DA3 Speculation Time!

[amhran_comhrac]

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?

Comments

[schreibzeug]

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.

[amhran_comhrac]

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.

[schreibzeug]

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.