Thursday, November 17, 2011

And Here My Troubles Began

Hmm. What IF we changed more about a future Dragon Age than you might like? Quel horreur!

I imagine it would look something like this:

Stage 1: Denial
Posts of "no, it can't be true!" and "maybe they didn't mean what we think it means!"

Stage 2: Anger
As the truth sinks in, posts of "Bioware, you have betrayed all that is good and righteous!" and furious predictions of financial collapse and boycotts, etc. etc.

Stage 3: Bargaining
Hopeful posts of "Well, if we don't get X will we still get Y?" and "Well, since there's still Z maybe X won't seem that bad" or even "Will we be able to change X ourselves?"

Stage 4: Depression
"Bioware is dead", "RPG's are dead", etc. ad nauseum as that glorious, scintillating might-have-been is now really gone.

and finally Stage 5: Acceptance
You see whatever game it is for what it actually is and enjoy it on its own terms.

or, alternatively Stage 5: Acceptance
You realize it's not the game for you, but might be for other people. You move on.

or, if you really must, you go back to Stage 1: Denial
You refuse to accept the presence of X in your beloved game, or any game for that matter, and begin a bitter campaign to convince everyone else that it is the travesty you think it is. If you play the game, you are determined to hate it-- and voila! You do! Possibly you hang out on RPG Codex.

...at least, that's how it usually happens. Or so I've found over the years.


- David Gaider
Lead Writer for Dragon Age II

Not gaming's best story, but maybe its best storytelling. Darker, sexier, better.

-PC Gamer

Yes! This! You guys have no idea how cute Merrill is. I work here and and I still squee when she says things I haven't heard.

There's a lot of this in the writer pit:

Merrill (in-game): (something unbelievably cute)
Sheryl: GIGGLESQUEE!!!!! SO CUTE!!!
Mary: Hee hee.
Sheryl: She's so adorable I love her and want to hug her omgIcan'tbelievehowadorablesheisCAN-I-NOM-HER-HEAD?!
Mary: ... No.


- Sheryl Chee
Head Writer for Dog, Dragon Age: Origins








That's right motherbitches, it's Dragon. Age. Mother. Fucking. Two.

The myth. The legend. The game that finally killed off any vestiges of goodwill Bioware had accumulated over my past decade and a half of PC gaming.

The sequel to a game that Bioware spent over half a decade developing, Dragon Age 2 was developed in significantly less time. Like, barely over a year. Not much of that time was spent on pesky timesinks like "designing maps," "designing combat encounters," "balancing the combat," or "creating a remotely coherent storyline", as Bioware focused on what really mattered: writing a harem of psychologically broken dipshits who will gladly fuck you no matter how much they hate you. This last part was something Bioware actually used to publicize the game.

Following release, Bioware decided that anyone who didn't like this obvious masterpiece was a 4chan troll and started banning people en masse from the Bioware forums, and subsequently their EA Accounts. You read that right, criticizing this trainwreck amounted to a lifetime ban from any future EA games. Their solution to remedy this problem was to lock the Dragon Age 2 forum so that anyone without Dragon Age 2 linked to their Bioware social network account was unable to post. That policy persists to this day.

I'm not gonna try to go extensively into metagame knowledge and how shitty this game is compared to Dragon Age: Origins, as that'll just add more time and effort expended on what is probably the worst idea I've had since downing 5 pints of Pabst and 3 shots of Black Velvet then getting behind the wheel of my mom's toyota and driving to my parents' wedding anniversary dinner.

Before we begin this epic voyage through Dragon Age 2, a game where everything's shat up and none of the choices matter, some disclaimers:
  • I'm not doing any DLC. At all. Don't ask. No Exiled Prince, No Legacy, No Felicia Day's Retard Fuckfest Adventure.
  • I'm not taking reader input. At all. Much like David Gaider, I'm not going to let an annoying thing like audience input get in the way of the epic story I want to tell.
  • I'm probably going to put as much effort into writing these posts as Bioware did into making Dragon Age 2.
  • I hate this game. This LP will reflect that.

With that said, let's jump in!

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