BioWare Announces Dragon Age Inquisition For October 7th 79
An anonymous reader writes "Today BioWare announced a new game in its popular Dragon Age RPG series titled Inquisition. The game will follow the story of an Inquisitor trying to rally the world against the magic-laden forces spewing from rifts opening to another place. The game's creative director, Mike Laidlaw, says players will be able to watch the world descend into chaos, and then deal with the burdens of power as they rally forces in opposition. BioWare is also taking the opportunity to fix all of the things they broke in Dragon Age 2: 'Top-down tactical view is back. Playable races are back. The game seems to have more of an emphasis on challenge thanks to non-regenerative health.' The game will launch on October 7th for the PC, PS3/4, and Xbox 360/One."
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Those people are lacking principles. DRM is intolerable to anyone with a brain.
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I'm sure that's why Steam and PSN are some of biggest gaming distribution platforms then - both DRM platforms, both massively popular - in fact Steam is the largest digital distributor of games on the planet and has much the same DRM as EA's origin, apples app/itunes stores, etc (installation to authorized computers only, optional online-only DRM for games, ability to put one or all of your games into 'playable offline').
I'm sure that's why some of the largest games in their genres are also online-only DRM
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Get real, DRM is completely tolerable - the numbers and money speak for themselves - you're just ignorant or senile.
DRM is intolerable *to anyone with a brain*. Appealing to popularity will not save you. Most gamers are unprincipled little wimps who will take any abuse these scumbag corporations, who think of them all as 'pirates', throw forth, simply because they want their precious "entertainment." They've never once known what it's like to have principles.
Digital restrictions management is disgusting and tries to take control of your computing from you, which is absolutely intolerable to those with brains and principl
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How do you suggest these Bioware stop everyone just downloading their game?
It is unjustifiable to unleash DRM against people just to stop the copyright infringement bogeyman. Furthermore, how does GoG do it? They don't. They don't treat their potential customers like scum and trust them to buy the games. DRM almost always fails to stop anyone but normal people, anyway, and when it doesn't, it's so horribly draconian (e.g. Diablo 3) that the game is worthless.
Because although a lot of /.ers complain about DRM and wanting everything to be free, these games actually cost A LOT of money to make. You can't hate a company for at least trying to break even.
Incorrect. I can hate a company for trying to make money through immoral means. Digital restrictions management, that which
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Seriously? Steam rakes in hundred of millions of not billions a year. They are not going anywhere soon. If in 30 years that changes, yes I guess you might be boned but honestly, would you REALLLY give a shit about 30 year old games that probably won't even work on windows 18? It isn't like they are just going to drop off the face of the planet one day, you will see it coming at which point you will stop buying games from them.
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Yes, I still play very old games on old equipment. Some of us do care about things like ownership and control.
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I don't care what the vast majority of you imbeciles care about. I care about morality and being able to control what I own (and being able to own things, of course).
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It's a popular opinion, but I have always failed to see why.
Because it is attempt by scumbag companies to control your computing.
As a legal gamer who pay for my games I experience no problems with services like Steam whatsoever.
You seem to be presuming that DRM only affects people who don't get the game from authorized channels, but even Steam sometimes affects 'innocents.'
But that's besides the point. I'm someone who wants full control over my computer, so of course DRM is going to be intolerable to me.
I never have to worry about keeping/maintaining physical discs for later install, no worries about media format changing or anything like that.
Guess what? Services like GoG exist, and they don't use DRM.
Steam games don't always use DRM, though, but since it supports a DRM scheme (Steamworks, I think it's
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Mass media is intolerable to anyone with a brain.
Taxation is intolerable to anyone with a brain.
Globalised farming is intolerable to anyone with a brain.
Fossil fuel use is intolerable to anyone with a brain.
Absolutist statements like yours sound all well and good, but just like the other examples I've just quoted DRM is a thing that people seem to be prepared to tolerate for the sake of an easy life. I'm really not a fan of DRM but it's a system that games ma
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Absolutist statements like yours sound all well and good
And in this case, it is all well and good. If you accept scumbag companies using digital restrictions management against you in an effort to control you, then you're a fool.
but it's a system that games manufacturers have developed in response to the evolutionary pressure of internet piracy.
Even if that were true, that does not justify it. Furthermore, it's more about control than it is about 'piracy' (a mere propaganda term).
Until you provide a sufficient counterpressure it will continue to be their optimal strategy so I'd rather hear solutions than soundbytes if that's okay with you.
Solution: Don't use DRM.
