#in the bit about the quote btw I'm not referring to the staffmembers who expressed these things btw

[felassan]

They said that if you’re not careful... you can kill your followers off? And there’s more POC characters?!? And more grey warden/horror content? Dragon age is reverting back to origins’ horror rpg roots. We are so blessed!

Hi Nonnie! It’s exciting times  ٩(*•͈ ꇴ •͈*)و

This answer I put under a cut as it became a bit overlong.

Yep, here is the quote for reference: “Decision-making can mean that a party member lives or a party member dies, and it means owning your outcome and reactivity to the choices that you do make.” The way this vid was presented I think this kind of stuff is mostly a more generic nod to like BioWare’s legacy of creating games with tough decisions and the DA franchise’s recurring feature of choice and consequence, as well as a ‘hey guys we’re still focusing on the RPG and character/story-based elements of this game (we know you have concerns about the game and things like the live elements stuff)’. I hope the apparent return to character-focus that’s presented in this vid (the found family angle they were hinting at) is a thing. And on the party members being able to die thing, it takes me back to DAO when you could kill Zevran rather than recruiting him, kill Leliana at the Urn, kill Wynne at the Circle Tower etc. Btw here I don’t mean I want to kill chars at will, I’m just referring to how in these situations character death was the outcome of a series of your choices or a choice. It also makes me think of choices with higher personal stakes and higher potential impacts, like the decision to take your sibling to the Deep Roads in DA2 but not thinking to bring Anders, or what happens in Trespasser with Iron Bull if you opted to let the Chargers die. More of that please. It gives choices weight, characters agency, the world reactivity.

I hope that for Bellara and Davrin, the VAs are reflected in their respective character designs. Representation on these fronts hasn’t been great, so that would be good. Here’s a good post about Bellara. I also hope that Bellara and Davrin have front-and-center (like Cass in DAI) or plot-relevant roles (like Morrigan or Alistair in DAO), or prominence in the marketing cycle (like how Cassandra and Varric were the go-to companions to be shown in tease screenshots, gameplay videos, trailers etc during the DAI runup), and that all such characters are written well and handled respectfully. I think lady Qunari is very likely a companion, and I’m interested in Badass Elf and third-from-the-right, whoever they are, if they’re characters.

Grey Wardens and Warden-things sure were prominent in the video weren’t they? Even the character doing some of the demo fighting was wearing Warden armor. This makes sense given the Warden civil war, the return of the griffons, the mysterious activities of the Wardens in the DAI epilogue and in TN, the looming threat of tainted lyrium spread, and what the Wardens discovered in the Ghilan’nain lab. So many plotthreads hanging. The prominence of the hanging Warden plotthreads gives me hope that Davrin will have an important role. And, I really hope we finally get to see Weisshaupt. I will say though that my preference would be to not be playing a Grey Warden PC again, I like new and fresh scenarios.

The Lovecraftian, horror, unsettling-type vibes were present in TN:

[quote] In terms of genre, a return to something closer to dark fantasy. A more grimdark/crapsack world setting once again like our Dragon Age: Origins roots, less of a light-hearted feel. The book really leans into stuff like eldritch Lovecraftian creatures, ghost-story vibes, crime noir and body horror. Interestingly one of the devs that stuck out to me a bit on Twitter these last few months is the Lead Creature Creator person

and it’s neat to see that continue in the first look, what with those sea monsters, the reference to hard-boiled detective stories, the talk of choices perhaps leading to squadmates dying, the red lyrium darkspawn, the pulsing fleshy sacs in some of the combat demo bits, etc. Said dev was even a highlight of the video imo. :D