Dragon Age Dragon Age: The Veilguard Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Quillon]

Sure.

What is good in it?

You can do the ultimate sacrifice, very emotional and shit.

 

[Roguey]

What is good in it?

The combat and companions are suitably entertaining in that Bioware way, though both occasionally end up too excessive. There are also a lot of role playing decisions to make.

 

[Quillon]

Battle cutscenes were pretty cool and music.

 

[Tito Anic]

Battle cutscenes were pretty cool and music.

Not my cup of tea. Too "epic" in a shitty way.

 

[KyivAfter12am]

I have a question for Codexers who are in their 30-40s. Is Dragon Age any good? Is it on par with BG2?

Yes. No.

 

[imweasel]

DA:O is weaker than Baldur's Gate 2, but it has some excellent quests. Bioware implemented at least one well designed quest with C&C etc. in every region to keep things interesting. 'The Sacred Ashes' quest is top notch and my personal favorite.

 

[fantadomat]

Tito Anic, Dragon age is a good game worth playing. Is it better than BG2......mostly no but they are a very different,it is hard to compare. Still play the game,it is good.

 

[BrotherFrank]

The problem is that the whole mages being living portals for demons is a Chantry created problem. Remember that Tevinter was ruled by mages for a very long time, and while they were generally

Kinda forgot about Tevinter, that's a good point.

I don't quite agree on blaming it all on the chantry though. Mages being potential daemon portals had nothing to do with the chantry's existence, what the chantry did was impose segregation/mage ghettos and create an organization to monitor the mages and fight them if they got out of hand. Perhaps the conditions imposed by the chantry and the negative conditioning of the common folk make for a higher % of mages turning bad as they want their freedom or get bullied, but there was always a base element of risk which was unacceptably high. Even if you're the supreme gentleman mage, all it took was a moment of weakness or just being unlucky in your sleep and a strong enough daemon grasping the opportunity, and bam you get possessed. As the head mage dude of da2 showed, the daemons are ALWAYS there scratching at the back of a mage's mind, all it takes is one time giving in, and to ask perfect control and restraint from someone all throughout their life seems an impossible task even if you were to set up them in the most idyllic living conditions possible.
Tbh though I think mages being bullied by normies is atypical if only because mages are usually segregated from the local populace and have templar handlers to follow them around when in public, only kirkwall was different because it was apparently the legendary lost city of fucktards, and look how that turned out... Though granted some of the religious folk there doing stuff like lobotomizing attractive female mages and using them as sex slaves probably didn't help.

Frankly I don't know how current tevinter gets around that problem, you'd think in a society of hyper competitive mages, incidents would happen frequently enough. This is why I'd have to see how they handle it, maybe they know something the chantry doesn't (which admittedly isn't much of a stretch). But I find the idea of "if we just treated mages better and let them run free like flowers in the wind everything will be fine" to go against everything the DA games has shown me up to this point.

Never trust a mage is the big moral of DA games when you think about it:
Da:O: Big bad waking up to conquer the world, all the fault of tevinter mages fucking around centuries ago
Da2: Your pal mage ends up being the true big bad, magic stuff corrupts everyone it comes into contact with, 1 out of every 2 mages you meet is a blood mage or at the very least a ticking time bomb, 1 out of every 2 of those remaining mages wants oppress and kill normies.
Da:I: The main bad guy is a mage (one of the OG tevinter mages no less), you fight blood mages all throughout the game, they are like a disease.

 

[fantadomat]

Tevinter goes around the problem easelly. Only the strong and the ones of old lineage are wizards,the rest are in the gutter. Strangely this country was the only one i was interested in DA,it is a shame that there is not a game set in it. Knowing how SJW Biowaste are,i am kind of glad about it. They would fuck up the country for certainty and make you do some SJW crusade for women's rights and shit.

 

[BrotherFrank]

That's what I don't get.
Your power as mage has nothing to do with the strength of the daemon possessing you. Thus anyone with magic even if they are untrained and horrible at it, are potential living portals, being untrained just means you're more likely to be tricked or beaten by a daemon in the fade whilst you're sleeping.
So an oppressed underclass of untrained or poorly trained mages in the gutter with 0 supervision sounds like a recipe for more daemon possession if anything.

I can accept the top elites of tevinter being such badass mages that make daemons their bitches but in a society full of mages how can they stop the weakest, most vulnerable or just angry sections of their population from willingly inviting daemons?
I theorize tevinter must have an organization like the templars but even more hardcore since their members would be mages themselves rather then drug addicts and would function like a mage inquisition.

 

[santino27]

I though DA:O was an okay game (mediocre combat, decent C&C) dragged down by high-school levels of grimdark and a really dull and unoriginal world.

And DA2 was worse, to almost everyone except my wife.

 

[fantadomat]

Well mage portals was the half-assed writing in the second game mainly. In the first one was about some idiot searching power trough retardo magic. In Tevinter they have old blood magic families that go back a long time,thus showing that a training and iron will have huge impact. Also it was shown that more will the more magical power they have,sooo the stronger the mage the less demonic possessions. Also there is the knowledge,the more you know about demons,the less stupid you will be with them. Another one is that feelings effect the whole demon shit,the more miserable wizards are,the easier it is for demons to posses them.

