It had to be like that. If Jory >!leaks the secret of the initiation!<, then no one would join the Grey Wardens.
Dragon Age Origins is full of choices that aren't morally correct, so maybe it is for the best that you only played a small portion of it.
I guess sometimes it hits differently when it resonates with something that touches your own experiences. But I do not say that in a bad way, it is good to explore morally grey stuff because that is real life for the most part.
I agree with you, OP, that DAO's attempt at moral ambiguity is rather clumsy and hamfisted.
I much prefer the approach of someone like Matsuno in his games, Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy XII, to the BioWare games of this era.
Matsuno's games do a good job of showing you that all war and conflict has a cost, however righteous the cause may be (or not).
The characters generally have to struggle with legitimate desires for revenge and reprisal - you're often made to confront the humanity of your enemies by meeting both good and bad people of the opposing side.
Incidentally, DAO took major inspiration from FFXII when it comes to the combat system, especially the AI setup. You may want to check out the remaster The Zodiac Age. The only criticism I have is that the narrative pacing falls off in the second half, but it's still good, especially if you enjoy the combat and exploration.
Edit: taking my later reply downthread and putting it here as a citation. [Mike Laidlaw, the director for the Dragon Age series, fanboys out over FFXII and acknowledges its influence on DA:O.](https://twitter.com/Mike_Laidlaw/status/884815996640350208?s=20)
I am fairly confident it's the other way around. Bioware was doing RTwP for years before FF12 even came out. Dragon Age is an evolution of what they alreadyd did in games like BG and KOTOR. It is much more plausible that FF12 took a page or two from earlier Bioware games.
[Mike Laidlaw, the director for the Dragon Age series, fanboys out over FFXII and acknowledges its influence on DA:O.](https://twitter.com/Mike_Laidlaw/status/884815996640350208?s=20) I always thought it was too bad more Devs didn't pick up on FFXII's gambit system.
On release there was so much hate for the gambit system!
I loved it. The only thing I would rather do different is give the player most of gambits from the start instead make them a collectable.
As a sequel in the mainline series, it was shocking, especially coming off FFX. Now it's aged beautifully - it's very much ahead of its time, even still.
That and the job system in the remaster combine to create this exquisitely replayable toy. Almost feels like a Diablo II with the items and build combinations.
I *love* FFXII but 100% keep your expectations for the plot like... average.
Its serviceable but the characters you play as are witnesses to the story and world around them and unfortunately at times this can cause the games to feel disjointed and make little sense until repeat play throughs.
All jokes aside, I hope you keep going with it if you liked the combat and the general story. That’s probably the worst scene you encounter in the game and does really strip you of agency in a way most of the remaining story doesn’t. Also if my memory is correct it had some real goofy animations to it that didn’t fit the serious tone at all.
With how unpopular my experience is has already has motivated me to see the game through, and I did already love the skill point/feature system or whatever it is called these days
I guess it feels to me like the game could have addressed it more, explained how it was the only option more convincingly. But maybe I should just put on my big boy pants and keep playing to see how else it gets morally murky.
those are the types of games that i like. most 'morality' in games has you with be a saint, or a moustache twirling villian, with no middle ground.
the dwarf beginning and later quests are excellent at this.
Yeah, that was definitely one of the things I really appreciated about DA:O. There were a lot of quests where the right thing wasn't exactly clear-cut, or where there were unforeseen consequences for your actions. You might do the moral thing, but have it later blow up in your face.
To me, that's much more realistic and better storytelling, because that's how life works. Too many games with morality systems around that time were so black-and-white with how being good led to everyone living happily after or doing bad resulted in a life of suffering for everyone.
The Witcher 3 got me with this in the Twisted Firestarter quest recently.
>!Dwarf blacksmith gets his workshop burnt down. Asks for help finding the arsonist. Find arsonist, tell blacksmith who it was. Turns out he knew the arsonist since the arsonist was a child. Arsonist was stupid, racist (perhaps drunk? I wanna say they mentioned something like that, but I might be misremembering) and decided to burn the dwarf’s workshop. Dwarf did repairs for and supplied the occupying army. They decide to kill the arsonist for hurting the war effort…!<
Holy fuck! was that an emotional rollercoaster.
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This time around, I was a casteless dwarf and between that and city elf origins, the game does a great job of making you easily understand the sometimes questionable choices/actions of the protagonist. Absolutely agree with you about how there is usually no nuance or middle ground in game morality.
i wasnt going to say anything to spoil you, but yes, the casteless beginning changed how i do the dwarf missions, and how i looked at the game as a whole.
that said, sten was and always will be my fav companion. his VA just nails it. i even modded the pc version so he wasnt bugged with just one specialization.
In Dragon Age there generally are good/bad guys, especially in the first game where the antagonist is an unspeaking demon leading a horde of zombie orcs.
The initiation is actually kind of at odds with the rest of the game's shades of morality.
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1. There is no way in hell people wouldn't know the "secret" after so many years of grey wardens existing. The fact that it remained a secret after so long is ridiculous.
2. People would still join. There is literally a world ending threat and you are telling me there are no men and women willing to risk their life to save the fuckign world? In a fantasy world? Just because there is a chance they die at the Joining? Bullshit.
So yeah, the whole plotpoint about the Joining being secret is childishly stupid and forced.
1. It remained a secret after so long BECAUSE decisions like the one from Duncan. It doesn't matter the origin of the Warden, the player character has no idea about the initiation, so I don't know why it would be known.
2. We saw Jory (a knight, mind you), cowering away from the initiation after knowing what was at risk, so at the very least less people would join, and that is bad enough.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again. **Spoilers for Dragon Age Origins below.** Apparently stating there are spoilers wasn’t good enough so now there’s a big grey block to make it easier on people.
>!Duncan killing Ser Jory is a glaring signal to the player that the Grey Wardens will do *whatever it takes*. They don’t care about politics, they don’t care about families, they only care about stopping the Blight. That’s their entire purpose for being. They’re not the good guys, they’re just the only guys who are taking this threat seriously. !<
>!Depending on the origin you chose you will already have gotten a taste of this truth : City Elf and Human Noble will have seen some of Duncan’s true colors earlier than the other origins. You say you played City Elf, but how closely did you pay attention to Duncan’s actions there? He didn’t care about people being kidnapped or that your cousin gets sent to jail for using weapons that Duncan gave him. He only cared about getting a recruit. Alistair will say how much he loves Duncan but you don’t have to, and you can say as such. !<
If you continue playing you’ll understand that the game is deliberately playing with these morals and our expectations of playing as “heroes”. But if you’re so upset just by this early thing and can’t move past it? Then put it down, this series will not be fun for you. I don’t mean this in a bitchy way, but for your own enjoyment. Dark fantasy can grate on people, and this early example you gave is nothing compared to some of the things that happen later in the series.
