dragon Age: Origins playthrough, and I really do love the Origin concept. I get why it's not standard practice, it is a ton of work to implement, but it's very cool.

Also interesting to play through this game in a post-Baldur's Gate 3 world, since this was sort of Bioware's version of the same concept.

I definitely agree, though I feel like it does stick out in parts that some origins are getting more content than others. Which one are you doing, out of curiosity?

I was actually thinking of the ME3/DAI era for the really mature version of it, and while BG3 is a lot better than that it's still clearly a LOT of work that many games don't need. I suspect that at best the standard will be what Owlcat's doing: 3D environments that allow you to do dramatic cutscenes while keeping conversations in the overhead view. It's a genre which trends towards long scripts*, and so there's going to be a tension between having nicer dialogue scenes and having all the dialogue you want.

Plus there's something odly charming when top down RPGs try to show battles and the characters act as if they were using the combat engine.

* Disco Elysium would likely not have been possible with cutscene dialogue, and I think benefits from the somewhat detached view.

Sometimes they even are! I remember when I was playing Pathfinder Kingmaker and some after-battle dialogue had a character move, and slip on the Grease spell that had been placed during combat. Everyone just waited for him to pass his save and get back up.

[Errorname]

I am surprised by how much people praised the conversations in BG3 as mini cutscenes and said that it was the way forward for WRPGs. Because when I played I immediately realized that it's been done before, and actually pretty well, and there was a reason many studios abandoned it.

It's very expensive and a lot of modern CRPGs have a pretty slim budget, but if a studio can afford it they generally go for it, it does add a lot.

I definitely agree, though I feel like it does stick out in parts that some origins are getting more content than others. Which one are you doing, out of curiosity?

I ran through all of them but the character I'm sticking with through this run is the Human Noble, which if I remember right is definitely one of the more content heavy ones.

[Cespenar]

Tried a short Korean game called No Case Should Remain Unsolved. Pretty good.

Plays a bit like a budget text based Obra-Dinn-ish narrative puzzler. You are basically restructuring/healing the memories of a police detective in a missing person case, in which there are transcripts of the dialogues and depositions of the suspects. You piece out the story, assign the right depositions to the right characters and fix the order of the dialogues as well.

Nice story and twists too, as much as a several hours' game can manage.

[Anonymouswizard]

It's very expensive and a lot of modern CRPGs have a pretty slim budget, but if a studio can afford it they generally go for it, it does add a lot.

Oh sure. It's just WRPGs are a niche genre, and I wouldn't expect BG3 to change that. Especially as costs can still ballon uncontrollably without such cutscenes, it's why PoE 2 took so long to break even and why there are unlikely to be new games in the series

But games which use Bethesda style 'look at still occasionally stock animating 3D model' conversations? I can see those disappearing.

I ran through all of them but the character I'm sticking with through this run is the Human Noble, which if I remember right is definitely one of the more content heavy ones.

IIRC it's human Noble as the most content heavy, followed by I think Dwarf Commoner and City Elf. I think the main issue is that they didn't go through with the idea of Loghain's number two being the villain from your chosen Origin and just stuck with the Human Noble one.

[SerTabris]

IIRC it's human Noble as the most content heavy, followed by I think Dwarf Commoner and City Elf. I think the main issue is that they didn't go through with the idea of Loghain's number two being the villain from your chosen Origin and just stuck with the Human Noble one.

Oh, that sounds like an interesting idea! Though how well it could work definitely varies. I could definitely see it working pretty well for CE and honestly not being that much different in terms of the rest of the story (having the same 'awful human Arl of Denerim' social position), but I'm not sure about the dwarven ones and I can't think of who it'd even be for Dalish. For a mage... maybe, but there might be some adjustment needed. I'd definitely like to see how those would have gone though.

But I also think that there should have been at least some possible reference to the fact that the CE has already been to the Arl of Denerim's Estate. And, you know, probably killed almost everyone in it.

[Errorname]

I think the main issue is that they didn't go through with the idea of Loghain's number two being the villain from your chosen Origin and just stuck with the Human Noble one.

