Erin Age: Keybearer Pages 1 2 NEXT | |
The keybearer cometh. | |
If you guys keep leaking Bioware's trade secrets, they're gonna send some totally-not-Star-Wars bounty hunters after you. | |
Yes, yes, that point seems to be hammered in. I don't know why, I just find it fun. | |
Did you just spoil what the mark turns out to be? | |
I saw the title and hoped there was going to be some Kingdom Hearts joke. I am very disappoint. | |
Villager: Only Erin can save us! Save us Erin! Erin! ERIN! ERIN, WHY AREN'T YOU SAVING US ERIN? | |
It worked in Saints Row. | |
The stare into the middle distant in panel 2 had me in stitches. | |
Well, not like it is that different of how ME started. You just basically bump into macguffin and become the chosen one, by grace of bumbling around and happenstance. | |
I'll put this in spoilers just in case. | |
Yes & no. Shepard was already supposed to become a Spectre, the beacon just gave him an important mission. The Inquisitor was some random person passing by. | |
Which Saints Row? | |
Nonononononononononononoooooo | |
I'd say this is similar, yet slightly better than the Bethesda approach. The Bethesda approach tends require far less involvement of the player than "standing there while important things happen" does though.
Dude. Spoilers | |
In the first one you join the Saints because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time and Rather than try to kill you the Saints rescued you from the Vice Kings, who were trying to kill you, and you jointed them because of that. | |
And she will look down and whisper, "no."
In fact, I'd say the Boss is pretty much a self-made man/woman. Or we could just go with psychopath. S/he climbs the ranksm becomes a celebrities, parlays that into an empire, parlays victories into a political advantage, and takes on the forces of Omicron Persei 8 because s/he's the freaking President now.
There is no Erin. Only Zuuhl. | |
Bioware writing never seizes to amaze me, and not in a good way... | |
I actually think that it's a good thing about this game although it comes across as a big twist halfway through even though I felt like it was kinda obvious. | |
I still think it's a better approach than "farmby with a dream acquired greatness because of ancient prophecy" And you can (sort of ) ackowlwdge this in game, also I like how they don't crown you "inquisitor" until you've " proved" yourself Aaaaand I'm really glad my charachters a Nobel...none of that social mobility crap!
I think people would have been far more forgiving had the game been better...I haven't played it but maybe its the idea that ones choices have no effect, the problem is that we as players (in a bioware game particularly) are trained to expect a certain outcome...and if its different we think we've done something wrong.... a bit like how Mass Effect screwed any "actual" moral choices by color coding it and punishing you from deviating also I know I tend to go into full on "explain away everything fangirl mode" when it comes to bioware games (and you'd think I'd have learned my lesson after ME3 but aparently not) but (only having finished the first act) the whole thing feels more like a clever PR move on part of the inquisition, it doesn't actually matter if the PC is chosen by Andraste or not, what matters is the people believe it, and unlike other Bioware games its not just you running around single handedly doing shit, you have armys/spys/delegates at your disposal it makes it feel more realistic my point is I don't like "be really really powerful" stories most of the time eather, but at least IMO it makes sense in context, unlike Bethesda games where your super duper powerful simply because your the player, literally thats the only explanation | |
The story is your average "Grand Savior" theme. Well, they tried to go away from it in Dragon Age 2 by making it the story where the local "Grand Savior" fails to stop centuries of accrued distrust and hatred from reaching the boiling point. ***
The funny thing that many people forget about Mass Effect is that as soon as she touches the Mcguffin, Shepard becomes absolutely certain that the Reapers are real: it's not a conclusion she reaches after finding clues during the main story missions: as soon as her first visit to the citadel, she's jumping up and down and shouting "Reapers! Reapers! Reapers!": no wonder the Power That Be treat her like an unhinged delusional paranoiac for most of the trilogy. | |
Act III's plot was moved forward by stupidity, no golden ending could have saved that in my eyes. Most of the conflict is still caused by impossible level of stupidity in DA:I aswell, and the characters even lampshade it, like that this is the single worst thing they could have done/acting like a villain cliché everyone expects. Granted I haven't finished the game yet, but I'm not holding my breath for anything Jade Empire level of awesomeness. | |
That's understandable. Continuing to insist that the Reapers aren't real after Sovereign attacks? Not so much. Especially since their explanations for the attack (Saren made up the Reapers in order to get the Geth to follow him and Sovereign was actually made by the Geth) are mutually exclusive. | |
My question is why do people think this is worse than "You have been ordained by the prophecy"? Or hell, in DAO you became a hero by virtue of not dying from an arrow instantly and being rescued by a dragon lady thing. I guess people will hate Bioware/anything new no matter what. | |
