Dragon age 3 you will once again be playing as a human

[ThriKreen]

People call it 'catering to the majority.' I call it laziness.

Ah yes, working for 2+ years on a game, overtime, getting sick from bad crunch food and having to go to the ER, getting worried over performance reviews, end up stocking up to 30+ vacation days due to never having any time off due to deadlines and such.

Only to see that 70% of your player base never touches 10% of your game, so you decide to cut that 10% the next time around.

Sure, laziness.

 

[Valis7]

Personally I'm behind Bioware on this

I always wound up playing a human in the original DA, most people I talk to say the same; most people played the other origins out of curiosity and then never touched that character again.

I thought the human origin was bland & boring, the elf & dwarf origin give the player a better feel of the DA world and the lore much richer. It's about immersion.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

I agree that the dialogue wheel does have more disadvantages than advantages, as far as personalisation and character creation goes.

I am not sure I'd called a human protagonist lazy though. They have limited manpower and resources, as well as a time frame. If they feel that those resources are better spent elsewhere than on creating more variety, then that's not necessarily laziness (although it definitely feels like a step backwards from Origins).

To quote Allan Schumacher who is the "Technical QA analyst for Dragon Age" (whatever the hell that is). His response to somebody saying it was lazy on the forums was:

"Define lazy.

Actually don't. You can hate our decision, but just call a spade a spade and say you don't like the decision we made. If you think I'm "lazy" then you don't know me, nor my colleagues.

We aren't sitting around with our feet up drinking cognac going "Good show mates, now that that's resolved there's not much to do but sit around and enjoy the sun!"

I'm willing to buy that as a legitimate excuse than people saying "catering to the majority" (<-does this statement even meaning anything anymore?)

The reason why (in my logic) I think the laziness accusation is legitimate, even considering Allan's defense, is because - they did it in DA:O. Why don't they do it again? 'Bacause no one wants to play as other races'? Frankly, I don't think that's a good excuse.

People call it 'catering to the majority.' I call it laziness.

Ah yes, working for 2+ years on a game, overtime, getting sick from bad crunch food and having to go to the ER, getting worried over performance reviews, end up stocking up to 30+ vacation days due to never having any time off due to deadlines and such.

Only to see that 70% of your player base never touches 10% of your game, so you decide to cut that 10% the next time around.

Sure, laziness.

Hold on, you're talking about DA:O right?

And how all that work and care they put into the non-human races went allegedly unappreciated?

And their respsonse to this was to cut out those races as being playable entirely in the sequel, because fuck the 30%?

So.... Yes, laziness????

Even if that's not your point, let me tell you, I actually did play as non-human characters in DA:O and never as a human one. So all that work and meticulousness they put into DA:O -all that crunch time, and care and detail they poured into their game beyond the Origin stories- was very much appreciated by me. You may not know this, but DA:O is one of my most favorite modern RPG's made and I love that game to death even with all it's flaws.

What you're saying sounds to me more like "70% of the playerbase didn't care about the other races, and neither should you."

Like I said earlier, you could play as other races in DA:O, now you cannot. Why?

Because they don't care?
Because time and resources?
Because deadlines?

All that means is, Bioware didn't view choosing non-human races as a big deal. They didn't want this feature to return. They didn't view it as important enough to improve on. They couldn't think of a way to make playing as other races more appealing.

So now we go from having 3 playable races, with hundreds of things to say and complete control over your dialogue to one playable race, with a few things to say, and partial control of your dialogue.

No matter which way you slice it, it ultimately always comes down to this. It's disappointing. And I think it's lazy. Sorry?

 

[AntiChri5]

Calling it laziness implies that, because they aren't working on what you want them to be working on they are not working.

That is, quite simply daft. They didn't cut races so that they could go home early and masturbate, they aren't doing any less work now then before.

 

[ThriKreen]

So instead of making the gameplay more engaging or finding out why people didnt finish it they just cut choices and length down thinking it will make things better... Sounds like whoever is running the place are pants on head retarded.

Just attributing it to "Oh, you could just make the feature better!" is a cop out. How? What if it already was good, but still hardly anyone cared enough to play it? Can you still justify expending the effort and money on an aspect of a game?

