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

[Grumpy Ginger]

Watching all this arguing from the sidelines and their seems to have been one thing I've noticed. The appearance of fans who could be summed up in one phrase "you are only a true fan of bioware if you hate it" anybody who actually likes their newer games are brain dead fan boys because disagreeing with somebody about a piece of entertainment somehow makes them stupid.

 

[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.

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.

Spoiler

You're family is murdered and you swear bloody revenge

- not exactly original, or exiting imo.

The dalish origin and the city elf origin let you see first hand the different cultures in Dragon age, namely the prejudice that still exist towards elves and why the dalish distrust humans so much.

I honestly don't see what's wrong with giving the player more options.

 

[AntiChri5]

I don't think any of the origins were the least bit original. Fun, but not original. Except maybe the Dwarf Noble. Dwarves as treacherous dipshits is relatively new.

There is nothing "wrong" with giving the player options. Like all things, it has positives and negatives so it can't be called a"good" or "bad" thing.

 

[Baralak]

Oh man, really?! I HAVE to be human?! But I loved my Volus Biotic in ME1, and my Asari Vanguard in ME2! Oh wait... I was a human in those games, and I loved them. I loved having Shepard speak, just like I love having Hawke speak, because it makes them more than dolls for me to control, they become characters that I influence and control.

That, and it's so much more immersive when someone goes "Shepard! I will control the Reapers!" "Hawke, duel me to the death!" As opposed to "Hey, you! Grey Warden, stop!" "Hi, I'm ___ and this is my friend!"

 

[lacktheknack]

Dammit, Bioware, LET ME PLAY AS A MABARI.

On a serious note,

So you choose to latch onto the one major negative rather than the multiple positives mentioned (two negatives if we count the background being unplayable, but seriously, big deal)? Somebody just wants this game to be bad. I honestly am hoping for the best, though I'll probably wait to see what others say about it.

What are the positive list them so I can call BS on all of them.

I think you're sticking to your username schtick a bit too closely.

 

[alphamalet]

Oh man, really?! I HAVE to be human?! But I loved my Volus Biotic in ME1, and my Asari Vanguard in ME2! Oh wait... I was a human in those games, and I loved them. I loved having Shepard speak, just like I love having Hawke speak, because it makes them more than dolls for me to control, they become characters that I influence and control.

That, and it's so much more immersive when someone goes "Shepard! I will control the Reapers!" "Hawke, duel me to the death!" As opposed to "Hey, you! Grey Warden, stop!" "Hi, I'm ___ and this is my friend!"

Yeah, sure. Having summarized bullet points and a dialogue wheel that tells you how the supporting characters are going to react to what you say before you say it is SOOOOO much more immersive.

The funny thing is, you perfectly illustrate the problem with DA2's and Mass Effect's dialogue system without even realizing it. Let's just put aside the ever too frequent scenario of having your protagonist react in a way you didn't expect them to, or having a system that removes any sort of intelligent moral ambiguity to CLEARLY define the "good" and "bad" choices. The problem is that when you have a system like ME or DA2, you are no longer the one "speaking" the dialogue, Hawke or Shepard are. You go from pure role-playing of a character, where no intermediary forces are affecting your interaction in the world, to someone who is merely pulling the strings of a character in a game who has more control in the dialogue they speak than you do. It's far less immersive.

The reason Bioware is doing this stupid "cinematic" dialogue system is to appeal to someone like you, a Mass Effect fan. Well I have news for everyone, DRAGON AGE ISN'T MASS EFFECT!

 

[lunavixen]

for some reason i couldn't really get into dragon age, i don't know why

OP: Bad move bioware, DA2 gets slammed and you guys want to not use the formula of the popluar DA game.

 

[VoidWanderer]

It would be nice for Bioware to focus a bit more on story...

And that has to be one of the wierdest things I have EVER said in forums.

Hopefully, through the lashings of EA's whips, Bioware can learn there is more to the world than 'EA Evil' and 'EA Good'. DA2 was, to me at least, the weakest of Bioware's stories in any of their games. You never felt like you accomplished anything, and I still cannot be bothered finishing 'Act 2'.

Bioware is a company I still have some respect for. I just hope EA can keep it's fingers away from Bioware so they can return to NWN greatness again.

 

[hazabaza1]

Alright.
What with DA:O choices being all of "Elf" or "Dwarf" I'm fine with being human. They're about as generic as each other nowadays.
I'd rather it focuses more on a central protagonist like Hawke, rather than the empty shell that sometimes said stuff in DA1.

Yeah! And never mind the legions of people that think otherwise... you know, people that actually play role playing games as an outlet for their own creativity.

This is just a sign of the times, RPGs are no longer marketed towards RPG fans but rather towards the Call of Duty crowd. It's all about the money.

Tell me where I said RPGs should never provide any choice?

I play old RPGs from time to time. I helped kickstart Project Eternity. I'm also looking in to ShadowRun and have for a year now been trying to get a DnD game set up. All I was saying is that I'd rather have a better, more engaging story, rather than one that provides and illusion of choice and suffers because of it.

Oh, and let's be honest, you probably won't even play this game and will still end up complaining about it. I'm getting that kind of vibe from your posts.

