Dragon Age preview

[Kools]

It's pretty funny that you'd classify the Witcher as not meant for the twelve to sixteen year old demographic. Indeed, it panders to that group more than any game I've played in the last 10 years.

 

Parts of it certainly do, which is why I was quick to point out that the Poles went way overboard with the whole sex card notion earlier in the thread. What I was more referring to was the generally bleak world, the moral ambiguity, etc. Those are themes that most fantasy simply doesn't have, unfortunately, because at least to my mind, they make any given story much more interesting for the simple fact that, to me, it's a more 'realistic' presentation.

[Tigranes]

who'll be just as happy with a To Have And Have Not take on fantasy as they will a Green Eggs And Ham take.

 

I like this Kools guy.

 

That doesn't mean much, unfortunately.

 

On topic: We sort of underestimate the pervasive power of the "12-16 culture". What we see on screen and think is for the 12-16s, is often consumed, and actually enjoyed/desired/supported by broader demographics; at the least, 12-16 culture is actually 8-28 by now. And that perhaps is the problem - we clamour that we want RPGs that geared to the 12-16 demographic, but when that demographic is actually much larger than 'snotty teenager', then market forces are going to make your hopes pretty distant. There are a lot of twenty and thirtysomethings who would much rather play Oblivion than Torment, and appreciate 'darker/bleaker fantasy', whether that be Calimshan or the Witcher, for 'coolness/badass factor' more than moral ambiguity and challenge. Not saying that's particularly immature or of a 'lower' cultural quality; if we all read Milton and waxed rhetoric about every game we played it wouldn't be such a peachy thing either. Just saying that as long the huge majority of gamers look for and appreciate the aesthetic and stylistic qualities of 'dark' fantasy, that is what we will get focus on - the gory finishing moves, the sex cards, the expletives, the flaying of skin and violation of human certainties not really for a meaning but for its aesthetic qualities.

 

Ironically, as I write this, the TV screen on the icafe is showing some random rappers jumping around in a basketball stadium with a man in a green bird suit, wearing enough bling bling to blind an old man.

[Pop]

They don't use the term "bling bling" anymore. It's been co-opted by old white people.

[Meshugger]

It's pretty funny that you'd classify the Witcher as not meant for the twelve to sixteen year old demographic. Indeed, it panders to that group more than any game I've played in the last 10 years.

 

Parts of it certainly do, which is why I was quick to point out that the Poles went way overboard with the whole sex card notion earlier in the thread. What I was more referring to was the generally bleak world, the moral ambiguity, etc. Those are themes that most fantasy simply doesn't have, unfortunately, because at least to my mind, they make any given story much more interesting for the simple fact that, to me, it's a more 'realistic' presentation.

 

The sex cards play such a minor role in the game that it is to the point of being insignificant. At best, they are some tacky, tongue-in-cheek humor. Still, the American market seems too immature to accept such things The Witcher was rated 'Adult' (18 and older) in Europe, due to excessive violence. There is no mention of nudity on my box. (Well, the scandinavian version at least).

 

Is there a point to all this? What is exactly mature? A nipple-slip? Cursing? Blood and gore? Moral ambiguity? It's a little more than that, i would say.

 

Having a 'mature' game means to me, that people behave like adults in real life: They are fallible. There are no "muahaha, i am so evil"-people, and little to no Pius' either. They try to get through the day as they can, some are drunk, some are cheating, some are gambling, some are trying to work. They are (just like you and me) mostly hypocrites, closet xenophobic, scared of the unknown and serving themselves and their closest ones first and foremost.

 

In The Witcher, the majority of people behave like that, which makes it easy to call it a mature game. But one have to remember that it is still a world with magic, elves and dwarves, which deviates from the having a mature setting in the first place.

[Meshugger]

Oh, i went a little off-topic there. My point is, that it would be interesting on how the result would be if Bioware would focus on a similar setting as The Witcher.

[Morgoth]

Oh, i went a little off-topic there. My point is, that it would be interesting on how the result would be if Bioware would focus on a similar setting as The Witcher.

