Ok, i see ur “Hawke told Varric about their sex life” and raise you “Hawke’s LI told Varric about their sex life”
Merrill must only get mildly tipsy before she is spilling ALL the smutty smutty details (”Oh and then Hawke put their tongue in my–” “DAISY!”) Fenris is tricked into it by Varric purposefully assuming the wrong thing (”And it was tender and chaste?” “Don’t be ridiculous.” “So it was all passion then!”) Anders gets all soppy and waxes poetical (”Kissing Hawke is like coming up for breath after being underwater so long.”) Isabela ghostwrites her own chapter of the book (”This means I get a share in the profits, right?”)
Sebastian is the only one who can keep his damn mouth shut.
'Enjoy it despite its flaws' is one thing, but Mass Effect somehow invented its own category: 'simultaneously one of the most flawed and the most well-crafted sci-fi stories I've ever experienced'. These games are incredible. They’re the worst. All the women are sexualized. All the women have deeply flawed and complex personalities without being either demonized or romanticized. The first available f/f ship seems to be written along the guidelines of 'what would a straight man find hot'. As the games go on, they effortlessly include multiple same sex romance options given just as much care and development as the the opposite sex ones. You can play as a xenophobic murderhobo asshole. You can play as someone genuinely caring but also harsh, who inspires growth and co-operation wherever you go but who makes hard choices when you have to. You can kill civilians and punch reporters and commit genocide. You can stop a generational war and mediate peace and save several species from extinction. The robots are stereotypically evil cannon fodder. The robots are deeply complex with a tragic history. Your team mates are assholes with xenophobic opinions or justifications for police brutality and genocide, or they just want excuses to Do Murder. You team mates are deeply flawed and can be urged to grow alongside you. The most important aliens are all humanoids. There are plant aliens and jellyfish aliens and insect aliens and elephant aliens and aliens who can’t share an atmosphere with us. You have to drive around countless identically boring planets with little to show for it. You get to discover hidden secrets and civilisations millions of years old and live through some of the most emotionally harrowing scenes in storytelling history. I am going absolutely insane about it.
Shoutout to literally all the Baldur's Gate 3 voice actors. Every single one of them. They all gave 110% and it shows. I can't even pick a favourite anymore because every time I do, up comes along a new scene that absolutely blows me away with how good the VA is.
Obsidian spills the first details on combat, magic, character-building, and how important companions are to the story.
You have an established role as the imperial envoy, but your "personality, appearance, and philosophy and vibe you bring to that role is up to you as a player to decide"
You can play as a human or an elf, but not other races
It's purely singleplayer—no co-op
The world is lightly systemic: think water and lightning interactions, but not the ol' bucket-on-the-head trick
You'll have two companions with you at a time, with their own combat specialties and, of course, personalities
There are several ability trees to progress through, and you won't be locked to a particular class or playstyle
You will level up, but the focus is on unlocking abilities rather than putting points into stats to grow stronger
Carrie Patel: "In most of our games companions have been optional, which I think offers a wonderful degree of choice to players, but it means there's a limit to how deeply you can tie them into the core story. With Avowed we decided companions are going to be core. They're going to be part of the experience. And that means we can invest so much more in them and tie them much more closely, and personally, to the events and the parts of the world the player is encountering."
imagine if you like bought a house and the realtor that sold you the house came by and did maintenance every couple months and it was a pretty good arrangement until one day they stopped doing maintenance and things started breaking them and you called them up and they were like 'surprise! we've decided what this house is really missing is a pool so we're going to build a whole new house for you that has a pool we are so excited about this pool' and you were like 'is this a deflection from your sexual harassment lawsuit you're involved in' and they were like 'the pool is going to be so cool!' and hung up and you didn't hear from them for years and then they called you up again and were like 'good news! we've built the new house, why don't you move in' and you were like 'oh, the one with the pool?' and they were like 'wellll yeah but we haven't actually installed the pool yet but when we do it's going to totally transform how you live in your house so you can see the value' and you were like 'i don't know i think i'll stay in this one' and they were like 'hmm yeah sorry actually you can't we're blowing the old house up with dynamite' and you were like 'what? why?' and they were like 'so that you're not split between your old house and the new one' and you were like 'um, fine' and you drove over to the new house and there was no pool or space for a pool and the realtor showed up to gave you the keys and you were like 'this house looks identical to the old one, i don't really understand why you did this' and they were like 'aha! you see, the old house had six rooms, this one has five!' and you were like 'that sounds worse, though' and they were like 'no you see with only five rooms it will be much easier to do maintenance on the house' and you were like 'but you haven't done that for months' and they were like 'yeah that was