New Dragon Age game possibly announced in December

[Hazel Motes]

You'd hope they would shoot Bioware in the face and make it quick so we can all go back to talking about the Land of Might Have Been and speculate how Mass Effect 4 would have fixed 3's ending, or how Dragon Age would have let you be an elven Napoleon.

But no, we have to slowly watch these franchises be gutted (more so than they already have, don't worry) so you can't even replay the past games without thinking about how they end up. Mass Effect: Andromeda may have sucked, but it is so far removed from the trilogy that it hardly bothers me. Mass Effect 4 will be member berries- yes, we can do that now- for every character and little detail from the past trilogy, all without any the soul of those games. Meanwhile, Dragon Age 4 will have its story continued by mediocre diversity hires who must shoehorn their modern worldviews in without an element of nuance. Characters will preach in your face and twitter dunderheads will say it is intellectual in lieu of ever needing to read a book.

Who knows, I could be wrong.

Spoiler: mild rant

I liked Inquisition, a lot. I loath the open worlds which look pretty, but drag the game down with time consuming quests, but many moments stick out to me just as much as many did in Origins. Sue me, I like a good deal of the characters as well. I even enjoyed 2 after a second playthrough. I think a voiced main character does limit the writers to branch out to meaningful choices, but I grew to like Hawke. I also enjoyed how very few of the characters from the first two games showed up in Inquisition. You had mention of a few, but people like Wynne, Sten, Orghren not turning up was nice. They saved the world once and their stories were done. They aren't spoiled by fitting them into the confines of a new story.

This is what I worry with ME 4 (I know this is a DA thread, but it's all about Bioware). They tried to do something different with Andromeda and failed- I think it should have been set on one, diverse looking, planet and made the whole thing smaller scale. No invading threat, except maybe your own people, where you are in conflict with how you want this world to be set out and how you respond to the other alien races. Maybe ending up with your sibling leaving over your actions, setting up future conflict.- It failed, mainly because your character felt like they made no choices that matter, not even in conversations. Think of all the characters you didn't even have to bother with in Mass Effect 1. Shep could be useful dick or a reliable saint. On the other hand, Ryder is either sarcastic or semi-serious. You could never be a dick to your squad. They were always happy with one another because the writers were too scared for you to have a spine and disagree with them? Fallout fucking 4 had more choices in dialogue.

And speaking of choices, where on earth was your Virmire mission? This is the moment where you are forced to sacrifice one of your squadmates. It's a highlight of the series. Andromeda has nothing like that. If you don't find the rest of the pathfinders, you lose a few people. It's a damn squib when compared to Virmire or the suicide mission. Everyone ended up on the same page when playing Andromeda.

Now, my issue with ME 4 is because EA and Bioware- they both deserve blame here- realised the trilogy does well and ME A tried to do something different, then doing something different is automatically a bad thing. So they make the trailer, bring out Liara, and hint at the return of Shep. This will just drag the trilogy into the shit if they do. I do believe many people would have happy with Mass Effect game like 1 or 2 with different characters which responded to the ending in an adequate way. That way, Bioware could move on with the story without clinging to nostalgia for faggy fanboy points. They are going to pull a Force Awakens with this shit.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

This is what I worry with ME 4 (I know this is a DA thread, but it's all about Bioware). They tried to do something different with Andromeda and failed- I think it should have been set on one, diverse looking, planet and made the whole thing smaller scale. No invading threat, except maybe your own people, where you are in conflict with how you want this world to be set out and how you respond to the other alien races. Maybe ending up with your sibling leaving over your actions, setting up future conflict.- It failed, mainly because your character felt like they made no choices that matter, not even in conversations. Think of all the characters you didn't even have to bother with in Mass Effect 1. Shep could be useful dick or a reliable saint. On the other hand, Ryder is either sarcastic or semi-serious. You could never be a dick to your squad. They were always happy with one another because the writers were too scared for you to have a spine and disagree with them? Fallout fucking 4 had more choices in dialogue.

This is so true. Personally I thought every planet in Andromeda should have been a death world, or a dead world, and the real villain was trying to keep the colony from tearing itself apart when they discover that they're millions of light years from home in a galaxy where nobody cares about them. Better still, have a large number of planets where there is evidence of sentient life, but most of them are radioactive ruins from where they discovered the atomic bomb and then destroyed themselves a few years later, because maybe the reapers were right that organic life always destroys itself in the end. Or maybe one where there was a sentient spacefaring species but who ascended to a higher plane of existence and only their robot servitors stay behind waiting for their masters to come back.

But no, they turned it into fan fiction. The most frustrating thing about Andromeda? That there were occasional flashes of competence. It felt like they could write competently, they just chose not to.

 

[Snekposter]

But no, they turned it into fan fiction. The most frustrating thing about Andromeda? That there were occasional flashes of competence. It felt like they could write competently, they just chose not to.

I think the most egregious example of that is the long, convoluted story arc involving the initial protests upon arrival leading up to the mass exile. "So, things went to hell, a bunch of third-rate paper pushers with no idea what to do got put in charge by sheer merit of not dying, people got more than a little upset, and then the number 2 man fucked over everyone to cement his own shadow authority."

And we get absolutely zero ability to resolve the events of such an arc, despite being able to conclusively prove his independent action. Exiles still bad, krogan are... krogan. We can't reconcile between the Nexus and Sloane's Kadara exiles. No apologies at all. Just "lol Nexus good" in the end. And then you have that little bit on Elaaden where apparently everyone being hacked off and edgy is because of... cryo-induced neurochemical imbalances? Certainly not because things have gone to shit, Elaaden is hot as fuck, and the sorts of people willing to sign up for a six-hundred-year voyage to a different galaxy aren't exactly predisposed towards authority and obedience in the first place.