Dragon Age

Mind you, a lot of people disliked Dragon Age 2 because it lowered the stakes so much.

And the obvious thing to do for Dragon Age 5 is another Blight.

I don't disagree, but the stakes need to be reset a bit somewhere. Maybe not to the extent of DA 2 because that game also... adimantly refuses to move the plot anywhere. But, we need to pull back somewhere.

Mass Effect didn't really need to do that because, while every game had its own individual threat from Saren to the Collectors, they were all part of the single looming threat of the Reapers.

If we keep having a 'There's a big threat! Go kill the thing to save the world' like we did in Origins and the Inquisition and DA 4 could do and DA 5 would CLEARLY do if we had another Blight, we're going to get bored with it. It'll have that comic book fatigue of 'JFC, THE WORLD NEEDS SAVING EVERY 5 MINS! WHY DO I ALWAYS HAVE TO SAVE YOUR ASSES?!' that superheroes usually angst over at some point. And the smaller personal stories of every day life in this world: the stories that should function as the 'Why?' in why we're saving the world, will get lost between the grant plots of powerful mages and kings and empires.

It doesn't have to go to the extent of Dragon Age 2's, but shouldn't we tone down somewhere before kicking it back up to another blight?

I had an idea awhile back for one of 4's DL Cs to involve Razikale being turned into an Archdemon and starting the Sixth Blight, only for your party to put a stop to it before it even gets off the ground (probably with the sacrifice of a Grey Warden supporting character of your choice)...only for signs to emerge that the Final Blight will likely start almost immediately afterward, with that being the plot of 5. This way, we could get all the Blights out of the way, and find out just what happens when all the Old Gods are dead (and Solas had hinted that it would be something really bad).

My personal theory is it involves this so-called "eighth Old God" as a sort of Gaia's Vengeance. Word of God is that "dragon's blood is the blood of Thedas, yes?

edited 31st Jan '18 4:16:49 PM by KarkatTheDalek

I feel like "lowered stakes" in the case of DA2 is a case of players misdiagnosing why they didn't like a game. Obviously some people just like saving the world from big threats, and it's an easy enough sell, but it's not like those kinds of stories are the only popular ones out there. (What's the old Gaiman quote? 'Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.')

Even with lowered world-ending stakes there's potential for meaningful player choice, affecting plots, fun companions, etc. I feel the problem with DA2, reception-wise, was never really just that it didn't have a plot where the world was in jeopardy — and I'm confident a different kind of story could be sold to the audience if the right care went into it.

edited 31st Jan '18 3:58:57 PM by Lavaeolus

I mean, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mine if we went smaller-scale again. It's just that I feel like at least some of the things I want to see would require a larger scale plot.

Certainly, I wouldn't want Solas to be left hanging. Now, you could theoretically do a small scale, espionage-focused plot with him, Tevinter and the Qunari, and I think that would be a great route to take 4 in, but at the end, you probably would need to bring on the epic.

I agree, at least as far 4 goes. I don't think there's anything wrong with either epic or personal stories, and the current arc with Solas is an interesting one; but I wouldn't want to say that's the only way the series can move forward after that.

Maybe Dragon Age 4 will feature Razikale...as a companion and possibly romantic option.

Or maybe Razikale will be a companion and the others will think they can finally figure out the truth about the Blights...only to remember that Razikale is the Dragon of Mystery.

"...Well, shit."

I would be down for both of those things, actually.

Though that might be a repeat of "Solas is Fen'harel".

Maybe if they didn't keep it a secret (in the game, at least - trailers should absolutely keep it a secret)...

edited 31st Jan '18 4:18:15 PM by KarkatTheDalek

Well, you have to ask, would she be in dragon form? I admit, I could see some slight party balance issues if she was.

Whoops, fixed. I only really remember the gender of Urthemiel.

edited 31st Jan '18 4:26:25 PM by Lavaeolus

I thought Razikale was female.

I seem to remember mentions of Razikale in Inquisition using female pronouns to talk about her.

If they seriously put Razikale in as a companion, I'd assume she'd be in a humanoid form. Yeah, it'd probably be a repeat of Solas...but considering how significant the Old Gods are in the history of Thedas, it'd be a repeat I wouldn't mind.

edited 31st Jan '18 4:25:07 PM by dragonfire5000

The problem with DA 2 isn't the stakes, it's that it's called DA "2". If it were called DA: Kirkwall or DA: Crisis, or something people wouldn't see it as the next installment so much, and wouldn't be expecting stakes to top DA: Origins. I mean, if Awakening was called DA 2 it would face similar backlash, I reckon.

