#fallout griffon | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

felassan · 1 year

Text

Some more snippets of interest and insight from Mark Darrah, from an older Mark Darrah on Games YouTube video where he was livestreaming playing Dragon Age: Origins some months ago -

Chat asked why Marvel's Avengers and Fallout 76 are still being supported yet Anthem isn't. Mark replied, "Two reasons, but they're basically the same reason. EA is definitely not something that likes to support things that they consider to be failures. But the other reason, which is kind've the same thing, is that because BioWare has so much going on, there is a tendency, there's always a lot of pressure to move people onto the biggest need, and Anthem is not the biggest need. If BioWare was allowed to add fifty to sixty people that wouldn't be the case, well at least it wouldn't be in the short-term, but it isn't because EA is very cost resistant, resistant to spending costs, so it's really about corporate structure and culture than anything else. If you look at something like Battlefield or other games at EA that have failed and then recovered, it's usually because the studio that made them literally had nothing else going on so the only option was to let them fix it or to basically shut the studio down. In the case of BioWare, there's always something else they could be working on and as a result, when things don't go as well people tend to get moved onto those other things. That's essentially what happened with Mass Effect: Andromeda as well, though in the case of ME:A there was also pressure from Jade Raymond's studio to steal all those people, which is what ended up happening. So it's really about the approach to these things at a corporate level."

Chat asked "Can you make a video about development hell and how games with long production cycles like Dragon Age Origins avoid that?". Mark replied "The short answer to how do games avoid development hell long production cycles is basically that they don't. It's probably worth a video to talk about what happens in the middle of long projects, but the short answer is what often happens is that they spend some period of their time kind've going in a big circle because the time is so long that projects can get lost. DA:O added and took out multiplayer three different times. Anthem spent a ton of time not being able to admit that it was making Destiny. ME1 spent a ton of time trying to figure out what it wanted its combat to feel like".

Chat asked "What do you feel about the revival of the Griffons?". Mark said "I think it's going to be hard to pay griffons off in gameplay but I'm glad that they are back, it's an interesting addition".

Chat asked "Did you know about the Netflix show? If not what are your thoughts?" Mark replied "I did know about the Netflix show so I'm not going to comment on it at this time, I'll wait and see what it looks like. It's been in the works for a while" [note: this video is from before Absolution released]

On the reason why Dragon Age has so many multimedia things e.g. books, comics, compared to other IPs: "I mean Witcher has tons. BioWare actually has a dedicated business development group which looks for opportunities to make money with the IP".

[source]

He also talked more generally about DA:O and the franchise and things in general. These bits are collected under a cut due to length -

[on the lyrium spirits/ghosts that provide the riddles during the Gauntlet] Chat asked "I've never been sure if these spirits are accurate memories of these people, or just how the masses believe them to be. I presume that's deliberate?". Mark said "Yes, definitely the accuracy of these memories is definitely up for debate and that is on purpose. Definitely DA:O, Dragon Age in general is filled with the unreliable narrator"

If you go the Gauntlet with no party members, the game gives you a bunch of indestructible ash wraiths instead. "It's super weird"

Chat asked "Is there an answer to the question of what the Ashes and this whole [thing] are really about, or is it left deliberately unknowable?". Mark said "It's left unknowable, I don't think that the Ashes is ever discussed. It doesn't really fit in with the magic of the rest of the setting does it?"

"Definitely there's a lot of 'Andraste taking over old elven temples' throughout the world"

The Queen of the Blackmarsh "was definitely combat design firing on all cylinders"

Chat commented "I noticed recently that many character models in BioWare games have a 'collar' on clothes even when it doesn't otherwise fit with what they're wearing. Is there a reason for that?". Mark said "The collar is probably to cover a neck seam. That's usually why there's something weird going on with the head"

Chat commented "I still don't know how I feel about the 'every class gets their version of lock pick' in DA:I". Mark replied "The reason for the every class gets their own lock pick thing in DA:I is, the problem is that what you usually end up with is rogues get a bunch of stuff to do outside combat and nobody else does, so the goal was to try to get a variety of activities for different classes. I don't know that it was super effective because I don't think that it was used widely enough, but that was the thinking. 'It's useful to have a mage along because a mage will let you get into these spots, it's useful to have a warrior along because they can lift heavy things and reach jars on high shelves'. But I think there's a lot of established game design around locked doors and locked chests, and I think the things in DA:I, people just weren't used to introducing them"

