OK, so you don’t need to answer that question, because the reply is rather obvious. Yes, of course we would. That hasn’t stopped BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah from gathering votes for such a hypothetical project via Twitter.
Here’s Darrah’s original tweet, including the now-closed poll:
Would you play a Dragon Age Tactics game?
— Mark Darrah (@BioMarkDarrah) February 19, 2016
The platform division makes it a little harder to determine the result, but it’s 78 per cent yes, 22 per cent no.
Darrah also posted a follow-up, when asked precisely what he meant by “tactics”:
tactics as in a game like Fire Emblem or XCom
— Mark Darrah (@BioMarkDarrah) February 19, 2016
I don’t know about you, by I’d play the heck out of a Dragon Age game in an XCOM wrapping. I’m not so keen on a Fire Emblem version, but I could be in the minority.
@BioMarkDarrah [Twitter, via Blue’s News]
Comments
31 responses to “BioWare Developer: ‘Would You Play A Dragon Age Tactics Game?’”
no, no i wouldnt
yes, yes i would
In hindsight, this is where the series has been heading… but I’ll say no.
How about a Dragon Age game with a tactical combat system? You know, like Origins?
Dear lord did that series ever take a nosedive.
With rocket propelled boots thrusting it even further into the dirt…
all the while furiously mashing the awesome button.
I played da:o on easy with a healer and pots and it was pretty much exactly the same as da2 or 3 (besides having a better story than da2). Because I really didn’t want to play a multiplayer tactics RPG like baulders gate in the modern era.
I guess I’m like half you guys worst enemy.
It’s not that. I preferred the dialogue from DA:O, I preferred the structure of the stories, the variance in choosing a character (you live in a varied world of wonderful races, be one of them!) then suddenly in 2 you live in a world of varied races… be human. Then in 3 the scope was a little looser but still very much limited. I think 3 was insanely better than 2, 2 being a major rushjob and it showed, but still didn’t hit the highs that part 1 did.
Oh I agree 2 was awful story and repeated level wise. I think 3 was much better too but I think all the silly optional side stuff made 3 worse for me. I wonder what it would be like just playing directly through a solid RPG story. In addition im getting real sick of biowares cast collection style stories in da and mass effect, where you collect a group of pals then fight the end boss.
Thats EXACTLY what Mass Effect 2 and 3 were wasn’t it?
Starting Mission, gather person 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and maybe 1 or 2 side missions… THEN ONTO THE BOSS!!!!!
Yeah. Pretty much. It’s a sad fate for RPGs.
Agree 100% this and it is why i’ve given up on the franchise, well bioware tbh. I havn’t played number three but from what i’ve seen it’s essentially just an mmo (quest design) with a constant struggle against the UI at harder difficulties (did they ever fix it?). I never bought it as I was burnt massively by number two – five years later and it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Why would i even bother with it when i have access to games like wasteland 2, divinity original sin or pillars of eternity – these can easily fill my CRPG needs. In terms of cinematic appeal CDPR have overtaken bioware since the witcher 2 imo – they’re the new kings of story telling.
EA bought out bioware right at its release. From there on DA took a nosedive as they “modernized” and “improved” combat for da:II…
Just gonna go sit in the corner and cry now…
Memories of how varied and awesome DA:O was, then how cut and dry the sequels were…
“Analytics showed not a lot of people played all seven origins through to the end… so have this one human dweeb who sits around this one city for seven years and accomplishes next to nothing.”
Next to nothing? Did you even play that game? I mean, I know it was probably hard to suffer through the respawning waves of jack-in-the-box badguys, mashing your attack buttons until the game apparently arbitrarily decided you had murdered enough, and navigating your way through the copy-pasted dungeons whose layout was only changed by which doors they locked, but the story and dialogue was a vast improvement over DA:O’s incredibly cliched, “Evil threatens the world, you are the chosen one, go round up the armies and kill the dragon,” phoned-it-in plot.
Let’s see… Ostagar happens off-screen, then you get to Kirkwall. A year of banditry happens off-screen. You run errands for a while, and then you get rich off-screen. You run some errands, then the not-Muslims try to torch Kirkwall to get their not-Koran back, and that serial killer nobody bothered looking into for three years kills your mother. Then three years off-screen again. Then Anders says kaboom! and both leaders go crazy to establish plot for Inquisition. Total influence on events: 3 points where you can kill/abandon some of the whiny insane ‘companions’ the story tells you are somehow your friends – Hawke achieves less than a $2 visual novel character… you may as well be playing as the dog.
I felt less rail-roaded when I worked on cane-trains for two years.