the old house which we've just blown up with explosives this is the new house' and you were like 'so how's that sexual harassment lawsuit going' and they leaped acrobnatically into their car like a trapeze artist and zoomed away and you went into the house and saw a coin slot on the bathroom door and called them and you could hear the background noise of a courtroom and they said 'yeah so you have to pay five dollars every time you use the bathroom now, it's our new monetization plan' and you were like 'well this is bullshit i feel like this house is just straight up worse' and they were like 'noo listen the pool is going to be so cool it's going to be so good we promise there'll be a diving board and a tiki bar and those water jets that give young people sexual awakenings' and you were like 'well okay' and they were like 'we've been building this pool for four years trust us it's going to be good' and then you didn't hear from them for a long long time except occasionally when they showed up to do maintenance and if you asked about the pool they just winked meaningfully and asked if you wanted to pay a $15/month fee for a bathroom pass giving you unlimited flushes and toilet paper. and this went on for a year until one day you got a voicemail 'dear resident. we're not going to build the pool lol' and you called them back like 'well what the fuck did you demolish my old house for' and they were like 'we actually gave up on the whole pool like two years ago but we did a whole announcement and it would have felt sooo awkward to walk it back' and you were like 'what the fuck have i been paying five dollars to use the toilet for over these last two years!' and they were like 'listen buddy if you don't like it you can buy the bathroom pass' and then they hung up on you . anyway that's what happened with overwatch 2
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 -
"I imagine that the only way that broodmothers would remain in the game [DA:O] would be in a remaster. In a remake I'm sure they would make changes, I would be very surprised if they didn't. But in a remaster you can get away with a lot more. I think they would change their appearance. Also, there's been an effort to unify the look of the darkspawn a lot more, so." "You're never gonna see broodmothers, probably in any form, in the mainline games, definitely not in the form that they're in in DA:O. I don't think you'll ever see a broodmother again. I guarantee that you're not seeing broodmothers in any future Dragon Age thing. I would be very confident in that statement."
Chat commented "Male Desire demons on the other hand" and Mark replied that there is a concept art out there for male Desire demons.
Chat asked "If we won't get Broodmothers, do you think we'll get the original Archdemon design? The Tentacle Monster one?". Mark replied "Probably not the tentacle version for an Archdemon. I could see that being created as another monster or high level boss, but probably not as Archdemon because the, sort've, dragon as being part of an Archdemon is too intertwined in the lore at this point."
Chat commented "I just hope the Mythal death in DA:I was a fakeout". Mark said, "One thing with Mythal is that, Kate Mulgrew, as her stock has risen and fallen, her price has gone all over the place, so 'is Mythal gonna show up?' decisions will be partially based upon if she's priced herself out of the market or not. Though I think she actually was sad, based on the DA:I stuff, so maybe she'd be willing to do it on a little bit of a lower price. But I actually don't know, because is Orange Is the New Black still on the air? Her price may have come down again." "I mean definitely you can see, sometimes characters disappearing is because the voice actor became a pain to work with, or became expensive, those are definitely factors, no question."
Later on this topic chat asked "Would you say Laura Bailey is still in the affordable VA space? I know she's become a mega popular/busy thanks to CR, but she's always been VA first afaik." Mark replied "Depends, you can always sort've write less for them, if you can do it in one session you can kind've afford anybody, it's a question of how much they're gonna show up."
Chat asked "Do you agree with the criticism some people have that DA lore focuses too much on elves?" Mark said "Yeah, kind've, I think it sort've, it's not on purposes, the elves, they just kind've end up sneaking into everything it seems like. I think there's a recognition of the elves kind've being too present." "I don't think elves are going to disappear, I just think that they don't necessarily need to, one of the things that sort've constantly happened is that the stories ended up presenting the elves as, they keep sort've having them make just the worst decisions. So I suspect there's a goal to maybe make them not do that and then that would allow them to sort've rebalance with everyone else. It's also harder to get, dwarves kind've require a, they're either harder to integrate in, because they're off [over there], they're not just in a forest, you gotta go into a hole to talk to them, so they kind've always are gonna be less present unless you're doing something in the Deep Roads or Orzammar."
"It's always hard to kill off the protagonist. Always gonna get people who are against that but y'know [shrug]. I can certainly see the argument for killing off the Inquisitor in Trespasser".
Chat asked "Would it be more likely that we would be able to get answers to the more deep-fan stuff like The Calling etc by assuming those would be in DLC and not the main game of DA:D?" Mark replied "I don't imagine that there's gonna be a ton of, it's possible that you're gonna see that sort've stuff in DLC but I don't know what the live service plan is gonna be for DA:D to be honest because that was definitely, has been in flux over the course of DA:D, that's for sure."
