Dragon Age: Inquisition

You're fucking kidding me, right? RIGHT?

 

I suspect she refers to this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8xJMWRI-cA

 

I actually hadn't seen this. Shame on me.

But it looks really, really good to me. The combat seems a bit arcadey, albeit it's on 360 and they didn't show the tactical view overmuch so that may be the case. Apart from that, it looks nice indeed; pretty graphics, large areas, choices with tangible consequences (losing the village strenghtrens the Inquisition, but locks you out of a few sidequests), non-combat gameplay, party tactics, all the good stuff.

Man, I was already eager to know more, and now I've seen this I consider myself cautiously hyped. This is almost exactly how I envisioned a sequel for Origins to be.

 

Since you're slow, you should see this too..
http://thesurvivor2299.com/

 

I see ... in RPGs worlds swords are still glued to the back of the players. I guess magic makes all kind of things possible ...

Call me stupid or pedantic. But it always disturbs me to see something like that. Particularly as far as two hands weapons goes, because they would not carry them on their back (in real life).

Its a small detail, but considering how much time you spend looking at your character ... even small details can become somewhat of an issue, at least for me. Because I think in this day and age, where you can achieve almost everything with minimal efforts

[spoiler:f3ad74f6e0][/spoiler:f3ad74f6e0]

there is no excuse to not add a bit of verisimilitude

 

To be fair, the game has one playable character model and only one type of weapon (longsword). Inquisition will have eight playable models and who knows how many different type of weapons that must fit them all (one-handed swords, axes, maces and daggers, two-handed swords, axes and hammers, bows, staves...).

Besides, I'm replaying TW2 right now, and often, if you're not Geralt of Rivia, your weapon does float on your hips too. And, the White Wolf's sheaths have quite a bit of clipping involved to boot.

Not saying they shouldn't do it. It would indeed be nice. But I don't consider it a top priority. Perhaps they will add them later, it is an alpha build with seeral obvious re-used assets (the Inquisitor's sword was around since Origins).

 

curse my sense as designer, its just that I see this done so often, and also leading to all sorts of clipping issues. I am not saying I would always do it better. But that happens usually when you design armor, weapons etc. that have no practical idea to it. Many weapons and armor we see in fantasy games could not work like that, which is seen by the clipping issues for example. Its a pet peeve of mine to be fair ... but I think even if you just argue with style (amazons wearing armor that gives them barrely any protection but ... making them super sexy), that doesnt mean one should completely ignore functionality, like clipping issues. Something I hate about certain "modern" RPGs today that go simply with, more spikes, crazyness and different look just for the sake of looking different.

 

I hear ya. To me, Dragon Age has (usually) succeeded at making a balance between visually interesting armor and realism. Some armors in Dragon Age II was a bit over the top, but it's still nothing like what you see in, say, World of Warcraft, and it seems like Inquisition will continue the trend. The Witcher is also pretty subdued, going very far on the realistic scale.

Also, on another note, anyone else finds the dragon animations we saw to be pretty damn amazing? Certainly blows Skyrim's out of the water. I liked that the lizard's momentum knocked the Inquisitor flat on his ass, it was always a pet peeve of mine with dragons in games that a giant flying death machine weighting a few tons doesn't seem to displace any air while flying around.

 

yeah, the animations so far are pretty decent, but honestly they have been so in Dragon Age 1 as well, at least as far as the creatures go. Shows that they spend a lot of time to make them believable, I remember that one of the animators talked about how they looked at a Gorilla and how it moves around, the muscles and all that to give their Ogre weight. And it shows.

 

There's that and bow strings. In Darksiders II (don't even think about it without a controller) your main weapons are held very close to one another and even when walking, running, fighting or climbing you don't see them clipping. If you have played the demo you'll know what I'm saying.
In Origins it is said that the mages use magic to have their staffs glued to their back. I wasn't believeing it when the Dwarfs in Orzammar (non-magic) were having the floating spell on their backs too. I believe it is time they bring some realism and justification. Weapon shethes are totally doable. Maybe the devs dunno how to do it right or maybe they dunno how to do it at all. CDPR is doing a great job with the Wither games. The weapons, sheaths are in great detail and clipping issues were largly fixed in the Wither 2 EE. In Wither when you're taking on a stone golem, you can FEEL that your sword is bumping off its body even with a K&M. You cut through a Harpy and you can feel how the Wither's sword cut through it like a butter knife on soap. Another thing to add is proper shield mechanics, in KOATR (Kingdoms of Amalur : The Reckoning) while use shild is diployed magically, it had you blowing back when you stop a huge blow. Proper mechanics of the transfer of the kinetic force from sword to the shield and the the PC compensates for the surge. I bet we'd have to wait for Dragon Age : LXIV to see these thing properly implimented. I'm going to side with CDPR. They're getting my money for listning to their fans and giving the White Wolf a beard
This Pre -Alpha is pretty much what we're going to get. Don't expect huge overhauls. This seems like a little out of the ordinary campaign as they haven't yet taken the video down and after the first 5,6 moments you feel that you're watching an actual relese trailer, not a leaked one..

