#mass effect: absolution

[vakarians-babe]

love that character. would hate to go into their tag.

#literally applies to absolutely any and everyone #dragon age #mass effect #ok to rb #lotr

[prezs]

this is still the funniest way to start a romance in a video game possibly ever

#personal #mass effect #thane shut the fuck up about your dead wife im trying to jump into your bug pants #second place goes to asking garrus to fuck out of absolutely no where and having all of your dialogue be about how you're prepping to fuck #and they say romance is dead

[ladygwyndolin]

#ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED #mass effect #shiara

[slightlysaneee]

No thoughts, only Shakarian

#mass effect #shakarian #garrus vakarian #female shepard #art #massive effect fanart #garrus x shepard #garrus x femshep #sane:draws #they are such a comfort otp for me #i'm absolutely cringe about them #feel free to imagine hearts and rainbows around them #bc that's how i see them <33333

[the-fae-tricked-me]

Can't stop thinking about THAT ONE Archangel reveal scene in ME2. You know which one. And now you're also thinking about it. And now we're all blushing

#they ABSOLUTELY knew what they were doing with that one #dear gods #the angle #the pose #HIS VOICE #*swoon* #mass effect garrus #garrus vakarian #the garrus vakarian #garrus x me #garrus x femshep #shepard x garrus #garrus romance #mass effect legendary edition #mass effect trilogy #mass effect 2 #me2 #i swear im not into aliens #but whooo—WE #theres no shepard eithout vakarian #theres no screaming into your pillow like a crushing schoolgirl without vakarian #mass effect

[chelshiart]

everybody make way for best friend legion!!!!

#mass effect #tali'zorah nar rayya #tali'zorah vas normandy #legion mass effect #commander shepard #absolute unit shaped #just dumping all the mass effect doodles out of the digital sketchbook #comics

[rad-roche]

just me and my best friend the comically small keeper. my smeeper. we are brothers. let me tell you if he engineers the destruction of all life in the universe through quiet maintenance of the citadel i'll be beyond fucking furious. do not let him know i said that

#mass effect #he would never betray me #text post #i have absolutely no clue what added this in. was it always there? is this a mod?

[blazedrobin]

Garrus: "Shepard this isn't funny"

Shep: "just stand still"

Grunt: "heh heh heh..."

It's almost Halloween, so why not lmfao

#mass effect #mass effect fanart #mass effect legendary edition #commander shepard #my art #garrus vakarian #shakarian #garrus x femshep #grunt mass effect #femshep #halloween #based on actual events #grunt is having an absolute ball #just two parents and their krogan child #garrus is fed up #garrus outfit is way too big lmao #urdnot grunt

[capt-biglou]

Gala, by @palavenmoons ✨

#mass effect #turian #eliana corvalis #my oc #female turian #fashion #Aaaaa thank you pally <3 #the fabric! #absolutely stunning

[catsharky]

Super late (again, augh) but here's June's patreon piece! Idea was submitted by @the-winterstorms who requested Jack's Dossier Mission where rather than a human, it turns out she's just a very aggressive Sphynx cat instead.

I had a lot of fun with this one! Might have gone a little overboard with it though, lmao.

Become a $5 patron by the end of the month to submit an idea for August!

Also have some detail shots~

#mass effect #urdnot grunt #mass effect jack #femshep #garrus vakarian #patreon art #sharky art #this got delayed because the universe be like “bing bong fuck ya life” #contract got extended to the end of this week and the deadlines have been... aough #had summer plans with my partner's kids and Security Breach: Ruin gave me brain worms for a week #but then I was all ready and finally had time put aside to get this done two weeks ago and then BAM brutal mystery flu outta nowhere #absolute bullshit I tell ya

[scalefeathers]

…I might have a type.

#I didn’t deliberately set out to make faerunian garrus vakarian but I absolutely made faerunian garrus vakarian #well #garrus if he was a bit more of a ho #Raal Heliwr #don’t perceive me #bg3 #baldur’s gate iii #baldur’s gate 3 #dragonborn tav #garrus vakarian #mass effect

[quietwingsinthesky]

no one ever fucking talk to me about the leviathan dlc and its implications. even thinking about it made me mad again. how do you create a story about artificial intelligence that is a direct consequence of its creator’s hubris (thinking that they, unlike more “primitive” species, could create robots to fix their problems that WOULDN’T rebel and kill them. only for the robots to rebel and kill them.) and also a reflection of their beliefs uninterrogated: that there is no possibility for peace between artificial and organic life, that it must all be extinguished for the sake of “peace”. how do you have a story where one of the main (paywalled. dlc.) squad members is the remnants of an empire that conquered and controlled other species in the same way the leviathans did, and met the exact same fate because their imperial power was an illusion created by the reapers to make them weaker, to make them easier to exterminate. how do you make a story about these cycles, about how the council IS repeating these cycles, they just do it in a “kinder” way, a way with a veneer of democracy while still holding the same kind of power the protheans did over their empire, taking the same corrupted seat and continuing to rule their even after they find out, in mass effect 1, that it was a time bomb of extinction. how do you write all of that. how do you write the geth/quarian conflict and give us an ending that proves that peace and reconciliation is not only possible, but the best option. and then. star child. and you can’t even fucking argue with him that his ideology is bullshit.