[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 -
[when party camp is ambushed by darkspawn] "That's one of the few times that we actually pay that off"
[during Leliana's party camp song] "Very impressive cinematic design. It shows off the age of the models in the close ups, but the long shots are really great." "They're desperately trying to get the lipsyncing to match and failing"
Chat asked "Any insight as to why class design was made so much stricter in DAII and DA:I? DA:O had dual wield warriors, rogues with swords, etc." Mark replied "In DAII and DA:I I think we were trying to make the roles more clear. DA:O is basically DnD with no clerics and the serial numbers filed off"
In later DA games they suppressed visual effects (like glowing auras from active skills) during conversations. "Probably for the best because I'm also having... weird glowing stuff coming off of me"
[when Dagna in Orzammar talks about a bunch of nerdy magic lore] Chat asked "When you made this part about dwarfs and lyrium, had you then made enough lore to know how it all worked? aka how the Descent in DA:I would play out? Not story, but lorewise." Mark replied "The lore, like the magic sources in DA:O are kind've a mess so there is, there's been an effort since DA:O to kind've draw them back together. There was an understanding of why dwarves didn't have magic in DA:O, so kind've." Chat followed up "'Like theres four sources [of magic]: Fade, Blood, Lyrium, Blight?" and Mark said "Yeah, that's sort've the problem. You've got lyrium, you've got the Fade, you've got the Blight, you've got blood magic, you've also got some other, sort've genericized stuff where it's not explained. So from my perspective you kind've wanna collapse that down. You either want magic to just generally be from everything, which a lot of settings do, or you want it to have a somewhat unified source or sources, so you can see that there's like, things have been slowly drawn into a more common metaphysical explanation over the last two games."
Chat asked "I'm not sure when you came on to the DA:O project, but do you know which of the origins was the last to be added? Were any kind of 'last minute afterthoughts'?" Mark said "The actual truth is we cut an origin. There was an origin for the Avvar as well that got cut, so there was supposed to be two elves, two dwarves, two humans and then mage, but we cut the Avvar for time." "I actually really like the idea of us having implemented at least one faction where you come up with the Treaties and they're like 'good to go, just let us get our stuff'. That could've been the Avvar, as well"
"I think that lyrium will eventually drive a dwarf mad. I think that's established canon." "I would say that just because lyrium drives you mad doesn't mean that dwarves would stop using it. It only slightly drives you mad. Certainly there are lots of examples in [irl] history of people continuing to use things that are very bad for them because they're convenient or cheap."
"I've always wondered about dwarves, I mean you're burning big fires in the middle of a cave, and everyone's living together, it does seem like you're gonna run out of breathable air pretty quickly"
Chat asked "Were you involved much in the class design aspect of the game?" and Mark said "With DA:O? Not too much. When I took over, the game was largely design-locked. There was content still being created but most of the game design was done well before I took over"
Mass Effect 1's combat was aspiring to be something it was failing to reach
Chat mentioned that Citadel was a fan service/love letter DLC. Mark said "Citadel in ME is definitely, you're absolutely right, it's definitely a 'please stop being mad at us' piece of DLC." "I don't even know if it hit its profitability goals"
"The asari in ME didn't succeed at being a parody of the 'green space babes' trope. ME races are like Star Trek races, they're all defined by a relatively small number of characteristics. If they're attempting to be parodies of those kinds of races in something like Star Trek they are not succeeding at doing that. It's hard to imagine that you're succeeding at making a commentary about it when you're basically just doing the same thing. If you're using the codexes to talk about how well executed they are then it's not coming through in the main game, if that's what's required."
[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)
Just reblogging this because its interesting. Thanks @felassan! You always go above and beyond when it comes to keeping everyone up to date and all that transcribing.
Do you think the aliens in mass effect saw all those messages humans would send out into the big empty world and wish they could respond? Our greetings, our invitations to visit earth, even playing our music out into a universe we thought empty. do you think some aliens were waiting impatiently for us to discover the relays so that one day, within their lifetime, they could take us up on those offers?
I recently heard the banter between Alistair and Leliana regarding the Ferelden stew he made and I couldn't get the image of him cooking for the party out of my head 🥰
imo the reason dragon age 2 goes so hard is because it's like... not afraid of the sociopolitical conflicts in thedas and it puts you right up in the middle of them. you just. you can't ignore how FUCKED thedas is when you're playing da2. it's not just that you're told "oh yeah some people are part of violently oppressed minority groups", your party members are deeply and personally affected by being part of those groups!
contrast that with dai where like... solas and sera are TOTALLY disconnected and disdainful when it comes to elves, and solas, while a mage advocate, sorta, doesn't have a personal stake in it! vivienne (just saying now i am not a fan of vivienne hate she is a complex and interesting character who deserves respect) has carved out a situation where she can have power WITHIN the system that violently oppresses her and wants to protect that! dorian comes from a country where mages are a protected and privileged class! none of them provide any incentive to closely examine or strongly oppose the established institutions of thedas, except, perhaps, tevinter, which we're supposed to write off as evil anyway!
da2 incentivizes you to believe that the decisions you make matter, on a deep level, to the people that you love. they are in real danger from the templars! threats against the alienage or the inquest of tevinter or the qunari are genuinely destabilizing on a life-or-death level. meanwhile like... idk you can let the chargers die and that sucks or you can personally make blackwall's life bad for his admittedly pretty shitty crimes, but the urgency is missing, the intensity of loving people who are in a mundane sort of danger. you can close the breach, but what the fuck can you do about the chantry? but da2's the only game you really get that in. dao asks you to make some hard decisions, but the force you're fighting against is an outside evil. the breach, the archdemon, the blight, corypheus. okay that thing is bad and i should definitely get rid of it. in da2 sure there's the qunari and meredith or whatever but imo the primary conflict is with the atrocities the society you live in is built on and that goes FUCKING HARD.