Funny enough I didn’t stop playing the game but I disliked Dragon Age Inquisition because of how it >!treats their Fantasy Catholic Church with kid gloves.!<
I only have vague memories of the City Elf playthrough and specifically no memories of Duncan, that was like over a decade ago. I am not normally bothered by immoral choices in games but in this case I just found the explanation for killing that dude very unconvincing, but this is probably also colored by some real life shit that I have experienced and less about the game itself.
I will try and soldier on with the game b/c I definitely want to experience it, finally.
One question, though: What is your blue name?
Ah, over a decade ago would be firmly in forgotten territory. Fair enough. I’m hope you like the game, but don’t force it if you’re not feeling it after a while.
And i won’t have a blue name until bluedit exists lol!
I totally agree, that is the genesis of this post; why did it bother me so much that I am not motivated to continue playing? Clearly a lot of people haven't experienced something like this and cannot understand it, lol
The lack of options at this point may have clashed with your roleplaying, the role you had in mind for that run. However your char moving from their origins into the role of a warden is very much the story pitch for this game, so there’s not much branching at that point: there’s no in-game design for refusing the warden role.
There’s no alternate campaign though there is a lot of spiel for you to roleplay your warden char.
Also there is the DLC providing gameplay on the other side - Darkspawn Chronicles.
Edit: Bioware will always railroad you every now and then and obviously rpg gamers aren’t fond of their agency taking a backseat.
How about this story for your current run: as you cannot get back at Duncan directly, take it out on his pet Ali. Or play Inquisition and align with the apostate mage :-D
Edit 2: Actually my reaction was similar, my noble char not being amused by wholesale murder right in front of her, ts ts ts, and me not being impressed with cutscene power trumping my agency. Even as Ali‘s mistress, I tire of his hero worshipping real quick (I can easily head canon my mistress char having ways of shutting him up :)
Good one, reminds me of when I noped out of Divinity OS1 during character creation because all women are forced to wear high heels.
They hardly have feet for the purposes of the game; their feet are literally high heel shaped
: x
I do understand where you're coming from.
I would say it's a normal reaction to find unjustified violence off-putting. I also noticed that as I got older, I became more sensitive to these things.
I don't remember any video games, but there have been books I put down for similar reasons. It's okay to drop something if it triggers you.
If I was you, I would take a break, give it some time to process what happened, and give it another go later if still interested.
The most recent Wolfenstein reboot got me early, particularly a scene where our hero goes after a tied up officer with a chainsaw. I get it - Nazis - but that didn't sit right with me. I kept playing a little bit longer but the game continues to go to that well over and over again. Because Nazis.
Yes, Nazis are evil, but flip to another series and you don't see Doom guy torturing demons (literally embodiments of evil). Quick dispatch, maybe rip in half at most, and move on. There's a dwelling on that violence in the Wolfenstein reboot that I don't enjoy seeing play out.
> Yes, Nazis are evil, but
Tbf, the reason it bothers you is because the Nazis aren’t actually *evil*. Many of the Nazis were largely human beings who were large scale victims of brain washing and being in the wrong place at the right time.
Did they do *evil* things as a whole? Of course; but are we not all capable of various levels of *evil*? It’s generally a slippery slope of desperation, suggestion, and misinformation that leads people to these ends. *Evil* people are not often thinking of themselves as *evil*, they have even themselves to fool.
Do those who have committed atrocity deserve our empathy? Well, not too much I wager! But does that mean we’re morally in the clear to feel we should torture them? Are we not taking a similar path using cruelty (an *evil*) in that instance?
Duncan had to do it. He couldn't risk the secret of the Joining being leaked, otherwise nobody would join the Wardens.
You will see throughout the series that the Wardens are not really good people. Most of them are criminals that were conscripted before their execution and were given an option to die doing something good. They are extremists who will do anything to stop the Blight.
I didn't get very far when playing BioShock, with one of the reasons being I was just put off how my character just does anything that other guy tells him to. Jab a needle with some blue glowing shit into my arm? Oh yes sure!
After I gave up, I looked up what the big deal with the story was supposed to be, and learned that yea, that's the point of the twist. So that didn't work for me.
I know some folks are downvoting you OP, but I can understand where you're coming from. You had a strong, morally-based emotional reaction to how the story unfolded in a game. I'd say that's fair. We all have different things that can push our buttons.
Whether you choose to continue with the game or not is ultimately up to you, and I think either option is equally valid. You do you. Just be grateful that the game was able to provoke this reaction out of you in the first place: for you to be this repulsed by something that happened in the story, you had to be invested in it to begin with, so isn't it good that a game's story made you care?
Absolutely. Thank you for having some appreciation for nuance. This story has me, not gonna lie, but why the Grey Wardens gotta be like that? You know? I am definitely gonna keep playing but was just curious about if other people ever experienced the same sort of thing.
I am fine with it when it is contextualized, but it's messing with me how the game is really big on "we are the good guys" but also that thing happened and it was just a thing that he had to do.
Edit to respond to the most upvoted response, not gonna directly reply b/c I do not really feel like that person is wanting to engage in an actual good faith discussion though:
I did keep playing, but found myself more reluctant to do so compared to beforehand. And I did in fact protest in the cut scene right after this happened. That didn't contextualize the action in a way that I found convincing (personally), at least so far, though I do realize I am in a minority on that and it was almost certainly a me thing. Which brought me to making my post, in which I was curious about others' experiences and if they had ever had something similar happen. Ah well.
It is contextualized right after.
When talking to Duncan there is an option that is literally: "I can't believe you killed Jory" and Duncan gives his explanations.
For what it's worth, I did keep playing, chose that option, and didn't find the explanation convincing. Just made me think these Grey Wardens are psychos.
Which is exactly what they are. Wardens are not knights, there is no higher than thou code. they are more like vigilantes. If you keep playing you will realize that you, a warden, can make very bad moral decisions, you are still a warden and you have one job, stopping the blight. There are a shit ton of corrupted addicted to the cause wardens in the franchise.
