Disclaimer:I do not count myself among the mob of haters who make petitions, threaten Bioware employees, and are just assholes in general whenever a new ME3 or DA2 topic pops up. If you are one of these people, then please restrain yourself and try to be constructive, or just leave, please. I don't want to talk about indoctrination theories, star children or how gaming is doomed and creatively bankrupt, I just want to talk Dragon Age. Everything at the panel is "unofficial", by the way.

So I just watched a few videos of the Bioware panel at PAX East. While DA3 has not been announced yet, it's not exactly a big secret that it's coming. Hell, they even say "Dragon Age 3" several times during the panel. What I did find surprising is the large amount of self-deprecating humour going on here, and I like it a lot. To me it shows that they're listening, and that they are all too aware of the many missteps they made with Dragon Age 2. This in turn makes me more confident about the future of the franchise.

Videos can be found here. If anyone finds Youtube versions, please embed them for our slightly lazier fellow Bombers.

Now the main points highlighted during the panel are as follows:

1. Decisions that matter

After the ME3 and DA2 outrages I don't find it difficult to believe that they will at least try to have meaningful, ending impacting, decisions this time around. Even if it's only to spare themselves some petitions and death threats. Whether they will actually deliver on this front, only time will tell. Also, importing saves from the two previous games has now been confirmed. Again, I think they'll have learned a couple of things from ME3 about importing saves into the third instalment of a franchise. They also talk about re-evaluating the whole thing with Hawke, and how they might hand back a bit of control to the players. Personally, I really liked Hawke, and thought that having a strong, identifiable central character was one of the few things that DA2 did better than Origins.

Another big one here is that they want specializations to have some story impact. The thing that always bugged me is that many people within the games view Blood Mages as more evil, and as a bigger threat than even the Darkspawn, but they never acknowledged the fact that my Hawke or Warden Commander was in fact the most powerful Blood Mage in all of Ferelden. To facilitate this impact, they would have to limit the number of specializations per character to 1, though.

2. Stop reusing levels

This one is pretty obvious. I don't think that anyone (even at Bioware) thought this was ever a good idea. It's just something they did because of time constraints and for budgetary reasons. Boy, have they learned their freaking lesson. I mean, wow, how terrible were those dungeons? Also, being in Kirkwall the whole time was a bad idea. Anyway, I highly doubt they'd be cheeky enough to try it ever again. Finally, the "somewhere French" remark confirms that Orlais will be one of the locales, possibly the main setting, of the next game. Bring on the French accents and luxurious cheeses!

3. Equipment for followers

This one's a little subjective. Origins didn't offer any unique appearances for your followers aside from their faces, Morrigan being the obvious exception, of course. DAII, on the other hand, went in the complete opposite direction, by not allowing you to give any armour to your companions. The compromise they have come up with is incredibly interesting, though costly. The idea of giving every character a unique look, and having each piece of armour look different on each follower (this article explains it a lot better with high-res images), sounds kind of awesome. It allows them to give everyone a very distinct look, and still gives us the ability to give them the items we want. It's the best of both worlds. Aside from these points, it's interesting to hear about the motivations behind some of their design decisions, especially the things that changed between 1 and 2.

4. Art design

This is not something they actually touched on very much, but it's my biggest concern as of now. I thought that DA2 looked absolutely horrendous when compared to Origins. Part of this is because of the fact that we stayed in Kirkwall, which severely limited the opportunity for visual diversity, of course. However, the redesign of the Darkspawn, and especially the Ogre, was a big mistake in my opinion. And the lighting, Origins had some great lighting, 2 had none of it. Not all of it was bad, though. The Qunari, for example, were much improved, and so was the Genlock from the DLC.

Overall, this panel has made me more confident about the future of Dragon Age, a franchise I love dearly (I've read the novels). Of course, we should not dismiss the past, and we would all do well to maintain a healthy level of caution.

This is S0ndor signing off.

Very cynic of me, but all of this they did right in DA1 and previous RPG's.
 