#HOW DO YOU DO ALL OF THAT- its because of ea i know that but still. how. #not that mass effect isnt a fantastic story on its own but god the implications. theyre right there. you had them in your grasp. #what the fuck happened here. #mass effect #not even a fucking paragon check at the end to go ‘rip to you you shitty child but you were programmed by the guys who thought it was okay #to enslave half the galaxy and they maybeee weren’t right about their views.’ #unbelievable. absolute disgrace. javik is right there and you disrespect him like this. you make a crucial part of understanding all of this #DLC!!!!

[thefloatingstone]

Imperialist grandpa is here to make racist remarks and try to convince you to throw your robotic son out the air lock.

#Mass Effect #Mass Effect 3 #Javik #Screenshots #spoiler #spoilers #Javik is a really great character #even if 90% of what he says makes me shake my head and go #''Oh Grandpa. You and your silly superiority complex and deep seeded trauma.'' #the absolute embodiment of ''I can't fix him.''

[captainderyn]

I was so lucky to snag a sketch commission slot from @sbeep as a little early birthday gift to myself and even luckier to receive it two days before my for realsies birthday and WOW WOW WOW I’ll scream in the tags for space’s sake but look at this lovely lovely depiction of ME3-era Ryn (probably post Thessia) 💙

#thank you sbeep *showers in love and adoration* I love how you drew her #absolute perfection I’ll tell you what #mass effect #mass effect 3 #femshep #oc: Ryn Shepard #I’m going to stare at this forever and ever ahhhh #how tired she looks?? how defeated but ready to keep pushing forward?? EXACTLY how I described it #Ryn my beloved this is all I’m gonna talk about #you will be seeing this all over my dash thank you #agfjahfifhthaidff GOODNESS this made my day #the way I lit up when the email came in #happy birthday to me happy birthday to meeeee thank you past me that made this purchase #this is so accurate to how I picture her agdjfhdofh 😭😭😭💙

[felassan]

Some snippets of interest and insight from Mark Darrah, from a Mark Darrah on Games YouTube video where he is livestreaming playing Dragon Age II -

On Dragon Age: Dreadwolf and sort've like, the franchise in general:

A comment in chat asked "What do you think about the recent DA:D leaks?" Mark replied that he doesn't really think that there is much in those leaks.

A comment in chat mentioned the possible 2 companions setup from the leaks. Mark said "honestly, I think the 2 companions is probably better for storytelling than 3, because you're able to have a more consistent banter setup, as opposed to having someone [else] there just hanging on".

Chat asked if he was worried about the quality of writing in DA:D. He replied "I'm not worried about the quality of writing in Dreadwolf at all, no".

Chat asked "What are your thoughts on the Dreadwolf leaks as far as the Dragon Age gameplay moving towards hack'n'slack vs cRPG?" He said that DAII and DA:I are both action RPGs, it's just that what action RPGs are has changed over the last while. He said he thinks DA:D is continuing to try to be an action RPG, and that "I don't think they're trying to be God of War, in spite of what the rumors say. Though if you're making an action RPG these days you have to at least be influenced by God of War. Dragon Age has always had to be, it's always been in this problem of not being able to be itself within EA, so it's always having to change."

Chat asked "Why God of War, and not, say, Dragon's Dogma?" Mark explained that when looking for previous other games as comparison points/inspiration points etc, devs have to be careful not to go too far back into the past (& that Dragon's Dogma is a great game, but from quite a while ago now).

When talking about primer and detonator tactics like grease and fireball, he observed that the series generally has been moving away from this type of tactics. Grease/fireball for instance requires a certain degree of targeting that he thinks is a bit impractical, but things like mana clash are things which could continue to exist.

Red Hawke-style options in terms of metrics are the least picked by players, same as Renegade options in Mass Effect. (while Blue Hawke is likely the most chosen) They're there to simply be there more than they are to be the most-picked choice. There could be an opportunity here for devs to spend less resources in development on evil or mean choices in future, but they still need to be there.

Varric is pretty much the only true non-quantum companion from DA:I. Mark noted that if a character's quantum state isn't dead/not dead but is rather recruited/not recruited, they can always write it such that the character survived. (He also mentioned as an example that Isabela's quantum "collapsed" and was "undone" in DA:I).

He also mentioned that he will probably do livestreams playing DA:D as he has done with DA:O and is doing with DAII, but thinks it's unlikely that he will be done with streaming DA:I by then, so at that point he'll likely set DA:I aside, do DA:D and then come back to DA:I.