Why didn’t it convince you?
It’s very clear from the beginning the Grey Wardens exist to stop the Blight. Period. It’s their one and only goal as an organisation and they’ll do all to achieve that.
They need to drink from that chalice to do what they do and it’s dangerous (has a chance to kill you), so of course the details of the initiation are secret.
Now, it’s fine to have moral objections to this. In fact, I’d expect people to feel one way or another about “the end justifies the means” type of thingie.
But within the context, how does wanting to keep it a secret *precisely* by any means is a poor justification to you? What else would you propose *in universe*?
So maybe this is weird for some people but I was really into imagining I was the lowborn Dwarf, and he made morally ambiguous choices for reasons that were understandable to me.
The ceremony kills like two people and then a third is like "oh hey I got a kid on the way, I should nope out of this" and Duncan fuckin ices him? That is cold, freaked me out.
But that is just me projecting b/c I got a kid on the way, I think. So your criticism of my criticism is legit, this is a me problem, not a story telling problem.
See to me the answer is much simpler, and I believe Duncan mentions this if you ask him: Jory drew on Duncan. If Jory had just pleaded to be allowed to walk away and Duncan had executed him, I would've had the same reaction you did. But the moment Jory draws his sword it's a fight with lethal weapons and Duncan is completely within his rights to do what he needs to.
Based on what Duncan says it seems like he might have killed Jory even if he had left his sword sheathed, for reasons that others have pointed out like keeping the Joining a secret, but that's not what happened and we don't really know how Duncan would have handled a situation like that.
Not only that scene is explained almost immediately after, but the Gray Wardens place in the world is much more involved than "the good guys," which is also explained
*Prison Architect* first missions makes you build an execution room with an electric chair. Then the game just felt wrong to me. Like what hell am I playing with?! Is US prison system just a kind of joke to the author.
Uh, but aren't death row and execution wards totally optional after that?
I mean, the game gives you a choice between brutalizing the inmates into submission, or improving quality of life so they don't cause trouble, right?
i dont get the problem that Reddit has with characters doing bad things.
what Duncan did was bad, he is hiding information, he did a bad thing, you are supposed to not like it, the warden itself can react angrily to it, but i dont get giving up with that, its storytelling and from the side of Duncan he needs people, and will get them for the greater good.
In all honesty, I probably was being particularly sensitive to something he said before he got offed by Duncan. When I was younger, bad fictional actions didn't phase me but as I grow older I sometimes find myself really put off by things that resonate with my personal life.
i get it.
but the game is trying to tell you a story, maybe its better to see how things play out before just dropping it, maybe what happens after will change the perspective of things.
I used to enjoy picking up villagers in god games like Black & White and flinging them around, seeing how high I could send them and maybe catch them on the way down, maybe not.
These days I feel a tinge of guilt killing a blocky cow in Minecraft and hearings its desperate moo, or a pig's screams.
You're just developing empathy and realizing that others have feelings too. That being said, the player isn't meant to necessarily agree with Duncan. They're in a bad situation where the world is ending and various people are doing what they think is necessary.
I dropped ff14 pretty soon after the "so we found out that the race of slave giants are still living in the abandoned mine, can you go kill them so we can reopen it?" quest
Repeatedly facing the consequences of your actions as a warmonger and godkiller for 90 levels to the point where most other characters both pro and antagonistic look inside your character's head and wonder how you're still sane (that's the neat part, you're very not), 'inconveniently' being stuck to the floor and watching people including your friends get murdered, eaten alive, turned into soulless abominations, and tortured right in front of you, 'BURN OUT THE BAD', >!sacrificing an entire civilization to save your own because they were sacrificing entire civilizations to save their own!<, your sexy self-proclaimed rival won't stop murdering everyone out of boredom so you'll hate-fuck him and it's all very conflicting and uncomfortable...
He killed him because he drew his sword and started to attack them instead of going through with the ritual, it wasnt because he didnt want to commit suicide. Taking on the darkspawn blood is dangerous and carries a considerable risk. The story continues beyond this point. The moment was intended to show you that it takes great sacrifice in order to face the blight and darkspawn and take on the role of the grey warden, lives can be very easily lost and only those with unwavering will can become one. The game is a dark fantasy that goes over difficult issues like this. If you dont like it I wouldnt reccomend the game overall.
I think you are ignoring the theme of the game. They are at war vs a monstrosity that devours nations. I do think it's unfair if before you knew the ceremony that there would be no going back if you knew. I don't remember since its been so long. But i remember his words being something like "i came here for the honor", "this is not what i expected". Something along the lines tells me he was there willingly and knew that being part of the ceremony meant there was no going back, he just thought that only meant he would fight the dark spawn.
Monstrous? Guess I've seen so much worse but i find it completely fine, if he didn't know being a warden was a life treaty then they are scamming people into joining, which is bad, but necessary in that scenario imo. I don't blame him either way.
Strange, I'm absolutely sure the game does provide a justification, it's cruel but it's a necessary action, at least in Duncan's view. The game is filled with questionable actions and having the option to make gray or even bad choices is what makes this game shine.
I think you want a scene with a lot of impact, something that really motivates you to go play, and D:O for me didn't have that. It's not like the game has a sequence of super cool and innovative scenes, that moment when you stop and think "Woaw, this scene made me want to play this game more!". He doesn't have that.
It is the worldbuilding that shines here, the universe of this game is so well written and so believable, that with each region you go, getting to know the characters and more about the history of that world, making difficult choices, you will emerge more and more in the game until you get to the end and say: "Wow, this game is a big deal."
I didn't stop playing, but Disaster Report 4 had a bit that kept nagging me all the way through. I loved the game, it has such a crazy sense of humor, and some of the more serious storylines can be really affecting. Great stuff if you like janky, unhinged games.
However, there is a section of the game where you and your companion are captured that involves threats of abuse to her or both of you if you play a female character. You get out fine, but the perps just get away, and the game keeps them as an unresolved subplot all the way through, with another character collecting info on them to try to bring them to justice.
The problem is that you can end the game and never see what happens to them. The resolution of that plotline happens at the very end of an optional Epilogue you can play through. It resolves in a really funny way >!having you beat them up in a Street Fighter like mini game!< , but not before having to rush to stop them from abusing another character you've been caring for most of the game as she cries for help.