So them saying they should return to what made them big in the first place...well duh?

They'll definitely need to do some major retooling to it to make me buy DA3. After being burned by DA2 and to a certain point ME3 I'm really hesitant to buy any more of Biowares stuff. I agree with pretty much every point you're making here but also I think they really need some more memorable characters. Quick name 2 characters from DA2. I can't.

Those sound like reasonable changes. I don't really know where I stand with the whole Hawke/nameless protagonist thing, but perhaps a shift back to the original nameless character with Hawke playing some sort of pivotal NPC role would work? Hmmm.

BioWare have made some of the greatest experiences in video gaming, in the past. If they could kindly go back to why those were great, rather than what they thought would make the game more accessible, a la Dragon Age 2, they'll be fine.

Really, all of this stuff is obvious. As people have said, BioWare have done these right themselves, repeatedly, in the past.

I'm definitely buying DA3 even though I was disappointed by both DA2 and ME3, I really hope that Bioware can get it together because I really believe DA3 is a make or break game for them.

I'm willing to give them a chance. Dragon Age: Origins was awesome and DA2, while flawed, has some good things going for it.

Well... yeah, these sound like good ideas. I hope they follow through with them, but I doubt I'll be able to convince myself to take a chance on DA3 in any case. I don't know what they'd have to do to get me on board - since it's the direction the story took that I disliked most, and the whole Mage-Templar War thing seems to be the main thrust of DA now.

EDIT: Also, Orlais? I dunno, man. Considering how goofy DA's writing got in 2, and especially that Felicia Day DLC, I can't help thinking an Orlais-set DA3 would just be one 50-hour long lolFrance joke.

I'll give DA3 a shot. DA2 was a pretty rough Bioware game (maybe the worst to date?) but it was still fun. People get way too butt hurt over that game. Maybe it was disappointing but it was certainly not awful to the degree that Bioware trolls will claim.

• Bring back Auto Attack. Seriously. If I wanted to play a Hack N' Slash then there are far better games.
• No Mass Effect style Dialogue wheel. If fact no mass effect anything. This is Dragon Age. Bring it back to how it was in past games.
• Better narrative. DA 2 story was just all over the place.
• Bring back Skill system.
• Expand the Tactics feature. All they did is do a Copy/Paste from DAO.
• Better combat scenarios.
• Better AI.
• Don't be afraid to take risks and complicate things. This whole " Making the game more accessible" dreck has to stop. If you make it good people will learn. There's a reason DAO is still Bioware's biggest selling single IP to date.
• Interesting characters please. They just felt empty and vapid compared to DAO.

Do those and I might go back on my statement of never buying a Bioware game again.

Let me put heavy armor on my Mage god dammit.

@mordukai: I was kind of puzzled when they overhauled the combat in 2. Especially since I thought Origins had great combat, with very challenging scenarios sprinkled throughout the game. I played it on PC, so I still had auto-attack, but the sheer amount of terribly weak cannon fodder enemies sure made it feel like a hack 'n' slash game. You see, the PC version has this feature where you can press R to automatically target and attack the enemy closest to you, and since most enemies died in 1 or 2 hits, I found myself constantly mashing R. Also, enemies randomly teleporting onto the battlefield from nowhere was a very dumb and lazy mechanic, I felt

While I rather liked the branching skill trees, I do agree with you about tactics. I'm one of those guys that always fills up all the tactics slots for all my followers with a wide range of possible scenarios, but I still found that there were things I simply couldn't do. So an expansion of the tactics system would be appreciated.

I didn't mind the dialogue wheel, though. What didn't you like about it?

I'm still willing to give BioWare a chance, but I'll remain skeptical.

@TaliciaDragonsong: And Ergo Proxy is awesome!