"I think the reason why you can't recruit anyone into the Wardens in DA:O is you don't know how to do that and Alistair doesn't either I guess. But there are a couple of opportunities in DA:O where you could sort've imagine, 'hey, we could use some more of us'." Chat commented that it's also a blood magic ritual and Mark said "It is totally, I mean it is fairly obviously blood magic, but yes it is not really ever [addressed]"

"Jade Empire had gay romances, that's probably the first mainstream game that had them"

Chat commented on the difficulty spikes in DA:O being a bit random at times. Mark said "There's only limited auto-balancing in DA:O so things are triggering on certain assumptions and those assumptions are definitely not always being met." Chat mentioned character movement speed and hardware engine speed at the time and Mark replied "Speed is most likely a limitation"

"I don't know if inventory limits are worth it. It's an interesting question. I get the idea but, I don't think everyone loves inventory management. It's been done better but I don't know that it's ever been done good. Especially for stuff like this where it's just, y'know, punishing you for not having sold stuff. I think having a weight limit on what you can equip, maybe, because then it's more you just can't carry around everything and the kitchen sink, but punishing me and my treasure-gathering for not having bought the extra backpack, kinda stupid, honestly. From Baldur's Gate 1 to modern games, inventory is pretty similar"

Chat asked "Were the Warden Colors (from DAII on) not decided on in DA:O? The mods prove the engine can handle the graphics". Mark replied "The art direction in DA:O is a little loose. So it's really about art direction in future games, it's not about technology, I mean you have to remember that this thing was supposed to run on a much crappier console, but yeah it's really more about art direction than anything else. DAII is where the art direction starts to establish a look for Dragon Age"

"Infinite healing is problematic. But yeah toxicity works, some other form of limiting works, but if you can heal infinitely then every single combat needs to be able to threaten you all on its own which is a problem"

Chat asked "How do Sha-Brytol and Golems function in terms of Titan connection? They're identical minus the rocks right? Instead of rocks Sha-Brytol are bound to armour?" Mark replied, "I don't know lore-wise the difference, I mean it's possible that golems are sort've a broken construction in comparison, the lost lore kinda thing"

Chat commented "I asked Mike [Laidlaw] about the golems and I got the impression that there was some sort of implementation difficulty that he couldn't easily explain". Mark said "I do think there was an ask for golems for DA:I from an art perspective and we didn't have the model, the time for the model, so that's part of it for sure". Chat mentioned that we fight golems in The Descent. Mark said "If so they were created after the fact, I don't really remember though"

Shale is small for a golem so they can walk through doors in gameplay. That's why they are the size they are

Chat said "I'd be curious to know how the global metrics break down, what the most popular race and class people choose is. I imagine BioWare has those numbers." Mark said, "I don't know if we have numbers on DA:O because our telemetry was so bad, but yeah, humans are usually the most popular. Dwarf is a pretty niche one but people who play dwarves pretty much always play dwarves. Elf is probably the second most popular. I think human is just sort've the choice that people who don't understand fantasy well, so it's also I would say often the one that's often chosen by people who are less engaged in the game. I'm not saying everyone who plays human is doing so because they don't want to engage n the system, not to deride that, but it includes that group as well". Chat commented, "The order was Human > Elf > Qunari > Dwarf. Dwarf was the least played race in DA:I". Mark replied "Yeah, I think that's probably right. Dwarf is sort've a 10 percent sort of thing. It's got a very strong group that play it any opportunity they can ever have but it doesn't get a lot of play otherwise"

[source]

(pls note that in places there is a bit of paraphrasing of the info, the best source is always the primary source with full quotes in their original context)

#dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age #bioware #mass effect #next mass effect #mass effect: andromeda #anthem #long post #longpost #video games #dragon age: absolution #alistair theirin #fav warden #jade empire #lgbtq

25 notes · View notes

anneapocalypse · 2 years

Text

Dragon Age: Warden's Fall and Redemption

Crosspost. Originally posted on dreamwidth on 06/09/20.