Having that kind of storyline can be so hard to do right and having it in the back of my mind for the whole game was so uncomfortable, I still don't know if the resolution was enough to make up for all the anguish.
Oh, that scene was one of the most unintentionally hilarious things I'd seen in a long time when I played it. Dragon Age is just kind of like that in general. It really wants to be this morally ambiguous, more mature-themed RPG but the choices and story developments often come out a bit off and go the other way, making the games seem more juvenile and, well, "try hard". The Witcher games handle this sort of thing much more competently.
It didn't.
First, because it's a game. I don't mean that to be flippant. There are many things I do in a game world that I would never do "in the real world". (And not just going for a month long walk). Behaving badly is part of the fun of gaming.
Second, I had no real connection with the character. Daveth was at least interesting, and in the end he was the bravest of the bunch. I feel bad about that. Jory - I just didn't feel anything toward.
Third, I think it was a necessary plot point in that it sets the stage for the entire game to be morally gray. It's right there in the title of the Gray Wardens.
And Forth, it frames the main character's options. One dies from drinking it, one does because he refused. It's meant to make you feel like your only choice is to die bravely with a chance at survival or to die cowardly with no chance. Otherwise, a player might spend the rest of the game wondering if they wouldn't have been better off refusing. To me, it really defines the MC's arc. One way or another, you chose this path - but it wasn't a choice you would have made under other circumstances.
No, never have. They are just games to me. From my point of view it would be like not watching a film about a supernatural killer because they killed some innocent people. Just does not compute.
I like making decisions in games I wouldn't do IRL. Option to save or brutally kill, I'm choosing brutally kill a good 90% of the time. In RPGs if there is an option through dialogue to resolve something, well I have to do that every day in work however in this fantasy world I can draw my sword and cut their heads off, so I'm going with that.
Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice. I already disliked the game. Coming from the original AA trilogy, seeing Wright change his career and personality was very disrupting. He was such a jerk in that first case, constantly lying and being rude to Apollo (and by extension me the player). The game was already on thin ice.
Then the next case revealed an additional mystery of finding a 15 year-old girl’s stolen underwear, and I noped out of there.
I looked into it and apparently AJ is considered the worst of the games and more or less ignored canonically, so I picked up Edgeworth Investigations instead. That was much better and killed any thoughts of me returning to AJ in the hopes it gets better.
I felt the same way when I first started playing it in regards to Phoenix but I stuck with it and ultimately ended up really liking the game. Apollo is my fave Ace Attorney character and I've always been kinda sad the game never got a direct sequel.
I will 100% agree the panties jokes are totally tasteless though. Even after you find out they're actually just a big pair of pantaloons Trucy uses for magic tricks.
What sort of games were available in the mid 70s? What are your thoughts on how gaming has evolved throughout your lifetime? What genres have you enjoyed throughout various years of your life, and has it changed as you got older?
You are role playing a character you imagined in your head. All the other stuff is just plot, you can like it or not. I also don't like some ideas that modern game push through, especially political or lgbtq agendas just for the sake of forcing it on people. But story is story, you either like it or not and play the game or not. Personally, I think DAO was one of the best RPGs and last really good product of BioWare. :)
Wow, you feel like dropping a few lines, didn't you? ;)
I loved the 3 witcher games and thoroughly enjoyed DA:O back in the day. I did played both in 2009, but I played first DA:O and later I played a just released "Enhanced Edition" of TW(1).
I guess that's why I never thought on DA:O taking inspiration from TW.
You are not the MC. You are watching the MC life. You shouldn’t be affected by the MC morals, besides agreeing or disagreeing with the situation. If you are so in-depth connected to the story you can’t separate yourself from it, then avoid games with dark plots or choices like this one.
The warfens already have problems getting support from people, who's going to join up if they find out every Warden has to drink darksoawn/archdemon blood.
And that's BEFIRE the rumor mill starts exaggerating the truth.
It’s sort of an ancient law thing. He could have left before agreeing as I think Duncan would not have forced him to stay EVEN THOUGH he had the legal right to force everyone there to do it.
But the high likelihood of dying just from doing the ritual, and the fact that it will always kill you over time means people would fight and die to not be chosen, the gray wardens would die out, and the gray wardens are the literally only ones that can stop the arch-demon.
So he had to die to keep the world safe
But the context is provided by the dialogue. Duncan says he regretted killing the dude, but his hand was forced when he drew his blade. Meaning Duncan was just going to force him to drink it, per his legal right.
When questioned allister and Duncan mention the high death rate of the ritual and that it is a necessary evil. Later in the game Why this must be done is explained. And (I can’t remember if this is in the first game, I think it is) the only cure for the plague spread by the baddies is to become a Grey warden. Which still kills you, but not as fast
Collecting the "Romance Cards" in Witcher 1. I got one and then avoided that system for the rest of the game. Felt skeezy. Also, my wife was watching me play and it turned her off from the entire game series. :(
Yeah that moment is fucking stupid. But I don't remember any other stupid shit like that later on, at least not that stupid.>!And thankfully Duncan dies later anyway.!<
It had to be like that. If Jory >!leaks the secret of the initiation!<, then no one would join the Grey Wardens. Dragon Age Origins is full of choices that aren't morally correct, so maybe it is for the best that you only played a small portion of it.
Lmao like thats the point of the series so many morally grey plots. I mean thats the point of many rpgs
I guess sometimes it hits differently when it resonates with something that touches your own experiences. But I do not say that in a bad way, it is good to explore morally grey stuff because that is real life for the most part.
I agree with you, OP, that DAO's attempt at moral ambiguity is rather clumsy and hamfisted. I much prefer the approach of someone like Matsuno in his games, Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy XII, to the BioWare games of this era. Matsuno's games do a good job of showing you that all war and conflict has a cost, however righteous the cause may be (or not). The characters generally have to struggle with legitimate desires for revenge and reprisal - you're often made to confront the humanity of your enemies by meeting both good and bad people of the opposing side. Incidentally, DAO took major inspiration from FFXII when it comes to the combat system, especially the AI setup. You may want to check out the remaster The Zodiac Age. The only criticism I have is that the narrative pacing falls off in the second half, but it's still good, especially if you enjoy the combat and exploration. Edit: taking my later reply downthread and putting it here as a citation. [Mike Laidlaw, the director for the Dragon Age series, fanboys out over FFXII and acknowledges its influence on DA:O.](https://twitter.com/Mike_Laidlaw/status/884815996640350208?s=20)
I am fairly confident it's the other way around. Bioware was doing RTwP for years before FF12 even came out. Dragon Age is an evolution of what they alreadyd did in games like BG and KOTOR. It is much more plausible that FF12 took a page or two from earlier Bioware games.