…He said, conveniently ignoring a refugee’s rags-to-riches rise in prominence and power, attaining the highest honours a city-state could award, nearly single-handedly ending a tense ‘cold war’ occuptation/invasion, and uncovering not one but two (albeit related) threats to the entire world order as we know it? Between the unearthing of Red Lyrium and its corrupting properties, and the beginning of the mages’ revolution, kicking off a war more unique and historic than any blight?
Jesus Christ, maybe you wouldn’t have been railroaded if you’d actually bothered reading anything put in front of you, like… EVER.
Edit: It seems like you have some kind of objection to having sections of a protagonist’s life take part off screen, but that was actually one of the best things that’s been done in gaming story-telling ever. It allowed the hero to actually be more like a REAL PERSON, showing only the periods of time in their life when the exciting and pivotal things happened, and not forcing them to go through the drudgery of the 9-5 work life. It actually makes the character believable, instead of following them on their tired, old, cliche ‘and that was an amazing summer!’ hurried cram-session that was DA:O. All the excitement of events, and all the believability of a hero who had to actually WORK for their achievements instead of just being the recipient of magic storyteller finger of god, anointing them as the person chosen to have an interesting weekend. IF you can call that bullshit cliche of ‘chosen warrior rallies the armies to defeat the dragon’ an interesting story by comparison to the new ground that DA2 dared to tread.
Would have been great if we actually saw any of that.
Want to do a smaller-scale story, great. Just incorporate what’s meant to be going on instead of telling you about what you missed during intervals that last too long. Make “help/kill the magistrate’s crazy son” have repercussions, instead of him threatening you and then just vanishing forever, or the Alienage Elves not noticing you let someone keep abducting their daughters. Have the city change during timeskips, beyond one statue moving. If you’ve skipped all Aveline’s city guard quests, have crime run rampant. Deal with nobles in Act 3 who want you to be Viscount. Make poverty a thing, beyond “do quests until you reach X gold, progress to Act 2.” Boom, you’re rich – what are the consequences of that, beyond you have a larger house that’s only there for cut-scenes and storage space? You keep running errands until you piss off the Arishok, and they hand you a fancy title. If you’ve been helping apostates left and right, how is it Meredith never heard of you beforehand? Why doesn’t she come after you? Why can’t you fink on Sister Petrice? Why doesn’t Leliana force the Cleric to leave, instead of handing off her quest (given by the Divine herself) to the first band of idiots to wander in while she’s fighting? No pay-off to any of that, instead you keep doing errands, despite supposedly being the most famous, important person in Kirkwall, until Forced Sequel Build-Up Ending. Even that turned out to be utterly pointless, and only the DLC was important.
You mean like how Flemeth literally swoops down, and says “wow, I can already tell you’re hugely important to the future of Thedas” in the first few minutes? The Viscount hands your mother the Estate back, thus negating the whole point of the expedition? Being proclaimed Champion regardless of if you even fight the Arishok? I get what BW wanted, but they dropped the ball so hard it bounced a fence.
How about getting the gameplay in the main series right before moving on to other genres? Inquisition was incredibly boring, just a series of bland open areas filled with ‘quests’ culled out of a bad MMO and very little content that actually was worth your time.
And more time spent in the inventory UI than actually playing the game proper. ;_;
Yes. Yes I would.
Dragon Age was Bioware’s successor to old school RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale (some changes were necessary for controllers and I’m okay with that). But somehow it lost its way by trying to be Elder Scrolls. If this is closer to the original Infinity Engine format, I’m all for it.
Is that in referral to the changes from DA:O to DA:II? Cause i beg to differ if thats the case.
Well if we can’t get our petting mini-game in FE, it’ll probably turn up in this.
I would love to play a Dragon Age Tactics game, except I assume it will be Origin exclusive, which is a deal breaker.
I’d be cool with it. I’ve been a fan of Fire Emblem for over a decade now and it’d be interesting to see Bioware create a turn-based strategy game similar to that.
I don’t play Dragon Age for the combat. Get me a tactical romancing game and we’ll talk.
Would I play a Koei, Atlus or CD Projekt Red tactics game? Absolutely!
Would I play a Bioware tactics game? HELL NO!
I would play that. But im curious how specific he means by that. Does he mean a story driven tactics game, or a strategy focussed game? Because i would dig a fantasy strategy tactics game.
Enh. Maybe. The combat’s not really what I play Dragon Age for, though… if they build an impressive story/dialogue/questing system with the tactics combat part simply replacing the current third-person skirmish system, then I’d be all for it.
But if it’s basically just a tactics game with a Dragon Age lore skin (“Oho, OUR fantasy dwarves and elves are slightly different to tolkein dwarves and elves! Er, only not in combat, they’re pretty much fucking identical there, and I guess combat’s mostly what you’ll be doing”), then no. No I probably won’t play it.
Maybe not an xcom version but baby making simulator version with DA companions could be interesting