As for how they deal with random mages going insane...they kill the off. I take it that they have their own school of mages and they are seen as elite.

 

[Cael]

The problem is that the whole mages being living portals for demons is a Chantry created problem. Remember that Tevinter was ruled by mages for a very long time, and while they were generally

Kinda forgot about Tevinter, that's a good point.

I don't quite agree on blaming it all on the chantry though. Mages being potential daemon portals had nothing to do with the chantry's existence, what the chantry did was impose segregation/mage ghettos and create an organization to monitor the mages and fight them if they got out of hand. Perhaps the conditions imposed by the chantry and the negative conditioning of the common folk make for a higher % of mages turning bad as they want their freedom or get bullied, but there was always a base element of risk which was unacceptably high. Even if you're the supreme gentleman mage, all it took was a moment of weakness or just being unlucky in your sleep and a strong enough daemon grasping the opportunity, and bam you get possessed. As the head mage dude of da2 showed, the daemons are ALWAYS there scratching at the back of a mage's mind, all it takes is one time giving in, and to ask perfect control and restraint from someone all throughout their life seems an impossible task even if you were to set up them in the most idyllic living conditions possible.
Tbh though I think mages being bullied by normies is atypical if only because mages are usually segregated from the local populace and have templar handlers to follow them around when in public, only kirkwall was different because it was apparently the legendary lost city of fucktards, and look how that turned out... Though granted some of the religious folk there doing stuff like lobotomizing attractive female mages and using them as sex slaves probably didn't help.

Frankly I don't know how current tevinter gets around that problem, you'd think in a society of hyper competitive mages, incidents would happen frequently enough. This is why I'd have to see how they handle it, maybe they know something the chantry doesn't (which admittedly isn't much of a stretch). But I find the idea of "if we just treated mages better and let them run free like flowers in the wind everything will be fine" to go against everything the DA games has shown me up to this point.

Never trust a mage is the big moral of DA games when you think about it:
Da:O: Big bad waking up to conquer the world, all the fault of tevinter mages fucking around centuries ago
Da2: Your pal mage ends up being the true big bad, magic stuff corrupts everyone it comes into contact with, 1 out of every 2 mages you meet is a blood mage or at the very least a ticking time bomb, 1 out of every 2 of those remaining mages wants oppress and kill normies.
Da:I: The main bad guy is a mage (one of the OG tevinter mages no less), you fight blood mages all throughout the game, they are like a disease.

The problem is that it is all through the lens of the Chantry, who has an agenda to demonise mages for obvious political reasons. What I am saying is that while mages are potential demon portals, they are NOT as bad as the Chantry made it out to be.

Let me give you an example: Golden retreivers are beautiful companion dogs, and are naturally nice and friendly. However, now and then, one of them do go nuts and start harming people. What the Chantry did was play up that now and then and made everyone afraid of golden retreivers to the point that all golden retreivers are locked up for life without trial.

DA2 had shit writing. Bioware went retardo emotard with it and you know it. Look at all of the mages you met in DAO. Only Uldred fell and we already knew he was shifty from the moment we first met him in the camp. The others didn't, not even Morrigan, who wasn't even Circle trained. Anders was a poorly written character. Justice had more depth and dimension than poor little ole Anders, and Justice is a fade spirit trapped to looking at the universe using only one view. The whole demon scratching thing was retarded and bad fanfic crap. Even in DAO, the mage origins demon tells you that the temptation never ends, but not once was your character or any other mage character even bothered by it. And let me tell you, I only pumped the magic stat, never touched the willpower stat. My mage was happily walking around without any problems at all with 11 willpower.

You get around the problem by mandating that mages need to be educated on how to beat fade demons (sort of like school education today for kids). Make them into natural demon slayers. ALL of them. And then giving them their freedom afterwards once they proved themselves (e.g., via the Harrowing, but without the secrecy). Then they have no need to make unnecessary pacts with demons to gain quick power to fend off the Templars. You also stop demonising them and trying to get them lynched. But that would mean that the Chantry stop being the monolith power hungry shithole that it is, and that is not going to happen. The only way this scenario would happen is if the Chantry falls hard and the Templars get buttfucked to hell.

 

[Reinhardt]

What I am saying is that while mages are potential demon portals, they are NOT as bad as the Chantry made it out to be.

They are much worse.

 

[Commissar Draco]

What I am saying is that while mages are potential demon portals, they are NOT as bad as the Chantry made it out to be.

They are much worse.

Yes indeed only decent mage I met in DAO was this old Lass. (and PC if he did not became bloodmage.)

 

[ilitarist]

Tevinter goes around the problem easelly. Only the strong and the ones of old lineage are wizards,the rest are in the gutter. Strangely this country was the only one i was interested in DA,it is a shame that there is not a game set in it. Knowing how SJW Biowaste are,i am kind of glad about it. They would fuck up the country for certainty and make you do some SJW crusade for women's rights and shit.