Maybe they know far more than you do, via forum posts, feedback, said stats, reviews - and realize that the cost, time and work involved vs. a feature being, well, played and seen (or not as the case may be) wasn't worth it, even if it was engaging, and the time saved from it was better spent on making sure the rest of the game is up to par.

It's funny, they added multiplayer to ME3 and people cried that the team working on it could be better spent focusing on the single-player portion (nevermind it's a completely separate team).

But now you want them to spread their work focus for additional races.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

The reason why (in my logic) I think the laziness accusation is legitimate, even considering Allan's defense, is because - they did it in DA:O. Why don't they do it again? 'Bacause no one wants to play as other races'? Frankly, I don't think that's a good excuse.

...snip...

No matter which way you slice it, it ultimately always comes down to this. It's disappointing. And I think it's lazy. Sorry?

Appreciated or not, it costs time and money to make the feature and as mentioned, if not enough people appreciated it enough, why continue making it when they could put that effort to the rest of the game?

They change the focus of the work, they don't just cut the feature and leave it empty in the schedule. That is not laziness.

 

[ThriKreen]

They didn't cut races so that they could go home early and masturbate

Nah, we just cut out early and went to the strip club across the street from the studio.

 

[trooper6]

Well, I loved DA:O, and I loved DA2 even more. So looking at the links provided, it looks like I'm in for another really awesome game in DA3. I'm excited that Gaider is still the writer, because I loved what he did in DA2. Looking forward to it!

 

[disgruntledgamer]

Well, my hopes are officially dashed for this game. Are they bringing back the dialogue wheel too?

Yes, this has been confirmed. Although they claim they will be working to improve the paraphrasing.

So we can pretty much guarantee they will have a voiced protagonist as well.

To Quote "Yahtzee" Croshaw

"It made me want to cave in Hawks head with a book of after dinner speeches."

Hopefully Bioware will finally understand this, and stop trying to enforce their own behaviours onto what are supposed to be our characters.

I wouldn't hold your breath I have a sinking feeling that if you're one of the people who liked DAO, but didn't like DA2 you're probably not going to like DA 3.

ME3's multiplayer is far from dead, and many long time Mass Effect fans consider it the best part of the game.

Biodrones are funny

 

[Tohuvabohu]

The reason why (in my logic) I think the laziness accusation is legitimate, even considering Allan's defense, is because - they did it in DA:O. Why don't they do it again? 'Bacause no one wants to play as other races'? Frankly, I don't think that's a good excuse.

...snip...

No matter which way you slice it, it ultimately always comes down to this. It's disappointing. And I think it's lazy. Sorry?

Appreciated or not, it costs time and money to make the feature and as mentioned, if not enough people appreciated it enough, why continue making it when they could put that effort to the rest of the game?

They change the focus of the work, they don't just cut the feature and leave it empty in the schedule. That is not laziness.

It's a step backward either way.

I'm not asking for an exact repeat of the Origin stories. I would like, at the very least, to be able to pick between the races. That's it. I'm not asking for a magnum opus Origin story for each race. I just want to play as them. I don't think that's an unreasonable desire. Would that really be so hard to achieve? To work it into development schedules in an efficient manner? Would the EA and Bioware really be falling apart at the seams if they worked on including other playable races? Really?
'But that takes time/money/blood/tears blahblahblahblah'
Okay.

Yes I've seen all the hooplah Bioware's raising about DA3 being allegedly the biggest game they ever made. This is all fine and good, and I never said I'm not giving the game a chance.
I'll miss being able to pick my own race, and I'll miss the -in my opinion- dialogue system which was much more superior to the Wheel. But none of this is going to stop the game itself from being good (That is if it actually is good.)

I'm just saying, not being able to play as another race - Sucks. It just sucks. It sucked in DA2. And unless Bioware blows my mind, It's gonna suck again in DA3.

Still, I'm waiting for the game to come out. No, don't let my complaints over the lack of playable races convince you otherwise. I AM going to buy it. But if they disappoint again, then the Dragon Age franchise will be dead to me.