Should've stuck with DA: Exodus. I suppose they were hot off the success of ME 2 and figured they were onto something with having a voiced, named protagonist. It's a learning process. How far we've come, right?

The obvious question: if they make Razikale a companion, she would of course be romanceable, yes?

Personally, I wish we could retcon DA 2 into Exodus. It stands out like a sore thing between the other two who aren't numbered.

I think, if DA 4 were to stick smaller scale was espionage and more political climates being the focus as part of Solas' plan to get what he needs to end the world (a la, Avatar/Legend of Korra a bit?) and then ramp up the stakes for the bigger climaxes, we could actually get a really interesting narrative.

We have Origins, Awakening, Inquisition. ][ is the odd man out in the naming scheme, at this point. And I'd be definitely down for another low fantasy entry after all the pomp and ceremony of being the Herald.

I see no reason why not. Dragon Age already sounds like some sort of moe dating sim.

The lowered stakes of Dragon Age 2 is a valid complaint, IMHO, because you went from a guy who could alter the shape of the world as well as its factions to the guy who couldn't accomplish anything—even stop a serial killer you know is in the region. The storytelling also goes in bizarre directions with three separate stories that are unrelated.

If I were to invoke my author powers and re-write it, I'd switch Act II and III with the Templar and Mage conflict reaching a climax, only to result in the city in ruins, only for the Qunari to trigger an invasion of the city since it's weakened.

You have the allies of whover you allied with in II or possibly both if you sided with Elthina.

I like the anthology style of DA 2, myself. The three stories are strongly linked thematically, and time skips are highly underrated as a narrative device in genre stories.

See, I think that's where I disagree. Being a "guy who couldn't accomplish anything" isn't a matter of stakes, nor is being unable to act on your knowledge about a serial killer — that's a problem with player agency. Choices don't have to be big and matter on a worldscale to be important to the player; indeed, I think more personal choices can, on occasion, be even more affecting. The problem is not that the stakes are too low — whether Hawke will succeed or be just a refugee, whether Kirkwall will fall into what seems into an inevitable abyss, those are all things that have the potential to be very interesting for a player. The problem is that the player has little-to-no chance to shape Hawke's journey to Champion, and the story's told in a way that leaves some of the more interesting things off-screen.

I don't really have a problem with time-skips by nature, and I think the kind of episodic, three-bit structure could work. I think what would have to be remedied is that there's kind of this sense that, well, Hawke just stopped to sit around on their arse every few years or so.

It's a problem better writing would be able to work around, I feel, but there's also a bit of that in the codexes and stuff. Isabela disappeared for a while after the Qunari invasion, Anders actually swore off the mage cause for a period of time — these are all periods that are very important to their characters and character arcs, but to the audience they feel as though they might never have happened. Hell, I imagine a lot of players likely ignore most of the codex, which is where what appears to be fairly important information about these characters and their journeys is shovelled away.

edited 31st Jan '18 6:38:43 PM by Lavaeolus

Eh. I don't agree with that— the way there were parts of the characters' lives we didn't see, some of which were quite formative, gave me a strong sense that these characters kept on living during those time skips, and that there were still stories left to tell, episodes we hadn't seen. It wasn't so much that those elements were missing, as it was that they were still to come.

I do see your point, and it's something I've enjoyed in other episodic stuff. I think my problem with that is, whenever we come back to these characters, it's always just as they're returning to the status quo, and the disruption to it isn't really acknowledged by the rest of the narrative. I think the idea that characters have their own lives would work better if you actually got to see Anders or Isabela leave the party on their own before the time skip; it'd land more as a reunion, or as part of the timeskip. As it is, it just feels like these elements just didn't have the time to be properly written in, or that the writers feel too tied into the gameplay to remove them from the party for story reasons. (Which to be fair, isn't an unreasonable concern.)

Of course, at the end of the day, these are my own opinions, and even then there are many ways to skin a cat. (Please don't skin cats.)

That's fair. A lot is always going to depend on your particular playthrough, how you roleplayed your character and whether or not the writing was there for what you had in mind.

I wonder if there was initially plans for side story dlc, where you don't control Hawke? (Like Leliana's song) The overall reception may have stopped any plans like that.

As far as anyone knows, no plans of that sort. And since it got two DL Cs (Legacy and Mark of the Assassin) while two firther DL Cs were cancelled (a vague DLC about Varric and the Cotere and then the elusive Exalted March full Expansion), I have doubts that they had planned further than that.

Ah, right. I forgot about the Exalted March one.