That would be awful. Bioware shouldn't "copy" anything from the Witcher. They should just create their own damn universe.

 

Oh, btw:

 

David Gaider > Andrzej Sapkowski

[Pidesco]

Sapkowski has to be a pretty awful writer for that to be true.

[Meshugger]

Oh, i went a little off-topic there. My point is, that it would be interesting on how the result would be if Bioware would focus on a similar setting as The Witcher.

That would be awful. Bioware shouldn't "copy" anything from the Witcher. They should just create their own damn universe.

 

Oh, btw:

 

David Gaider > Andrzej Sapkowski

 

Well, i wasn't meaning that Bioware should copy the setting, but sharing similarities is never wrong though.

[Tale]

That would be awful. Bioware shouldn't "copy" anything from the Witcher. They should just create their own damn universe.

Yeah, their own damn universe! And while they're at it, they shouldn't copy anything from Lord of the Rings.

[Morgoth]

That would be awful. Bioware shouldn't "copy" anything from the Witcher. They should just create their own damn universe.

Yeah, their own damn universe! And while they're at it, they shouldn't copy anything from Lord of the Rings.

What are you babbling about? Dragon Age is Dragon Age, not LOTR.

[Tale]

That would be awful. Bioware shouldn't "copy" anything from the Witcher. They should just create their own damn universe.

Yeah, their own damn universe! And while they're at it, they shouldn't copy anything from Lord of the Rings.

What are you babbling about? Dragon Age is Dragon Age, not LOTR.

And nobody said anything about Dragon Age being The Witcher, either.

Edited January 11, 2008 by Tale

[samm]

don't bother, irony doesn't transport well when written

[Gromnir]

I've been looking forward to this game for years. However, I don't much like the sound of unrelenting bleakness that they are stressing. Unlike folks who enjoy what I call "unpleasantly gritty misery and mayhem" games, I like to feel happy and satisfied when I finish a game, not utterly depressed and in need of a shower to wash off the taint. Bio is one of my favorite developers, so I'll no doubt buy this game on faith alone.

 

our surprise would be genuine if da turned out to be too dark for Di. bioware develops games that has as broad an appeal as they can manage... given limitations o' licenses n' such. bio games is kinda like mcdonalds fast food. is anything at mcdonalds gonna be your ideal meal? probably not, but there is little surprise ‘bout mcdonalds food you know that you can get a big mac or a filet o’ fish, and chances are that with a coke and some fries you is gonna end up satisfied with your meal.

 

Gromnir, as a food snob o’ the o’ the worst water, can decry the EVIL that is mcdonalds, but am fully aware that mcdonalds is an extremely successful business. the business o’ mcdonalds is to make money, not to make great food.

 

Bio, as with mcdonalds, is very aware that they is in business to make money… making games is simply the means. is no way that bio is gonna risk the franchise by trying something that could be unpalatable to thousands. da is gonna be another big mac or filet o' fish... your fear that you end up with braised goat brains or black truffle foie gras seems slim.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps keep in mind that we ain't saying that bio is crap, or that they make crap games... is simply that they is making games with an expansively broad appeal. the more you attempt to achieve universal approval, the closer you inch towards mediocrity. while people is not as diverse as they would like to believe, they is different 'nuff that true universal appeal is probably impossible. universal satisfaction? perhaps.

Edited January 14, 2008 by Gromnir

[Hurlshort]

I'll be honest, when I play a Bioware game, it's like I've been eating dried jerkey and berries in the woods for a year and I've suddenly been given a double cheeseburger. It tastes awesome.

 

At least that was the way I felt when I played KotOR, JE, and ME. It probably has a bit to do with the fact that there is few and far between in terms of good RPG's. I wasn't has hungry when I played the BG's because it seemed like I was still getting fed regularly.

[astr0creep]

You guys are making me hungry.

 

Stop it.

 

I'm dieting.