In DAI they had Dorian as a token representative of Tevinter. He was nice in many ways, including the way you talk about bad Tevinter stuff about him. Even though he's positive character he has no problems with slavery, he says he didn't even think about it before coming to South and hearing about Tevinters being called slavers. He talks about how low classes are in slavery anyway de facto if not de jure. He also seem to be talking about Roman-style slavery and mostly saw domestic slaves. Meanwhile in the game you meet slavers of the worst kind, the ones who hunt refugees and sell them to blood mages.

 

[Sykar]

What I am saying is that while mages are potential demon portals, they are NOT as bad as the Chantry made it out to be.

They are much worse.

Yes indeed only decent mage I met in DAO was this old Lass. (and PC if he did not became bloodmage.)

Funny enough there is not a single drawback of becoming a blood mage from an rpg point of view. None of your companions care nor any NPC you meet.

 

[ilitarist]

Character traits in general are only mentioned when some writer remembers it.

E.g. in DA2 when you recruit that mage-hating ex-slave elf you have to clear some mansion of demons. If you had a mage in your party he comes at you afterwards talking about how magic is evil and he hates it even though he was silent when you used it in battle. The whole city is afraid of mages and that begged for something like Baldur's Gate 2 encounters with magic police. But you can have throw magic in the light of day and no one cares. I think Inqisition is better about it: in one of the first dialogues NPC shouts at you for grabbing a weapon, and if you're a mage you can say that don't you know I don't need a weapon.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Do we have more details about the original Dragon Age? I vaugely remember some concept art with mongols instead of dorkspawn. Or maybe my mind is making stuff up.

 

[Lhynn]

What is good in it?

It was codex GOTY, that should tell you all you need to know.

Spoiler

About the codex

 

[fantadomat]

Tevinter goes around the problem easelly. Only the strong and the ones of old lineage are wizards,the rest are in the gutter. Strangely this country was the only one i was interested in DA,it is a shame that there is not a game set in it. Knowing how SJW Biowaste are,i am kind of glad about it. They would fuck up the country for certainty and make you do some SJW crusade for women's rights and shit.

In DAI they had Dorian as a token representative of Tevinter. He was nice in many ways, including the way you talk about bad Tevinter stuff about him. Even though he's positive character he has no problems with slavery, he says he didn't even think about it before coming to South and hearing about Tevinters being called slavers. He talks about how low classes are in slavery anyway de facto if not de jure. He also seem to be talking about Roman-style slavery and mostly saw domestic slaves. Meanwhile in the game you meet slavers of the worst kind, the ones who hunt refugees and sell them to blood mages.

Yeah,also he was a spoiled faggy drama queen running away from any responsibility. Should have killed the faggot. DA games are another franchise that is heavily "inspired" by the real world. The first one was set in Britannia,the second one is in Venice. Tavinter is the Byzantium,Orley is France,qunari are arabs/turks,Tavinter have orthodox fate while the rest have catholic fate,dwarfs as always are jews and elfs are pagans.

 

[Cael]

Yeah,also he was a spoiled faggy drama queen running away from any responsibility. Should have killed the faggot. DA games are another franchise that is heavily "inspired" by the real world. The first one was set in Britannia,the second one is in Venice. Tavinter is the Byzantium,Orley is France,qunari are arabs/turks,Tavinter have orthodox fate while the rest have catholic fate,dwarfs as always are jews and elfs are pagans.

Being heavily inspired by real history is not the problem. The problem lies in a leftard SJW interpretation of real history, and that interpretation is generally neither real nor historical.

 

[ilitarist]

Ah come on, they don't do it as directly. DA2 has strong Jerusalem feel about it, Qunari have a lot from Indians and Chinese. Tevinter is the only one that is relatively straightforward with their Byzantine feel.

And yeah, those SJWs corrupt the true version of history with their additions of universal language, dragons, elves, magical zombies, ancient ghosts and all the other leftist crap.

 

[Cael]

And yeah, those SJWs corrupt the true version of history with their additions of universal language, dragons, elves, magical zombies, ancient ghosts and all the other leftist crap.

Feigned ignorance is far more dastardly than real ignorance. At least, the latter is not the fault of the person expressing that ignorance. The former is nothing but fraud and deceit.

 

[Alkarl]

Tevinter does have a chantry and templars. Although it's more of a token organization supported by their mage council. The templars are trained to counter magic and all that good stuff and are typically only called in when a mage goes abomination. Usually low-class mages.

Not that it matters, the series frequently destroys any ambiguity about whether mages should be free or not when every other mage ends up demon possessed. It's two conflicting accounts, but you aren't hearing about them in post, you see these things happen. Are mages dangerous? Well, they seem to be exceptionally open to possession and the only place they are free doesn't sound like a great place to live. Is the Maker real? Well, we have this ancient wizard who says no and a bunch of elven gods who seem to indicate this is the case. So on and so forth.

"Ambiguity"

I confess though, this is mostly info gleaned from DA:I which seemed to be trying so hard to destroy the franchise, it even asks if you'd like to (seemingly) disband the grey wardens that characterized the initial entry to the series. Good luck with that next blight, yo.