 

[Souplex]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Being forced to play as a human in a fantasy game is like being forced to have your character class be accountant.

 

[Saviordd1]

Personally I'm behind Bioware on this

I always wound up playing a human in the original DA, most people I talk to say the same; most people played the other origins out of curiosity and then never touched that character again.

I thought the human origin was bland & boring, the elf & dwarf origin give the player a better feel of the DA world and the lore much richer. It's about immersion.

Yeah

I had no immersion when someone would OCCASIONALLY say

"Oh, you are an elf, fuck you"

And ALL the origins were bland and boring except the dwarf noble and human noble.

 

[AntiChri5]

Well, my hopes are officially dashed for this game. Are they bringing back the dialogue wheel too?

Yes, this has been confirmed. Although they claim they will be working to improve the paraphrasing.

So we can pretty much guarantee they will have a voiced protagonist as well.

To Quote "Yahtzee" Croshaw

"It made me want to cave in Hawks head with a book of after dinner speeches."

Hopefully Bioware will finally understand this, and stop trying to enforce their own behaviours onto what are supposed to be our characters.

I wouldn't hold your breath I have a sinking feeling that if you're one of the people who liked DAO, but didn't like DA2 you're probably not going to like DA 3.

ME3's multiplayer is far from dead, and many long time Mass Effect fans consider it the best part of the game.

Biodrones are funny

I find it so very cute when people have no argument so resort to bullshit and insults.

Just adorable.

 

[CoL0sS]

Hardly anything has been said about the game so far, so I'll save my venom until I actually see something I care about get scrapped.
Playing as plain, old boring human ? Fine, as long as I actually get a decent story and a few characters I can actually give two shits about. I'll put up with any gimmicky armor-dying, interior-decorating bullshit you throw my way as long as I can enjoy and be challenged by combat, without it feeling cheap.
If they can get immersed in your world and lore again, I'll forgive anything. Otherwise I'll just pound one more nail into your coffin and move on to Project Eternity

 

[Legion]

I wouldn't hold your breath I have a sinking feeling that if you're one of the people who liked DAO, but didn't like DA2 you're probably not going to like DA 3.

I liked both.

Dragon Age 2 has a lot of faults, most of which are very well documented. But I wouldn't say that it was a bad game overall. Was it a worthy successor to Origins? Not quite, but given another years work I think it could have been.

ME3's multiplayer is far from dead, and many long time Mass Effect fans consider it the best part of the game.

Biodrones are funny

I actually thought the multiplayer was quite good. Too repetitive, but quite fun before it became so.

It's funny really, I expected the main game to be good and the multiplayer to be bad, but I had a lot more fun on the multiplayer than I did on the campaign.

Not that I consider that a good thing. I was one of those that didn't want multiplayer included at all, because I felt it would detract from the campaign. I am not particularly happy that I was right.

 

[AntiChri5]

I have seen almost that exact same post dozens and dozens of times, Legion.

 

[C. Cain]

(...)

And ALL the origins were bland and boring except the dwarf noble and human noble.

Ah yes, the city elf origin only had ghetto dwelling elves, an arranged marriage, arbitrary cruelty and oppression by the ruling human nobles, a pseudo-invocation of droit du seigneur and rape. How bland and uninspiring.

Not nearly as riveting as the human noble origin.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

Not really surprised, but not really bothered. This is a necessary restriction for an RPG series that wants to create a large, interconnected narrative for current generation consoles.

We aren't in the days of easily editable text-boxes and minor sprite animation anymore, guys. While Bioware is huge on choice and shaping the world, it's realistically impossible, thus limiting the choices is the only way for the developers to maintain control on their own beast.

Though I do believe that Dragon Age 2 was limited enough in other places that it could have stood to have at least a choice between a human or elven Hawke, I knew from the moment they announced a sequel to Origins that character choices would be limited to one race by the third game.

Not as fun, but it's the way it is. We can't demand the moon and the sky from these guys.

 

[dantoddd]

Remember 'Knights of the Old Republic' by Bioware, it was a god awful game because you couldn't play as a hutt/twilek hybrid. The lack cosmetic character customization absolutely ruined that game.