That couple rather pissed me off, for the sole reason that on Ilium, there is yet another random and trite quest where an Asari girl suddenly seeks your advice in whether she should marry her Krogran boyfriend and have a child with him, even though Krogans live as long as Asari. /palmface

What the fuck, Bioware. Lessons obviously NOT learned. It’s not about lampooning tropes other people have identified in your game, or making fun of topics in your game that other people have made fun of. It’s about understanding WHY they were targeted and mocked as low-quality shit writing, something that clearly didn’t happen, with that quest at least.

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In any case, I always thought Hercule Poirot was a french speaking belgian (being belgian myself, I’ve never actually watched it). So wouldn’t it be more like “le samedi soir”? :P

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Harder is fine. It is my choice after all.

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I was glad to see a link between one part of your “Do these 4/5 things” tree and another part.

KG

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Kieron Gillen said:
“Walking off to the Mage Tower for help was a ridiculous decision and deserved to be treated as such.”

No it wasn’t. It was only a day away.

KG

Chalk me up as another one dissapointed by the ‘easy’ option for that quest. One day there, one day back, and an almost ridiculous amount of time sorting the mage tower out while there adds up to a whole lotta days. And on my triumphant return, no-one even mentions my absence, or the intervening period.

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No it wasn’t. It was only a day away.

KG

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I always find it hard to attach weight to a decision if it isn’t going to impact on the gameplay or the overarching story in some way. Ultimately, I felt no satisfaction in stopping the Blight, because I felt like I could have just randomly made choices throughout the game and still won, which, to me at least, highlights how meaningless those choices really were. Every time Sten – the stand-out character in the game- stopped me and told me that we were wasting time and that the fight was the other way, I wanted to remind him that it was 2009 and that there was zero chance of anything bad happening because of our wandering.

Bioware played it too safe for my tastes – you are always firmly in control of exactly how any given quest will play out, and, with few exceptions, the possible outcomes are always telegraphed well in advance. Walking off to the Mage Tower for help was a ridiculous decision and deserved to be treated as such. If I had come back from the Mage Tower and Connor had flipped out and killed everybody in my absence, I would have been instantly hooked into the world and every decision I made thereafter. If my constant chasing of a ‘perfect solution tomorrow’, led to either an extremely tough battle at the end, or even failure to stop the Blight (as in, still have a conclusion to the game, just a failed one), I would tell you this was one of the greatest RPGs ever made.

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That is all.

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I’ve been playing the game lately. Just reachez Orzawhatsitsname and suspect I still haven’t seen much of the game. There are things to enjoy in DAO but that article analyzing the quest left me wondering something.

Is the result of the quest displayed as an endgame vignette or does it manifest during playtime? In either case, that seems to harken back to the Fallout days and how even the most inconsequential looking stuff can have broad implication or results. Like leaving unknown progeny in New Reno (F2) after sleeping with the Bishop family’s daughter without wearing protection, or fingering the wrong person in a murder case only knowing that while the poor sod was lynched the true criminal remained unknown.

I’ve also yet to see more of the Chantry’s belief. All I’ve done so far is watch a city get wasted by the Darkspawn (amusingly, a nod to Fallout’s Super Mutant rampage across the wasteland, something I clearly remember not a small number of people criticizing in Black Isle’s game since it deprived them of doing things in their own time, and finding the same people who looked down on that element welcoming it in DAO), unknowingly starting a lesbian relationship (pressing the wrong number key in dialog options is fun, apparently), saved a royal brat from demonic possession (and now off to find the Urn of Ash for his father), talked with everyone in the party camp and getting to know them better (to Bioware’s credit, the cast feels less annyoing than in previous games even if they’re still using the same personalities ever since Baldur’s Gate 2), and ventured into crypts, castles, forests. It feels like I’ve done a lot and there’s still a lot more to do. Can’t say I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve done, which leaves me somewhere between bored by the same kinds of quests I’ve seen elsewhere before and looking forward to trudging on through the ridiculous blood soaked plastic figurines pantomining some sense of emotion thanks to the glittering gems amidst the mud.

In particular, the reflection on that religion reminded me of Arcanum. It also expanded on Fallout’s consequences, like dooming a small mining city for the simple fact you never bothered to get rid of the bandits that demanded payment outside its gates, or how never giving a damn about the outdated and insular views of Cumbria’s king had the city die out in the face of progress. Arcanum also had a religion, one which was maintained by a degree of superstition, heresay and very rigid control over scriptures and truth by the church. Saints often weren’t, certainties were misguided, and the guy everyone prayed to and thought dead for centuries was actually living off in a deserted island, meaning the whole idea behind the religion was suddenly made bogus when you found him. It was, of course, unfortunately underdeveloped and muted but a refreshing change nonetheless.

Racial and gender division also existed, particularly in the bustling city of Tarant, with women often excluded from “men only” societies, orcs under the boothill of humans and working as slaves (there’s actually a nifty bit where you can aid Donn Trogg to escape with his life and become a voice in the fight for their rights), elfs were seen with distrust (along the lines of outdated pagan dolts who could not see the marvels of technological progress), and disenfrachised members of a race living in squalor or doing menial tasks to earn a living (such as high class gnomes and dwarves having nothing to do with their lesser brethen because of their social status).

I’m certain Bioware expanded greatly on these kinds of concepts, adding quite a bit of depth even when they didn’t had to but while that’s commendable, I can’t really look at that quest – or quests in DAO in general, admittedly from what I’ve seen so far – to be enormous achievements. They just took a decade to notice what the underdogs have been doing for years and seem to have come to the conclusion that an illusion of choice and false depth just don’t cut it anymore. Kudos to them if that is the case but I can’t shake the feeling that once again, they’re being praised for things that have passed by most people in the first place.

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It’s a bit like reading 8k words on why The Matrix is a treatise on the evils of socialism. Hijacking films/books and shoehorning your favorite ideology to hate is neither creative nor fun usually. Maybe if you are Charlie Brooker or similar.

Also, Existenz is not even near as fun as Videodrome, long live the new flesh!

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