The choices made do have effects: whether Merrill's clan get slaughtered or not, whether Fenris is taken back by his former master, still hounded by him or free to go where he wants, whether Hawke's sibling survives the deep road expedition or not, whether Aveline found a new love who helped her get rid of the massive chip on her shoulder or not... Plenty of choices do affect the overall story: it's just the final confrontation which is inevitable, which shouldn't have surprised anyone since the game's first scene between Varric and Cassandra establish that the Chantry itself is on the verge of collapsing: even if we don't know the details immediately, it's clear from the game's very first minute that Hawke either failed to stop the ongoing crisis or fanned the flames: and in fact, the game does allow you to chooses Hawke's role: mine was sympathetic to Anders' view and merciless toward Templars who abused their power, but had no animosity toward those who just wished to correctly do their job, and he felt no remorse about planting a knife between Anders' shoulders after his final murderous act of defiance; he remained willfully blind to Merrill going down the rabbit hole yet his greatest triumph was avoiding a catastrophic final showdown with her vengeful clan: others' will have fully agreed with Anders, or opposed him at every turn; they'll have pushed Merrill to destroy her Illuvian, or will have mercilessly slaughtered her whole clan when they turned against her. The game's overarching theme is that some events are simply too big to be handled by a single man/woman, no matter how strong, gifted, or charismatic they are: it's foreshadowed by the role played by Kirkwall's viscount: far from being inept or foolish, he proves to be a reasonable and open-minded man trapped between zealots doing all they can to undermine him: when Hawke become quasi-co-viscount alongside the Knight-Commander, he (unless he's either as wrathful as Anders or a Templar yes-man) falls into the same trap: reasonable leader trapped between zealots who resent him for not allowing them to have the showdown they crave. Overall, Dragon Age II's stroy is way better than Origin's, not only because it avoids the classic demonic invasion/evil overlord story to concentrate on its characters dealing with the socio-political issues established in the lore, but also because unlike most of Bioware's tale, it gives its backstory the opportunity to really affect the events instead of being mere decorum while some overpowered protagonist kung-fu-jesus everything in his wake. ***
I agree that pulling a Suikoden was a smart move (especially given that Konami dropped the ball on this series) ***
Stupid, surely, but it's still understandable: I can perfectly see the council members looking at each other until one of them openly says what they were all thinking: | |
and that actually sounds really cool but as I said mabye poeple don't interperet like that, because of shit goes wrong in thease games its not "oh this is an important story theme" its I did something wrong or you failed mabye because of the nature of Bioware games or games in general it feels more like "you can't win the game" rather than "this was the story" now was this the fault of peoples expectations or not communicated in the game? I don't know, mabye the former. I haven't played DA2 my point it I just find it hard to believe people didn't like DA2 purley because it wasn't a typical "chosen one master of the universe" story, not when thats the first thing people roll their eyes at when it comes to narrative conventions, blaming people for that feels dangerously close to "they just didn't get it" | |
A lot of the stuff the inquisitor does, especially early in the game, is completely by accident. If anything Bioware is critiquing the whole special snowflake hero plot. Not as well as Obsidian with KOTOR2 I'm afraid, but Bioware wouldn't want to make their past works look that bad. That part where you meet the big bad for the first time, I picked the option for her to say that she had intentionally kept him talking all along so she could distract him and unleash her secret plan. I was laughing so hard because that felt completely untrue and the inquisitor was talking out of her ass. | |
The reason people were upset about the story was because the story was just plain bad, not because you were not the chosen one. If you want to look at a good implementation of a more personal story then just look at the Witcher. Geralt has his own battle to fight, while to major factions that hate each other (Scoia'tel and the Knights of the flaming something) are going at it. You still can't make peace between them, but you have choices with consequences. You can join one of the sights and actually fight for that side. You can make decision that will affect how your personal goal of defeating a third factions will go. You have choices, there are consequences and people like it. Additionally to there being zero consequences to any choice you make the story was overall just plain bad. The big "twist" is just retarded and drama for the sake of drama. Then again you still think that people were angry at ME 3 because the ending wasn't happy so i can allready tell that you had paid zero attention to the whole thing. | |
To be fair, a similar thing was done in Arcanum. Your character is proclaimed the chosen one by virtue of having survived a blimp crash. | |
I kinda like the fact your powerless someways. One big things about DA2 is that choice don't change anything big but affects the small and personal. overall it shows you what type of person Hawk is and how his legend is view. | |
Don't bait and switch, don't let me rescue everyone except for a few red shirts and one guy/girl who CHOOSES heroic sacrifice for two games and then finish it with an object lesson in the callousness of the universe and one man's impotence to do anything but nudge it a bit towards a gaggle of shitty outcomes. The game was never meant or written to be a gritty Deus Ex knock off until the end (and Arrival). It was meant and written to be a schlocky TTGL knock off.