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Or maybe you just have a pack rat obsession with owning things while the rest of us as just looking to get some entertainment. I "buy" a non-transferrable license to a DRM-locked online-tied sandbox, even a DVD which also has DRM is more liberal as I can sell, lend, play anywhere without anyone's approval or activation but even that one I can't back up or format shift legally as I expect to do with my own property. None of that is an absolute necessity though, what matters if if the value (utility, desire)
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Or maybe you just have a pack rat obsession with owning things while the rest of us as just looking to get some entertainment.
Or maybe you're just completely lacking principles. I can't imagine why anyone would enjoy not being able to have full control of the computer they bought, and even enjoy having scumbag companies using digital restrictions management to take further control away from them. They'll basically saying that everyone is a 'pirate,' and people should be opposed to such things on principle.
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Those people are lacking principles. DRM is intolerable to anyone with a brain.
Why is it intolerable? My home computer has had "always-on Internet" for 10 years now. People are even forgetting that advertising slogan it's been so long. Assuming non-buggy DRM, occasional Internet outages hardly qualify as an intolerable interruption.
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Because it's an attempt to control what I do on my own computer, which is intolerable. Anyone who says otherwise needs to get some principles.
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I don't use those things.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, Origin's crap and I haven't played an EA game in over a year because of it. If they release on Steam, I'd consider it.
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As far as origin itself in function, I don't really have
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No go: the basically free game which was three years old needed an online connection, even for single player. You know, to make sure I donated at least a penny to the EFF for the game instead of just pirating it.
Are spawn waves gone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Are the enemy spawn waves gone? That's why I stopped playing DA2: having enemies spawn into the middle of my party when I thought I was done fighting and (as such) had expended all my mana was not fun. I liked that I actually knew what was happening in DA:O and had some capacity to plan and deal with it.
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From what I read, both the fights and the resource management are going to be a lot more challenging. For one, there won't be as many healing potions and mages can't just spam healing spells as they used to in DA:O. Additionally, creatures inhabit the maps. Giants roam the place and dragons guard their nests and your party can run into them quite unprepared. (Source in german: gamestar.de [gamestar.de]
Having played through DA:O without death of my character on the highest difficulty, I am looking forward to the changes
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What irritated me was the long cooldowns on powers, combined with magical thieves everywhere who attacked out of invisibility then went back invisible, repeat.
Fights devolved into protracted attrition rolls of the dice, where you tried to position non-casters to eat these every-round hyper backstabs until your casters' blasts recycled. Tank could eat two, everyone else a 1-hit 1-round speed bump sacrifice. If they backstabbed a caster, sigh, reload. If one of your blasts didn't hit, or for enough, sigh,
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Dragon age huh? (Score:2)
I still remember this thing called Dragon Age 2...which really wasn't a dragon age game, but you never really did say you screwed up royally on it there Bioware. In fact, I seem to remember that you never apologized for the cookie cutter layouts, or gutting the game in the first place. We shall wait, but faith has not been restored, especially after ME3's ending.
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the cookie cutting wasn't that much of the problem.
it was recycling the same places over and over and over again. that's not cookie cutting. that's just being lazy.
Re:Dragon age huh? (Score:2)
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That's literally what cookie-cutting is. That's what happens when you use a cookie cutter to cut cookies. All the cookie shapes end up the same.
I actually got over that very quickly. Board games are often like that, and I like board games. I couldn't stand the repetitive combat with the continuous enemy respawn. I thought it was a very neat conceit the first time it happened, but I quickly realized that it was *every combat*, regardless of whether it made sense. Also didn't like the bland mechanics an
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Yeah, just remeber Mass Effect was just as bad with its cookie-cutting, but since combat was fun and characters were interesting (compare and contrast: Garrus and Wrex versus Anders and... Fenris), it ended up being a good game. DA2 was so easy and repetitive it was painful. It's not what ruined it for me, though. At least not solely. Terrible dialogue, limited control over the poor plot and needless and jarring redesign (the Qunari and Flemeth, for instance) all contributed to a slightly below mediocre exp
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Actually they didn't. Going as far as to say that people preferred DA:O, "so we'll probably bring those back." But they defended all their design decisions in DA2.
Hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Try...
DRM infested great game created by a company that is unfortunately at the mercy of EA.
Don't get me wrong, I believe you are probably right about the DRM infested bit, and I'm personally of the opinion that EA blows ass in general.
But despite the mistakes they've made in the past, I still generally regard Bioware as a company that creates excellent video games, and as such, the announcement of Dragon Age 3 to me isn't something to snort derisively at, but something to look forward to with a bit of wari
Ignoring EA for a moment (Score:1)
Yes yes, most of us are going to pirate the crap out of it, many of us even having bought it that same day, but let's think about what the new Dragon Age really is promising.
Important, burdensome decisions (like what color of explosion you want at the very end), Inquisitor.
The weight of (small squad) command (in a videogame with plenty of healing and recuperation options - even if your health isn't regenerating like a shield system anymore) Inquisitor.
