Not too hyped about the new dragon age trailer/reveals

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exsea wrote:

1. agreed, tho theres 2 ways of viewing this. one is you're being rewarded for being strong, but the other is like what you say, things no longer feel challenging. its hard to make both sides happy

Its certainly challenging, but far from impossible and every "great" game has pulled it out. The idea of rewarding progression with greater challenge is something that have been around ever since space invaders. For comparison with a similar kind of game, divinity 1 and 2 as well as the dungeons and dragons-based games keep the game dificulty fresh by having enemies get new tricks along with the party and/or recieving the new tricks the party also gets, so the combat activelly evolves as you progress tro the game. DAI mostly just gives enemies numeric increases. Mook from dungeon 30 is the same mook from dungeon 1 but with X% more stats

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exsea wrote:

the premise of him "never dying" is really scary. you defeat him, he posseses a warden and raises to power again. he may fail 100 times but he will return

I disagree... at best he just compares unfavorably with the archdemon, at worst, you have to consider that yeah, he can revive indefinetly, but he is never shown to be particularily strong on his base level. Enemies with endless ressurective immortality are only scary if they are also powerful enough to be intimidating treats with their base power. The Dude from DAI feels like its just a matter of weakening him and them imprisioning him. Wich really, the narrative keeps SAYING is a daunting task but never SHOWS it(all the more impressive feats of power comes from the sphere he is holding, NOT from his own power), in fact, it shows the opposite: he dies surprisingly easily on a cutscene at the entrance of the dungeon with the mirror where we are shown he can ressurect and he folds rather pathetically at the final battle. The message it dellivers is "yeah, he can res indefinetly, but he also have unimpressive base power, just stab at the right place and he is forced to res, beat the crap out of him and as hes weakened lock with a bunch of gards that actually know what he can do(rather than what the warden did where they made sure literally nobody around had any clue what he could do) and regularly beat the tar out of him to keep him weakened and he cant leave"

And i know, the wardens tried to imprision him, but all things considered, they did a unbeliveably poor job, literally just locked the door and kind of forgot about him. This one dude in particular have tons of reasons to keep imprisioned around as a guinea pig, he seems to be linked to the archdemons and dawkspawns, so why the wardens didnt kept him constantly beaten and weakened and kept activelly researching him already feels a wasted oportunity. This guy is definetly safer and easier to contain than an archdemon and could offer similar insights

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exsea wrote:

what happened to my companions from dao, da2, dai? they are inconsequential. all except varric. i would argue hes the real face for DA at this point. morrigan and leliana too to some extent but even then they have faded into the background.

Not just companions, EVERY plot point with some importance will always lead to the samey place in this franquise, its not quite as bad as WOW, but similar

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exsea wrote:

i understand that its not easy to make a game to be able to facilitate 1001 different choices.

but that was how the game was marketed. i know now that its just marketing and i hate that i believed in what they sold.

It would be admitelly awesome if they could delliver, but its an instance of sounds too good to be true... and indeed is too good to be true. Snake oil at its finest(super common on AAA industry in general, but particularly for EA). The games are much easier to stomach is you just take each installment as a separate experience

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feike wrote:

I disagree... at best he just compares unfavorably with the archdemon, at worst, you have to consider that yeah, he can revive indefinetly, but he is never shown to be particularily strong on his base level. Enemies with endless ressurective immortality are only scary if they are also powerful enough to be intimidating treats with their base power. The Dude from DAI feels like its just a matter of weakening him and them imprisioning him. Wich really, the narrative keeps SAYING is a daunting task but never SHOWS it(all the more impressive feats of power comes from the sphere he is holding, NOT from his own power), in fact, it shows the opposite: he dies surprisingly easily on a cutscene at the entrance of the dungeon with the mirror where we are shown he can ressurect and he folds rather pathetically at the final battle. The message it dellivers is "yeah, he can res indefinetly, but he also have unimpressive base power, just stab at the right place and he is forced to res, beat the crap out of him and as hes weakened lock with a bunch of gards that actually know what he can do(rather than what the warden did where they made sure literally nobody around had any clue what he could do) and regularly beat the tar out of him to keep him weakened and he cant leave"