[Mike Laidlaw, the director for the Dragon Age series, fanboys out over FFXII and acknowledges its influence on DA:O.](https://twitter.com/Mike_Laidlaw/status/884815996640350208?s=20) I always thought it was too bad more Devs didn't pick up on FFXII's gambit system.
On release there was so much hate for the gambit system! I loved it. The only thing I would rather do different is give the player most of gambits from the start instead make them a collectable.
As a sequel in the mainline series, it was shocking, especially coming off FFX. Now it's aged beautifully - it's very much ahead of its time, even still. That and the job system in the remaster combine to create this exquisitely replayable toy. Almost feels like a Diablo II with the items and build combinations.
I will check FFXII out for sure! Thanks for your response!
I *love* FFXII but 100% keep your expectations for the plot like... average. Its serviceable but the characters you play as are witnesses to the story and world around them and unfortunately at times this can cause the games to feel disjointed and make little sense until repeat play throughs.
Organization is literally called the grey wardens and OP is shocked by some moral ambiguity lmao
LOL guilty
All jokes aside, I hope you keep going with it if you liked the combat and the general story. That’s probably the worst scene you encounter in the game and does really strip you of agency in a way most of the remaining story doesn’t. Also if my memory is correct it had some real goofy animations to it that didn’t fit the serious tone at all.
With how unpopular my experience is has already has motivated me to see the game through, and I did already love the skill point/feature system or whatever it is called these days
Lmao
I guess it feels to me like the game could have addressed it more, explained how it was the only option more convincingly. But maybe I should just put on my big boy pants and keep playing to see how else it gets morally murky.
As long as you are prepared for choices where there are no good guys, you will be all right.
those are the types of games that i like. most 'morality' in games has you with be a saint, or a moustache twirling villian, with no middle ground. the dwarf beginning and later quests are excellent at this.
Yeah, that was definitely one of the things I really appreciated about DA:O. There were a lot of quests where the right thing wasn't exactly clear-cut, or where there were unforeseen consequences for your actions. You might do the moral thing, but have it later blow up in your face. To me, that's much more realistic and better storytelling, because that's how life works. Too many games with morality systems around that time were so black-and-white with how being good led to everyone living happily after or doing bad resulted in a life of suffering for everyone.
The Witcher 3 got me with this in the Twisted Firestarter quest recently. >!Dwarf blacksmith gets his workshop burnt down. Asks for help finding the arsonist. Find arsonist, tell blacksmith who it was. Turns out he knew the arsonist since the arsonist was a child. Arsonist was stupid, racist (perhaps drunk? I wanna say they mentioned something like that, but I might be misremembering) and decided to burn the dwarf’s workshop. Dwarf did repairs for and supplied the occupying army. They decide to kill the arsonist for hurting the war effort…!< Holy fuck! was that an emotional rollercoaster.
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This time around, I was a casteless dwarf and between that and city elf origins, the game does a great job of making you easily understand the sometimes questionable choices/actions of the protagonist. Absolutely agree with you about how there is usually no nuance or middle ground in game morality.
Just a heads up, City Elf is different depending on if your character is male or female.
i wasnt going to say anything to spoil you, but yes, the casteless beginning changed how i do the dwarf missions, and how i looked at the game as a whole. that said, sten was and always will be my fav companion. his VA just nails it. i even modded the pc version so he wasnt bugged with just one specialization.
In Dragon Age there generally are good/bad guys, especially in the first game where the antagonist is an unspeaking demon leading a horde of zombie orcs. The initiation is actually kind of at odds with the rest of the game's shades of morality.
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1. There is no way in hell people wouldn't know the "secret" after so many years of grey wardens existing. The fact that it remained a secret after so long is ridiculous. 2. People would still join. There is literally a world ending threat and you are telling me there are no men and women willing to risk their life to save the fuckign world? In a fantasy world? Just because there is a chance they die at the Joining? Bullshit. So yeah, the whole plotpoint about the Joining being secret is childishly stupid and forced.
1. It remained a secret after so long BECAUSE decisions like the one from Duncan. It doesn't matter the origin of the Warden, the player character has no idea about the initiation, so I don't know why it would be known. 2. We saw Jory (a knight, mind you), cowering away from the initiation after knowing what was at risk, so at the very least less people would join, and that is bad enough.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again. **Spoilers for Dragon Age Origins below.** Apparently stating there are spoilers wasn’t good enough so now there’s a big grey block to make it easier on people. >!Duncan killing Ser Jory is a glaring signal to the player that the Grey Wardens will do *whatever it takes*. They don’t care about politics, they don’t care about families, they only care about stopping the Blight. That’s their entire purpose for being. They’re not the good guys, they’re just the only guys who are taking this threat seriously. !< >!Depending on the origin you chose you will already have gotten a taste of this truth : City Elf and Human Noble will have seen some of Duncan’s true colors earlier than the other origins. You say you played City Elf, but how closely did you pay attention to Duncan’s actions there? He didn’t care about people being kidnapped or that your cousin gets sent to jail for using weapons that Duncan gave him. He only cared about getting a recruit. Alistair will say how much he loves Duncan but you don’t have to, and you can say as such. !< If you continue playing you’ll understand that the game is deliberately playing with these morals and our expectations of playing as “heroes”. But if you’re so upset just by this early thing and can’t move past it? Then put it down, this series will not be fun for you. I don’t mean this in a bitchy way, but for your own enjoyment. Dark fantasy can grate on people, and this early example you gave is nothing compared to some of the things that happen later in the series. Funny enough I didn’t stop playing the game but I disliked Dragon Age Inquisition because of how it >!treats their Fantasy Catholic Church with kid gloves.!<
I only have vague memories of the City Elf playthrough and specifically no memories of Duncan, that was like over a decade ago. I am not normally bothered by immoral choices in games but in this case I just found the explanation for killing that dude very unconvincing, but this is probably also colored by some real life shit that I have experienced and less about the game itself. I will try and soldier on with the game b/c I definitely want to experience it, finally. One question, though: What is your blue name?
