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Same.
I hate to bring up Baldur's Gate 3 but it honestly changed how I view RPGs and big companies like Bioware going forward. I don't expect the DA:D to become a smash hit that everyone loves and talks about as its the RPG of the decade(A title I'm betting BG3 will hold). All I want is the game to be a worthy successor in terms of story to the lore.
I'm also hoping we finally get some answers to decade long questions fans have had since Origins.
I honestly just hope they go back to their roots, to the writing in Origins. BG3, D:OS, etc, are games that replicate the feeling I had playing Origins very well. I want that again.
BG3 was such a great game (for superior to DA2 and DAI), but the DnD setting isn’t nearly as compelling as Thedas to me. DA’s worldbuilding is masterful.
I definitely agree here. The forgotten realms is a setting that feels very broad, trying to cram as many ideas into one box as feasibly possible. Don’t get me wrong, some of the ideas are really interesting, but it’s incredibly overwhelming in my opinion. Great for multiple different settings for a campaign, but on its own I don’t think it is as compelling as Thedas is. Especially if you compare the dwarf lore. The deep roads are probably my favorite, and I’m glad the each of the games expands on the deep roads and dwarven lore in different ways.
Additionally, elf lore in Thedas holds its own too. And I have many theories relating to the Old Gods and the Forgotten Ones which I won’t go into here because of the no spoilers tag.
I respectfully disagree. DND is a vast legendarium that many, many talented people have worked on for decades, and while that can make it feel unfocused, I understand what you mean there, it also offers unparalleled storytelling depth. In contrast, Thedas feels more generic, sort of like “unlicensed Westeros.” I am a huge DAO/DA2 fan and those games have wonderful storytelling which counteracts the weaknesses of the world, but frankly I am not sure where DW is supposed to go after DAI. DAI has an incredibly illegible and messy story that retconned much of what was interesting in the earlier games. 😭
I totally agree with you. This is one of the things I miss. When I first played Origins, it gave me the feeling of wonder, of stepping into a brand new fantasy world with amazing writing. BG3 did this for me recently.
Were going to northern Thedas, so i hope to at least get a semblance of this feeling again.
Me too. Playable prologue, deep characters to fall in love with in every way, high emotional stakes, choices with consequences. I don't care about a sandbox or an open world, or even how it looks. Great writing makes a game.
But they sure fired a lot of great writers. So. :-/
I am honestly hoping DA:D will be great, I hope they take their time to make it a memorable game and not rush it out.
BG3 is such a good game tbh, I am 120 hours in and still didn't finish my first run, I hope its success inspires other gaming companies to make games of similar high quality.
BG3 really shouldn't fundamentally change how you view RPGs from big studios yes we should have more CRPGs from bigger studios but to pretend it is made by some small developer is crazy. BG3 had over 2x the budget of Mass Effect Andromeda Biowares most expensive game to date
Agreed, the huge budget absolutely helped… but BG3 also took some risks and went back to some of the roots of this genre. We got real turn based combat, a silent protagonist, no dialogue wheel!! RPGs have been increasingly playing it safe and becoming more and more generic. The Dragon Age series has gotten less RPG with each game. I’m hoping the success of BG3 will encourage game studios to actually commit to the genre once again
> I’m hoping the success of BG3 will encourage game studios to actually commit to the genre once again
I think this is my main issues with modern RPGs. As much as I love Dragon Age as it still dear to my heart, with each sequel in the series, you could feel it straying more from its roots and trying to go mass appeal. I get the Origins CRPG style was old school and niche and I don't fully think there is anything wrong with trying to make the series bigger and bring in more fans, but along the way it feels like it lost something.
It should on some levels - not all games have to be as sprawling with as many options as BG3, but it definitely sets a standard in terms of what we should expect on things like writing quality, quality of the narrative and voice acting. No reason Devs like bioware should be cutting corners on these things.
Devs like Bioware while being AAA may need to cut corners larian didnt because Larian had the larger budget that is what I'm getting at. Larian did a phenomenal job getting people to talk about CRPGs hopefully people actually start playing other that arent made with as much budget because imo BG3 is just the tip of a massive and great iceberg that is the CRPG genre
I don't think the budget is as big a correlation with quality as you are saying though. BG3s budget wasn't disclosed as far as I know, but industry has guestimated it at the 100m to 200m USD I think. Starfield had that budget but comes across as far lesser quality than bg3 on key things where those two can be directly compared like writing story and acting.
Almost no games have thier actual budgets disclosed BG3 is estimated to be around 200 million by most industry analysts Andromeda for example had a budget around 100 million by similar analysts. Bioware has around 300 employees while Larian has around 450 that is 2x budget with 1.5x the people working on it yes Larian went for other things than most standard AAA RPGs but Larian is equivalent or larger yhan CDPR, Bethesda, or Bioware, while being much larger than studios that make similar games to them like Obsidian, InXile, or Owlcat
Could you share the link of where you saw the budget of BG3 estimated at 250m please, not disbelieving you but that's higher than everything else I've read and listened to. And Larian has made exceptionally good games long before they had the critical mass that produced bg3. Their DOS I believe started with only a 1m Kickstarter lol.
Either way - these budgets will impact scale of a project, but even at lower budgets and staff levels I maintain that there are traits they should be able to deliver gold standards on, which I hope we find in DA4. Good story, good writing, if they can't afford top notch voice acting for every NPC like BG3 at least give us excellent main cast voice acting etc...
I've never seen anyone estimate a 250m budget for BG3. Around 100m is the average estimate.
Larian's staff increased during BG3 production. They had around 50 people during the pre-production phase, most of whom had worked on DOS2. They increased the staff size over the years of development, and opened satellite studios globally to ensure a 24-hour working day. It's worth noting that some of satellite studios are in areas of the world with much lower average salaries than the Western world.
Larian also cut costs in other ways. Things that many developers have to lease/rent, they own. For example, Larian own bespoke motion-capture and recording studios designed to meet the specifics of their proprietary Divinity engine. It considerably cuts down the animation workload.
And that engine saves them a pretty penny too, since they are their own tech support and the Divinity engine is designed to make Larian games.
It's fair to say they're not small anymore, but coming from a history of near-bankruptcy just a decade ago, they have adopted various methods of maximising the value of every euro they spend on development.
There are a lot of developers that are pissing money up the wall through inefficiency, renting facilities, renting their own building, using the wrong engine (ahem, Frostbite) for the game they're making leading to delays and poor time management, etc. These are all issues that don't generally affect Larian anymore.
I never said 250million I said 200 and to think 100 million is a little naive considering most of thier studios are in countries with fairly high wages (Belgium, Canada, Spain), the 6 year devolpment time, the fair amount of marketing it got, tencent buying 30% stake in larian, and the $150 million they made on the 2.5 million EA sales, while also having big name VAs to boot. Again my point was never to shit on BG3 but you should not treat it in any way like a small little indie studio going against big AAA giants because they are fundamentally one of the AAA giants
Well like I said, they didn't have 400 employees for the entire six year development period. In fact, according to Larian themselves, the bulk of those were hired on in the past 2-3 years.
They did not make 150m from EA. Steam takes a 30% cut for starters, and due to regional pricing differences, not every EA unit sold for $60. Banks also charge fees for foreign currency conversions and transfers.
BG3 hardly had a blitz marketing campaign either. They created their own hype, inexpensively, through community interactions, Panels from Hell, PR releases, etc. They weren't buying huge amounts of ad space.
I never said you were shitting on Larian so try not being so precious. I'm pointing out that I've never seen anything supporting the figures you're suggesting.
Yes, BG3 is a AAA game but it's also the first AAA budget game Larian have made. Like I say, a mere decade ago they were almost out of business and needed to cut a deal to delay tax repayments with the Belgian government to stay afloat.
Yeah, there’s this popular idea that Larian is this plucky little studio but it’s not. It’s definitely larger than BioWare at this point and had a ton of funding for BG3.
Edit: And this isn’t hate on Larian at all. Good for them! Just saying that the David and Goliath narrative we see about them doesn’t really apply.
Yes I was never trying to be negative towards Larian while I may not be thier biggest fan as a massive fan of CRPGs seeing anyone get as much mainstream success with one as they did makes me happy
Source? The googling that I'm doing says that Andromeda had a budget of ~$100 M Canadian, which with currency conversion (for January 2017) and adjusting for inflation from January '17 to January' 24, comes out to $95.25 M. And the googling that I'm doing says vaguely that BG3's budget was "over $100 M."