And i know, the wardens tried to imprision him, but all things considered, they did a unbeliveably poor job, literally just locked the door and kind of forgot about him. This one dude in particular have tons of reasons to keep imprisioned around as a guinea pig, he seems to be linked to the archdemons and dawkspawns, so why the wardens didnt kept him constantly beaten and weakened and kept activelly researching him already feels a wasted oportunity. This guy is definetly safer and easier to contain than an archdemon and could offer similar insights

i think you've neglecting some of his lore. he is very dangerous especially against wardens. all of them are linked via tainted blood. his whispers intrude the minds of wardens. in fact that was the very premise of the DLC itself where the warden guarding him was tricked into believing that he could be instrumental in ending the blight.

also his mind control is astounding where wardens free of his influence may forget everything they did while under his control.

pretty sure they beat the shit out of him at various times but i m guessing they later found that even being near him was a risk. they couldnt just abandon him either as he could either escape or just commit suicide.

and as vault tec, corypheus has one asset that puts him above his enemies, time. when he revives, no one knows where he is. he can plot and scheme behind the scenes. i would even say he's really freaking strong lorewise, tho it didnt translate well in the game as we're fully decked out in gear his death was so fast i thought it was just "part of a cutscene".

furthermore, his existence implies tragedy. unless he is fully destroyed, the wardens had no effective way to deal with him. imprisonment was the best option but more out of lack of choice rather than anything else. he would eventually return to haunt them. everytime he appears, wardens would die or would become enslaved.

game mechanics aside, purely from a lore perspective isnt that scary?

he has wisdom accumulated from his everlasting lifespan, access to various different magics. perhaps even access to powerful artifacts. the fact he is immortal means he could even harness powerful artifacts that would kill regular humans.

if he wanted to, he could even just remain hidden and ambush wardens out of spite. no single warden is strong enough to fight him 1v1.

if not he could plot and scheme.

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exsea wrote:

i think you've neglecting some of his lore. he is very dangerous especially against wardens.

Wich the inquisitor isnt... that only means he cant be imprisionated by wardens, but other people are fair game

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exsea wrote:

all of them are linked via tainted blood. his whispers intrude the minds of wardens. in fact that was the very premise of the DLC itself where the warden guarding him was tricked into believing that he could be instrumental in ending the blight.
also his mind control is astounding where wardens free of his influence may forget everything they did while under his control.

The problem is his power is way too warden-specific, and the game is... vague about how he can use his power, sure he can on good conditions, but if you keep him weakened, he dont seem to be capable of influencing anything. He had to take his sweet time after hawke ravaged his ass

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exsea wrote:

and as vault tec, corypheus has one asset that puts him above his enemies, time. when he revives, no one knows where he is. he can plot and scheme behind the scenes

No, he dont really have time advantage. Because you could simply inform his captors what he is capable of. He SEEMS to have that advantage because the wardens took the WORST possible aproach: Supress all info about him, so when he came out, nobody had a clue aboue who he really was, if he was contained by people aware of what he can do, he dont seem to be harder a particularly talented mage to contain, just more annoying because it would take a more continuous effort(but given the research potential he represents, it would be super worth it)

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exsea wrote:

i would even say he's really freaking strong lorewise, tho it didnt translate well in the game as we're fully decked out in gear his death was so fast i thought it was just "part of a cutscene"

Yeah... that cutscene was awfull and basically showed how strong hes not

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exsea wrote:

game mechanics aside, purely from a lore perspective isnt that scary?

Nope... for wardens, sure, but for general people and for the inquisitor especially? Not really... again, too warden-specific

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exsea wrote:

he has wisdom accumulated from his everlasting lifespan, access to various different magics. perhaps even access to powerful artifacts. the fact he is immortal means he could even harness powerful artifacts that would kill regular humans.