I think it's a mistake to worry too much about decisions carrying over between DA games (or even for DA3 to be that strongly linked to the previous games... or even for it to be called 'Dragon Age 3' at all for that matter). It's great that they tried it with Mass Effect, and -considering how crazy ambitious setting out to do it was in the first place- I think it worked out reasonably well there. However, even though they clearly didn't know all the details of how that stuff would work out in Mass Effect, it did feel like it was something they had in mind from the start, which is what allowed it to be reasonably successful - if they try and retroactively shoehorn it into Dragon Age it's going to be a mess (it kinda already has been a mess with Awakening and DA2). Dragon Age doesn't need to be Mass Effect.

I agree that making decisions matter is crucial for an RPG, but I think they can do that far more effectively and interestingly if they try and contain both the choice and the consequence to within the same game. Decisions don't have to be world-changing in order for them to engage the player. In fact the scale of the consequences is pretty much irrelevant - make people care about the characters and factions involved and they'll care about the decisions they're being asked to make. Saving a character you care about can have far more impact than saving a world you don't care about. We don't always need to be saving the entire universe from destruction.

They should make each Dragon Age game as self-contained as possible, so that anybody can pick up and play any of them, without having to have played the previous games. They hemorrhaged too many players with DA2 to make that a requirement, and to be honest, there's not really a 'main storyline' going on that's so interesting that they couldn't just drop it and move on anyway. They've established another great setting with tons of potential (which Bioware are great at), which could be used to tell countless great stories, but it hasn't been used as well as it could be so far.

I am being very cautious after the last one.

But i think dragon age games aren't for me anyways.

@Jimbo said:

I think it's a mistake to worry too much about decisions carrying over between DA games (or even for DA3 to be that strongly linked to the previous games... or even for it to be called 'Dragon Age 3' at all for that matter). It's great that they tried it with Mass Effect, and -considering how crazy ambitious setting out to do it was in the first place- I think it worked out reasonably well there. However, even though they clearly didn't know all the details of how that stuff would work out in Mass Effect, it did feel like it was something they had in mind from the start, which is what allowed it to be reasonably successful - if they try and retroactively shoehorn it into Dragon Age it's going to be a mess (it kinda already has been a mess with Awakening and DA2). Dragon Age doesn't need to be Mass Effect.

Also this.

Another thing: assuming combat remains similar with group combos, gambits etc. (which I think are great by the way) they really need to drop the enforced specializations on the other party members. I get that it makes sense that Archer dude should really always be using a bow, but in practice it was far too limiting on how you would set up your party, and how you set up your party is where all the meat of the gameplay is.

I'm not a Bioware basher, but I'm going to remain very skeptical of their future games from this point. DA2 was a crushing disappointment, and although ME3 was a solid game, it had problems that don't need to be discussed again.

I'll be waiting for a price drop at the very least for DA3.

I fucking loved the way my Hawke turned out. I felt much more attached to her as a character than my Warden from DA:O. I hope they don't stray too far away from that.

As far as the other changes are concerned, they seem like smart solutions to the (to me, minor) problems that distracted people from the amazing game that DA2 was. I loved DA:O and DA2 and can't wait for DA3.

Did they say that Morrigan would be coming back because that's what needs to happen in DA3.

@DonChipotle said:

Did they say that Morrigan would be coming back because that's what needs to happen in DA3.

They have hinted that DA3 would be in Orlais, and iirc you learn in DA2 that Morrigan is in Orlais.

@Jimbo said:

@DonChipotle said:

Did they say that Morrigan would be coming back because that's what needs to happen in DA3.

They have hinted that DA3 would be in Orlais, and iirc you learn in DA2 that Morrigan is in Orlais.

Oh man, Sandal is going to Orlais.

It's okay, guys, everything will be fine so long as Sandal is there.

@DonChipotle: No word on that yet. A fan asked them about the possibility of past party members returning in three, and they said they would like to have a solid mix between the old and the fresh. No specifics yet, though. I'd imagine that Leliana would play a some role, especially after the way DA2 ended.

Still, I think Morrigan's return is inevitable. She, her child and Flemeth seem to be bigger potential threats than even the Blights.