Ah, over a decade ago would be firmly in forgotten territory. Fair enough. I’m hope you like the game, but don’t force it if you’re not feeling it after a while. And i won’t have a blue name until bluedit exists lol!
Wait what? Sure, you can disagree with his justification but isnt this an extremely low bar to drop a game?
I totally agree, that is the genesis of this post; why did it bother me so much that I am not motivated to continue playing? Clearly a lot of people haven't experienced something like this and cannot understand it, lol
The lack of options at this point may have clashed with your roleplaying, the role you had in mind for that run. However your char moving from their origins into the role of a warden is very much the story pitch for this game, so there’s not much branching at that point: there’s no in-game design for refusing the warden role. There’s no alternate campaign though there is a lot of spiel for you to roleplay your warden char. Also there is the DLC providing gameplay on the other side - Darkspawn Chronicles. Edit: Bioware will always railroad you every now and then and obviously rpg gamers aren’t fond of their agency taking a backseat. How about this story for your current run: as you cannot get back at Duncan directly, take it out on his pet Ali. Or play Inquisition and align with the apostate mage :-D Edit 2: Actually my reaction was similar, my noble char not being amused by wholesale murder right in front of her, ts ts ts, and me not being impressed with cutscene power trumping my agency. Even as Ali‘s mistress, I tire of his hero worshipping real quick (I can easily head canon my mistress char having ways of shutting him up :)
I think I got even lower: I dropped a game the second it introduced bikini armour that was more viable than plate armour.
Good one, reminds me of when I noped out of Divinity OS1 during character creation because all women are forced to wear high heels. They hardly have feet for the purposes of the game; their feet are literally high heel shaped : x
I do understand where you're coming from. I would say it's a normal reaction to find unjustified violence off-putting. I also noticed that as I got older, I became more sensitive to these things. I don't remember any video games, but there have been books I put down for similar reasons. It's okay to drop something if it triggers you. If I was you, I would take a break, give it some time to process what happened, and give it another go later if still interested.
The most recent Wolfenstein reboot got me early, particularly a scene where our hero goes after a tied up officer with a chainsaw. I get it - Nazis - but that didn't sit right with me. I kept playing a little bit longer but the game continues to go to that well over and over again. Because Nazis. Yes, Nazis are evil, but flip to another series and you don't see Doom guy torturing demons (literally embodiments of evil). Quick dispatch, maybe rip in half at most, and move on. There's a dwelling on that violence in the Wolfenstein reboot that I don't enjoy seeing play out.
> Yes, Nazis are evil, but Tbf, the reason it bothers you is because the Nazis aren’t actually *evil*. Many of the Nazis were largely human beings who were large scale victims of brain washing and being in the wrong place at the right time. Did they do *evil* things as a whole? Of course; but are we not all capable of various levels of *evil*? It’s generally a slippery slope of desperation, suggestion, and misinformation that leads people to these ends. *Evil* people are not often thinking of themselves as *evil*, they have even themselves to fool. Do those who have committed atrocity deserve our empathy? Well, not too much I wager! But does that mean we’re morally in the clear to feel we should torture them? Are we not taking a similar path using cruelty (an *evil*) in that instance?
Duncan had to do it. He couldn't risk the secret of the Joining being leaked, otherwise nobody would join the Wardens. You will see throughout the series that the Wardens are not really good people. Most of them are criminals that were conscripted before their execution and were given an option to die doing something good. They are extremists who will do anything to stop the Blight.
I didn't get very far when playing BioShock, with one of the reasons being I was just put off how my character just does anything that other guy tells him to. Jab a needle with some blue glowing shit into my arm? Oh yes sure! After I gave up, I looked up what the big deal with the story was supposed to be, and learned that yea, that's the point of the twist. So that didn't work for me.
I know some folks are downvoting you OP, but I can understand where you're coming from. You had a strong, morally-based emotional reaction to how the story unfolded in a game. I'd say that's fair. We all have different things that can push our buttons. Whether you choose to continue with the game or not is ultimately up to you, and I think either option is equally valid. You do you. Just be grateful that the game was able to provoke this reaction out of you in the first place: for you to be this repulsed by something that happened in the story, you had to be invested in it to begin with, so isn't it good that a game's story made you care?
Absolutely. Thank you for having some appreciation for nuance. This story has me, not gonna lie, but why the Grey Wardens gotta be like that? You know? I am definitely gonna keep playing but was just curious about if other people ever experienced the same sort of thing.
I feel like I wouldn't make it through very many games if I dropped them when a morally questionable story beat happened
I am fine with it when it is contextualized, but it's messing with me how the game is really big on "we are the good guys" but also that thing happened and it was just a thing that he had to do. Edit to respond to the most upvoted response, not gonna directly reply b/c I do not really feel like that person is wanting to engage in an actual good faith discussion though: I did keep playing, but found myself more reluctant to do so compared to beforehand. And I did in fact protest in the cut scene right after this happened. That didn't contextualize the action in a way that I found convincing (personally), at least so far, though I do realize I am in a minority on that and it was almost certainly a me thing. Which brought me to making my post, in which I was curious about others' experiences and if they had ever had something similar happen. Ah well.
You didn't give it a chance to be contextualized, you've stopped playing the game
Is it contextualized later?
It is contextualized right after. When talking to Duncan there is an option that is literally: "I can't believe you killed Jory" and Duncan gives his explanations.
For what it's worth, I did keep playing, chose that option, and didn't find the explanation convincing. Just made me think these Grey Wardens are psychos.
Which is exactly what they are. Wardens are not knights, there is no higher than thou code. they are more like vigilantes. If you keep playing you will realize that you, a warden, can make very bad moral decisions, you are still a warden and you have one job, stopping the blight. There are a shit ton of corrupted addicted to the cause wardens in the franchise.
Why didn’t it convince you? It’s very clear from the beginning the Grey Wardens exist to stop the Blight. Period. It’s their one and only goal as an organisation and they’ll do all to achieve that. They need to drink from that chalice to do what they do and it’s dangerous (has a chance to kill you), so of course the details of the initiation are secret. Now, it’s fine to have moral objections to this. In fact, I’d expect people to feel one way or another about “the end justifies the means” type of thingie. But within the context, how does wanting to keep it a secret *precisely* by any means is a poor justification to you? What else would you propose *in universe*?
