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Origins to me struggled with dullness. I think the closest game to origins tonally is probably Pillars of Eternity, the first one, in part because it’s the only Obsidian game since Alpha Protocol to largely avoid the ‘zany Le CraZy 🤪’ “humor” that marred every other game they released from them onward. But like Pillars, I think Origins is flawed. The combat is MMO lite with limited strategic depth and very bad effects and animations, much of the dialogue is wooden and dull and feels more suited to a WoW quest text box than an interactive cutscene, and the voiceless protagonist (which I also felt fatally wounded BG3) works in a sandbox like Skyrim but not really in a BioWare game. I also thought the art style always came across as very cheap, like a “art assets pack - dark fantasy edition” you could pick up off the Unreal Store or something (I don’t know if it works like that, but I believe it does). The overall story, despite some good moments around Loghain, the excellent Deep Roads segment, and a couple of the companions, is also pretty generic and predictable.
2 really improves on every aspect of 1. The 10 (well, 7) year framing is grand and ambitious, and the game has a good sense of time passing given they didn’t even have the budget for different weather in each year. The story within a story bookend of Varric’s interrogation isn’t obtrusive but adds some intrigue. The companions are too the man and woman, with the possible exception of Fenris, great and have great stories and perspectives on the world in a way no other set of RPG companions in a AAA game have ever had. One might have more affection for the Normandy crew, but they’re not as interesting or multifaceted.
Kirkwall is magnificent. It’s a shame that putting the longtime franchise art director in charge of Veilguard allegedly ruined the creative direction of that game (according to Jason Schreier) because if he’d stuck to art he would have done great work. Byzantine-Brutalist Fantasy, heavy on the concrete and stone, hugely referential of 1840s gothic revival - you can see the Houses of Parliament and a solid part of Mayfair in the building design. It’s unlike anything else. The dull haze of the Wounded Coast, the brilliant mossy green of the mountain around the Dalish camp, the work in color alone is stunning, and each location is graded beautifully, such that the Deep Roads feel deeper and more mysterious in 2 than they do in any other game. Given the limitations of the age, I think a lot of the object work was also great, notably the Lyrium idol which of course became central to the franchise’s overall plot (and I love that, that ruining the world and causing the deaths of millions is arguably Hawke’s ultimate legacy). Hawke’s mansion is one of the coziest houses in RPGs, the hall, the decoration of the bedroom. With the exception of the “iconic” act 3 armor, the gear is dull but not mostly ugly, down to earth but not as unstylish as in Origins where you really have to mod to get anything not horrific.
The music in 2 is extraordinary. Inon Zur has a reputation as a workmanlike composer who churns out passable genre themes, but in 2 he’s at his most creative, he brings in new instruments, he’s inspired by Eastern Orthodox music, by middle eastern instruments. The sound of Kirkwall isn’t quite European but it’s not “Asiatic” or “African” or “Mayan” in the cringe way fantasy games are when they go to another biome. Rogue Heart, Mage Pride, the Wounded Coast theme (which had a brief play in Origins at the edge of the mage like), all timers.
I think 2’s dialogue is very good. There are cringe lines, but far fewer than anything by Larian or Obsidian in the last decade. And even widely praised Disco Elysium has mountains of unintentionally cringe dialogue where it’s like yes it’s nice you’ve read Baudrillard and yes it’s nice you’re commenting on what’s happened to European green parties since 1991 but also this just isn’t compelling or good writing. Anders is a really good depiction of an extremist, especially when you’re arguing with him (especially in a romance). Sebastian is an almost George W Bush type of figure tempered by a Presbyterian Scottishness and played magnificently. The regional accents are great. The acting is some of BioWare’s best across the board. The Qunari aren’t “reactionary” of course, they’re closer to communists. Unlike Disco Elysium they’re not a simple analogue for a faction at the second international or whatever. They’re not Islamists. They’re not China. They’re zealous egalitarians, central planners, ruled by a matriarchy, hate and afraid of magic, vaguely Buddhist maybe, but with a strong early church influence. They’re ideologically idiosyncratic in a fantastic way.
The gameplay is a mixed bag. I love 2’s combat and think returning to aspects of its rock-paper-scissors dynamic is one of the only good creative decisions Veilguard made. Chaining together combos, freezing, smashing, disorienting, it’s one of the best pure tab-targeting implementations ever. It might be the best RTwP combat of all time. The ability to chain together IFTT statements in the AI page for companions is also great, you can program relatively complex behaviors yourself.