I use to love Bioware. The Baldurs Gate series is one of my fav games ever. Now they are a bunch of twats talking shit and catering to the lowest common denominator.

All the praise they get is just riding the name of past deeds. You only need to look at EA renaming everything "Bioware" to see that.

I'm really hoping they make some beneficial changes. My biggest problems with DA2 were the terribly recycled dungeons but more importantly the arbitrary boss battle that occurs toward the end which was awful and shoehorned in. It didn't make sense for that character and was really sloppy. I still played through DA2 three times and liked most of it but it was still one of my biggest gaming disappointments ever simply because DA:O knocked me over and became my faourite game of the gen so far. My fingers are really crossed for 3 and I hope there is more interesting story than the mage templar conflict because it didn't feel as important as the darkspawn threat.

@S0ndor: Yeah, but thing is they can't 100% write Flemeth into the script because you CAN kill Flemeth in Dragon Age the Events of Dragon Age II at the start run concurrently to the events of Dragon Age which is why she was easy to write in. However, Dragon Age II ends 10 years AFTER that. I just don't see Flemeth being a big part of the story.

@Jimbo: They would be running right back into the line of scrutiny and fan ire if they abandoned the ability to import saves. They EXPLICITLY setup the fact that the entire reason Hawke's story was being told is because He/She needed to be found to help the Seeker. I mean the whole thing ended on a pretty bluntly put cliffhanger.

Orlais would be great ... French accents all over the place, I'm in heaven.

Haven't played 2 yet but I want to soon. For all the complaints about reused areas and one city and combat or whatever, I've heard a great amount of love & praise for the characters, interactions and everything from a bunch of cool people so I'm looking forward to that.

As much as it may anger some of the more nostalgic RPG players, I really hope that they keep the mass effect style dialogue wheel where the main character actually speaks. I always found it off-putting to play RPG's where your character might as well be a mute who communicates through telepathy.

@Demoskinos said:

@S0ndor: Yeah, but thing is they can't 100% write Flemeth into the script because you CAN kill Flemeth in Dragon Age the Events of Dragon Age II at the start run concurrently to the events of Dragon Age which is why she was easy to write in. However, Dragon Age II ends 10 years AFTER that. I just don't see Flemeth being a big part of the story.

There is enough around Flemeth that saying you killed her isn't really a big issue. In fact most probably did "kill" her in DA:O. But she is Baba Yaga and can easily return.

@endaround said:

@Demoskinos said:

@S0ndor: Yeah, but thing is they can't 100% write Flemeth into the script because you CAN kill Flemeth in Dragon Age the Events of Dragon Age II at the start run concurrently to the events of Dragon Age which is why she was easy to write in. However, Dragon Age II ends 10 years AFTER that. I just don't see Flemeth being a big part of the story.

There is enough around Flemeth that saying you killed her isn't really a big issue. In fact most probably did "kill" her in DA:O. But she is Baba Yaga and can easily return.

Actually, only a piece of Flemeth dies in DA:O, the other piece is the one that Hawke carried across the ocean to safety. Hawke only resurrects Flemeth 2 years after he first meets her, by which time the Warden Commander has already slain the piece of Flemeth that still lived in the marshes. This is also why Flemeth appears to "not give a shit" when you tell her that you've come to kill her in DA:O, she knows that it won't matter in the end. So yeah, she knew Morrigan would turn on her to try and save herself from posession, so Flemeth made sure to have some contingencies in place.

So yeah, Flemeth is very much alive, regardless of player choices.

Gameplay aside I thought DA2 had a much better story and art design.

@whyareyoucrouchingspock said:

I use to love Bioware. The Baldurs Gate series is one of my fav games ever. Now they are a bunch of twats talking shit and catering to the lowest common denominator.

All the praise they get is just riding the name of past deeds. You only need to look at EA renaming everything "Bioware" to see that.

I disagree. I thought Mass Effect 2 and 3 are probably the best work bioware has ever done. Even with the rough ending. I really hope they pull through with dragon age 3 because origins was great.