[~Di]

our surprise would be genuine if da turned out to be too dark for Di. bioware develops games that has as broad an appeal as they can manage... given limitations o' licenses n' such. bio games is kinda like mcdonalds fast food. is anything at mcdonalds gonna be your ideal meal? probably not, but there is little surprise

[newc0253]

Anyway, it does seem to me that dark, "moody", grim settings and so-called "mature " themes ("mature" meaning lots of death, betrayal, suffering and misery of the masses, sprinkled in some cases with lots of gratuitus sex) seem to comprise the bulk of the most popular games now. BioShock, The Witcher, STALKER... these are all apparently great games, enjoyed by most here.

 

If it's true that all the kids want to play so-called 'dark' games like Witcher, Bioshock and STALKER, then it's only natural that Bio should make a so-called 'dark' game to compete.

 

Personally, i don't think those games are anywhere near as 'dark' or 'despairing' as you seem to think, nor are the 'grim' settings that novel: certainly Rapture doesn't seem any intrinsically grimmer as a setting than the radioactive wastelands in Fallout, the suffering and woe of Durlag's Tower, or the misery of the inhabitants of the Outlands in Torment.

 

The idea that these games uniquely involve 'lots of death' and 'betrayal' is a bit sketchy too: I'm struggling to think of a so-called bright and cheery CRPG that didn't involve a lot of killing along the way. As for the gratuitous sex, apart from The Witcher, i'm struggling to remember any sex in Bioshock and STALKER didn't even have girls.

 

But if Gromnir is right in his McDonald's analogy, the economics actually favour Bio making Dragon Age as dark as possible in order to meet the demands of the market, just like McDonalds introduced salads to attract women customers and allegedly 'gourmet' coffee to win back market share from Starbucks.

 

Me, I think the reason Dragon Age won't be that 'dark' (for the sake of argument, morally complex) isn't because of the economics but simply because that's not what David Gaider et al are particularly good at.

[~Di]

Anyway, it does seem to me that dark, "moody", grim settings and so-called "mature " themes ("mature" meaning lots of death, betrayal, suffering and misery of the masses, sprinkled in some cases with lots of gratuitus sex) seem to comprise the bulk of the most popular games now. BioShock, The Witcher, STALKER... these are all apparently great games, enjoyed by most here.

 

If it's true that all the kids want to play so-called 'dark' games like Witcher, Bioshock and STALKER, then it's only natural that Bio should make a so-called 'dark' game to compete.

 

Perhaps so, but I don't have to be pleased by it. I wasn't just referring to those games, BTW; they just happen to be the most recent releases that popped to mind. I find the entire concept of the GTA series to be... well... pretty gross and horrific. Their popularity is, IMHO, rather depressing.

 

Personally, i don't think those games are anywhere near as 'dark' or 'despairing' as you seem to think, nor are the 'grim' settings that novel: certainly Rapture doesn't seem any intrinsically grimmer as a setting than the radioactive wastelands in Fallout, the suffering and woe of Durlag's Tower, or the misery of the inhabitants of the Outlands in Torment.

 

The idea that these games uniquely involve 'lots of death' and 'betrayal' is a bit sketchy too: I'm struggling to think of a so-called bright and cheery CRPG that didn't involve a lot of killing along the way. As for the gratuitous sex, apart from The Witcher, i'm struggling to remember any sex in Bioshock and STALKER didn't even have girls.

 

Two separate sentences in my statement, although I can see have you might have combined them. There has always been a touch of gratuitous sex in crpgs. Heck, brothels were a staple of crpgs from BG 1 on. In Fallout 2 and Arcanum, among others, you could even buy yourself a few minutes of bliss, and female players could trade sex to complete certain missions. Silly to be sure, and definitely geared to the horny adolescent players. I understand that in Witcher it has evolved to the point that the main character can nail anything with a pulse, and get trading cards to prove his sexual prowess! Of course all such escapades are optional in these games. At least so far. Thus, I can basically avoid things that I find purile and not particularly fun. Most of those older games also had a sense of humor about themselves, a tongue-in-cheek kind of parody that did not take itself too seriously. It seems... from what I've heard and read about many recent games... that they are taking themselves much more seriously and touting their content as "realistic!" Er... realistic on which planet, I wonder.