A colorful cast (okay that one we have to give them, wit
Eye candy (Score:3)
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as carefully balanced ... as Skyrim
That's not really a very high bar right there. Invest a little bit in stealth, archery, alchemy, or blacksmithing, and you can easily break the game.
Is it close enough to bug free that immersion isn't lost?
Actually, are you sure you played the same Skyrim as everybody else?
I tend to give Skyrim a pass on some of those balance issues because there's about a million ways to play the game, so it's likely that someone will find a golden path or two. I don't recall the game being quite as easy to break as you make it out to be, but then, I didn't actively seek out those methods, and just had myself a few hundred hours of fun. In a sandbox type game, if you really want to ruin your own fun by breaking the game with obscure tricks and mechanics, it's on your head. I was much more
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All good questions, but many are still premature. Remember this is due to be released in October, which means going gold sometime ~6 weeks prior (or something like that). They'd have to have things wrapped up in August, and we're in April. Plenty of time for a death march. This is all my speculation.
Is the gameplay as carefully balanced and the world at least as immersive, large, and interesting as Skyrim plus expansions?
I doubt they could do much about world size now, being so late in development. Immersion depends entirely on the players suspension of disbeleif. Some people find the old-school Thief games incredibly immersive,
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That said, I'm interested in how it handles an alt+tab or even an escape (pause). DA:O still runs in the background, whereas Skyrim sleeps.
If you run something like Open Hardware Monitor you'll see what I mean.
- Launch the monitor
- Watch it for a minute to get a baseline
- Launch Skyrim and stand in game for 15 seconds
- Hit Alt+Tab
- Watch CPU and Graphics temps plummet
- Close Skyrim and repeat with DA:O
- CPU and Graphics
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No, I would want them to teach me. The mage-templar conflict is boring. Nothing interesting is going to be told there that hasn't already been said in DA1, and literally almost every other form of fantasy media available.
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Press button for awesome (Score:5, Informative)
To speak in the words of the venerable Michael Scott, "Fool me once, strike one, but fool me twice... strike three." What Bioware has proven over and over again is that they haven't been able to make any proper decisions involving their games since they released the "are you ready for the new shit?" trailer to promote DA1. Again and again they have alienated their core player base in order to appeal to a wider market... and failed. DA2 was a pile of shit, the ME3 ending an abortion that turned everything they said over the course of the development of the entire ME series into a lie ("the ending won't simply be a button you push in the last five minutes of the game!"), and the departure of the Doctors the final nail in the coffin. I'm not even going to pirate this. Before ME2, the last game worth my time Bioware produced came out in 2003. It's over, we're never going to get another Baldur's Gate 2, at least not from Bioware.
Though I'm hopeful about Pillars of Eternity.
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PoE looks promising, yes, and don't forget there is still some excellent community content [ign.com] being produced for the venerable NWN2 engine, which by now has had the release bugs fixed. Some of the community content is far better than what shipped with the game.
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DA1, for example, was enjoyable by most standards. I'm not sure what "new shit" you were expecting, since I didn't bother with the trailer, but if you had realistic expectations not buoyed by marketing hype, it was good.
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Before ME2, the last game worth my time Bioware produced came out in 2003.
DA:O was amazing, Jade Empire and Mass Effect 1 were very good as well.
Umm, anything look different in that video? (Score:1)
The combat looked exactly as crappy. I saw lots of rolling and the jump/zoom 40 feet to kill monster. They are making some noise about tactical gameplay, but the guy flat out says you can play the whole thing as an action game. The same shit that made DA2 combat suck. Without even getting into all the other ways DA2 sucked (amazingly ugly, emtpy levels, backtrack over same 3 places over and over, completely uncompelling story, forgettable characters, I honestly can't remember anything I actually liked). I w
Playing an Inquisitor is not an option (Score:2)
Sorry, but the Inquisition and its agents is one of the darkest, most evil things humans ever did. I am not going to play one.
Nobody (Score:1)
Nobody expects the Inquisition!
Fooled me last time (Score:2)
I really enjoyed the first game. Pre-ordered the second. It was complete trash in comparison.
I'll be waiting for the user - not the lying paid critic - reviews before I fork out for this one.
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"It's different, now i hate it. It's the same, now I hate it"
I never pre-order anything. I'll never trust that a sequel will automatically be as good as the first. They have to change things up, but they also have to keep good things in. They are liable to make mistakes. Hopefully 3 will incorporate learnings made from the failure of DA2. But I won't pre-order it. I wouldn't pre-order a Borderlands 3 game, even though I was very happy with both BL1 and BL2.
They should never be able to fool people, but so ma
Like Dragon Age for a time (Score:1)