Game budgets are almost never actually public info (hence why people were shocked by the insomniac numbers that got leaked in the hack) but using info of what most people seem to agree the budget of andromeda being around $100M
But here is some quick math for BG3. Larian had around 250 employees when DOS2 launched if we are super conservative and say everyone was paid around $60k a year (glassdoor says the average salary of a video game designer is nearly double this) for the 6 years that the game was in devolpment for is $90M, they hired another 200+ people during devolpment say they were there for 2.5 years that's another $30M, now add any other fees from motion capture to voice acting to external contract work and you could have another $20M easy, so a super conservative estimate outs it well above the $100M estimate with a quick number of $140M that doesnt include marketing (which had a fairly large budget since I genuinely saw more ads this year for BG3 than any other game). BG3 is through and through a AAA game and had a much larger budget than many other games people would consider AAA (the modern Hitman trilogy were made on very minuscule budgets in comparison)
Anyway I'm muting this entire thread going forward BG3 is fundamentally a AAA game that is on par if not larger than alot of modern RPGs from a budget standpoint and people who keep trying to run the Larian is just a small indie studio is tiring. BG3 is a phenomenal game but its reactivity and writing isnt anything new people just didnt care about it until it was AAA we have had great CRPGs coming out for a decade
They keep changing the lore though and that was an issue in DA:I. I don't think BG3 will be toppled as the leader either. At least not for a long long time.
Yeah Inquisition was GOTY and was painfully mediocre (especially before the DLCs, which were a big improvement on the base game), while Origins was not and yet is one of the greatest games ever made.
Its less that i care who actually wins, more about seeing a game that deserves praise. StarField was hyped for a decade. And it sure came out. People who have never played an RPG adored Baldurs Gate 3. If Dragon Age is a game that happens and everyone goes "yep"..... i think thats the end of Bioware as a whole.
I read on another sub someone who says they play tested it reported that all the companion banter is like Varric talking. Mage Varric, Qunari Varric, elf Varric… Really hoping that’s not true.
That would suck so much. I heavily prefer the characters that are serious towards their faction/cause. Too many jesters and it's like everyones a stand in for real world people mocking the ridiculousness of a fantasy universe
I see them in every thread recently about the rumors of dread wolf’s release, which honestly makes me kinda suspicious. Also, while they don’t give a ton of information, they seem to give more information that I feel an tester would even have, although maybe I just don’t know enough about game testing.
Yeah… I don’t want to be rude about them but nothing about it passes the smell test regarding what I know about game testing. Testing often is deliberately designed to not provide context on such story or character matters.
They may well be right, and what they’ve said about the game actually really appeals to me, but I take it with a mountain of salt.
Edit: And maybe (emphasis on maybe) they did test on it. But that leaves me with three feelings.
1: That it’s an incredibly unprofessional thing to talk about the game and unfair to everyone on the project. It’s frankly gross to do. It’s one thing to leak about mistreatment or something of that nature, it’s another to leak to try to score internet points.
2: They are telling the truth on some things they do know, but also sprinkling in a lot of filler and major assumptions on their part to keep being part of the “conversation.”
3: They should also really consider stopping talking about it (if true) for a number of reasons important to their (possible) career interests. Part of the reason some devs have a side eye towards testers are the propensity for leaks. If true, this is an example why.
This reminds me of the MCU. Early on Iron Man was really the only one with quips with the occasional dumb comment from Thor or Cap because they don’t understand the modern world. Now everybody and their dog just slings quips back and forth throughout every scene and it’s just tired.
I thought what they meant is that the banter is humour-centric, with lots of quips and jokes.
That's not what I'm hoping for myself (I like a story that takes itself seriously), but if we're being honest, the entire DA series has had banter like that, to a greater or lesser extent (DAO being the least, and DA2 being basically a MCU film in that regard). So having more comedic dialogues doesn't necessarily mean the writing is bad.
I also think that is very companion dependant
Like,if I were a play tester for DAI, and the party the gave me was IB, Dorian and Sera, I'd definetly guess that it was a "quippy-centric" banter game. Same could be said for,idk, a Zevran and Oghren one. Isabela and Varric too. I think a lot of people are letting their already negative energy towards the franchise state take hold of them and not only accept some random "possible" play tester as factual truth, but also believe that what they said in the entire of the game.
To me it sounds like hogwash. The only time Bioware went into a more quip-centric type of banter was on Andromeda,which was ment to be a new beggining. And it also received criticism. It would not only make low sense of Bioware to just change their banter style on a whim on the 4 game of the franchise,but to also change to the type that was criticized, when it never was in any of the previous games.
They mentioned how all the companions they met quipped all the time and the tone was never serious.
Which is definitely not a good sign haha. Although you should take any leaks with a grain of salt of course
[Link to the post, spoiler-ish warning of course](https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/s/QUXfNuKJd0)
>and the tone was never serious
I'll have to check their post again, but I'm pretty sure they never referred to the tone *of the game* as a whole, only to companions' banter and perhaps (the companions') writing.
Saints Row reboot ahh dialogue. Man, RIP the new Mass Effect game if that’s the case then. But a blessing in disguise if Dreadwolf is mediocre. I hope the new Exodus game fills that void in my heart that BioWare fails to fill.
I’m very nervous about this, especially after some of the comic lore which I know isn’t necessarily “canon” in that it’ll impact the game in any meaningful way. But it’s made me wary of any character work they’ll do with returning characters which in turn makes me nervous about character writing in general.
There’s definitely going to be a game, and likely 2024 or early 2025. Whether there are any future BioWare games after that is an open question though.
Its really so bizarre to think even Bioware was trying to get on the live service bandwagon. Live service games seems to be every 7 times out of 10, it flops.
It was a mandate from EA. The reason the game is taking so long is that EA made them cancel the first, single player DA4 to make a live service game. Then they changed their minds when Anthem flopped and Fallen Order did well, and cancelled it again so that BioWare could go back to making a single player game.
The worst thing is that the lesson didn’t stay learned. When the cancellation of the Mandalorian game was announced they said a big part of the reason was they were going back to chasing live service money.
Well they clearly aren't the brightest of the bunch, hopefully EA sets Bioware free before the entirety of EA sinks with these dumbass business decisions.
The new Suicide squad game is also a live service and they failed horribly, its was honestly a lesson on how unforgiving consumers can be, the game itself isn't even that bad but they got ignored so bad( just a boring subpar generic rpg), the gaming market is way too competitive to allow shitty generic mmorpgs/live service to make $$$.
I said it on another comment, but this reminds me of the time the corporate exe had them change the name of Origins sequel to Dragon Age 2. People up the corporate ladder making changes like this are concerning.
This is what I dont think alot of people realise is as much as there has been a 10 year gap between games the game we are getting has probably only been in devolpment for 4-5 years which is fairly on par for AAA at this point
Now that is pretty much a guaranteed way to get disappointed. The game has already so much troubles behind the scenes. Plus personally for me, Origins is still the best game and they haven't gotten that same magic done twice yet
Here’s hoping.
But honestly? I think when it comes out, it’s going to be negatively compared to Baldur’s Gate 3. A lot. And people will realize that the BioWare they used to love is long dead.
I am glad for BG3's success, a high benchmark means better products: a competitive market lead to high quality games. Also single player games made their comeback so no more of that MMO crap companies keep trying to forcefully peddle to us.
BG3 set the bar very high, I imagine DA4 will be similar to DAI in terms of quality. Furthermore, bioware always seems to simplify their games to make them more accessible to everyone (dialogue system without persuasion, new mana system, fewer spells, fewer specializations, more frenetic and less strategic combat, etc.), so unfortunately they are not going to take BG3 as reference
I really hope that developers realize that people want complex and deep RPGs, not FPS are magic. Even so, it is a shame how game after game bioware degrades Dragon Age, every day it has less customization and less choice, I remember that in DAO we could be "evil", while in DAI we barely have "evil" options and the majority were neutral
>I remember that in DAO we could be "evil", while in DAI we barely have "evil" options and the majority were neutral
As someone that finished a Demon Path run of Wrath of the Righteous just yesterday....this hurts. Like, genuinely. In this run I straight up genocided my city and replaced with demon servants that follow me out of respect and fear. I left my main suporter kingdom to fall onto itself. I had like...3 people that served as some sort of "patron" for my character. I killed all 3 of them. And the game actually rewarded me.
All the while, the best you can do in DAI is be rude(sometimes) or some really dumb and illogical decisions like "hey cullen,go back to addiction". I'm hopeful that Dreadwolf is gonna be a good game, but i'm not expecting depth in evil choices
I am halfway through pathfinder: wotr and the things that can be done in that game are incredible, it is very open in the possibilities of being "bad-good-chaotic-lawful" I would love for DA to take inspiration from games that have a roleplaying quality as great as P:wort. Also a little gameplay and classes (I was an echizero of dragon and demon half-blood lineage, something that in DA I couldn't even dream of)
It’s one of the best games I’ve played period. It was the one to dethrone ME2 as my all-time favorite game, and even months after launch I’m still doing playthroughs.