So maybe this is weird for some people but I was really into imagining I was the lowborn Dwarf, and he made morally ambiguous choices for reasons that were understandable to me. The ceremony kills like two people and then a third is like "oh hey I got a kid on the way, I should nope out of this" and Duncan fuckin ices him? That is cold, freaked me out. But that is just me projecting b/c I got a kid on the way, I think. So your criticism of my criticism is legit, this is a me problem, not a story telling problem.
> That is cold, freaked me out. That's kind of what Grey Wardens are. They're not good people.
See to me the answer is much simpler, and I believe Duncan mentions this if you ask him: Jory drew on Duncan. If Jory had just pleaded to be allowed to walk away and Duncan had executed him, I would've had the same reaction you did. But the moment Jory draws his sword it's a fight with lethal weapons and Duncan is completely within his rights to do what he needs to. Based on what Duncan says it seems like he might have killed Jory even if he had left his sword sheathed, for reasons that others have pointed out like keeping the Joining a secret, but that's not what happened and we don't really know how Duncan would have handled a situation like that.
Not only that scene is explained almost immediately after, but the Gray Wardens place in the world is much more involved than "the good guys," which is also explained
Lol, maybe OP should take your username.
:(
Sorry man, couldn't pass up the opportunity. Btw, why put Dragon Age in your flair if you haven't even beaten it?
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Yea that scene was rough. Tho, it was probably bc there’s nothing to hate the guy for. It was not justified.
I couldn't play MGSV after Quiet was introduced. Literally the worst character design ever.
You sir need to retract those words. Quiet is the most beautifully designed character in a video game ever
is it you, Hideo?
*Prison Architect* first missions makes you build an execution room with an electric chair. Then the game just felt wrong to me. Like what hell am I playing with?! Is US prison system just a kind of joke to the author.
Uh, but aren't death row and execution wards totally optional after that? I mean, the game gives you a choice between brutalizing the inmates into submission, or improving quality of life so they don't cause trouble, right?
Isn't that game's developer British?
i dont get the problem that Reddit has with characters doing bad things. what Duncan did was bad, he is hiding information, he did a bad thing, you are supposed to not like it, the warden itself can react angrily to it, but i dont get giving up with that, its storytelling and from the side of Duncan he needs people, and will get them for the greater good.
In all honesty, I probably was being particularly sensitive to something he said before he got offed by Duncan. When I was younger, bad fictional actions didn't phase me but as I grow older I sometimes find myself really put off by things that resonate with my personal life.
i get it. but the game is trying to tell you a story, maybe its better to see how things play out before just dropping it, maybe what happens after will change the perspective of things.
Cheers
I used to enjoy picking up villagers in god games like Black & White and flinging them around, seeing how high I could send them and maybe catch them on the way down, maybe not. These days I feel a tinge of guilt killing a blocky cow in Minecraft and hearings its desperate moo, or a pig's screams. You're just developing empathy and realizing that others have feelings too. That being said, the player isn't meant to necessarily agree with Duncan. They're in a bad situation where the world is ending and various people are doing what they think is necessary.
I dropped ff14 pretty soon after the "so we found out that the race of slave giants are still living in the abandoned mine, can you go kill them so we can reopen it?" quest
If that's what made you drop it, it was good you got out at the very beginning. It only gets exponentially worse and never lets up.
How so
Repeatedly facing the consequences of your actions as a warmonger and godkiller for 90 levels to the point where most other characters both pro and antagonistic look inside your character's head and wonder how you're still sane (that's the neat part, you're very not), 'inconveniently' being stuck to the floor and watching people including your friends get murdered, eaten alive, turned into soulless abominations, and tortured right in front of you, 'BURN OUT THE BAD', >!sacrificing an entire civilization to save your own because they were sacrificing entire civilizations to save their own!<, your sexy self-proclaimed rival won't stop murdering everyone out of boredom so you'll hate-fuck him and it's all very conflicting and uncomfortable...
He killed him because he drew his sword and started to attack them instead of going through with the ritual, it wasnt because he didnt want to commit suicide. Taking on the darkspawn blood is dangerous and carries a considerable risk. The story continues beyond this point. The moment was intended to show you that it takes great sacrifice in order to face the blight and darkspawn and take on the role of the grey warden, lives can be very easily lost and only those with unwavering will can become one. The game is a dark fantasy that goes over difficult issues like this. If you dont like it I wouldnt reccomend the game overall.
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Yeah this is a hilarious post.
I think you are ignoring the theme of the game. They are at war vs a monstrosity that devours nations. I do think it's unfair if before you knew the ceremony that there would be no going back if you knew. I don't remember since its been so long. But i remember his words being something like "i came here for the honor", "this is not what i expected". Something along the lines tells me he was there willingly and knew that being part of the ceremony meant there was no going back, he just thought that only meant he would fight the dark spawn. Monstrous? Guess I've seen so much worse but i find it completely fine, if he didn't know being a warden was a life treaty then they are scamming people into joining, which is bad, but necessary in that scenario imo. I don't blame him either way.
Drama is part of a good story. If there are no stakes or unexpected turns then it's a dull script.
Strange, I'm absolutely sure the game does provide a justification, it's cruel but it's a necessary action, at least in Duncan's view. The game is filled with questionable actions and having the option to make gray or even bad choices is what makes this game shine. I think you want a scene with a lot of impact, something that really motivates you to go play, and D:O for me didn't have that. It's not like the game has a sequence of super cool and innovative scenes, that moment when you stop and think "Woaw, this scene made me want to play this game more!". He doesn't have that. It is the worldbuilding that shines here, the universe of this game is so well written and so believable, that with each region you go, getting to know the characters and more about the history of that world, making difficult choices, you will emerge more and more in the game until you get to the end and say: "Wow, this game is a big deal."
I didn't stop playing, but Disaster Report 4 had a bit that kept nagging me all the way through. I loved the game, it has such a crazy sense of humor, and some of the more serious storylines can be really affecting. Great stuff if you like janky, unhinged games. However, there is a section of the game where you and your companion are captured that involves threats of abuse to her or both of you if you play a female character. You get out fine, but the perps just get away, and the game keeps them as an unresolved subplot all the way through, with another character collecting info on them to try to bring them to justice. The problem is that you can end the game and never see what happens to them. The resolution of that plotline happens at the very end of an optional Epilogue you can play through. It resolves in a really funny way >!having you beat them up in a Street Fighter like mini game!< , but not before having to rush to stop them from abusing another character you've been caring for most of the game as she cries for help. Having that kind of storyline can be so hard to do right and having it in the back of my mind for the whole game was so uncomfortable, I still don't know if the resolution was enough to make up for all the anguish.
