Dragon Age

Solas and Cole were fine, but I never really liked Bull.

Bull was interesting because he gave more perspective on the qunari. Other than that I didn't care much for him or the Chargers.

Bull's pretty cool. Not a character I expected to like at first, but like James Vega, Freddie Prinze Jr made him just likeable enough. Being the Qunari equivalent of Sam Axe was a mark in his favour, too.

Solas seemed so boring at first that I assumed he was going to be the sacrificial lamb character Bioware likes to kill off in their prologues. Obviously I was wrong there, and through sheer volume of lore and that understated performance on the actor's part, he ended up being one of my favourite characters, even before the big reveal.

I thought I'd like Cole more than I did. I don't dislike him, but I find his alliterative schtick to be a bit too much of an obvious affectation, and the voice actor doesn't quite give it the heightened, Shakespearean delivery that I think it needed.

edited 23rd Apr '17 2:22:53 PM by Unsung

I don't think I'd have liked a more dramatic delivery of Cole's lines. I like his voice. It sounds uncertain and stuttery, like he knows the idea he is trying to communicate but is really struggling to put words to it.

Ok. I will concede from earlier. Solas has great POTENTIAL to be a really good villain. But the potential there, if fulfilled, would possibly take him to being the greatest Bioware Villain.

I will say, of Cole, Bull and Solas, I think Bull is the weakest. More in the sense that he's a static character with little to no development. He has moments where it feels like they're making moves with him, obviously so when he abandons the Qun/Chargers and how that affects him. But it doesn't feel like the writing does all it can and he ends up feeling really static.

The early promo material looked like they were building him into a PTSD warrior who has some serious issues. While I'd never go as far as to say that the writing doesn't have that, it gets downplayed or told rather than shown. I think it would have been more interesting to... well, do something with it.

Like, the romance felt kind of dull. There wasn't much of a character arc there. The game suggests that Bull thinks you need someone to 'take control' after long hours of always being in control, but I think this goes both ways. I think Bull, feeling like his life is out of control, NEEDS to feel like he's in control which is why he turns to the dom-sub sex dynamic. And I would have actually liked for the game to subvert the whole 'And now we're having sex and its happy' by maybe exploring Bull's need for control through the sex scene and do something more. Maybe he's doing BDSM and he for some reason falls apart so they stop sex and have a quite no-dialogue moment of Bull at his lowest point.

I feel like Bull was an attempt to challenge a-typically Masculine tropes. He's got big muscles, is into rough intense sex, complete badass, all the women want him. But he's bisexual, he openly supports and cares for his entire crew including the transgender guy, he likes Dawnstone because its pink and 'pretty', he suffers from PTSD at times, and other small tidbits here and there. But I never felt like those more challenging traits weren't at the forefront of his character and could have been given a lot more forcus.

As a qunari fanboy, I was disappointed by Bull. He had very little inisght on the Qun or Qunari society and overall he just came off like a lame fratboy.

Oh I've been assured he's actually super smart and informed and if you take him places he will rattle on and on about history or architecture. But no one ever said shit to me in the field because Inquisition has problems.

edited 23rd Apr '17 4:56:53 PM by Nikkolas

Inquisition has the worst banter system of any Bioware game, which sucks because it also has some of the best banter. Most of the games have their banter triggered by a specific area or a transition or something. It's usually grindable.

Inquisition has it triggered by time. Motherf*cking time. A banter instance occurs every 10-20 minutes. The timer isn't precise and seems to change depending on what map you're on. I think the Hissing Wastes might be the one where it occurs most frequently.

Worse, going through a load screen resets the timer, so if you do a lot of cutting back and forth between world maps and HQ, you will basically never hear it. I wound up playing with a timer set on my phone counting down from fifteen minutes. When I wanted to leave the area, I would check my phone; if I was within a few minutes of a banter instance trigger, I'd f*ck around until I got it, then leave.

What makes this especially horrendous is the tying of Bull and Dorian's romance to the banter system. The game features a shitty system and then holds Character Development at ransom to force you to tolerate it.