You’re right about Friendship/Rivalry. I do think the whole game sets up mages/templars well - the Qunari are part of that, too, it’s central to their ongoing war with the northern humans; the game is pretty nuanced. The other Dragon Ages overwhelmingly sympathize with mages, 2 has tons of examples of psycho rapist murderer mages abusing their power and treating the muggle population awfully. 2 has a certain briskness, David Gaider has said most of the game was written and edited in one pass, essentially, no real review, you’d write a line of dialogue and production was so fast that nobody was really looking at it. I think that gives it a confidence that’s so rare in AAA games outside of Rockstar where they think they are (and are) above the critics. Made in a year, thoroughly compelling, and one of very few games made about politics by committed progressives that limits its preachiness to some extent and has a real ideological depth. We’ll never see anything else like it, although if and when AI generation gets good enough I’ll generate another 250 hours.
Sometimes I think you're deliberately trolling us with your ludic preferences.
It’s a slog in the best way. It’s a slog in the way that Rockstar clearly thought very carefully about the fact that you have to suffer through a 30 second animation when looting someone in Red Dead 2 is. Its deliberate. You really do feel like you’re far, far underground, at least 5 or 6 loading screens away from civilization. The old CRPGs had more of that.
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My main issue with DA2 is how it dropped the pretence, story-wise, of being anything else than a game with a strictly structured narrative.
Of course, games usually benefit from some kind of narrative structure, while real life typically doesn't have one, but good writing smoothes over the seams and makes the story still flow in a realistic way. Now Bioware, since their beginnings, have seen people enjoy when the writing in their games forces them to engage with difficult philosophical, ethical and moral questions with no obviously good answer. But up until ME2 and DA2, it still felt like those choices happened fairly organically. Sure, most storylines had them, but sometimes they were subtle, or the deeply held morality of the player made it so that the player would not even notice they were there. Up to that point, Bioware seemingly understood these moral questions were in the service of worldbuilding; it adds a layer of realism when the two sides of an issue are not saints vs comic book villains, when at least the comic book villains make a good point once in a while, or when perfect is the enemy of good.
ME2 and especially DA2 laid bare the narrative structure; the whole game world felt like a contrivance to push those toy moral puzzles rather than something that would have happened in a consistent, well-written world. It felt, to me at least, like the narrative equivalents of being told "You can defeat this asshole who is oppressing people, but it requires you to personally skin every puppy in Kirkwall with a potato peeler and roll them in salt, how do you feel about that, player? Huh?" or "You have a choice, do the right thing or not, but if you do all your family and friends will be raped, tortured and murdered". It feels like they created the story backwards from the dillema they wanted to push on the player, rather than build a coherent universe that has dillemas.
Would you say it happened organically in Knights of the Old Republic or Jade Empire?
I'd agree that it felt fairly organic in Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, but those aren't really games about morality. BG is sort of about whether you choose to turn away from or embrace the power of Bhaal, but those games are so sidequest-heavy that you don't spend most of the game thinking about it, and for the most part you just make decisions based on what seems sensible at the time. Baldur's Gate does not even track your moral decisions systematically in any way - the closest it has is reputation, which is clearly more about how you are perceived. NWN does have alignment shift slightly in response in your choices, but in a very granular way (loot a house, +5 to Chaotic, etc.).
However, KotOR and JE both sell themselves as games about morality, and have a big moral choice system that their mechanics are structured around. I thought that both of them do present you with a series of contrived moral dilemmas just so you always have a Light Side/Dark Side or an Open Palm/Closed Fist choice. They were usually cartoonish and silly, but they were unmissable.
Perhaps it felt less jarring then because KotOR is a Star Wars game, and very blatant LS/DS choices are part of that franchise? But Jade Empire starts to give you the idea that OP is not good and CF is not evil, and while that was laughable as implemented in JE itself, it's clearly a prototype for Paragon/Renegade.
I suppose my perception is that BioWare sort of flanderised themselves over time. Baldur's Gate doesn't really have a morality system but it does have themes of the protagonist struggling with his/her evil nature. KotOR and JE externalise it, ME built the whole game around it, and...
So I think Dragon Age is an interesting comparison, because Dragon Age does not have a morality system as such. Dragon Age replaces morality with a more granular system of companion approval. There aren't objectively good or evil choices, just choices that different companions like or don't like. In theory this fits well with the early DA games' attempt to be dark fantasy, emphasising necessary evils, sacrifice, complicity, and murky situations where there are no good options. At times it even works well. Do you execute Loghain or not? There isn't a clear right or wrong answer to that question, but your choice will have consequences either way, especially for your companions.