Huh, I thought DA2 had a great art design. Felt like it created its own identity with the look while DA:O adopted an almost generic fantasy style.

But, also, are they just throwing Hawke away? Kinda wanna know what happens to the guy.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

Very cynic of me, but all of this they did right in DA1 and previous RPG's. So them saying they should return to what made them big in the first place...well duh?

This.

Bioware : We dun fuct up.

Everyone : No shit.

@SeriouslyNow said:

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

Very cynic of me, but all of this they did right in DA1 and previous RPG's. So them saying they should return to what made them big in the first place...well duh?

This.

Bioware : We dun fuct up.

Everyone : No shit.

You can't fault them for trying new things, I think, and it's nice to see them acknowledge their mistakes. One need only look at Call of Duty to see that the same shit over and over again, no matter how good, will get boring and repetitive. Bioware at least tries to do new things, even if it doesn't always work out. I just wish they would knock this "streamlining" shit off.

@Nonused: I felt the art design was hit and miss. Like I said I strongly disliked the Darkspawn redesign. Stuff like the Qunari, and especially the Arishok, looked great, though. I was also a big fan of the Genlock redesign from the DLC, it made them really menacing, as opposed to the comical twerps they were in the original game.

@Demoskinos said:

@Jimbo: They would be running right back into the line of scrutiny and fan ire if they abandoned the ability to import saves. They EXPLICITLY setup the fact that the entire reason Hawke's story was being told is because He/She needed to be found to help the Seeker. I mean the whole thing ended on a pretty bluntly put cliffhanger.

Yeah they would, I totally agree, but can they afford to move forward with this franchise with the millstone that is Dragon Age 2 hung around their neck? They're gonna be handicapped by it in perpetuity if they don't let it go.

The debate between nameless character and front man Hawke is really just preference. A nameless protagonist is an empty body for the player to fill with their imagination, it's their character that they shape. A front man like Hawke or Shepard are characters that the player simply guides through the experience. Every Hawke and every Shep have a lot of similar features. While Nameless Protagonists had only their origins and being a Grey Warden in common. Both have their place, but I prefer DA:O's route for the DA series.

@S0ndor said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

Very cynic of me, but all of this they did right in DA1 and previous RPG's. So them saying they should return to what made them big in the first place...well duh?

This.

Bioware : We dun fuct up.

Everyone : No shit.

You can't fault them for trying new things, I think, and it's nice to see them acknowledge their mistakes. One need only look at Call of Duty to see that the same shit over and over again, no matter how good, will get boring and repetitive. Bioware at least tries to do new things, even if it doesn't always work out. I just wish they would knock this "streamlining" shit off.

Whether you can fault them or not really depends on the motivation behind those 'new things'. If they're genuinely attempting to innovate with the aim of improving or varying the experience and it doesn't quite come off, that's one thing, and I wouldn't fault them for that. If their motivation is primarily to cut development time in half, or to (attempt to) appeal to a wider mainstream audience at the expense of the people who bought the first game, then I think you can absolutely fault them for it. Especially if it backfires and cuts their sales in half.

So I just got done actually watching the panel, and is it me, or is it now veeeeeeeeeeeeery likely that the Hero of Ferelden will be showing up in DA3 in some capacity?

@S0ndor said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

Very cynic of me, but all of this they did right in DA1 and previous RPG's. So them saying they should return to what made them big in the first place...well duh?

This.

Bioware : We dun fuct up.

Everyone : No shit.

You can't fault them for trying new things, I think, and it's nice to see them acknowledge their mistakes. One need only look at Call of Duty to see that the same shit over and over again, no matter how good, will get boring and repetitive. Bioware at least tries to do new things, even if it doesn't always work out. I just wish they would knock this "streamlining" shit off.

@Nonused: I felt the art design was hit and miss. Like I said I strongly disliked the Darkspawn redesign. Stuff like the Qunari, and especially the Arishok, looked great, though. I was also a big fan of the Genlock redesign from the DLC, it made them really menacing, as opposed to the comical twerps they were in the original game.