Origins did it right. Banter could be triggered just by walking across dedicated map points.

2 does it that way too, but shuffles where those points are on the map so you have to search around and find them. Each section of the city has 6 or 7 trigger spots, but randomly selects just a couple of them to be active when you load it.

They're trying to make banter happen more organically or something, but the result is simply that it's getting harder and harder to ever hear it.

edited 23rd Apr '17 6:04:21 PM by TobiasDrake

Oh, and that timer gets reset when you fast travel or when random environmental comments trigger. There's an enormous amount of banter in the game, but it's almost impossible to see a significant portion of it without constantly standing around and waiting for it to fire. If that timer was 3-5 minutes, it'd probably be fine, but it's just way too slow with the current timer.

Andromeda does the same basic system pretty well actually. Squad mates get very chatty and constantly banter when driving around. Only real problem is how easily it can be interrupted by SAM. If the devs could get SAM to shut up about the temperature or mining zones, it's be perfect.

edited 23rd Apr '17 6:42:23 PM by Millardkillmoore

Also the 10/20 minute timer is for a CHANCE to hear banter. Basically the game rolls, decides if you get banter or not, and then resets the timer. And doesn't have a cap on how often you can get the "No banter" result. I'm also 99% sure that the less unheared banter two party members have left, the more likely the game is to roll the "No Banter" result (I suspect that if the game picks a banter that's flagged as already done, it doesn't play anything and just resets the timer). Meaning hearing the full banter of a party member is fucking hard.

I once left the game running on idle for 8 hours (to trigger Adoribull, Party only had Dorian and Iron Bull). Doing nothing but standing still. Game triggered banter three times. in 8 hours.

MEA has the opposite problem. Banter triggers too easy and you can run out too fast. I managed to go through all the drack \ Jaal banter in my first half hour on voeld so they spent the rest of the game in silence.

edited 24th Apr '17 12:23:49 AM by Ghilz

So over in the Andromeda thread we were discussing DA 2 "Loyalty...."

I still maintain Friendship/Rivalry is the best mechanic ever in a BW game because it allows you to speak your mind while not alienating your companions. You also get very different perspectives on your companions depending on Friendship/Rivalry.

Ink Dagger had some objections

"Not to mention, DA 2 also never accounted for WHY you were getting rivaly points with characters. I disagreed with Anders a lot of times and suddenly it was all 'WHY could you possibly think mages should be kept in the circle?! You, a mage, of all people?!" and... I never said that... Never once suggested it. But the game never accounted for that."

I've never Rivaled Anders so I don't have experience with this. However I do know some of the "Rivalry choices" are just being an asshole for little or no reason. That wasn't perfect.

But a lot of the companions have issues they're so hung up on I imagine that any sort of "challenge" to them can be interpreted as a challenge to their beliefs or cause.

You never rivaled Anders? So...I take it you agreed with his positions?

About mage liberation? Absolutely. It was the unending Mage-Templar arguments I saw on forums I frequent that got me to play DA in the first place. Played Mage Origin for my first run of DAO and then played Mage in DA 2 as well.

I've always been Pro-Mage, hated the Templars and supported what Anders did.

My enthusiasm for the Mages has waned over time, though. I'm more in favor of the Qunari now. I suppose that seems like quite the shift.

On my second DA 2 run I did play a Mage-hating Hawke but in that run I just never talked to Anders at all, instead of bringing him along to Rival him.

edited 2nd May '17 6:51:09 AM by Nikkolas

Ah yes, that was what I was wondering about.

Because, well...being pro-Qunari does seem to necessitate being anti-Mage - the Qunari are, if anything, more extreme than the Templars.

Do you still consider yourself as at least somewhat pro-Mage? Because I'm wondering how you square that with your feelings about the Qun.

Anders: So, the Qun, huh? You just... woke up one day and decided "what I really need in life is a big guy with horns telling me everything I should think?"

Tallis: Believe me, it wasn't that quick. Haven't you ever looked at the world and wondered where the justice is? The equality? In the Qun, everyone is welcome. Elves, humans. It doesn't matter what you look like, where you come from, there's a place for you.