Would be hard to make that work with most of the Origins as written, and what it'd probably come down to is just having Howe (or his replacement) involved in all of them, which I don't think would be very good.

[GloatingSwine]

Why on earth would I play a man?

Because they've unaccountably forgotten to give the female portraits moustaches at all, let alone the full General Melchett. How are you supposed to civilise space without it?

[Zevox]

Ah, so, it's been a long haul, but I'm finally closing in on the end of FF7 Rebirth. Finished Nibelheim, just a stay at the Golden Saucer separates me from what must be the endgame, given when the devs said the ending is compared to the original game. Looking forward to-

Game: New side-quests have opened in every region! Also, most of the game's mini-games now have harder challenges with new rewards, and you have a kinda-sorta boat that can sail the seas and a new side-quest related to that.

...damn it Square-Enix, you know there might be such a thing as having too much content in your game, right?

(I'd skip straight to the story stuff, except the new things that have opened up now are actually the good side-content. I've dealt with all of Chadley's Open-World Filler at this point, which is a huge part of what slows the game down.)

[tonberrian]

Thinking of picking up Fallout 4 again, and since i have the luxury of playing on PC, was wondering about good mods. I think i want to find one that lets me craft, or at least move around, legendary prefixes, but other than that I don't have anything I'm dying for. I'm also going to see about abandoning Preston and his crew in Concord, at least for the moment, until i do some things in Nuka World so he won't be mad at me.

[AlanBruce]

Ah, so, it's been a long haul, but I'm finally closing in on the end of FF7 Rebirth. Finished Nibelheim, just a stay at the Golden Saucer separates me from what must be the endgame, given when the devs said the ending is compared to the original game. Looking forward to-

Game: New side-quests have opened in every region! Also, most of the game's mini-games now have harder challenges with new rewards, and you have a kinda-sorta boat that can sail the seas and a new side-quest related to that.

...damn it Square-Enix, you know there might be such a thing as having too much content in your game, right?

(I'd skip straight to the story stuff, except the new things that have opened up now are actually the good side-content. I've dealt with all of Chadley's Open-World Filler at this point, which is a huge part of what slows the game down.)

I finished the game a few days ago and have returned to pick up any trophies, since you unlock chapter select, just like in Remake before.

I may be in the minority here, but I believe they should’ve either eased on the mini games, or not made them mandatory for completionists. I was never a fan of Fort Condor in the DLC. And here we have an entire subquest dedicated to that game. The same can be said for Gears & Gambits. I understand they wanted to give players things to do other than the main story. And some of them are in my opinion, genuinely fun and relaxing (Queen’s Blood and the piano come to mind).

But if you’re going for platinum, placing some trophies behind incredibly annoying mini games. Or worse- making already frustrating activities even worse (looking at you, Crunch Off game), is not the way to keep the players coming back.

[warty goblin]

I was actually thinking of the ME3/DAI era for the really mature version of it, and while BG3 is a lot better than that it's still clearly a LOT of work that many games don't need. I suspect that at best the standard will be what Owlcat's doing: 3D environments that allow you to do dramatic cutscenes while keeping conversations in the overhead view. It's a genre which trends towards long scripts*, and so there's going to be a tension between having nicer dialogue scenes and having all the dialogue you want.

This is very much a milage may vary thing, I tend to find zoomed out static shots of vaguely gesturing models kinda boring myself. It certainly does nothing to elevate the material over reading a picture book with kinda dull illustrations and an inflated word count. Which segues nicely to my second criticism, anything that enforces some level of restraint in cRPG scripts is fine with me, because I find most of them to be really overwritten.

Oh sure. It's just WRPGs are a niche genre, and I wouldn't expect BG3 to change that. Especially as costs can still ballon uncontrollably without such cutscenes, it's why PoE 2 took so long to break even and why there are unlikely to be new games in the series

I always figured PoE2 came in lukewarm because the genre was fairly saturated at that point, and was moving beyond Obsidian's very backwards looking take. I certainly was unable to rustle up any enthusiasm for an atavistic throwback like that in a universe that contained Original Sin 2, a game that actually had ideas fresher than "contains guns" and "has weird stats." I'm not saying PoE2 is bad, it's just extremely conservative in an already super conservative genre, and I think it got scooped by other games that had selling points beyond being like BG2, a by that point nearly two decades old game. Nostalgia for any given thing has a declining audience.