I disagree, the status quo in Dragon Age is what annoys me about it. Mage revolution is as much part of the status quo as mage slavery (whether by the chantry, a mage hierarchy or by the communists doesn't really matter). What I actually want is going to disgust you much much more ... I want a happy ending. I want the veil to be strengthened so possession is no longer possible, I want a cheap lyrium amulet to be invented which protects a person against bloodmagic. BAM any reason to subject mages to slavery obliterated and we can truly break the status quo, they can have freedom. | |
I love how that guy had the helmet ready for Erin right away. I wonder where he was hiding it. | |
Maybe you'll have it: but it's clear that the writers named their series "Dragon Age" because the Age, that is, the 99 years long period used in Chantry Calendar is the true protagonist: the series overarching theme is that the Andrastian Era is coming to a close and the Dragon Age is its final period of turmoil, mirroring the real world's history: the fall of Tevinter and the rise of the Chantry mirror the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the Dragon Age happening roughly a millennium later mirrors the 14th century crises (plural): the period where famine, epidemics, wars put the nail in the strictly feudal systems which had prevailed in Western Europe and made way for the Renaissance. So you may have your happy ending: in Dragon Age 7 or more, after several decades, many tragedies, and with most of the original cast dead and buried (except Cullen: poor guy is obviously fated to witness it all). | |
what The status quo for Dragon Age was Circles, Templars, and Apostates. DA2's ending was, literally 'The Status Quo has been shattered for this world, and the Chantry is shitting itself because of it.' Complaining that mage rebellion is the status quo isn't a valid point--it's nonsense. It's like saying the status quo for Star Wars is Han trapped in Carbonite, just because that's how Empire Strikes Back always ends no matter how many times you watch it.
People who want happy endings for Dragon Age aren't aware of what genre of fantasy it is. Gritty dark fantasy doesn't end well for everyone. | |
From a real world, human perspective, we see this sort of thing a lot. People too prideful to admit they were wrong and quite happy to double down. ven (and sometimes especially) in government. My only real problem is that this seems to be everywhere in sci-fi and fantasy. This big looming evil, often one from the past, that nobody acknowledges and even scoffs at the idea. I mean, in ME specifically, it's not like they were there for the last cycle, but often times we have recordings and prophecies, and people are still like "That old tripe? Just a fairy tale! Now fetch me my elf slave girls so that I might have some fun before the dragon races later!" I mean, tropes are tropes for a reason, but it gets boring eventually.
I'm not sure people are, but I'll take a swing. Because "you are the chosen one" is dumb and played out, but "you are the chosen one because you happen to be standing here and I'm too lazy to look any further" is dumber. I think they're both dumb, though.
So you point out something else that's totally dumb, and then you say people will hate Bioware/new things no matter what? Hell, let's ignore Bioware and focus on the concept of "new." The problem is that this isn't new. | |
And mages will continue to be born, kicking a bunch of them to Tevinter is no long term solution. Letting them run free Is Not An Option by decree of the Bioware writers ... so enslavement (and more revolution) by some similar system is just a couple years away. | |
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