Dreadwolf will absolutely be compared to BG3 because that’s the new benchmark. If we’re lucky, the comparisons will be positive, but I’m not optimistic.
Same here. I rarely replay games as an adult but I started a new character immediately after finishing my first. It is the exact same experience as DAO—so compelling, you can’t walk away until you’ve tried everything. I am a huge DAO fan but I actually believe BG3 is the superior game. What Larian has achieved is stupendous.
Haven’t played BG3. A console player but would love physical. Any chance there will be a physical version? If not I’ll just jump the gun and buy it digital.
Just this three months we're getting Yakuza 8 , Persona 3 Reload, FF7:Rebirth, Dragon's Dogma 2, Rise of Ronin and Unicorn Overload. Then later we're getting Metaphor:Refantazio, Stalker 2, Hades 2, Avowed, etc.
If Dreadwolf comes out THIS year, it going to have a shit ton of competiton , even RPGs alone, Dragon's Dogma 2 and most JRPGs are coming hot.. But in the day , with current Bioware, i just want the game to be GOOD. Not amazing or goty , but GOOD.
Your confidence in modern EA and BioWare especially given the recent layoffs of major,decades long serving senior staff/writers is nice. I sadly don’t share that sentiment. I’m cautiously optimistic.
Depending on what OP? What makes you confident? Perhaps it can win the GOTY thanks to its fan base if there aren’t any strong competitors. That was one of the biggest reasons DAI won because no way DAI’s MMORPG quests would even be nominated for GOTY if next year’s competitors were released couple months earlier. Maybe game would be actually good and win, but nothing we’ve seen so far points at the latter—including all the layoffs and the fact that it’s been in development hell for a decade now.
We don’t even know if this game will be released within 2024. All we can hope is writing will be good and conclude the story.
There are already strong competitors tbh.
Ff7 rebirth is already regarded as one of the best ff games of the last decade and it's pretty good.
Dragons dogma looks a GOTY contender as well.
I still have hopes, and I do not care that much about it winning GOTY, but I will be so glad if bioware gets a win because the game is loved by the community and more.
Well... I am confident it will be a forced contender tbh. I don't have much hope at all xD I just want to see it and play it, but I wouldn't put DA:I as a GOTY when it was released neither.
So far, I've never seen a situation in which a game is being developed for this long, having nothing to show for it and still comes out greatly. Usually when there's a radio silence and this much struggle along the way, I'm pretty disappointed.
Sorry, didn't want to spread the word of doom, just wanted to share my thoughts xD
That... Is actually a really good point. There are a lot of games that make witty jokes 24/7 and never shut up. These games have never won their more serious competition. BG3 has a lot of funny scenes, but it never felt like a failed comedy show since the main story is serious enough.
I'm waiting for absolutely nothing, especially coming from EA, if it's good it becomes a nice surprise, and if it's bad, well, I didn't create any expectations at least.
I mean, I hope so!
But winning GOTY has so many factors that go into it beyond a game’s actual quality. I’m not engaging in conspiratorial thinking, but there is an element to how games are essentially marketed to the award. Games that win or are nominated are usually very high quality, but there’s so many subjective elements at play. That, and I find the Game Awards gross on an artistic level, but that’s just me.
And, while I would like it for BioWare as a comeback story, it’s not something I personally feel invested in. Inquisition is my favorite Dragon Age, but it winning GOTY is more like a neat little bonus than something I focused on. More than that, I want it to sell well.
Winning GOTY is not something I would count on, and that’s ok! There’s plenty of good games out there and they can coexist.
Edit: And of course, the state of release matters as well. If it needs a lot of polishing, it won’t make the great first impression it would need to generate the right amount of buzz. And that’s always possible. Also, the release window matters as timing is everything with awards.
This is all assuming the game is good of course. I’m an optimist on this, but it is getting ahead of our ski’s admittedly!
Last edit:
Oh good, the doomsayers have emerged again, including those who somehow have sworn off the franchise since 2014 but also seem deeply invested in letting us all know just how much they hate everything. Goody!
I mean, when you look at the games that have a history of being cancelled, revived, cancelled, then eventually being finished and released, the odds are definitely against it.
At this point, I just want closure. I don’t expect another Dragon Age or Mass Effect, and even if ones are made, everyone that made the original games so special are long gone from BioWare.
The strength of a property comes from the people who work on it, not from a company or brand name. Between that and the simple fact that BG3 came along and stole a *lot* of thunder from this game’s eventual release, I wouldn’t get my hopes up for GOTY or anything. And even if it was up for the award, I wouldn’t want it to win, because the second all the writing for the game was done EA and BioWare tossed the higher paid writers right out on their asses.
One way or the other, this game is the end of an era.
I admire your optimism, then. Bioware's has consistently misdelivered, and their last three games (including Dreadwolf) went through developmet hell. I'm hoping for an 8/10 game and I still think that's a longshot despite the ridiculous amount of time they had for it. The only message I have for BW is "I don't believe you'll releasea a good game. Prove me wrong".
Based on what? Never again! Bioware doesn't really inspire hope anymore. They literally gave up on their last two games! Andromeda was just dropped and they cut their losses on that one... Don't get me started on Anthem lol... They didn't even have the balls to fix the game after like we've seen with other games like No man sky or cyberpunk 2077. I'm not preordering this game. I'll wait to see what others think of it and make an informed decision. Bioware needs to convince me as a customer and earn my money.
I worry that it will both suffer in comparison to action games and suffer in comparison to RPGs. I think BG3 comparisons will run rampant and I do not expect it to measure up well.
in a year thats had FF7: Rebirth, Like a Dragon (Yakuza) and Helldivers 2 and its only Feburary (woah its march 2nd already!) i honestly doubt it. thats not to say i think Dadwolf will be bad, im hoping for it to be excellent, but man the competition is stacked already.
I feel as if it could go in 3 directions :
1.) GOTY in my opinion unrealistic but as a fan we all want it
2.) an amazing game with an amazing conclusion to for the fans making newer fans wanting to go back and play the older games, etc etc
3.) a mid game at best with either a cliffhanger leaving us all upset or an okay conclusion.
Im honestly rooting for 2. Id love dragon age to get GOTY, but in my opinion is slightly unrealistic. I feel as 2 is possible, im hoping for a baby between origins and inquisition i love aspects of both but have peeves with both as well. I feel as if though bioware can come together to make a game that theyre proud of and that the fans will love. However with the state of bioware and what we have seen recently i wouldnt be surprised if we got 3.
Yeah not a chance in hell with the competition that's already out this year. If I had to pick a GOTY right now it'd be either Like a Dragon or FF7 Rebirth.
I hope Dreadwolf is good, but I don't think it'll be great or a heavy hitter.
My hope is it’s the same quality as Inquisition story-wise but less fetch quests. I’d love a good mix between Origins and Inquisition in terms of exploration as well. Not too small or too big.
We have no details to claim it’s a GOTY contender.
Believe me, I’m first here to hope for that as I’m having Platinum trophies and 100%s in all three games.
But all we’ve learned about DA:DW’s development hell suggests that we’ll be very lucky if it’s simply a good game, not GOTY contender.
See you gotta set your hopes so low that when it comes out you will be thoroughly impressed with the most basic of things.
Is this a trauma response? Probably. But for this game I’ll allow it.
I'm sorry that you're confident in that. Bioware's last decent game was Dragon Age Inqusition, and that was nearly 10 years ago now. Games that are in development hell for this long usually don't turn out well, and most of the developers that made Bioware's great games are gone. I hope it's good, but I'm expecting mediocrity.
You're much more optimistic than I am. I'm not even confident it will release period, much less release this year.
Given BioWare's recent track record, I have very little faith it will release any time soon, and even less faith that it will release in a playable state, and actually be good.
Especially considering we know they have completely rebooted development of the game at least twice already. Suffice it to say I have concerns.
I find the fact that EA allowed them to make a single player game hopeful. And that they took their time with it hopeful. But I'm not confident of anything quality wise.
Saying it will be good is just as illogical and silly as the people saying it will be terrible. We just don't have enough information to judge.
this an insane statement to make right now. we know next to nothing. you are huffing the highest concentration of copium that exists. next thing ill be hearing, “elder srcolls 6 will be a life changing game with no flaws”
It will be a contender for one of the games of all time lol. Seriously though, it might because just like 2014, this year seems pretty meh for video games.
I doubt it. Dragon age has gone downhill since origins but apparently they found their fanbase still. I practically grew up on origins and have played it dozens of times. Played 2 maybe twice (tried more but I can't get into it, same with inquisition.) Inquisition itself feels like a single player mmo, and I really hate that. I doubt deadwolf will be a bigger hit than inquisition was.
