#replaying all the dragon age games

[makerwatchoverme]

Time to get conscripted in the Grey Wardens :’)

[zaahvi]

GLORY TO THE RISEN GODS

[araneapeixes]

happy dragon age month, i miss my homies so I doodled them in some simple camp clothes (bc im bg3pilled)

[spitedemon]

i really don’t think it’s “typical dragon age fandom nonsense” for people to be genuinely upset about the world state choices. combat, level design, art direction, gameplay gimmicks, those have all varied across each dragon age game. the one thing that’s remained constant are nods to our previous choices.

i wasn’t expecting my HoF to come riding in on a griffon, but i can’t find a monument dedicated to warden tabris somewhere around the anderfels? lucanis couldn’t have some lines about the time that one arainai boy was stirring up trouble in antiva city? you’re gonna tell me that making a mage the new divine wouldn’t have some impact on nevarra and antiva? on the anderfels, the supposed most devout militant andrastian nation in thedas? you’re saying nobody in the north is paying attention to who rules orlais or ferelden? come on.

[grandpasauce]

"bioware's doing the best they can" "they have to trim the fat SOMEWHERE" "they have to move on from the previous games EVENTUALLY" "they ALWAYS have disregarded things from past games" guys........... (ramblings under the cut)

my man on earth....... morrigan is literally claimed By The Devs to be a prevalent character in datv and ur telling me NOTHING that happned to her is worth putting into the background of datv?

you can claim bioware is just doing their job and have all the excuses in the world for them but when u get down to it.... they really just didnt want to deal with anything from the past three games... they didnt want to put the work in to add even CODEXES (one the the easiest cheapest forms of implementing background lore) to this game... the literal game director barely even knows who ZEVRAN is (a MAIN CHARACTER from the FIRST of the series) because they didnt bother going back to replay or research dragon age as a series beyond dai... like... i understand the devs wanting to simplify their jobs and i actually totally agree, they needed to get rid of the keep, that was too much info for them to keep up with.

But they cut back SO MUCH, like an unnecessary amount. Three? THREE choices? AND ALL OF THEM ARE SOMEHOW RELATED TO SOLAS? NOTHING the inquisitor did was notable beyond their relationship to Solas? Nothing??

people are using leliana as an example of something bioware has retconned before because shes alive regardless of if u killed her in dao or not. except the problem with that is that the games DOES address the fact that she's supposed to be dead. like it very much does that??? hello?? id rather they bring her back and address it than just totally retcon it and never explain it

this is such a horrible, disrespectful decision on bioware's part and making excuses for them is WILD. like. the devs are fine i promise u. stopppp telling people to **touch grass** and **take some deep breaths** after I myself have invested over half my life into playing these games just to get slapped with "lol actually none of that matters now hehe" jfc

like i understand fandom can get a lil crazy but im telling u this isnt an overreaction lmao let people be upset about things that theyve poured their lives into for 15+ years

im still buying the game, im still playing it, ill still love it, but MAN this has kind of totally ruined my trust in the devs and im back to being nervous about how they will address things in this game and beyond because it really feels like a big fuck u to long time fans and idk how they wouldnt think it would be perceived as such.

[corseque]

I'm just laughing... like in the scene after the big signal fire battle where everybody gets betrayed and dies, you're there with Alistair trying to figure out what to do, and there just happens to be an elven goddess right there, saying, "ah yeah, that sounds good" "no that sounds stupid" "that might work" "oh that sounds like a plan to me"

Flemythal I love you

this game series is about getting pep talks from ancient deities and rising to the occasion

[lostburgerprince]

you can't "just add a few codexes". you have to write those codexes. you have to write them in the proper voice and style and so it doesn't just fit ONE specific person's worldstate but anyone who also may have made the same decision as them. (you might even have to write multiple variations of the SAME CODEX to account for gender/race/class/romance) you have to edit them. you have to decide where those codexes are going to appear. you have to put them somewhere where people who want to read them will find them. you have to program them showing up. you have to flag it so it only shows up in sPECIFIC versions of the game. (because god forbid it doesn't and breaks someone else's immersion) you have to bug test that. you have to hope it still works when it ships.

and after all that the people complaining might still pick up said codex and close out the window immediately. or run past it entirely and complain that they made a selection in the worldstate that never paid off.

and then you've just spent all that time fleshing out something that's just a small nod to a very small percentage of players. time you could have spent on the current plot or companions. time you could have spent on making *active* decisions matter. these things can easily take up weeks or months like you wouldn't fucking believe.

[obsessedwithvarric]

Been doing a lot of thinking about the "Varric is going to die in DAV" stance.

Either Bioware really want us to think he is going to die and are deliberately teasing it, or he actually does die, and they just aren't hiding it.

But what I keep thinking is, if he dies, I guess we are going to know how he felt in worldstates where Hawke never came home from the fade.

[floppycacti]

New header image because DA:D has me in its GRIP

Dragon age rant under the cut

If they don’t give me an option to save this boy I’m gonna RIOT anyway Solas makes me sad and the inquisitor makes me sad and these games make me sad it’s just one big giant sadness rollercoaster of emotions

[mourn-and-watch]

idc if i've already talked about it because it drives me crazy every time i replay this game but. i love companion introduction scenes in da2 so much. this game was rushed as fuck and its writing often is all over the place but oh boy they put everything into their characters' first appearances. these 2011 cheap graphic scenes sometimes have unexpectedly cool camera angles and unexpected movements that don't even look as awkwardly as bioware animations usually do and the best thing is that they tell about the characters so much.

when he first appears, varric catches a thief who stole hawke's purse and shoots him, obviously showing off, to return the purse, obviously trying to impress hawke with that display of his skills and silver tongue. anders is in the middle of healing a kid, seemingly tired, but the second he senses a potential danger he grabs his staff and prepares to fight back. isabela gets threatened by some thugs while she had a drink but quickly shows them she is not the one they should pick a fight with. fenris rips off slaver's heart with his bare hands and then politely apologises for the trouble. and so on, and so forth. every one of them (maybe with exception for hawke and their siblings, but they still get a cool fighting scene and a banter in varric's retelling) gets a scene that summarize everything you should know about them for now and gives you an idea of what you should expect. it is, like, the point of introduction scenes, and it is executed so nicely i'd go as far as to say that da2 has the best ones out of the whole series

[wizardsix]

about 30 hours into veilguard and while I have an essay worth of my problems w the game and how this is absolutely not ten year's worth of developing I do want to say what I do like. the maps (visuals/progression/exploration), combat, and the companions (only five of them. neve and taash annoy me and I would absolutely not recruit them if this game didn't force you to)... overall it's all right on its own but it's no dragon age game.

[magnetic-rose]

would yall kill me if i said i like veilguard a lot more than inquisition.

[araneapeixes]

My dragons have aged again and I'm replaying Origins. here's my warden Ailea, and also a comparison doodle of my first warden from 8 years ago

[coffeeworldsasaki]

It's totally predictable but I still got a couple minutes of confusion when someone didn't agree with me when I said that people think Dao Is a dark fantasy unlike all the games that came after just because there's women raped and used to breed

[beaulesbian]

how i've been feeling these past two weeks or so