On Dragon Age: Absolution:

Chat asked what he thought about Meredith coming back in the show. "I don't have a problem with Meredith coming back because as revealed, it looks like she's basically almost entirely embedded in red lyrium or maybe is some kind of lyrium ghost, so I think it's certainly beyond plausible."

[source]

He also talked more generally about DAII and the previous games in general. These bits are collected under a cut due to length:

Regarding DAII's overkill, he said that the goal of DAII is to make the game "look like something", as DA:O doesn't really "look like something". The overpowered, Varric-embellished introduction to the game anchors this

Cassandra's hair isn't supposed to seem light-colored during the Varric interrogation sequence, this was probably a lighting issue

He commented that he feels Varric's voice has changed quite a bit from DAII to DA:I

Mages are super overpowered in DA:O in a very D&D way

DA:O is more difficult on PC than on consoles. He doesn't think this is the case for DAII and DA:I though

DA:O was trying to be a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate (at least, that's what was said out loud). But Neverwinter Nights snuck in there a few times as DA:O bounced in and out of Multiplayer. So DA:O has some fingerprints on it which look like NWN. Also, it was originally built using some of its code, which ended up in the engine, Aurora

In the MET, because it's a trilogy and Shepard is the PC in each game, every single choice you made still mattered going forwards, whereas with DA, a lot of the more personal choices can be washed away game to game. That's an advantage in terms of responding to choices (as devs can set aside what they want to set aside, whereas ME3 was really bogged down by the weight of 2 games of previous choices)

On Flemeth's appearance in DAII, as a voice actor Kate was really "chewing the scenery" there and allowed to do so (to chew the scenery means to play a role in a very energetic, emotional or dramatic way); it got too expensive with Orange is the New Black to keep Kate in a big role going fowards

The slave statues at the entrance to Kirkwall are huge and probably magic

He mentioned that he thought Freddie Prinze Jr. was awesome as he was one of the most active voice actors that they had in terms of talking about his experience and how much he loved it

A comment in chat said "I just wish we had black stones in Kirkwall. any reason they made the stone white in this media only? books, animation, and codex say it's a pitch black stone city" and he explained that this is because black is almost incredibly hard to do in this engine, and that pitch black is not a good choice for level art in a video game

Chat asked "Do you feel DAII was too narratively ambitious at the start?" and Mark replied "Yeah probably, the writers have always had some difficulty keeping their ambitions in check"

Chat asked "Was it known since DA:O what Flemeth's story was?" and he replied that he thinks they always knew Flemeth was Mythal, but can't remember for sure

DAII is the most character-focused game, partially because during its development everything else had to get stripped away, but also because it laid the seeds of the devs finally admitting what BioWare are about

Chat asked "Was it ever discussed, bringing a Warden Hawke sibling to Nightmare in DA:I?" He said that he thinks it was discussed but the problem of bringing in the Warden sibling is that only one of them is alive, so they would have been dealing with quantum. They already were dealing with quantum, so they could have brought them, but only a small group of people would have the attachment to each character, because half of people would care about one and half about the other

Chat asked "Was DA:O or DA:I considered more of a success by BioWare?" DA:I sold better and has more awards, but it's hard to be down on DA:O as it was the first game and set up the IP

He feels that in a weird way, DA kind of ends up being in a similar weird place as Star Wars, in that the trilogy a fan likes best is often the one they saw when they were a child. There are people for whom Clone Wars is the pinnacle of SW, and people for whom the prequels are. Similarly, with DA, the one a player got introduced to first is often their favorite one

Mark mentioned that they probably switched to Welsh accents for Dalish elves in DAII because they liked how the accent sounded. The dwarves were always intended to sound American

Were he to remaster DA:I he'd like to push the Power requirements down a bit, so that players can go through the gates to the main storyline pieces quicker

He discussed a bit around remakes vs remasters in the context of things that have aged badly (in terms of what's politically/socially acceptable now and what isn't, compared to back then) and said that if you remake a game, you have to re-address those issue, whereas with a remaster you get away with not doing so

If they were to remake/remaster DAII they would probably only do it because they were remaking/remastering DA:O

A comment in chat said "hear me out, a VR remake of DA:O" and he replied that VR still remains pretty niche, and that making VR work well requires a certain smoothness that is missing from DA:O

(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)

[source]

#dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #da4 #dragon age: dreadwolf spoilers #dragon age: absolution #dragon age #dragon age: absolution spoilers #bioware #mass effect #video games #long post #longpost #cassandra pentaghast #my lady paladin

[bytesie]

#mass effect #mass effect 3 #me3 #citadel dlc #garrus vakarian #commander shepard #oc: fern #mele #were these just to look at fern big muscle body in dress. absolutely #i wishs he was even more muscle