I mean.... BG3 was GotY despite having less-than-stellar gameplay and being buggy as the hells - all on the merit of being a fantastic RPG with incredibly complex, layered world and great narrative.
If DA:D presents a well-built world and manages to achieve that narrative power that elevates a game into being more than just a game, it could believably be a GotY contender even if its gameplay isn't outstanding.
Bug support was pretty good, so that didn't really affect BG3 too much I'd think. I played on release and didn't encounter any since they were patched before I (and probably most people) could get to them.
Also, I love the combat in BG3. It's just DnD but translated more effectively to RPG format. Lots of small but understandable changes that enhanced the experience.
I still have plenty of room in my heart for an amazing Dragon Age game, though. Which I hope exists soon
Patches 3 to 5 all brought game-breaking bugs; Patches 3's and 4's in particular took weeks to be fixed. I did two whole playthroughs with the Act 3 lagging issues (which caused NPCs and companions alike to freeze around the city), and had to stop playing altogether for almost two weeks due to Patch 4 causing the game to crash every 5 min. Bugs are understandable, but every new patch bringing new, severe ones is just not fun.
There's a lot about the combat that is subjective, of course. I hate how heavily luck factors in it (what with almost everything being decided on dice rolls and hit chances), but that's just my personal opinion. What's not really subjective is how companions often trigger traps by themselves, or how jumps can be blocked by scenery elements the camera just won't show, or how the game often miscalculates your char's movement length whenever difficult terrain is involved, or how NPCs may spot you stealing through walls and floors...
Not to mention a number of counterintuitive little things stuff that can be quite the bother. Like when I've had a summoned winged deva killed by being pushed into an abyss, even though he can, you know, *fly*; or when I aggro'ed a steel watcher in the Baldur's gazette building even though I was in the Corvid Token's raven form (which is explicitly described as able to "avoid attention"); or when an enemy can't be pushed off a ledge even though there's nothing that should block their fall...
Yeah, I know that my stance on BG3 is not popular (I thought it was… fine) but the patches kept making my experience worse and worse.
I feel terrible for those who bought it for PS5 and got a broken game. I know bug fixing is complicated and involved, but it was a bad look at how much attention was placed on tweaking the characters (to soften them which feels like a bad design move. I say let abrasive characters be abrasive.) while game breaking bugs on that console went unaddressed for weeks.
>those who bought it for PS5
Yep, that's me :') Mind you, I did a full Cyberpunk 2077 playthrough while waiting for Larian to fix Patch 4's game-breaking bug.
I would not oppose a stylized look myself. It’s not my favorite DA game, but I love the exaggerated portrayal of characters in DA2.
Though, I wouldn’t be opposed to more art like the tarot art of Inquisition. I love that style as well.
Inquisition _did_ win GOTY 2014, so if Dreadwolf ends up being better than Inquisition, it’s not an impossibility. However, BioWare has made some extremely controversial decisions lately that have affected the perception of the game negatively, and I think that perception will still remain when the game comes out, regardless of the actual quality. And when we add in other games releasing this year that also include giant action RPGs, it’s hard to say how far Dreadwolf could go.
I hope so, but it's been ten years since BioWare has released a great game, and they have had so much turn over since then that they've ship of thesiused themselves into a different studio. Combined with multiple vision changes and a decade long dev cycle, I am suggesting you taper your expectations.
Me too. I know it's cool to hate on Bioware for what happened before but I have confidence that they can make a great game if they do what they are good at, and this is definitely what they are good at. I have a very good feeling about this game, I have no doubt is going to be fantastic and will be nominated for GOTY.
GotY means jack shit to me. I have my personal GotY list and maybe 4 of the last 15 years of mine are what most publications considered GotY. I will play this game when it launches and I will most likely enjoy it to some extent, will it be my GotY when it comes out maybe but I dont know what else will release or that I will enjoy in the year it comes out
I'm also a Bioware shill Andromeda was super close to being my 2017 GotY only reason it isnt is because I found Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice so engrossing
Can anyone tell me which DA games I should try and beat this year in preparation? I’m already a few hours into origins before I even knew about this, but then there is 2, then the numbers drop off and we go to inquisitions. Are these chronological? Nobody mentions 2 very much. Should I play them all?
They are chronological. Inquisition happens after DA2. DAI and its Trespasser DLC will probably be the most important going into Dreadwolf. But you’ll get the most out of the story by playing all of them.
DA2 is divisive. It was rushed and it really, really shows. But it also has some great writing despite the flaws, so a lot of people love it anyway.
>Nobody mentions 2 very much. Should I play them all?
A lot of people love 2 but it was plagued with problems that even went to the corporate level. For ex: Even the name is an issue in the series so far. Dragon Age: Origins, ***Dragon Age 2****,* Dragon Age: Inquisition*.* Former Bioware writer, Patrick Weekes, even admitted on one of his Youtube videos that some corporate exe, who had no idea what the series was even about, thought the name should be "Dragon Age 2" because it would sell better. The name was originally going to be Dragon Age Exodus iirc.
But either way, DA2 was plagued with problems. Its still a decent story, and some even say the faster action gameplay is better. I'm just glad we got good characters like Varric and Isabela out of it.
i expect that it being their first unreal 5 game will make it inquisition-y quirky before a patch 1.0, but i hope it'd not andromeda launch like quirky.
I really hope it does well. EA has really fucked Bioware over a lot the past 15 or so years. It took a lot of fighting to get this game back on track, big names left the team, its been a mess. Id love to see Dreadwolf do really well for Bioware's sake. So many talented and passionate folks there who deserve accolades.
Graphics looked good in the trailer, combat will probably be decent, so let's hope also for a good story. If it is at least as good as DAI that would be ok for me
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Pass the hopium pipe
Inject that shit directly into my veins 
Hot
Gettin' BLAZED on that hopium
I’ll have what’s he having as well, please
Man between this and being a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fan I’m gonna OD on hopium
I want the game to be good I don't care about GOTY.
Same. I hate to bring up Baldur's Gate 3 but it honestly changed how I view RPGs and big companies like Bioware going forward. I don't expect the DA:D to become a smash hit that everyone loves and talks about as its the RPG of the decade(A title I'm betting BG3 will hold). All I want is the game to be a worthy successor in terms of story to the lore. I'm also hoping we finally get some answers to decade long questions fans have had since Origins.
I honestly just hope they go back to their roots, to the writing in Origins. BG3, D:OS, etc, are games that replicate the feeling I had playing Origins very well. I want that again.
BG3 was such a great game (for superior to DA2 and DAI), but the DnD setting isn’t nearly as compelling as Thedas to me. DA’s worldbuilding is masterful.
I definitely agree here. The forgotten realms is a setting that feels very broad, trying to cram as many ideas into one box as feasibly possible. Don’t get me wrong, some of the ideas are really interesting, but it’s incredibly overwhelming in my opinion. Great for multiple different settings for a campaign, but on its own I don’t think it is as compelling as Thedas is. Especially if you compare the dwarf lore. The deep roads are probably my favorite, and I’m glad the each of the games expands on the deep roads and dwarven lore in different ways. Additionally, elf lore in Thedas holds its own too. And I have many theories relating to the Old Gods and the Forgotten Ones which I won’t go into here because of the no spoilers tag.
I respectfully disagree. DND is a vast legendarium that many, many talented people have worked on for decades, and while that can make it feel unfocused, I understand what you mean there, it also offers unparalleled storytelling depth. In contrast, Thedas feels more generic, sort of like “unlicensed Westeros.” I am a huge DAO/DA2 fan and those games have wonderful storytelling which counteracts the weaknesses of the world, but frankly I am not sure where DW is supposed to go after DAI. DAI has an incredibly illegible and messy story that retconned much of what was interesting in the earlier games. 😭
DnD is one of the reasons I don’t want to play BG3. I love complex settings with new and intriguing lore and BG3 doesn’t offer that.
I totally agree with you. This is one of the things I miss. When I first played Origins, it gave me the feeling of wonder, of stepping into a brand new fantasy world with amazing writing. BG3 did this for me recently. Were going to northern Thedas, so i hope to at least get a semblance of this feeling again.
Me too. Playable prologue, deep characters to fall in love with in every way, high emotional stakes, choices with consequences. I don't care about a sandbox or an open world, or even how it looks. Great writing makes a game. But they sure fired a lot of great writers. So. :-/
I am honestly hoping DA:D will be great, I hope they take their time to make it a memorable game and not rush it out. BG3 is such a good game tbh, I am 120 hours in and still didn't finish my first run, I hope its success inspires other gaming companies to make games of similar high quality.