However, you can tell that Dragon Age is written by people who have the KotOR/JE/ME script still in their heads, and they keep presenting you with contrived dilemmas that feel like they're from earlier games. There aren't little blue or red icons, but obviously sparing the mages is the LS/OP/Paragon/blue option, and the Rite of Annulment is the DS/CF/Renegade/red option. Saving the elves is blue and recruiting the werewolves is red. Destroying the Anvil is blue and making the golems is red. DA's promise of more interesting choices is usually not lived up to. Helping Caridin is the good choice and helping Branka is the evil choice. It's not subtle.
And the same in DA2, and then by Inquisition I think Dragon Age has more-or-less given up on being dark fantasy entirely. It is a pity, because while it was certainly imperfect, I did think Origins was on to something.
The whole concept of the series is exploring this aspect of the Star Wars universe; how can normal, realistic human beings can become what appeared to be comic book villains, so it felt like the morality system and its difficult questions was in service of the world building. Yes, the Sith are comic book villains, but the comic book villains occasionally make a good point. And I'm reminded of that planet in KOTOR where a Republic officer is decidedly guilty of murder; this is the kind of realistic dillema that helps the world building. KOTOR2 also works a lot to knock the Jedi down a peg, not intervening against the mandalorians was a problematic decision that with the benefit of hindsight the Jedi love to act all superior about, nothing says that it needed to have happened that way, especially if the Jedi had been led into the war by wiser masters rather than hothead Revan. I don't remember much of Jade Empire, I remember the thesis of closed fist being not exactly evil made sense when it came up in the game, but as applied in the game it felt disconnected (it would have made sense if CF was about letting or empowering people to deal with their own problems, but in the game it felt more like inflicting additional cruelty for the lulz)
Yeah, Bioware of that era was high on their own supply in that regard (and in the LGBT romances department) due to the praise they were getting. It's not the morality system I resent, but the contrivances made to force you to engage with the moral dilemmas. In the KOTOR murder case I mentioned, the murderer doesn't also randomly kidnaps your dog and forces you to chose between losing your dog or helping him off the hook; the reason why you would hesitate are utilitarian calculus (his condemnation could affect the balance of power on that planet), or perhaps an extremist belief that all Siths deserve death because the ideology they willingly embrace would spread it, etc... The story doesn't feel the need to twist itself to try and make the choice harder.
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I agree about the fantastic aesthetics, and wish we'd seen a Tevinter more inspired by Kirkwall than whatever it was Veilguard was trying to do. The music is solid though I think Inon Zur did better work on Origins, a game I would like to defend at length but won't attempt to do so tonight.
I think my main disagreement with you is about the writing. I agree that it's better than Larian or Obsidian's recent output, like The Outer Worlds, but I feel that's a pretty low bar. I'll agree that it's better than Disco Elysium, but I hated Disco Elysium, so I would consider almost anything better than sitting through another page of Disco Elysium trying to be clever.
It is worse, I think, than Origins, or Obsidian games like Fallout: New Vegas or Knights of the Old Republic II. I think the combination of a dialogue wheel and the three colour-coded personalities for Hawke really hurt the writing. I suppose one of my spicier opinions might be that the Mass Effect dialogue wheel has been a disaster for game writing. The three options are just never enough to express a nuanced opinion on anything, especially because they are always locked to the blue, purple, and red options. No matter what's going on, my options are always limited to a polite yes, an angry yes, and a 'funny' non sequitur.
I'm not sure I agree about mages, and in fact I think the Dragon Age fandom has distorted and flanderised mage issues. Origins presents the issue as genuinely complicated - the templars serve a necessary but unpleasant role, justified by the obvious threat of magical crime, but their ruthlessness makes them hard to like. Greagoir and Irving are colleagues who mostly work together well, but with a subtext of threat - Greagoir knows that Irving and his mages might be possessed or turn into monsters at any point, and Irving knows that Greagoir and his templars are their jailers and legally empowered to kill them, so there can never be complete trust between them. I feel that DA2 was a step back from that in favour of making both sides almost cartoonishly evil. Almost every single mage who slips the Circle becomes a blood mage or abomination, and meanwhile the templars have gone from necessarily ruthless to just plain abusive. Fortunately Inquisition dialled it back and instead showed a world where the breaking of the Circles has left both mages and templars in crisis, to the detriment of each order. It is obvious that mages are people who should not be abused or imprisoned; it is also obvious that either the templars or something like the templars are necessary because of the immense risk posed by magic. Inquisition generally refuses to demonise either group, and I also give it some credit for, in a move that surprised me, the templar sidequest being vastly better than the mage sidequest.