[Anonymouswizard]

Oh, that sounds like an interesting idea! Though how well it could work definitely varies. I could definitely see it working pretty well for CE and honestly not being that much different in terms of the rest of the story (having the same 'awful human Arl of Denerim' social position), but I'm not sure about the dwarven ones and I can't think of who it'd even be for Dalish. For a mage... maybe, but there might be some adjustment needed. I'd definitely like to see how those would have gone though.

But I also think that there should have been at least some possible reference to the fact that the CE has already been to the Arl of Denerim's Estate. And, you know, probably killed almost everyone in it.

City Elf is just full of leftover pieces from early drafts, there's still a casual mention of magical healers. But honestly I just wish that when the idea was dropped that the non-HN Origins got more content, particularly the two elf ones. The other three are at least linked to major parts of the game, those two not so much.

Would be hard to make that work with most of the Origins as written, and what it'd probably come down to is just having Howe (or his replacement) involved in all of them, which I don't think would be very good.

I suspect it got dropped due to a mixture of justifying some of the characters and not wanting to write the conversations six times. Because two are still in states where Howe would be very easy to replace.

Because they've unaccountably forgotten to give the female portraits moustaches at all, let alone the full General Melchett. How are you supposed to civilise space without it?

'Abelard, civilise this planet'

[Errorname]

I always figured PoE2 came in lukewarm because the genre was fairly saturated at that point, and was moving beyond Obsidian's very backwards looking take. I certainly was unable to rustle up any enthusiasm for an atavistic throwback like that in a universe that contained Original Sin 2, a game that actually had ideas fresher than "contains guns" and "has weird stats." I'm not saying PoE2 is bad, it's just extremely conservative in an already super conservative genre, and I think it got scooped by other games that had selling points beyond being like BG2, a by that point nearly two decades old game. Nostalgia for any given thing has a declining audience.

I find Josh Sawyer's Deadfire Post-Mortem really interesting, although it is more about lukewarm responses from people who bought and played the game

I suspect it got dropped due to a mixture of justifying some of the characters and not wanting to write the conversations six times. Because two are still in states where Howe would be very easy to replace.

It would be easy to integrate Howe (or a replacement Loghain Henchman) into the City Elf origin, but everywhere else? I guess you could make Jowan or the Templar Commander into a more villainous character that would work as Loghain's right hand, but I don't see any opportunity for it with the Orzammer or Dalish origins.

[Anonymouswizard]

It would be easy to integrate Howe (or a replacement Loghain Henchman) into the City Elf origin, but everywhere else? I guess you could make Jowan or the Templar Commander into a more villainous character that would work as Loghain's right hand, but I don't see any opportunity for it with the Orzammer or Dalish origins.

Have Leske throw Jarvia under the bus at the end of Dwarf Commoner, she flees to the surface and tries to take her revenge on the Warden, Leske takes over the Carta.

For the Magi you'd clearly have Uldred trying to tear you down as Irving's prized pupil, and probably actually somewhat softening the relationship if you didn't betray Jowan. But that requires a much bigger reworking of the Origin.

On that note establish that at least one of the interlopers in the Dalish Elf origin is the son of a Bann, ideally the one who can be killed.

For Human Commoner? Dwynn.

[Errorname]

Remembering why I've struggled to actually stick with a playthrough of Origins to the end. I do not care for a lot of the combat, although I think I'm one of the few people who doesn't utterly loathe the Fade segment.

For the Magi you'd clearly have Uldred trying to tear you down as Irving's prized pupil, and probably actually somewhat softening the relationship if you didn't betray Jowan. But that requires a much bigger reworking of the Origin.

I like the idea of giving Uldred a bit more of a role in the Mage Origin, but Uldred is already filling a different villainous role to Howe. My issue with the idea is that making Loghain's chief henchmen modular based on your origin feels a little artificial in the way that having each origin introduce different important characters early doesn't.