So there's a lot of Dragon Age media, and apparently where fannish obsession is taking me at the moment is finding and consuming all of it.

So let's talk about those miniseries.

Wait, there are miniseries? Yes, two of them, both apparently considered so insignificant to the canon that the fan wiki doesn't even have a category for them alongside Games, Novels, and Comics. I was aware of the existence of Redemption, but had never heard of Warden's Fall.

Let's watch 'em!

Dragon Age: Warden's Fall

(Watch it here)

Warden's Fall is a 30-minute miniseries created by Machinima.com back when Machinima was a relevant name in geek culture. (For more on the rise and fall of Machinima.com, see this video from the Fallen Titans series by Quinton Reviews.) It's made in the Dragon Age: Origins engine and released in 2010 as a promotion for the Awakening expansion. Basically, it's a 30-minute cutscene. Now I love Origins to death, but I think it's safe to say that its aesthetic hasn't aged super well and the in-game lighting is particularly bad. I found 30 minutes of Origins cutscene a little difficult to watch, though that might just be me, or the video quality. (As an example of how bad the lighting is, for most of this miniseries I was struggling to figure out if a particular character was suffering from darkspawn corruption or if it was just shadows on his face.)

Warden's Fall follows Kristoff—remember him? The dead Grey Warden from the Blackmarsh whose body gets possessed by Justice for the remainder of the DLC? Yeah, that Kristoff, but like, alive. What story thinly exists in this miniseries basically establishes that poor Kristoff just wants to return home to his family, but alas, he cannot because the darkspawn are not retreating into the Deep Roads as they should following the defeat of the Archdemon, and he must figure out why. The Mother is namedropped by a human agent who is evidently working for her, which I don't think ever actually comes up in Awakening.

A humorous note from the wiki:

Kristoff makes Bartholomew look at his crest, which is implied to be a Grey Warden heraldry, a griffon. However, Kristoff is not wearing Grey Warden armour and thus the crest on his chest is not that of a Grey Warden.

lol.

Anyway, I think that this would be a reasonably intriguing teaser for the Awakening DLC if you hadn't played it yet and knew nothing about it, which was after all its purpose. After the fact, it doesn't tell you a whole lot we don't already know. It might still be worth watching if you've got 30 minutes and you really want to see Kristoff be sad and run around Amaranthine for a while. No great loss to skip.

Dragon Age: Redemption

(Watch it here)

Otherwise known as "the one with the Felicia Day elf." Redemption is, I think, a bit more well known than Warden's Fall. It's a six-part live-action miniseries written by and starring Felicia Day, and released in 2011 to promote the Mark of the Assassin DLC for Dragon Age II. (Jesus Christ those dates are a painful reminder of how rushed DA2 was.)

Redemption isn't very good, which feels mean to say, because when I'm watching I'm it, I don't feel like I'm watching a piece of official canon material; I feel like I'm watching a fan project, with low-budget special effects and a bunch of people running around in cosplays of varying quality.

I wasn't super tuned into the fandom when this was coming out but I'm sure people gave Felicia Day hate over this because every visible woman in geek culture gets hate and I don't want to contribute to that. I don't even dislike Day as a voice actor—I think she's great as Veronica in Fallout: New Vegas though I don't know much of her work beyond that. And if Redemption were just a fan project cooked up by Day and friends and produced for YouTube I would probably find it kind of cute and charming if not particularly to my interest. Hell, it's certainly more watchable than that Nuka Break series.

But this isn't a fan project—it's supposed to be canon, and it does not work as that.

It is not easy to capture the tone and feel of a video game in live action, particular fantasy or sci fi settings with very specific aesthetics. The Halo series pulls off a live-action installment incredibly well with Forward Unto Dawn, effectively capturing the look, feel, and general tone of the Halo universe. But Forward Unto Dawn had the budget to make that happen, which Redemption clearly did not.