 

They usually keep it if there's good feedback. I remember the ''leaked'' demo of Deus Ex Human Revolution that converted many skepticals (me among them), they basically said ''eh, whatever''.

As for sheaths, I provided an explanation. It's much easier to do them for one model and weapon than for 8 models with 8 (at least) weapon types. Unless you wanna go the Skyrim way and have tons of clipping.

 

See, I have no idea about how to prevent clipping. I'm no designer or animator. I'm just saying it is doable because we have games that has already done it. It is time we start to see heavy plate armors NOT acting like cloth armor (chest rises up and down when breathing as if it was cloth). Simply, when you equip a non-cloth armor set they need to make a module so the character is not using any animations that would break the "I'm in heavy plate" immersion. If they don't break these barriers now and find solutions to glued-to-the-back weapons, bows with no bow strings and shields with no point to hold on to, what's the point of a glorious next genaration game that takes repeted delayd relese dates? Please, bring more believeble combat animations that are matching the Inquisitor. That Scorpion-pull attack sucks big time. I'd swap it with Origins' Revenant's 'Pull' attack anytime which is around 120% better that what the inquisitor is using. Even a superhuman Witcher won't try those lame Mortal Kombat attacks with a long sword. Rembember that you can always POKE with a long sword to the enemy would die very quickly when encountered alone. Attack animations should differ automatically when fighting a single opponent (focused, directional powerful blows) and more than two opponents (swinging in a wide arc, fast sweeps).. So far I'm not impressed. CDPR is still getting my money..

 

I think one way to prevent is, is by actually creating a collision detection, that is when you give objects physical characteristics, making them solid objects for instance. This can lead to all sorts of weird issues though if you don't do it right (and hands down, many don't ...), because objects can get stuck in each other etc.

The best way to avoid it though is by making good design. A really good designer can think about it already in the concept phase for example when he is creating the armor, weapons etc. Like ok I have this nice sword of awesomeness here, what happens when I have it on my back? Or my belt? In a sheath? And you also start to look for references, in comic books, graphic novellas, movies real life weapons etc.

You probably cant avoid it all the time though.


Though I think they could avoid a lot of issues if they actually allowed the character to simply hold his weapon in his hands. I mean no wizard would place his staff on his "back" but rather use it like a simple walking staff. Same for axes, hammers etc. What I am missing here are idle stances.

But for some reasons people want to have all their weapons on their "back" ...

 

Collision detection sounds fine. Although when climbing a ladder or doing something that require both hands is going to look bad with a sword. These guys were checking out Skyrim and now I can see that they have swollowed too much aggression. With each passing day we get to see copy-pasta ideas from devs. They don't think or imagine, they just copy and paste. Apart from this, the inquisitor's helmet seems to be unchangable for now. The crappiest looking helm ever, if I may put. I'd prefer heavy infantry helm for all my not mage characters in origins as the helm alone is a load of bad-assery.. The helm in DAI looks like a 5YO wearing a motoGP helmet.

 

I can assure you that all dev's "copy-pasta ideas" including those who worked on Skyrim. IMO trying learning and being critical about various implementations is the job description of game designer and thosewho always try to reinvent the wheel or stick to idea because it is their are fools.

With that said, I really don't care about how the sword rides the char :/

 

I had to take arts classes for about 8 years...
...thats exactly how it felt.


"ART" is probably the most useless thing ever. Tahts also why 90% of all arts students never find a job... cause its useless

 

That game doesn't look too promising, mostly because it looks completely optimized for a console: Wheel-based skills, easy fights and objectives, simplistic maps with obvious markers.

I particularly don't like the JRPG looking guys with the oversize weapons, but I guess that type is so cliche at this point that anything else would look weird.

 

http://dgaider.tumblr.com/post/67695026365/on-game-writing-nuts-and-bolts-part-5