 

Torment was about as bleak as I could tolerate, with NO ripping off his own flesh and writhing in agony. The brilliance of Torment was that the crux of the entire story made NO's suffering acts of atonement instead of masochism or sadism, which permeates some games. As you point out, crpgs have always had lots of killing. That's what adventurers do... they kill monsters and bandits and bad guys, hopefully to make life better for those they run across rather than making life worse. Of course, I've never followed the "evil" paths in the earlier games, and really can't understand the appeal of murdering innocents, slaughtering the helpless ... or forcing one of my devoted followers to butcher his best friend to honor a blood vow for my own dispicable enjoyment. This kind of thing really makes my skin crawl. I also avoid vampire games as well, since the idea of spending hours biting necks and keeping my fangs tidy does not sound like jolly good fun to me.

 

So far the games I personally have chosen allow distasteful cruelty to be optional... but yeah, it kinda bugs me that it's so popular to be brutal, vicious and evil, even in a computer game. Not my cuppa. When games evolve to the point where the entire story revolves around brutality and selfishness without the option to redeem oneself or give anything positive to an otherwise bleak universe, then that's not the game for me. Period.

 

But if Gromnir is right in his McDonald's analogy, the economics actually favour Bio making Dragon Age as dark as possible in order to meet the demands of the market, just like McDonalds introduced salads to attract women customers and allegedly 'gourmet' coffee to win back market share from Starbucks.

 

Me, I think the reason Dragon Age won't be that 'dark' (for the sake of argument, morally complex) isn't because of the economics but simply because that's not what David Gaider et al are particularly good at.

 

From what I've heard of following the dark path in KOTOR, I'd said Gaider and company have proven they can do unrelently evil quite well. Thus far Bio games have also offered options for those who want to feel good about their impact upon the game world. If DA allows the same options, then I'll be fine with it. BTW, I don't consider "dark" to be "morally complex", unless you define "morally complex" as a game where all your choices are between two evils, and no matter what choices you make your impact upon the game world will be overwhelmingly negative and bleak.

Edited January 16, 2008 by ~Di

[newc0253]

When games evolve to the point where the entire story revolves around brutality and selfishness without the option to redeem oneself or give anything positive to an otherwise bleak universe, then that's not the game for me.

 

Again, which games are we talking about here? I understand your objection to GTA given that you don't have any real option to avoid criminality if you want to progress the main storyline. Similarly, i can understand the same objection to Bloodlines, given that you have no choice but to play a vampire (although, hey, you could choose to only bite bad people).

 

But neither Witcher, Bioshock nor STALKER force, require or otherwise encourage you to be a bad guy, so I'm at a loss to understand why you seem to have them in mind as the kind of games you object to as the poster children for 'brutality and selfishness'?

 

I don't consider "dark" to be "morally complex", unless you define "morally complex" as a game where all your choices are between two evils, and no matter what choices you make your impact upon the game world will be overwhelmingly negative and bleak.

 

Again, I don't know which games you're referring to. The Witcher has some hard choices for which none of the consequences are an unmitigated good. But so do some Bio games. For the record, I don't think 'dark' necessarily means 'morally complex' nor do i think games that try to present difficult moral choices are therefore 'dark'. There's plenty of sophomoric angst out there passing for moral complexity and I'd hate to play a CRPG that confused one for the other.

 

I suspect your actual objection is really to do with the tone of some games and your particular conception of what heroism involves. If you dislike games or stories in which a criminal or a vampire is a hero, then i guess you could equally object to a game like the Witcher in which a social outcast is the putative hero. But it seems mighty strange to me that someone could profess like games like Planescape or Fallout but declare a moral objection to games like Bioshock or Witcher or STALKER.

[~Di]

I think you're picking out of context sentences without understanding the full scope of what I'm saying. Probably I'm not expressing myself well.

 

I did say: "I wasn't just referring to those games, BTW; they just happen to be the most recent releases that popped to mind. I find the entire concept of the GTA series to be... well... pretty gross and horrific. Their popularity is, IMHO, rather depressing." I thought that would clarify that I wasn't just picking on those three games, but what I consider to be a sub-genre of its own, that in which an unrelenting bleak universe is touted as a selling point and marketing as "reality".