[GloatingSwine]

Remembering why I've struggled to actually stick with a playthrough of Origins to the end. I do not care for a lot of the combat, although I think I'm one of the few people who doesn't utterly loathe the Fade segment.

A lot of the combat goes away when you get the mass hold spell. Especially if you're a rogue and once it goes off you get infinity backstabs and you start posting absolutely silly damage numbers with every attack.

[Zevox]

Got Barret for the second Golden Saucer date event, though I did have to deliberately sabotage my score with Tifa and Aerith to do so. Doesn't feel like there was too much unique to this event based on who you went with, but it was nice seeing his at least, some good moments in there.

I finished the game a few days ago and have returned to pick up any trophies, since you unlock chapter select, just like in Remake before.

I may be in the minority here, but I believe they should’ve either eased on the mini games, or not made them mandatory for completionists. I was never a fan of Fort Condor in the DLC. And here we have an entire subquest dedicated to that game. The same can be said for Gears & Gambits. I understand they wanted to give players things to do other than the main story. And some of them are in my opinion, genuinely fun and relaxing (Queen’s Blood and the piano come to mind).

But if you’re going for platinum, placing some trophies behind incredibly annoying mini games. Or worse- making already frustrating activities even worse (looking at you, Crunch Off game), is not the way to keep the players coming back.

I don't understand that criticism. Granted, I'm someone who has never given a single crap about achievements/trophies/whatever you want to call them, but if the reason you would is completionism, then the goal there is to experience and complete everything the game has to offer, whatever it may be, right? If not, what is the reason? Because then I really don't understand.

Personally, I'd say most of the mini-games in Rebirth are actually pretty good and at least somewhat fun, and very few are difficult to beat even the hardest challenge on - the exceptions being the sit-ups, which I do kind of hate, and the piano, which I managed to squeak out A ranks on most of the songs for it, but sincerely doubt I'll do it with the Red XIII theme (at least, that's what I assume it is, the name's weird; it was the second to last one I believe). And I wouldn't call the piano mini-game bad, just hard, at least for the last few songs. I actually very much liked Fort Condor and went out of my way to do all of that one's hard challenges despite the lack of a reward; oddly, not nearly as much of a fan of Gears & Gambits. Not sure why that one doesn't work as well for me, but I just wasn't enjoying it nearly as much, I barely beat its last normal mission, and I don't intend to do the hard ones.

[Anonymouswizard]

Remembering why I've struggled to actually stick with a playthrough of Origins to the end. I do not care for a lot of the combat, although I think I'm one of the few people who doesn't utterly loathe the Fade segment.

My main issue with the Fade is all the backtracking to get the stat boosts, especially as getting that +5 Cunning early unlocks all the skills when playing as a Warrior or Mage. It makes the early game somewhat samey.

I like the idea of giving Uldred a bit more of a role in the Mage Origin, but Uldred is already filling a different villainous role to Howe. My issue with the idea is that making Loghain's chief henchmen modular based on your origin feels a little artificial in the way that having each origin introduce different important characters early doesn't.

Oh sure, the current way is better. I'd just have preferred if the setup from my favourite Origin was followed up on.

A lot of the combat goes away when you get the mass hold spell. Especially if you're a rogue and once it goes off you get infinity backstabs and you start posting absolutely silly damage numbers with every attack.

Dragon Age combat has a sweet spot at about levels 7-10, where you actually have options but haven't worked you way to the broken abilities yet.

I think it's also better if you go with the intended party of Warrior/Warrior/Mage/Rogue, instead of just running two mages with all the crowd control. I'm tempted to do a Dalish Archer Warrior run to make that practically required.

[Errorname]

A lot of the combat goes away when you get the mass hold spell.

It's not that I'm struggling with it, I just don't like it. I've never been a fan of RTWP combat to begin with, always preferred proper turn based games.

[GloatingSwine]

Tbh my best play through was mage mage warrior dog. But that’s because I was playing an absolute git and killed everyone except Morrigan, Sten, Oghren and the dog.

I eventually turned that mage into an unstoppable god warrior with max con, arcane warrior and all the buff spells in heavy armour to get the hard mode achievements. Most things could only do single digits of damage to me.