Anders: Unless you're a mage.

Tallis: You won't find that anywhere in Thedas.

That banter sums up how I feel. Do I actually like what the Qunari do to mages? Absolutely not. Do I like everything else? Yes.

That, to me, is the difference between the Qun and The Chantry or Templars. What the Chantry do to mages is awful but there is no counterweight to balance things, no pros to cover that con. There are just tons and tons more cons, like how The Chantry keeps an army of drug addicts as its slave soldiers until the drug eats away the slave soldiers' brains.

The Chantry and Templars have nothing to offer. The Qun does.

If it came down to it? There's some weird scenario where I have to support either total mage liberation in Thedas or the Qunari taking over? That's a tough one. But right now the two issues are generally separate. I would definitely sooner support the Qunari over Tevinter, though. The Mageocracy is not what I or Anders want.

edited 2nd May '17 7:16:43 AM by Nikkolas

Well, I reject the idea of a binary choice between the Chantry and Qun as they are (or Tevinter, for that matter). For one thing, I believe there are options for reform here, as Divine Victoria can prove. I suppose I don't understand why you're willing to support such an extremely flawed system, rather than advocating for changes, or even something different entirely.

edited 2nd May '17 7:27:44 AM by KarkatTheDalek

The thing about the Qun is that every pro has a pretty monstrous con.

• Pro: All races and kinds are accepted under the Qun.
• Con: Except mages, who are subjected to the harshest subjugation out of any nation in Thedas.
• Pro: Everyone has a place and a purpose under the Qun.
• Con: Which is decided for you, and from wihich you are never permitted to stray.
• Pro: Every Qunari can act with the utmost confidence in him or herself and what he or she does.
• Con: Because they literally brainwash you into subjugation at the slightest hint of discontent.
• Pro: All you must do to become Qunari is accept the Qun.
• Con: Once you have entered, you may never leave. If you try, you will be branded a crazy monster, hunted down, and murdered.

Etc. etc. As cults go, the Qun is one of the sicker, more brutal ones.

edited 2nd May '17 7:48:00 AM by TobiasDrake

Don't forget "If our reeducators can't break you, we'll chemically induce brain damage and work you to death in the fields."

I imagine you chose the word "cult" as a slur. There's practically no difference between a religion and a cult and I say that as a pretty open-minded guy/ Cult is just an unpopular religion, really.

But I've had all these arguments before. We're not talking happy fun land here, or even modern Earth. This is Thedas. A baker or peasant in Ferelden is no more free than the qunari equivalent. In fact, it's probably worse outside of the Qun. You are at the capricious whim of a lord who could decide to kill you or rape your daughter or whatever else. That's not going to happen in the ordered qunari society. You an live in comfort, without fear of random sadism or selfishness ruining your life.

edited 2nd May '17 8:19:02 AM by Nikkolas

Only in so far as you've been brainwashed to accept the rape coz the Qun tells you who gets to have sex with you and why.

That.

There are courtesans under the Qun. Think about that. Qunari society has the ability to demand that a person become a professional sex object and then brainwash them into submission if they refuse to comply.

The Qun has the ability to demand that a child grows up as a sex object.

edited 2nd May '17 8:40:06 AM by Ghilz

There's nothing wrong with prostitution. It's been shamed and made illegal here due to religious bullshit. If it's safe and regulated like it is in several countries, there's no problem.

You really shouldn't draw the line at sex anyway. By your logic, everyone under the Qun is being abused and those kids who were "forced" to grow up into farmers have it just as rough as someone forced to grow up to having sex for a living. Except at what point does "brainwashing" or "indoctrination" just become simple education in cultural norms?

And if you have no concept of monogamy or the family, what's even the problem here? Sex is a meaningless act in qunari society. It's done for procreation. It's called Blue-and-Orange Morality.

edited 2nd May '17 8:49:38 AM by Nikkolas

There is nothing wrong with prostitution. There is everything wrong with forced prostitution.