peopleofthedas | DA3 Speculation Time!

No, not too soon. The last couple days have had some interesting news for the franchise.

Bioware has announced that they are cancelling further DLC and a planned expansion for DA2, and moving right on to DA3. (edit to add, they have also said there won't be a DA2 collectors/legacy edition that includes the DLC, so if you were holding out for that....might as well pick it up next time you see a good deal).

DA3 will, apparently, be neither Warden nor Hawke related. And will draw from Skyrim. (Whatever that means...)

There are also hints it won't import previous games.
Let the speculation begin!

In a way.... I like the idea of not importing, since they have already said it won't be replaying your old characters. (please don't hurt me). I think it can work. There are SO MANY options now... it is almost impossible to do justice to all of the potential choices and still manage to string together a logical story. Now, the Skyrim thing gave me pause, since it stands out from previous Elder Scrolls games for one major reason: timing. Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion were basically set one after another. Different characters, but ultimately one cohesive timeline for the world. Skyrim is set several hundred years later.

A new game in the Thedas setting, a couple hundred years later, or earlier? No problem if there's no imports. If earlier, well... non-issue. If later... meh. You know the blight ended, you know about the Kirkwall Chantry. Those are constants. Anything more granular would likely be lost to time. For as much as we care about our characters, it is unlikely Random Future Adventurer will know or care who the Warden from the fourth blight was banging, or will have even heard of the Champion of Kirkwall other than a note in a history lesson, unless they're from Kirkwall. There's no reason to even mention any of them, except in the vaguest of codex entries.

I also like that they are going back to their history, as they said. I think the interest in the Baldurs Gate HD project has surprised them... and a return to that style storytelling would be nothing but good, IMO.

SO, what does everyone else think? Anyone see any good articles?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The part about that announcement I had noticed (and felt cranky about) was no further DLC. I loved Legacy, and although I didn't like MotA as much, I feel... cheated by the abrupt ending. I guess if it didn't sell it didn't sell, but I

I am cranky about that and it is increasing my state of pre-game skepticism. Perhaps I should be more trusting, I thought I would hate DA2 with the voiced character, and I ended up liking it as well or better than DAO. I loved it and would have happily lay down money to play more there, but I do seem to be in the minority. I haven't been at all impressed by their other media and am not terribly interested in buying it.

I was not as big a Skyrim fan as most of the rest of the people on the boards. Skyrim was full of people I didn't care about, I was mostly into making enchanted armor, once I had maxed that out it became too bothersome to finish the plot. I would be really sad to see any DA game like that. I don't know if they could have a meaningful narrative arc in an open world, so I am terribly leery of that idea. Even more, I am not very interested in multiplayer. I also don't want to play with other real people, I want to play with imaginary people I have some degree of control over...

I would be a little sad if they didn't draw on anything. They wouldn't have to do the quests they did in DA2, but they could at least throw in a couple of codex entries that reference the big things (who was made king/queen in DAO, how the mage wars turned out from DA2).

I don't know, no matter what they do, there are always screw ups with one or two flags along the way that import incorrectly, or choices that aren't addressed while others are, and people raise a stink. (when the Zev romance didn't import correctly into DA2 people were losing their shit left and right on BSN. I think seeing that is probably when the devs said 'yeah, maybe no more imports')
Personally, I would rather see them throw their all into making DA3 the best game they can instead of spending time and resources making sure the new game correctly acknowledges previous imports. Even the big choices were open ended, so that wouldn't be just a quick codex. If you include Loghain living or not, and Alistair drunk or Warden, there are something like nine or ten options just to determine the throne in Origins.

It's sad, though, that the better choice of action is not to do something people really liked because it's just so much work.
Looking through the toolset I saw flags that were being set upon certain conditions with developer comments like, "Don't even try to understand this, but it should work, I guess." Aside from being funny, this also shows why there were some things that just didn't work, I suppose. Some flags simply couldn't be referenced because they weren't spelled correctly. Those things can be fixed and have been fixed by people who love the games, but not by the developers.

That Zevran thing needed to check for what, 10 flags, maybe? Probably that is a lot, but that's what you get if you let people make decisions.
So, it probably really is better to give up on importing than continue to not get it right.

What they proposed was insanely ambitious. I don't fault them for having things get messed up, especially since the engine changed a bit between the first and second game. No one else really bothers with character imports, and it is generally for reasons like this. It feels more fun in ME, anyways, since you're actually still playing the same character. There is a lot lost in importing choice when you don't even have the same protagonist.

I guess I just fall on the side that says if the choice is having someone shovel through the Origins and DA2 code for 100 hours to get the flags right, or having someone spent 100 hours working on a new unique dungeon, I'll pick the latter every time. I would really have gladly traded the fanservice Alistair cameo for not using the same cave over and over again the last time around. I want more new game to play, not more references to games I've already played. In a perfect world, both would happen, but in the world of corporate EA overlords, time constraints, and budgets, they have to pick their priorities.

I think you're right. It is a terribly ambitious concept. And, to be fair, even if imports are done correctly, there's still a chance that people like me are annoyed because it could have been even more extensive... or because an NPC whose marriage choices were checked by the game happens to make a quip I dislike.
I'm not being sarcastic when I say it probably is for the best if there's no further importing because in this case, it might be better not to try at all than to try and fail.
I don't believe that many people would have truly hated it if there hadn't been any cameos of Origin's characters in DA2; it was only when they acted wrong or should have been dead that people took notice.

I would love to see the characterization and overall writing of DA, combined with the sense of being part of a larger world that I have in Skyrim. I'm having great fun running around with my Dunmer girl and pretty much taking over Skyrim one organization at a time, but a little more structure would have made things a lot smoother in the beginning. And yay, I can marry anyone I want, regardless of race, age, or gender, but it's kind of meaningless when I don't feel like I know or really care about the people I'm interacting with.

Also, ditching the traditional D&D-style stats list and class system. My main Skyrim character is a spellsword who happens to have an insanely high lockpicking skill. She's isn't locked into a single fighting style or type of armor (which does get annoying; I'm wandering around with two sets of armor in addition to the one I'm wearing.

I'm definitely with you on the no multiplayer! I like being able to save a game and shut down and not have to deal with asshats in pick-up groups. If I want a multiplayer fantasy game, I'll start playing Rift or Aion again, or just break down and play WoW.

I would love a more organic mixed class system. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Also, screw multiplayer. I used a save game editor to raise my war assets because I fucking hate multiplayer.

The thing I'm worried about is if they do make some comments on previous events, they'll just default to the official Bioware canon to avoid flags not properly importing. Which means you'll always have King Alistair and a dead Warden, a Warden Commander who works with the architect, and whatever is canon for Hawke. (Warrior who let Anders live? Something?)
I'd rather they ignore it completely, I was displeased enough at being informed that my Warden simply vanished.
I guess they could and will reference the mage war, that has nothing to do with anything we got to influence, at least.

DA3 Speculation Time!

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