 

[likalaruku]

I remember the old days when the name EA used to bring smiles to faces.

 

[Muunokhoi]

I remember the days when rpg was linked to Neverwinter Nights and Fallout 1,2 now its just this repetitive clone games with sub-par stories and inovations.

 

[DustyDrB]

It actually is a huge negative for me too. I'm still keeping an open mind about Dragon Age 3, but they aren't starting off well with that bit of news. The Dwarven Commoner origin was my favorite in the first game, and I'm always a fan of more choice. I did really like the voice acting for the female Hawke, as her snark was pretty great. But then again, I felt like I was dragged along by the game without having the major quest choices that Origins gave me. Hawke felt less like a proactive champion and more like the person who just happened to be there.

 

[OpticalJunction]

This sucks. I want more choice, they should be heading in the direction of letting us play as qunari and other races instead of limiting it to only human. Bad call bioware, and very reminiscent of the limiting choices of DA2. I think this proves they still believe in da2's gameplay design and that da3 will be more like the sequel than origins.

 

[Milanezi]

I enjoyed both DA games, and am not afraid to admit than enjoyed Dragon Age 2 MUCH more than Dragon Age 1.

For all the (fake)freedom Dragon Age 1 had, I felt that despite the pretty good story, the player's main character and some NPC were horribly left to the wastes with very poor personalities and simplistic stories, Morrigan was one of the few, if not the ONLY exceptions, unfortunately they gave her that awful and bugged Witch Hunt DLC, but that didn't make her background bad, she was a great character through and through. Dragon Age 1 was good, but poorly executed in my opinion. Last but not least, I played through it 2 or 3 times, so that means I enjoyed it, but every time it felt like a cheap Neverwinter Nights knock-off (unless you read the BOOKS to get into the whole universe, but as much as i enjoy reading books, reading game books that contain important info is really really wrong, yes I'm looking at a MANY games out there).

Dragon Age 2 had almost zero character customization (at least important ones), but that allowed them to give a better focus to Hawke's story, he felt REAL and tangible, however the price paid was that the character felt less "melted" with the gamer, because he's not really your character (granted, THAT killed the traditional RPG concept), but the writer's. Also, my choices in Dragon Age 2 felt more powerful, I felt like really deciding things, maybe they didn't have actual gameplay impact - but no game seems to be successful at that once you look deeper - but they were decisions to events that really spoke to me; such as that whole affair with mages and towers near the end (if you played you know what I'm talking about). However, everyone com plains about this and I must do so as well... Side quests are a complex matter, some games like Fallout will throw at you all these complex side missions that end up building the whole game, other games like Borderlands and BOTH DA use them as a mechanic for you to waste more time leveling up, in this case, the least you can do is trick me with interesting new areas, like in Borderlands and Dragon Age 1, Dragon Age 2 was more sincere, and that isn't always the good option, it was a pain in the ass going over the same caves to kill a number of different enemies.

All in all I enjoyed DA 2 more, because of the better characterization, and better story overall. I give great focus to storytelling (and graphics, but since that wasn't an issue...), so Dragon Age 2 took the gold for having a 360º character, even if he/she wasn't really MY character, at least his/hers choices were mine to make (or at least that's the impression I had)...

 

[Milanezi]

I remember the days when rpg was linked to Neverwinter Nights and Fallout 1,2 now its just this repetitive clone games with sub-par stories and inovations.

That, despite what I just posted, I could totally dig an absolute freedom of choice in your character, as long as he/she felt REAL afterwards.

 

[Michael Rogov]

The problem is that they're forcing us into a specific background and sticking with the voiced protagonist.

They don't understand that in doing so, they kill the R in RPG. TOR for example, who said that I wanted my Scoundrel to be snarky? Oh, he's a scoundrel so he has to be snarky because umm ummm ummm Han Solo. What if I wanted my bounty hunter to be a moppy crybaby. Nope, he's automatically a badass.

Taking away races is a legitimate complaint. Again, if you want to force me into a certain persona with only a few facets, I'll play Gears of War or something. Three dialogue options at a time with set ways of expressing those ideas isn't REAL roleplaying.

Of course the only real roleplaying you could ever do is tabletop games, but silent protagonists were as close as we'd ever get to that. I could write a whole essay about how silent protagonists are the key to fantastic roleplaying, but the point is that they help accomplish what voiced protagonists will never be able to.

 

[Falseprophet]

This is welcome news.

Fantasy authors have spent over a decade crawling out from under Tolkien's shadow. Now the only epic fantasy stories written today that still have elves and dwarves are i) Dungeons & Dragons/Pathfinder-related, and ii) video game RPGs. And in those media, the differences boil down to cosmetic, and maybe a few gameplay mechanics. You rarely get any opportunity to actually explore what it means to live for hundreds of years or under an intractable, ossifying caste system because you're too busy raiding tombs and killing orcs.

I wouldn't have minded playing a qunari, or any non-human race in Mass Effect, because they were actually unique. But I am sick to death of elves and dwarves. I never liked playing them in D&D. In fantasy novels they always fell into predictable roles. Good riddance.