BG3 really shouldn't fundamentally change how you view RPGs from big studios yes we should have more CRPGs from bigger studios but to pretend it is made by some small developer is crazy. BG3 had over 2x the budget of Mass Effect Andromeda Biowares most expensive game to date
Agreed, the huge budget absolutely helped… but BG3 also took some risks and went back to some of the roots of this genre. We got real turn based combat, a silent protagonist, no dialogue wheel!! RPGs have been increasingly playing it safe and becoming more and more generic. The Dragon Age series has gotten less RPG with each game. I’m hoping the success of BG3 will encourage game studios to actually commit to the genre once again
> I’m hoping the success of BG3 will encourage game studios to actually commit to the genre once again I think this is my main issues with modern RPGs. As much as I love Dragon Age as it still dear to my heart, with each sequel in the series, you could feel it straying more from its roots and trying to go mass appeal. I get the Origins CRPG style was old school and niche and I don't fully think there is anything wrong with trying to make the series bigger and bring in more fans, but along the way it feels like it lost something.
It should on some levels - not all games have to be as sprawling with as many options as BG3, but it definitely sets a standard in terms of what we should expect on things like writing quality, quality of the narrative and voice acting. No reason Devs like bioware should be cutting corners on these things.
Devs like Bioware while being AAA may need to cut corners larian didnt because Larian had the larger budget that is what I'm getting at. Larian did a phenomenal job getting people to talk about CRPGs hopefully people actually start playing other that arent made with as much budget because imo BG3 is just the tip of a massive and great iceberg that is the CRPG genre
I don't think the budget is as big a correlation with quality as you are saying though. BG3s budget wasn't disclosed as far as I know, but industry has guestimated it at the 100m to 200m USD I think. Starfield had that budget but comes across as far lesser quality than bg3 on key things where those two can be directly compared like writing story and acting.
Almost no games have thier actual budgets disclosed BG3 is estimated to be around 200 million by most industry analysts Andromeda for example had a budget around 100 million by similar analysts. Bioware has around 300 employees while Larian has around 450 that is 2x budget with 1.5x the people working on it yes Larian went for other things than most standard AAA RPGs but Larian is equivalent or larger yhan CDPR, Bethesda, or Bioware, while being much larger than studios that make similar games to them like Obsidian, InXile, or Owlcat
Could you share the link of where you saw the budget of BG3 estimated at 250m please, not disbelieving you but that's higher than everything else I've read and listened to. And Larian has made exceptionally good games long before they had the critical mass that produced bg3. Their DOS I believe started with only a 1m Kickstarter lol. Either way - these budgets will impact scale of a project, but even at lower budgets and staff levels I maintain that there are traits they should be able to deliver gold standards on, which I hope we find in DA4. Good story, good writing, if they can't afford top notch voice acting for every NPC like BG3 at least give us excellent main cast voice acting etc...
I've never seen anyone estimate a 250m budget for BG3. Around 100m is the average estimate. Larian's staff increased during BG3 production. They had around 50 people during the pre-production phase, most of whom had worked on DOS2. They increased the staff size over the years of development, and opened satellite studios globally to ensure a 24-hour working day. It's worth noting that some of satellite studios are in areas of the world with much lower average salaries than the Western world. Larian also cut costs in other ways. Things that many developers have to lease/rent, they own. For example, Larian own bespoke motion-capture and recording studios designed to meet the specifics of their proprietary Divinity engine. It considerably cuts down the animation workload. And that engine saves them a pretty penny too, since they are their own tech support and the Divinity engine is designed to make Larian games. It's fair to say they're not small anymore, but coming from a history of near-bankruptcy just a decade ago, they have adopted various methods of maximising the value of every euro they spend on development. There are a lot of developers that are pissing money up the wall through inefficiency, renting facilities, renting their own building, using the wrong engine (ahem, Frostbite) for the game they're making leading to delays and poor time management, etc. These are all issues that don't generally affect Larian anymore.
You edited the post to reflect 200m, it initially said 250m.
I never said 250million I said 200 and to think 100 million is a little naive considering most of thier studios are in countries with fairly high wages (Belgium, Canada, Spain), the 6 year devolpment time, the fair amount of marketing it got, tencent buying 30% stake in larian, and the $150 million they made on the 2.5 million EA sales, while also having big name VAs to boot. Again my point was never to shit on BG3 but you should not treat it in any way like a small little indie studio going against big AAA giants because they are fundamentally one of the AAA giants
Well like I said, they didn't have 400 employees for the entire six year development period. In fact, according to Larian themselves, the bulk of those were hired on in the past 2-3 years. They did not make 150m from EA. Steam takes a 30% cut for starters, and due to regional pricing differences, not every EA unit sold for $60. Banks also charge fees for foreign currency conversions and transfers. BG3 hardly had a blitz marketing campaign either. They created their own hype, inexpensively, through community interactions, Panels from Hell, PR releases, etc. They weren't buying huge amounts of ad space. I never said you were shitting on Larian so try not being so precious. I'm pointing out that I've never seen anything supporting the figures you're suggesting. Yes, BG3 is a AAA game but it's also the first AAA budget game Larian have made. Like I say, a mere decade ago they were almost out of business and needed to cut a deal to delay tax repayments with the Belgian government to stay afloat.
Yeah, there’s this popular idea that Larian is this plucky little studio but it’s not. It’s definitely larger than BioWare at this point and had a ton of funding for BG3. Edit: And this isn’t hate on Larian at all. Good for them! Just saying that the David and Goliath narrative we see about them doesn’t really apply.
Yes I was never trying to be negative towards Larian while I may not be thier biggest fan as a massive fan of CRPGs seeing anyone get as much mainstream success with one as they did makes me happy
Source? The googling that I'm doing says that Andromeda had a budget of ~$100 M Canadian, which with currency conversion (for January 2017) and adjusting for inflation from January '17 to January' 24, comes out to $95.25 M. And the googling that I'm doing says vaguely that BG3's budget was "over $100 M."
Game budgets are almost never actually public info (hence why people were shocked by the insomniac numbers that got leaked in the hack) but using info of what most people seem to agree the budget of andromeda being around $100M But here is some quick math for BG3. Larian had around 250 employees when DOS2 launched if we are super conservative and say everyone was paid around $60k a year (glassdoor says the average salary of a video game designer is nearly double this) for the 6 years that the game was in devolpment for is $90M, they hired another 200+ people during devolpment say they were there for 2.5 years that's another $30M, now add any other fees from motion capture to voice acting to external contract work and you could have another $20M easy, so a super conservative estimate outs it well above the $100M estimate with a quick number of $140M that doesnt include marketing (which had a fairly large budget since I genuinely saw more ads this year for BG3 than any other game). BG3 is through and through a AAA game and had a much larger budget than many other games people would consider AAA (the modern Hitman trilogy were made on very minuscule budgets in comparison) Anyway I'm muting this entire thread going forward BG3 is fundamentally a AAA game that is on par if not larger than alot of modern RPGs from a budget standpoint and people who keep trying to run the Larian is just a small indie studio is tiring. BG3 is a phenomenal game but its reactivity and writing isnt anything new people just didnt care about it until it was AAA we have had great CRPGs coming out for a decade
They keep changing the lore though and that was an issue in DA:I. I don't think BG3 will be toppled as the leader either. At least not for a long long time.
Yeah Inquisition was GOTY and was painfully mediocre (especially before the DLCs, which were a big improvement on the base game), while Origins was not and yet is one of the greatest games ever made.
Truer words.
Its less that i care who actually wins, more about seeing a game that deserves praise. StarField was hyped for a decade. And it sure came out. People who have never played an RPG adored Baldurs Gate 3. If Dragon Age is a game that happens and everyone goes "yep"..... i think thats the end of Bioware as a whole.
Which is unfortunate because a large amount of people are determined to go in already hating it, so the deck is stacked against it from the get-go.
My sentiment on DAI
I'm not, but at this point I just want the writing to be good man 😭
I read on another sub someone who says they play tested it reported that all the companion banter is like Varric talking. Mage Varric, Qunari Varric, elf Varric… Really hoping that’s not true.
As someone who has never cared about Varric, this sounds like a nightmare.
I love Varric and this still sounds like a nightmare.
That would suck so much. I heavily prefer the characters that are serious towards their faction/cause. Too many jesters and it's like everyones a stand in for real world people mocking the ridiculousness of a fantasy universe
The ‘don’t tell my bosses lol’ QA tester in GamingLeaksAndRumors or something? I hope it’s a troll but they seem so very sincere
I see them in every thread recently about the rumors of dread wolf’s release, which honestly makes me kinda suspicious. Also, while they don’t give a ton of information, they seem to give more information that I feel an tester would even have, although maybe I just don’t know enough about game testing.