Unfortunately, in my experience, the BioWare fanbase is extremely progressive, identify heavily with mages, and have a flattened, 'All Templars are Bastards' level of understanding of the issues that the games evoke.
DA2 disappointed me because, well, the actual issue with mages is fairly straightforward. Mages are innocent people who are not responsible for their own powers; it doesn't seem like they deserve to be brutally oppressed. However, intensive training is necessary in order for mages to not be a threat to everyone around them, and magic is incredibly dangerous and a threat to everyone. Even leaving aside the everyday risks of possession, or the maddening influence of blood magic, one can hardly forget that magic were the ones who tainted the Golden City and unleash the Blights. It is very reasonable for the people of this world to want to control and regulate magic. So the question is - how should those concerns be balanced? How can magic be regulated, mages taught to use their powers constructively and punished if they go wrong, without threatening the rest of society? Unfortunately DA2 mostly flattens it to "do you like mages or do you hate mages?", and that's just the wrong question.
Interesting. I enjoy New Vegas but think it overrelies on zaniness and a certain kind of 1990s Mad Magazine humor, maybe almost Jim Goadesque, that has had its day and had had it long before that game was written. Knights 2 is good but so compromised by the development cycle, lack of voiced protagonist etc that it’s hard to evaluate. I like it as the most cogent criticism of Star Wars that is still, officially, Star Wars, but beyond that it’s more of a showcase that games Can Say Things than a great game, in my opinion. Maybe I just hate turn based games, which I do.
I like the dialogue wheel, or rather I like what the dialogue wheel enabled, which is a fully voiced protagonist. Here is the hidden subtext of the unvoiced protagonist - you too often play yourself. Commander Shepard, Hawke, Geralt, V, they have to sound like someone else for you to be ripped out of the isekai thing. If Mask of the Betrayer had had a voiced protagonist with a good backstory it would probably be one of the best RPGs of all time but of course it couldn’t - it was too tied to the ‘choose your own adventure’ format pioneered in the 70s that I find deeply uncompelling. Give me a woman, a man, a story, an identity. The Witcher and Cyberpunk lack a wheel, but I don’t think it makes those games better.
I am really lucky that I picked a Bleak Walker Paladin for my first and only Pillars playthrough. Too many games let you do the "let me talk to the other side first" back-and-forth dance that results in the best possible solution to the quest. Then at the end you refuse the money and are rewarded with a much more valuable unique item.
Doing either of these things as a Bleak Walker literally makes you weaker. Having to avoid benevolent or diplomatic choices was at the same time limiting and immensely liberating. You no longer feel obligated to explore the whole solution space because you'd be cheating yourself out of content otherwise, no, you are now engaging with it the way your character should.
Maybe in a different game, when trying to defuse a hostage situation, you would learn that the hostage-taker has been unfairly persecuted by the corrupt captain of the guard, would break into his mansion to search for evidence and would ultimately expose the real criminal, earning the praise of everyone. But now you are free to answer "(Unsheathe your weapon)" when the hostage-taker tells you not to approach him and then convince the grieving parents of the dead hostage that they still owe you the reward.
I think more games should push you to roleplay a character mechanically.
It’s too easy to fall into the trap of wanting to see “all the content” and get the “best possible ending”. But it’s also because of a cycle in which most players will look up guides, pick the best choices, and then developers cater to that.
You can play Mass Effect in a kind of freewheeling way, and it’s a lot of fun because the renegade choices are (unlike the ‘pure evil’ in a lot of RPGs) actually often efficient and believable, moreso than the good ones. But in the end it also means (especially if you mix paragon and renegade in ME2 and therefore fail a bunch of mandatory checks) that half the main characters die and get replaced with no-name nobodies in the third game, which robs the narrative of much of its flavor.
A good RPG has a good creative writing prompt, and something like Skyrim or Avowed or Outer Worlds or Pillars is just very broad. There are always going to be those people who find themselves playing Geralt, monster slayer, and who still make every choice as if he were them, woken up in the body of this man one morning. And there are always going to be people who can take a (near) fully blank slate, like a classic MMO or an Elder Scrolls game and invent an elaborate 300 page backstory and moral code and adhere to it flawlessly. But I think there’s a big middle ground that is served by a protagonist whose already-existing story you take over for a time, and the voice helps with that, helps tell you “this isn’t you”.
The mechanics help with that, but players hate it. If you give a better outcome for playing stealthily for example, like Dishonored, most players will be mad and play through it anyway even if they have less fun, because they want the good ending, it’s a ‘win condition’. I would prefer a game where being awful helped you win in the end. Fable 3 came close but the property system was too easily manipulated.
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