Nope, he dont have great wisdom. He dont seem to have knowledge from before he became a darkspawn and hes twarted easily on the story and i recall a completely random crook under him even stole atrifacts under his nose to sell on the black market. Not a sign of a clever chessmaster
*edit* Now that i think about it, the very fact he corrupted that dragon and handed over a way to kill him kinda showcases a bad chase of too dumb to live

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exsea wrote:

if he wanted to, he could even just remain hidden and ambush wardens out of spite. no single warden is strong enough to fight him 1v1.

No warden, but hawk and the inquisitor both kicked his ass, hawk before the game even begin, not a 1v1, but didnt exactly took an army either

i agree that hes too warden specific, and that he becomes less of a threat once non wardens become his jailor. if we do follow the stories, people usually only ever help wardens out because of desperation/obligation. many organizations "hate" wardens as they take away some of their people.

so that might be a reason why the wardens did not get outsiders to help.

another reason is because wardens are supposed to stay neutral so that they can leverage recruitment from different factions/countries/orgs. asking one particular faction to help means they are no longer neutral and would be obligated to help that faction out. the factions by themselves all have reasons to not want to cooperate with each other so thats very unlikely to happen.

with imprisoning him asap being a huge priority he will eventually always be a "warden specific issue".

i would agree that "in game" he seems weak. in dragon age we kill dragons, demons etc. it doesnt mean that the dragons and demons are weak, it highlights how our protags are really strong. i would blame that on the game mechanics and balancing.

pretty sure the writers lorewise would have wanted him to be seen as a powerful character.

i do agree on your "hes no chessmaster statement".

The whole thing about wardens not seeking help at the end of the day is they simply acted moronically. They had a guy with strong corrrelation to the blight and basically just swept the matter under the rug

Even the very lack of attempted research on him already was, at best, eye-rolling
At worst, you could infer that they acknowledged that research on that dude might have potential to end the blighs, but that would mean the wardens are no longer needed, so they covered the situation to prevent the extintion of the order

And no, he will not necessarialy become a "warden-specific issue". The inquisition was in prime position to make him a permanent prisioner in an enviroment with no warden involvment. If it comes down to it, even the chantry should have great interest on him and good reasons to keep him at reach

And i mentioned how hes weak in narrative, not just in-game. Its not just in-game that he was killed because he just stepped on a landmine, its not just in-game that he got his ass beaten by less than half a dozen people and its not in-game that he dies pathetically with the inquisitor lording over him and the guy in a "please dont hurt me" position

You need to consider that talking outside gameplay its THE PARTY that is not that strong: The warden needing the back on an army to reach the archdemon and not just plowing the hordes of darkspawn is the point of DAO, hawke not being able to even scratch the issues at kirkual(cant spell the name of the place :P) is the main points of DA2, the inquisitor being just a regular, if super talented, person and just being special because the thing that accidentaly poped on his hand is a major point of DAI
Yeah, the party kills dragons and stuff, but speaking from a lore perspective, two dozen soldiers also could do it, its just every important faction is too busy with each other to pay attention to one or two dragons. Dragons on DA universe are not like elder dragons on D&D that can devastate whole armies, and the player characters are not like a D&D epic level characters than are aproaching the point they can challenge gods

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exsea wrote:

pretty sure the writers lorewise would have wanted him to be seen as a powerful character.

Im well aware of that, and its exactly why i find him so pathetic... hes more like a "side antagonist" and completely not a "main villiain" material. The narrative tries its damnest to paint him as an impressive treat, but just fails on every level:
Hes weak, hes dumb, hes twarted easily, hes not even taken seriously on tervinter!!! Guy is just a terrorist the tervinter lords overlook because if he suceeds, that would favor them but he dont even have their official support! His venatori are terribly outmatched by the inquisition, who develops into a major power. He marks way too many boxes of a joke villiain