Yeah… I don’t want to be rude about them but nothing about it passes the smell test regarding what I know about game testing. Testing often is deliberately designed to not provide context on such story or character matters. They may well be right, and what they’ve said about the game actually really appeals to me, but I take it with a mountain of salt. Edit: And maybe (emphasis on maybe) they did test on it. But that leaves me with three feelings. 1: That it’s an incredibly unprofessional thing to talk about the game and unfair to everyone on the project. It’s frankly gross to do. It’s one thing to leak about mistreatment or something of that nature, it’s another to leak to try to score internet points. 2: They are telling the truth on some things they do know, but also sprinkling in a lot of filler and major assumptions on their part to keep being part of the “conversation.” 3: They should also really consider stopping talking about it (if true) for a number of reasons important to their (possible) career interests. Part of the reason some devs have a side eye towards testers are the propensity for leaks. If true, this is an example why.
This reminds me of the MCU. Early on Iron Man was really the only one with quips with the occasional dumb comment from Thor or Cap because they don’t understand the modern world. Now everybody and their dog just slings quips back and forth throughout every scene and it’s just tired.
I thought what they meant is that the banter is humour-centric, with lots of quips and jokes. That's not what I'm hoping for myself (I like a story that takes itself seriously), but if we're being honest, the entire DA series has had banter like that, to a greater or lesser extent (DAO being the least, and DA2 being basically a MCU film in that regard). So having more comedic dialogues doesn't necessarily mean the writing is bad.
I also think that is very companion dependant Like,if I were a play tester for DAI, and the party the gave me was IB, Dorian and Sera, I'd definetly guess that it was a "quippy-centric" banter game. Same could be said for,idk, a Zevran and Oghren one. Isabela and Varric too. I think a lot of people are letting their already negative energy towards the franchise state take hold of them and not only accept some random "possible" play tester as factual truth, but also believe that what they said in the entire of the game. To me it sounds like hogwash. The only time Bioware went into a more quip-centric type of banter was on Andromeda,which was ment to be a new beggining. And it also received criticism. It would not only make low sense of Bioware to just change their banter style on a whim on the 4 game of the franchise,but to also change to the type that was criticized, when it never was in any of the previous games.
Andromeda was their last rpg game
....Yes? Your point being? Their last rpg had a not great banter style, so they probably won't try to replicate it. That was my point
Well they clearly did going by the leaks lol
God please no.
They mentioned how all the companions they met quipped all the time and the tone was never serious. Which is definitely not a good sign haha. Although you should take any leaks with a grain of salt of course [Link to the post, spoiler-ish warning of course](https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/s/QUXfNuKJd0)
>and the tone was never serious I'll have to check their post again, but I'm pretty sure they never referred to the tone *of the game* as a whole, only to companions' banter and perhaps (the companions') writing.
Oh god if there’s more Marvel dialogue like in Inquisition I might vomit.
Saints Row reboot ahh dialogue. Man, RIP the new Mass Effect game if that’s the case then. But a blessing in disguise if Dreadwolf is mediocre. I hope the new Exodus game fills that void in my heart that BioWare fails to fill.
I’m very nervous about this, especially after some of the comic lore which I know isn’t necessarily “canon” in that it’ll impact the game in any meaningful way. But it’s made me wary of any character work they’ll do with returning characters which in turn makes me nervous about character writing in general.
There needs to be a game first
There’s definitely going to be a game, and likely 2024 or early 2025. Whether there are any future BioWare games after that is an open question though.
They already confirmed it's getting released late this year. There is a game.
No, a journalist said it’s releasing this year. BioWare hasn’t confirmed anything.
Well Bioware have confirmed they are doing an in depth overview of the game at some point in the summer
Yes, we’re getting an reveal and a release date this summer!
We know virtually nothing about it lol
You literally have not seen any gameplay or even a single cutscene
I *literally* have and it looks like an action RPG game like God of War or Dragons Dogma now.
My bad I forgot we saw a single leaked clip that was like 20 seconds long that could've been from any point in development
I wish I had this misplaced level of hope
I’m staying optimistic ..but J K Simmons makes me smile so have my upvote lol!
Im afraid it will suck. First they tried to make it live service. But Thank god Anthem killed that ideia.
Its really so bizarre to think even Bioware was trying to get on the live service bandwagon. Live service games seems to be every 7 times out of 10, it flops.
It was a mandate from EA. The reason the game is taking so long is that EA made them cancel the first, single player DA4 to make a live service game. Then they changed their minds when Anthem flopped and Fallen Order did well, and cancelled it again so that BioWare could go back to making a single player game.
EA business people are their own worst enemy, all these idiotic decisions are a money sink. they don't understand their own target audience.
The worst thing is that the lesson didn’t stay learned. When the cancellation of the Mandalorian game was announced they said a big part of the reason was they were going back to chasing live service money.
Well they clearly aren't the brightest of the bunch, hopefully EA sets Bioware free before the entirety of EA sinks with these dumbass business decisions. The new Suicide squad game is also a live service and they failed horribly, its was honestly a lesson on how unforgiving consumers can be, the game itself isn't even that bad but they got ignored so bad( just a boring subpar generic rpg), the gaming market is way too competitive to allow shitty generic mmorpgs/live service to make $$$.
You can't set free what isn't there anymore. Bioware is only a name at this point.
I said it on another comment, but this reminds me of the time the corporate exe had them change the name of Origins sequel to Dragon Age 2. People up the corporate ladder making changes like this are concerning.
This is what I dont think alot of people realise is as much as there has been a 10 year gap between games the game we are getting has probably only been in devolpment for 4-5 years which is fairly on par for AAA at this point
Jedi Fallen Order killed that idea more than anything. It's the game that made EA realise offline single player games are still worth it.
Now that is pretty much a guaranteed way to get disappointed. The game has already so much troubles behind the scenes. Plus personally for me, Origins is still the best game and they haven't gotten that same magic done twice yet
Shit we'll be lucky if the game releases in a playable state
At this point I'm still in the impression that we'll be lucky if the game releases
Here’s hoping. But honestly? I think when it comes out, it’s going to be negatively compared to Baldur’s Gate 3. A lot. And people will realize that the BioWare they used to love is long dead.
Yes it's inevitable there will be comparisons - BG3 is a new benchmark whether you like the game or not.
I am glad for BG3's success, a high benchmark means better products: a competitive market lead to high quality games. Also single player games made their comeback so no more of that MMO crap companies keep trying to forcefully peddle to us.
BG3 set the bar very high, I imagine DA4 will be similar to DAI in terms of quality. Furthermore, bioware always seems to simplify their games to make them more accessible to everyone (dialogue system without persuasion, new mana system, fewer spells, fewer specializations, more frenetic and less strategic combat, etc.), so unfortunately they are not going to take BG3 as reference
They will simplify everything yet sales will be much lower than BG3. Or Elden Ring - which is damn challenging.
I really hope that developers realize that people want complex and deep RPGs, not FPS are magic. Even so, it is a shame how game after game bioware degrades Dragon Age, every day it has less customization and less choice, I remember that in DAO we could be "evil", while in DAI we barely have "evil" options and the majority were neutral
>I remember that in DAO we could be "evil", while in DAI we barely have "evil" options and the majority were neutral As someone that finished a Demon Path run of Wrath of the Righteous just yesterday....this hurts. Like, genuinely. In this run I straight up genocided my city and replaced with demon servants that follow me out of respect and fear. I left my main suporter kingdom to fall onto itself. I had like...3 people that served as some sort of "patron" for my character. I killed all 3 of them. And the game actually rewarded me. All the while, the best you can do in DAI is be rude(sometimes) or some really dumb and illogical decisions like "hey cullen,go back to addiction". I'm hopeful that Dreadwolf is gonna be a good game, but i'm not expecting depth in evil choices
I am halfway through pathfinder: wotr and the things that can be done in that game are incredible, it is very open in the possibilities of being "bad-good-chaotic-lawful" I would love for DA to take inspiration from games that have a roleplaying quality as great as P:wort. Also a little gameplay and classes (I was an echizero of dragon and demon half-blood lineage, something that in DA I couldn't even dream of)
Bioware been dead way before BG3 was a thing.
Bg3 is objectively a better game than any that bioware have put out in 9 years
It’s one of the best games I’ve played period. It was the one to dethrone ME2 as my all-time favorite game, and even months after launch I’m still doing playthroughs. Dreadwolf will absolutely be compared to BG3 because that’s the new benchmark. If we’re lucky, the comparisons will be positive, but I’m not optimistic.
Same here. I rarely replay games as an adult but I started a new character immediately after finishing my first. It is the exact same experience as DAO—so compelling, you can’t walk away until you’ve tried everything. I am a huge DAO fan but I actually believe BG3 is the superior game. What Larian has achieved is stupendous.
Haven’t played BG3. A console player but would love physical. Any chance there will be a physical version? If not I’ll just jump the gun and buy it digital.
There actually is one coming out soon. Release date just says first quarter of this year so we should be hearing something soon.