It's not just the fact that, for example, Day's elf ears look very obviously fake. Again, if this were cosplay I would say it looked pretty cool, especially the Saarebas played by Doug freaking Jones. But then you have things like the absolutely minimal effort at even approaching the in-game aesthetic of the Dalish elves. The young First character is wearing like… a black sheet? The Keeper has some sort of (probably temporary) swirly tattoos on her face that don't actually look like any of the established vallaslin. Totally fine for a fan putting together a cosplay with whatever they have lying around! Does not work for a series that's supposed to be canon. The Aravels look pretty cool, so maybe all the budget went there.

The actors also seem to mispronounce several in-universe words. Elven pronunciations vary across the games so I'm willing to let those slide, but everyone saying "Saarebas" as "Sara-bis" was weird.

The plot is also weird, with Tallis's target a renegade Saarebas trying to use an elven artifact, the Mask of Fen'Harel, to tear open the Veil because reasons. It's weirdly proto-Inquisition? It's also really funny: an elf who's trying to be a qunari chasing a qunari who's trying to use elven magic. There's also a templar and a Dalish kid and a Nevarran mercenary so Tallis has people around to quip at. Also, she kisses the templar at one point. I will say this, it's a fairly diverse cast! Love to see it.

One of the most out-of-place elements is just Tallis herself. Tallis is a qunari elf trying to earn back her position as Tallis (a Qunari title which the miniseries tells us means "to solve" and which I suspect was made up specifically for Day's character). She is Whedon levels of quippy, always with a snappy comeback or one-liner or flirtatious comment, in that way that sort of feels like the writer (who is, in this case, also the actor) is rubbing her cleverness in the faces of all the other characters and also the audience.

Visually, Tallis's costume design just stands out glaringly in this universe. Now just as a costume, detached from the universe, Tallis's look is fine. The colors work together, the top is cute, Day certainly looks cute in it. But it does not fit the style of the setting. Even in Dragon Age II, where we're starting to see that shift away from skirted armor and toward pants for everyone (culminating in what I will call the Inquisitor Skinny Jeans), Tallis's style doesn't mesh. It's basically low-rise jeans, boots, and a tank top. The tank top is green and swirly so it looks elfy, and there's a bunch of belts and straps and leather bits, but the overall silhouette is just undeniably modern, and specifically, 2010. It just does not work.

And this carries over into an official DLC. (Which I have played once and remember very little of, so I am not judging Tallis by that DLC, only as she is in the miniseries.)

This feels mean. I feel like I'm picking apart someone's beloved self-insert OC, and, well, I suspect that's exactly what I'm doing—but only because Bioware decided to make her OC canon. I support all of our special, sparkly, quippy, quirky, overpowered OCs! My own included! But there is a difference between what fans do for fun and what works in canon, and there is a reason that when we say a piece of canon media feels like fanfiction it is usually not complimentary.

It is very obvious that Day and everyone involved put a lot of love into this production and had fun doing it. But it's also obvious that Bioware dropped this project in her lap without the budget and oversight it would have needed to feel canon-compliant and nevertheless tried to present it as canon. And I don't feel like they actually did anyone any favors with that, including Day herself.

You know what I do like about Tallis? I like her concept on a high level: a viddathari elf trying to devote herself to the Qun and struggling with it, gaining status and then losing it due to multiple infractions, finding safety in the rigidity of the Qun in theory but in practice consistently failing to mold her personality into the shape the Qun demands. That's interesting! And it fits within the universe as elven viddathari are already a thing and that struggle for one not raised under the Qun to conform to it is one I'd love to see explored. In theory.

In interviews Felicia Day said that she "wanted to bring a modern sensibility to a fantasy character in a fantasy world," and that… just explains so much about what happened here. I think Tallis is a good character at the conceptual level, and could have worked well in-universe if not for that need to make her cool and quirky and well. Modern.

Basically... Redemption should not be canon. And I think if you're going to watch it, it is best enjoyed as a fan project lovingly made by someone who just wanted to dress up as her elf OC and run around in the woods. Lots of us can relate to that! From that angle, there is a certain charm to it.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion: Both of the Dragon Age web series are eminently skippable. Warden's Fall adds little to the established universe but fits within it; Redemption is best viewed as though it is not meant to.

#dragon age warden's fall #dragon age redemption #dragon age kristoff #dragon age tallis #dragon age origins awakening #dragon age 2 #dragon age meta #crosspost #anne does dragon age #blunders of thedas

7 notes · View notes