Dragon Age II wasn't an example of attempted innovation. It was an example of streamlining and simplification that justifiably blew up in their faces.

@S0ndor said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

Very cynic of me, but all of this they did right in DA1 and previous RPG's. So them saying they should return to what made them big in the first place...well duh?

This.

Bioware : We dun fuct up.

Everyone : No shit.

You can't fault them for trying new things, I think, and it's nice to see them acknowledge their mistakes. One need only look at Call of Duty to see that the same shit over and over again, no matter how good, will get boring and repetitive. Bioware at least tries to do new things, even if it doesn't always work out. I just wish they would knock this "streamlining" shit off.

Whether you can fault them or not really depends on the motivation behind those 'new things'. If they're genuinely attempting to innovate with the aim of improving or varying the experience and it doesn't quite come off, that's one thing, and I wouldn't fault them for that. If their motivation is primarily to cut development time in half, or to (attempt to) appeal to a wider mainstream audience at the expense of the people who bought the first game, then I think you can absolutely fault them for it. Especially if it backfires and cuts their sales in half.

@S0ndor: You knew which response was the Good, the bad and the neutral...what a dumb change. DAO did not convey to you that clearly. You just had to pick the one you thought was the good or the bad or the indifferent.

I see I put down Skills but I actually meant Talent.

@WinterSnowblind said:

I'm not a Bioware basher, but I'm going to remain very skeptical of their future games from this point. DA2 was a crushing disappointment, and although ME3 was a solid game, it had problems that don't need to be discussed again.

I'll be waiting for a price drop at the very least for DA3.

I pretty much agree with this. And if they want to fix even more things, don't should try not making your only healer the biggest d-bag in the world.

I wish they would drop the whole save import feature and just make the games they want to make.  They've tried accounting for variables in the game and previous games at the same time and, to me, it's never satisfying.  It's a waste of resources that seem like they are desperately needed.
 
When you ask why a random thing doesn't turn out they way it ideally should have (ex: a rachni queen section in ME3 no matter you chose in ME1 or a Dragon Age character being alive if you killed them previously) the answer is going to be something like, 'making games is hard/didn't have enough time.'  If it never turns out well, just stop wasting time with it.
 
If the quality of the games could go up without the import feature, I would be all for that.
 
I guess I'm saying I want them to go back to telling me the 2 or 3 different versions of a story that is good rather than trying to tell me 50 versions of a story that sucks.

@CaptainCharisma said:

Subscribers find out first and us non-payers find out later. I see no problem here, subscribers have earned at least something since content has been pretty bare lately due to the readjustments being made.

Dude, you are seriously lost.

@ExplodeMode said:

I wish they would drop the whole save import feature and just make the games they want to make. They've tried accounting for variables in the game and previous games at the same time and, to me, it's never satisfying. It's a waste of resources that seem like they are desperately needed. When you ask why a random thing doesn't turn out they way it ideally should have (ex: a rachni queen section in ME3 no matter you chose in ME1 or a Dragon Age character being alive if you killed them previously) the answer is going to be something like, 'making games is hard/didn't have enough time.' If it never turns out well, just stop wasting time with it. If the quality of the games could go up without the import feature, I would be all for that.

What? How are Bioware not making the games they want to make? The whole point of save games being used from one game to another in a series is to allow the player the ability to tell an epic tale which has been directly shaped by choices made in previous games. That's exactly the kind of game which Bioware has been trying to make since even their early D&D licensed games. Their games haven't improved with even more streamlining so I wouldn't recommend more of it.

@ExplodeMode: Yeah. Giving up on the idea of a dynamic story isn't the way to go. They should be working on doing it correctly. At least they're one of the few who are trying. I kind of feel like it won't be Bioware to be the first to do it correctly, though, because under the thumb of the big machine means pushing out games too quickly for those ambitions.