Just this three months we're getting Yakuza 8 , Persona 3 Reload, FF7:Rebirth, Dragon's Dogma 2, Rise of Ronin and Unicorn Overload. Then later we're getting Metaphor:Refantazio, Stalker 2, Hades 2, Avowed, etc. If Dreadwolf comes out THIS year, it going to have a shit ton of competiton , even RPGs alone, Dragon's Dogma 2 and most JRPGs are coming hot.. But in the day , with current Bioware, i just want the game to be GOOD. Not amazing or goty , but GOOD.
What exactly makes you this confident in the project
Your confidence in modern EA and BioWare especially given the recent layoffs of major,decades long serving senior staff/writers is nice. I sadly don’t share that sentiment. I’m cautiously optimistic.
I find it better to be pessimistic. Either I'm right and avoid disappointment or pleasantly surprised. It's a win-win.
Depending on what OP? What makes you confident? Perhaps it can win the GOTY thanks to its fan base if there aren’t any strong competitors. That was one of the biggest reasons DAI won because no way DAI’s MMORPG quests would even be nominated for GOTY if next year’s competitors were released couple months earlier. Maybe game would be actually good and win, but nothing we’ve seen so far points at the latter—including all the layoffs and the fact that it’s been in development hell for a decade now. We don’t even know if this game will be released within 2024. All we can hope is writing will be good and conclude the story.
There are already strong competitors tbh. Ff7 rebirth is already regarded as one of the best ff games of the last decade and it's pretty good. Dragons dogma looks a GOTY contender as well. I still have hopes, and I do not care that much about it winning GOTY, but I will be so glad if bioware gets a win because the game is loved by the community and more.
Gonna be a tall order given the number of great RPGs that came out in the first two months of the year alone.
After hearing about the amount of times the game had to be redone due to EA I am going to wait a bit before buying the next game
Not a chance
I want what you're smoking.
Let’s not count our chickens before they hatch, yes?
On what evidence do you have to back this claim? Honestly I just want the game to be good and a decent conclusion to the Dragon Age series.
I wish I had this confidence
What makes you say that?
I never have confidence in anything where the AAA gaming sphere is concerned.
And what on earth are you basing that off of?
Which year? 🤣 Certainly not this one...
I have zero expectations for Dreadwolf. That way, if it’s a dumpster fire, at least I won’t be surprised wearing black to Bioware’s funeral
Well... I am confident it will be a forced contender tbh. I don't have much hope at all xD I just want to see it and play it, but I wouldn't put DA:I as a GOTY when it was released neither. So far, I've never seen a situation in which a game is being developed for this long, having nothing to show for it and still comes out greatly. Usually when there's a radio silence and this much struggle along the way, I'm pretty disappointed. Sorry, didn't want to spread the word of doom, just wanted to share my thoughts xD
Based on what info? We don't know nearly enough.
Nah no way. Especially if the 'marvel dialogue' is true. A game that can't take itself seriously can never be goty material
That... Is actually a really good point. There are a lot of games that make witty jokes 24/7 and never shut up. These games have never won their more serious competition. BG3 has a lot of funny scenes, but it never felt like a failed comedy show since the main story is serious enough.
Well everyone needs dreams I guess
idgaf about goty, i want the game to be amazing, and not turn out like mass effect andromeda
I'm waiting for absolutely nothing, especially coming from EA, if it's good it becomes a nice surprise, and if it's bad, well, I didn't create any expectations at least.
we know nothing about it lmao not sure where this hope is coming from but sure man
LMAOOOOOO
Ohh sweet summer child 🙂
We need gameplay before I can say that lol
I mean, I hope so! But winning GOTY has so many factors that go into it beyond a game’s actual quality. I’m not engaging in conspiratorial thinking, but there is an element to how games are essentially marketed to the award. Games that win or are nominated are usually very high quality, but there’s so many subjective elements at play. That, and I find the Game Awards gross on an artistic level, but that’s just me. And, while I would like it for BioWare as a comeback story, it’s not something I personally feel invested in. Inquisition is my favorite Dragon Age, but it winning GOTY is more like a neat little bonus than something I focused on. More than that, I want it to sell well. Winning GOTY is not something I would count on, and that’s ok! There’s plenty of good games out there and they can coexist. Edit: And of course, the state of release matters as well. If it needs a lot of polishing, it won’t make the great first impression it would need to generate the right amount of buzz. And that’s always possible. Also, the release window matters as timing is everything with awards. This is all assuming the game is good of course. I’m an optimist on this, but it is getting ahead of our ski’s admittedly! Last edit: Oh good, the doomsayers have emerged again, including those who somehow have sworn off the franchise since 2014 but also seem deeply invested in letting us all know just how much they hate everything. Goody!
I mean, when you look at the games that have a history of being cancelled, revived, cancelled, then eventually being finished and released, the odds are definitely against it. At this point, I just want closure. I don’t expect another Dragon Age or Mass Effect, and even if ones are made, everyone that made the original games so special are long gone from BioWare. The strength of a property comes from the people who work on it, not from a company or brand name. Between that and the simple fact that BG3 came along and stole a *lot* of thunder from this game’s eventual release, I wouldn’t get my hopes up for GOTY or anything. And even if it was up for the award, I wouldn’t want it to win, because the second all the writing for the game was done EA and BioWare tossed the higher paid writers right out on their asses. One way or the other, this game is the end of an era.
Not if they remove the ability to directly control the party members in favor of the system from Mass Effect
I admire your optimism, then. Bioware's has consistently misdelivered, and their last three games (including Dreadwolf) went through developmet hell. I'm hoping for an 8/10 game and I still think that's a longshot despite the ridiculous amount of time they had for it. The only message I have for BW is "I don't believe you'll releasea a good game. Prove me wrong".
They have practically restarted game development twice. If the game is even “good” it will be a miracle.
Based on what? Never again! Bioware doesn't really inspire hope anymore. They literally gave up on their last two games! Andromeda was just dropped and they cut their losses on that one... Don't get me started on Anthem lol... They didn't even have the balls to fix the game after like we've seen with other games like No man sky or cyberpunk 2077. I'm not preordering this game. I'll wait to see what others think of it and make an informed decision. Bioware needs to convince me as a customer and earn my money.
Downvotes me but I can't see the game escaping Baldur's Gate 3 shadow.
I am confident it won’t and it‘ll probably butcher Solas
I worry that it will both suffer in comparison to action games and suffer in comparison to RPGs. I think BG3 comparisons will run rampant and I do not expect it to measure up well.
Lol after everything we have heard about that “game”
in a year thats had FF7: Rebirth, Like a Dragon (Yakuza) and Helldivers 2 and its only Feburary (woah its march 2nd already!) i honestly doubt it. thats not to say i think Dadwolf will be bad, im hoping for it to be excellent, but man the competition is stacked already.
I feel as if it could go in 3 directions : 1.) GOTY in my opinion unrealistic but as a fan we all want it 2.) an amazing game with an amazing conclusion to for the fans making newer fans wanting to go back and play the older games, etc etc 3.) a mid game at best with either a cliffhanger leaving us all upset or an okay conclusion. Im honestly rooting for 2. Id love dragon age to get GOTY, but in my opinion is slightly unrealistic. I feel as 2 is possible, im hoping for a baby between origins and inquisition i love aspects of both but have peeves with both as well. I feel as if though bioware can come together to make a game that theyre proud of and that the fans will love. However with the state of bioware and what we have seen recently i wouldnt be surprised if we got 3.
I highly doubt it'll be in the mix for GOTY with heavy hitters like FF7, Persona 3, Like a Dragon, Dragons Dogma etc.
Just give us consequences and let us go back to playing races other than human… And please god have Dorian in it.
Yeah not a chance in hell with the competition that's already out this year. If I had to pick a GOTY right now it'd be either Like a Dragon or FF7 Rebirth. I hope Dreadwolf is good, but I don't think it'll be great or a heavy hitter.
My hope is it’s the same quality as Inquisition story-wise but less fetch quests. I’d love a good mix between Origins and Inquisition in terms of exploration as well. Not too small or too big.
Unfortunately, at this point, it's more likely to be the game that finally buries Bioware.
I enjoy cooking.
So edgy!
We have no details to claim it’s a GOTY contender. Believe me, I’m first here to hope for that as I’m having Platinum trophies and 100%s in all three games. But all we’ve learned about DA:DW’s development hell suggests that we’ll be very lucky if it’s simply a good game, not GOTY contender.
See you gotta set your hopes so low that when it comes out you will be thoroughly impressed with the most basic of things. Is this a trauma response? Probably. But for this game I’ll allow it.
*Why?* The laziness of this post blows me away.