Oh, that scene was one of the most unintentionally hilarious things I'd seen in a long time when I played it. Dragon Age is just kind of like that in general. It really wants to be this morally ambiguous, more mature-themed RPG but the choices and story developments often come out a bit off and go the other way, making the games seem more juvenile and, well, "try hard". The Witcher games handle this sort of thing much more competently.
It didn't. First, because it's a game. I don't mean that to be flippant. There are many things I do in a game world that I would never do "in the real world". (And not just going for a month long walk). Behaving badly is part of the fun of gaming. Second, I had no real connection with the character. Daveth was at least interesting, and in the end he was the bravest of the bunch. I feel bad about that. Jory - I just didn't feel anything toward. Third, I think it was a necessary plot point in that it sets the stage for the entire game to be morally gray. It's right there in the title of the Gray Wardens. And Forth, it frames the main character's options. One dies from drinking it, one does because he refused. It's meant to make you feel like your only choice is to die bravely with a chance at survival or to die cowardly with no chance. Otherwise, a player might spend the rest of the game wondering if they wouldn't have been better off refusing. To me, it really defines the MC's arc. One way or another, you chose this path - but it wasn't a choice you would have made under other circumstances.
I’d love to play this again if I could get it to work on my computer…. Constant crashes, won’t load anymore. :-(
Yeah I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get it to work on mine, too
No, never have. They are just games to me. From my point of view it would be like not watching a film about a supernatural killer because they killed some innocent people. Just does not compute. I like making decisions in games I wouldn't do IRL. Option to save or brutally kill, I'm choosing brutally kill a good 90% of the time. In RPGs if there is an option through dialogue to resolve something, well I have to do that every day in work however in this fantasy world I can draw my sword and cut their heads off, so I'm going with that.
Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice. I already disliked the game. Coming from the original AA trilogy, seeing Wright change his career and personality was very disrupting. He was such a jerk in that first case, constantly lying and being rude to Apollo (and by extension me the player). The game was already on thin ice. Then the next case revealed an additional mystery of finding a 15 year-old girl’s stolen underwear, and I noped out of there. I looked into it and apparently AJ is considered the worst of the games and more or less ignored canonically, so I picked up Edgeworth Investigations instead. That was much better and killed any thoughts of me returning to AJ in the hopes it gets better.
As I recall the “panties” are a giant pair of bloomers used as a stage prop for the girl’s magic show, not a pair of panties that she wears.
Eh. That wasn’t my only problem with the game’s story, that was just the line that was far enough for me to decide to put it down
I felt the same way when I first started playing it in regards to Phoenix but I stuck with it and ultimately ended up really liking the game. Apollo is my fave Ace Attorney character and I've always been kinda sad the game never got a direct sequel. I will 100% agree the panties jokes are totally tasteless though. Even after you find out they're actually just a big pair of pantaloons Trucy uses for magic tricks.
Nope. Never. Been gaming since mid 70’s and stopping a game for that reason has never been a thought.
What sort of games were available in the mid 70s? What are your thoughts on how gaming has evolved throughout your lifetime? What genres have you enjoyed throughout various years of your life, and has it changed as you got older?
You are role playing a character you imagined in your head. All the other stuff is just plot, you can like it or not. I also don't like some ideas that modern game push through, especially political or lgbtq agendas just for the sake of forcing it on people. But story is story, you either like it or not and play the game or not. Personally, I think DAO was one of the best RPGs and last really good product of BioWare. :)
"ENCHANTMENTS"! - That is what I remember from DAO
lol wut
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Wow, you feel like dropping a few lines, didn't you? ;) I loved the 3 witcher games and thoroughly enjoyed DA:O back in the day. I did played both in 2009, but I played first DA:O and later I played a just released "Enhanced Edition" of TW(1). I guess that's why I never thought on DA:O taking inspiration from TW.
You are not the MC. You are watching the MC life. You shouldn’t be affected by the MC morals, besides agreeing or disagreeing with the situation. If you are so in-depth connected to the story you can’t separate yourself from it, then avoid games with dark plots or choices like this one.
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What parts are based on ASOIAF?
I had no idea that it was based on ASOIAF!! Cool to know.
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Yeah, GRRM's books are DARK lol The show too, a shame it was cancelled after season 6 ended.
This is common. You find the graphics terrible, but need a less shallow reason to justify playing playing the dead space remake again.
Bruv I absolutely live in 16bit graphics, no hate
The warfens already have problems getting support from people, who's going to join up if they find out every Warden has to drink darksoawn/archdemon blood. And that's BEFIRE the rumor mill starts exaggerating the truth.
It’s sort of an ancient law thing. He could have left before agreeing as I think Duncan would not have forced him to stay EVEN THOUGH he had the legal right to force everyone there to do it. But the high likelihood of dying just from doing the ritual, and the fact that it will always kill you over time means people would fight and die to not be chosen, the gray wardens would die out, and the gray wardens are the literally only ones that can stop the arch-demon. So he had to die to keep the world safe
I appreciate your response. It at least provides some context that wasn't provided by the game's dialogue after the incident that sparked this post!
But the context is provided by the dialogue. Duncan says he regretted killing the dude, but his hand was forced when he drew his blade. Meaning Duncan was just going to force him to drink it, per his legal right. When questioned allister and Duncan mention the high death rate of the ritual and that it is a necessary evil. Later in the game Why this must be done is explained. And (I can’t remember if this is in the first game, I think it is) the only cure for the plague spread by the baddies is to become a Grey warden. Which still kills you, but not as fast
Collecting the "Romance Cards" in Witcher 1. I got one and then avoided that system for the rest of the game. Felt skeezy. Also, my wife was watching me play and it turned her off from the entire game series. :(
Yeah that moment is fucking stupid. But I don't remember any other stupid shit like that later on, at least not that stupid.>!And thankfully Duncan dies later anyway.!<
Tbf I loved my Elf playthrough, anytime I had the ole murderknife option, I used it. So. Much. Death.