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Darc Requiem on 17 January 2016
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Nem said:
Darc Requiem said:

 

You don't have to sacrifice any important characters to save your Warden or Inquisitor. You may have to sacrifice an important character for your Hawke depending on the choices you've made previously. The DA does a lot of work. I know DA isn't as well received as ME on the whole but from a narrative standpoint the DA is leagues above the ME team. Which is strange because ME was conceived as a trilogy unlike DA.

The Dragon Age team and the Mass Effect team are separate. Yes they are under the Bioware banner but they aren't the same developers. For all the flaws of the Dragon Age franchise, unlike Mass Effect, the Dragon Age team has an overall narrative plan, pays attention to lore, and forces the player to make real choices. Consistency in the writing of characters in Dragon Age is something that sorely missing in Mass Effect. There are a lot of OOC moments in ME3. 

 

I still say its not right to bring your favorite characters back just to have you kill one off. Even if as you say the narritive is better, wich is your opinion, it just leaves me with a bad taste on my mouth. I'd rather having an open ended ending rather than have the characters come back just so you can kill them off. I mean, the Hawke/Alistair thing is outrageous. It wasnt my case, i had the luck to just sacrifice the new character before i got attached to it, but if i had to choose between those two there would be no end to my rage.

Besides, inquisition left much to be desired story wise. Maybe if more time went to it rather than all those useless and repetitive objectives. But, i'm getting side tracked. The ending of mass effect 3 isn't perfect but its not worth the whole fan rage that says the game is bad because of it. Though, now that i think about it, it also had horrible choices to be made, but it was part of a complete continuous storyline. DA just goes and rapes the previous games at their leasure.

Yeah, i hate what DA has become. I miss DA origins and would totally be up for a remake, but i'm pretty much done with the series after inquisition. They raped my DA:O ending without me beeing able to do anything. Still have to replay that part and just doom the dumb inquisitor instead. God i hated inquisition. Wish it jever happened. Sorry... ended up ranting. ^^

I'm honestly consfused at your dislke of how DA handles it's characters while having an affinity for DA:O. Origins was the arguably the darkest game in the franchise. The hard choices you seem to dislike were woven throughout Origins. It was one of the reason I liked the game so much. From the outset of Origins your protagonist is faced with loss. The Human Noble and City Elf origins were especially dark. The Human Noble's whole family is slaughtered except for your elder brother. Your father, mother, sister in law, and your young nephew. The City Elf has his fiance and cousin abducted. Your cousin is raped by the lecherous Bann's son. I could go on. 

I'm not disputing your right to dislike the choices presented and their consequences but they've been consistent. They've been presented that way through the series entirety. If there was sudden change in theme or tone, I'd get it. DA has always had a darker theme. Anderson's equivalent in DA is Duncan and he doesn't make it beyond the tutorial phase of the the first game of the franchise. Anderson on the other hand makes to the climax of ME3.

While I know it's my opinion. I believe DA has the superior narrative. Why? From the beginning of the series through Inquistion. DA had one lead writer. David Gaider. ME, despite being conceived as a Trilogy, changed lead writers and it showed. While DA had changes to it's writing team as well, they had same lead writer. In addition, the writers that came into DA as replacements actually bothered to pay attention to the lore and characterizations. Granted Inquisiton was the end of Gaider's turn as the lead writer but he left the series in great hands. Patrick Weekes was brought over from the ME team to take his place. He was the writer behind the Tuchanka and Rannoch arcs in ME3. Those were the best written parts of ME3. Even people like me, that find ME3 greatly disappointing, enjoyed those arcs. I wish they let him write the whole game...

ME had the better game play in my opinion. DA's gameplay greatly changed between all three entries of the franchise with varying degrees of success. Despite my dislike of the RPG elements be all but eliminated from ME2. The actual gameplay of the franchise got better through ME3 trilogy. I just wish the story telling did the same.

The original theme of ME was dropped completely after the original lead writer, Drew Karpyshyn, left Bioware. This resulted in the sudden "organics vs. synthetics" motivational change for the Reapers. The original motivation of the Reapers was tied to the Dark Energy story point brought up in ME2. I'll try to be brief. The Reapers original motivation was to solve the Dark Energy issue. In ME2, Tali's team on Haelstrom was studying Dholen a star that was aging rapidly. The source of the rapid aging was Dark Energy. The Mass Effect Field technology that powered the ME Universe was the source. The Reapers cycle wipes out all advanced life to stop the proliferation of Dark Energy. This was to buy  time to resolve the problem. Without the Cycle's the dark energy would continue to build, this would cause all stars to exihibit the aging present in Dholen. This would lead to the eventual end of life in the galaxy. Shepard original was going to have the choice destroying the Reapers and hoping the Council races could resovled the dark energy problem or letting the cycle continue to ensuring that some form of life would go on.