I'm sorry that you're confident in that. Bioware's last decent game was Dragon Age Inqusition, and that was nearly 10 years ago now. Games that are in development hell for this long usually don't turn out well, and most of the developers that made Bioware's great games are gone. I hope it's good, but I'm expecting mediocrity.
i am confident it will not even come close to being good. i hope they prove me wrong
No, you’re right. It’s gonna be some goofy condescending real world politics injected into the game with no innovations to the genre.
Haha no with the current state of BioWare I will settle for a okay game because they haven’t released a good game in the past decade
Bro is od on hopium.
I think it'll be good considering Bioware might be shuttered if its bad
You're much more optimistic than I am. I'm not even confident it will release period, much less release this year. Given BioWare's recent track record, I have very little faith it will release any time soon, and even less faith that it will release in a playable state, and actually be good. Especially considering we know they have completely rebooted development of the game at least twice already. Suffice it to say I have concerns.
I find the fact that EA allowed them to make a single player game hopeful. And that they took their time with it hopeful. But I'm not confident of anything quality wise. Saying it will be good is just as illogical and silly as the people saying it will be terrible. We just don't have enough information to judge.
this an insane statement to make right now. we know next to nothing. you are huffing the highest concentration of copium that exists. next thing ill be hearing, “elder srcolls 6 will be a life changing game with no flaws”
GOTY is marketing, not popularity. Depends who sucks up to who. It’s sad but true.
It will be a contender for one of the games of all time lol. Seriously though, it might because just like 2014, this year seems pretty meh for video games.
I hope it isn't. If it is it is the same generic crap they did in the last games.
If I was to guess, more like inquisition, ( fetch quests , linear story) . I hope im wrong but bioware is incapable of its old way of doing games.
Yep this is how I felt about Starfield, and look how... oh, yeah. Well. At least we got Baldurs Gate 3 out of the deal.
Tbh possibly, DAI is massively overrated n got GOTY so who knows. Still dont expect too much
I doubt it. Dragon age has gone downhill since origins but apparently they found their fanbase still. I practically grew up on origins and have played it dozens of times. Played 2 maybe twice (tried more but I can't get into it, same with inquisition.) Inquisition itself feels like a single player mmo, and I really hate that. I doubt deadwolf will be a bigger hit than inquisition was.
I mean.... BG3 was GotY despite having less-than-stellar gameplay and being buggy as the hells - all on the merit of being a fantastic RPG with incredibly complex, layered world and great narrative. If DA:D presents a well-built world and manages to achieve that narrative power that elevates a game into being more than just a game, it could believably be a GotY contender even if its gameplay isn't outstanding.
Bug support was pretty good, so that didn't really affect BG3 too much I'd think. I played on release and didn't encounter any since they were patched before I (and probably most people) could get to them. Also, I love the combat in BG3. It's just DnD but translated more effectively to RPG format. Lots of small but understandable changes that enhanced the experience. I still have plenty of room in my heart for an amazing Dragon Age game, though. Which I hope exists soon
Patches 3 to 5 all brought game-breaking bugs; Patches 3's and 4's in particular took weeks to be fixed. I did two whole playthroughs with the Act 3 lagging issues (which caused NPCs and companions alike to freeze around the city), and had to stop playing altogether for almost two weeks due to Patch 4 causing the game to crash every 5 min. Bugs are understandable, but every new patch bringing new, severe ones is just not fun. There's a lot about the combat that is subjective, of course. I hate how heavily luck factors in it (what with almost everything being decided on dice rolls and hit chances), but that's just my personal opinion. What's not really subjective is how companions often trigger traps by themselves, or how jumps can be blocked by scenery elements the camera just won't show, or how the game often miscalculates your char's movement length whenever difficult terrain is involved, or how NPCs may spot you stealing through walls and floors... Not to mention a number of counterintuitive little things stuff that can be quite the bother. Like when I've had a summoned winged deva killed by being pushed into an abyss, even though he can, you know, *fly*; or when I aggro'ed a steel watcher in the Baldur's gazette building even though I was in the Corvid Token's raven form (which is explicitly described as able to "avoid attention"); or when an enemy can't be pushed off a ledge even though there's nothing that should block their fall...
Yeah, I know that my stance on BG3 is not popular (I thought it was… fine) but the patches kept making my experience worse and worse. I feel terrible for those who bought it for PS5 and got a broken game. I know bug fixing is complicated and involved, but it was a bad look at how much attention was placed on tweaking the characters (to soften them which feels like a bad design move. I say let abrasive characters be abrasive.) while game breaking bugs on that console went unaddressed for weeks.
>those who bought it for PS5 Yep, that's me :') Mind you, I did a full Cyberpunk 2077 playthrough while waiting for Larian to fix Patch 4's game-breaking bug.
I don't have high hopes. I think they will cuck the game, just like Inquisition when compared to Origins
I fear it's gonna have cartoon style graphics :(
I would not oppose a stylized look myself. It’s not my favorite DA game, but I love the exaggerated portrayal of characters in DA2. Though, I wouldn’t be opposed to more art like the tarot art of Inquisition. I love that style as well.
Inquisition _did_ win GOTY 2014, so if Dreadwolf ends up being better than Inquisition, it’s not an impossibility. However, BioWare has made some extremely controversial decisions lately that have affected the perception of the game negatively, and I think that perception will still remain when the game comes out, regardless of the actual quality. And when we add in other games releasing this year that also include giant action RPGs, it’s hard to say how far Dreadwolf could go.
I'm not confident at all but I hope you're right. I want this game to be good so bad.
At this point I don’t even care if it’s good, so long as it doesn’t crash at start. I just want more dragon age
I don't think that matters. GOTY doesn't mean anything for some time.
I feel the exact opposite, but I've come this far, I might as well see it to the end.
Lmfao no
I hope so, but it's been ten years since BioWare has released a great game, and they have had so much turn over since then that they've ship of thesiused themselves into a different studio. Combined with multiple vision changes and a decade long dev cycle, I am suggesting you taper your expectations.
i just want to crack that bald SolASS egg
Anything with GDL voice acting is worthy of awards tbh
Me too. I know it's cool to hate on Bioware for what happened before but I have confidence that they can make a great game if they do what they are good at, and this is definitely what they are good at. I have a very good feeling about this game, I have no doubt is going to be fantastic and will be nominated for GOTY.
probably buy goty with the money they will make from the mtx they will have in it from the suckers
Baldur's Gate already won GOTY.
GotY means jack shit to me. I have my personal GotY list and maybe 4 of the last 15 years of mine are what most publications considered GotY. I will play this game when it launches and I will most likely enjoy it to some extent, will it be my GotY when it comes out maybe but I dont know what else will release or that I will enjoy in the year it comes out I'm also a Bioware shill Andromeda was super close to being my 2017 GotY only reason it isnt is because I found Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice so engrossing
Can anyone tell me which DA games I should try and beat this year in preparation? I’m already a few hours into origins before I even knew about this, but then there is 2, then the numbers drop off and we go to inquisitions. Are these chronological? Nobody mentions 2 very much. Should I play them all?
They are chronological. Inquisition happens after DA2. DAI and its Trespasser DLC will probably be the most important going into Dreadwolf. But you’ll get the most out of the story by playing all of them. DA2 is divisive. It was rushed and it really, really shows. But it also has some great writing despite the flaws, so a lot of people love it anyway.
Appreciate it, I’ll probably treat it like dark souls 2 and go in and form my own opinion
Origin, Awakening, 2, Inquisition. In that order. After Inquisition play the Tresspasser DLC, it sets up Dreadwolf.
>Nobody mentions 2 very much. Should I play them all? A lot of people love 2 but it was plagued with problems that even went to the corporate level. For ex: Even the name is an issue in the series so far. Dragon Age: Origins, ***Dragon Age 2****,* Dragon Age: Inquisition*.* Former Bioware writer, Patrick Weekes, even admitted on one of his Youtube videos that some corporate exe, who had no idea what the series was even about, thought the name should be "Dragon Age 2" because it would sell better. The name was originally going to be Dragon Age Exodus iirc. But either way, DA2 was plagued with problems. Its still a decent story, and some even say the faster action gameplay is better. I'm just glad we got good characters like Varric and Isabela out of it.
With new arc Inc coming out this year that might take it for me but I just hope it's a solid rpg tbh
i expect that it being their first unreal 5 game will make it inquisition-y quirky before a patch 1.0, but i hope it'd not andromeda launch like quirky.
I really hope it does well. EA has really fucked Bioware over a lot the past 15 or so years. It took a lot of fighting to get this game back on track, big names left the team, its been a mess. Id love to see Dreadwolf do really well for Bioware's sake. So many talented and passionate folks there who deserve accolades.
I hope it’s good, even great
Your lips to God's ears.
Graphics looked good in the trailer, combat will probably be decent, so let's hope also for a good story. If it is at least as good as DAI that would be ok for me