 

I haven't played those three games, nor any of the GTA series. My decisions on whether a game will be to my taste or not comes from the game's own websight, what they stress about the story and the purpose; from detailed on-line reviews; and from forums discussing each game in depth. I don't object to The Witcher because the main character is a social outcast. In fact, I've asked a lot of questions about it and it was one of the games I was considering dispute the juvenile use of females as purely sex objectss. I decided against it for two reasons: It's too much of a resource hog, and it really was constructed as a strictly a "guy game." No reason for me to buy games that I am fairly certainly will annoy me with blatant sexism and locker-room humor. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, if one isn't bothered by such things!)

 

One's choice of games is in the end strictly personal. No two people will always agree. Of course the tone and theme of a game is important to each of us in those choices. At the end of the day I want to feel as if I've had fun, and have not been vicariously engaged in activities that make me feel... well, icky.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Perhaps so, but I don't have to be pleased by it. I wasn't just referring to those games, BTW; they just happen to be the most recent releases that popped to mind. I find the entire concept of the GTA series to be... well... pretty gross and horrific. Their popularity is, IMHO, rather depressing.

 

GTA in a nutshell is basically the virtual glorification of gangsta violence, something which is popular in both movies and music especially within youth culture. That's why it's popular.

 

Admitantly I enjoy the freedom GTA allows because, frankly beating virtual grannies with a virtual baseball bat gives me kick, well not quite as much as a virtual granny beating gang bangers with a baseball bat but meh...

You get the point, and its certainly a pointless and sadistic exercise. This is also not the focus of any of the GTA games, and not all that much different to running about in fallout killing all the children you can find, or villagers or whatever... No difference at all.

 

It's popular because the game allows you to do many things which appeal to gamers (other than but as well as killing), you say it's gross and horrific, but I don't see all that much difference between Fallout, and GTA from the perspective of the things which you can do in those virtual worlds.

 

By the way the point of the GTA series isn't to run about killing as many people as you can, nor can you rape anyone in these games, you just take part in a kinda mundane gangsta movie.

[Tigranes]

Indeed - for all we laud the original Fallouts and though some lambast what they see as Bethesda's "LOOK NUKES AND STUFF ARE COOL" direction, many people got into and enjoyed the original Fallouts primarily because they could talk tough, screw people over, shoot them in the groin and plant dynamite on their corpses.

[Meshugger]

Indeed - for all we laud the original Fallouts and though some lambast what they see as Bethesda's "LOOK NUKES AND STUFF ARE COOL" direction, many people got into and enjoyed the original Fallouts primarily because they could talk tough, screw people over, shoot them in the groin and plant dynamite on their corpses.

 

Well, in Fallout it was in a more silly, non-serious way. Comparing it to Bethesda's "IT'S AWESOME DUDES!"-jock-attitude way isn't exactly the same thing.

[Tigranes]

Of course, but I think in the wake of Bethesda overdoing that, the fans are all too keen to dress the older Fallouts in nostalgic memories of 'pure, unadulterated roleplaying goodness'. I love Fallout, but I hardly think it would have been as successful or well-known, or as cult, without its share of juvenile cool.

 

I'm not saying it's a case of pot and kettle though. We can't say until the game is out, but Beth's F3 does seem to be erring on the side of gratuity.

[Pop]

Of course, but I think in the wake of Bethesda overdoing that, the fans are all too keen to dress the older Fallouts in nostalgic memories of 'pure, unadulterated roleplaying goodness'. I love Fallout, but I hardly think it would have been as successful or well-known, or as cult, without its share of juvenile cool.

I got into Fallout when I was 10, and it had nothing to do with the character creation or turn-based combat systems.

 

I'm not saying it's a case of pot and kettle though. We can't say until the game is out, but Beth's F3 does seem to be erring on the side of gratuity.

What makes you say that? Last time I checked, the BoS paladins didn't swear. They seemed actively against the concept of foul language. And people were angry about it not being gratuitous enough.

Edited January 17, 2008 by Pop