#teminon

DA:I was love/hate for me. I cannot stand that they tried so hard to be Elder Scrolls with all the open world ‘content’, most of which is just filler and travel time. To their credit, the world design is stunning. And unlike ME:A, they didn’t cut back on the main quests for it. Legit some of the story in DA:I is outstanding.

Yeah the thing that turned me off my first playthrough was the open-worldness, which is NOT a thing I come to Bioware games for and that they didn’t execute especially well, as well as the (to me) lack of characters that really hooked me.  My companions were meh at best and actively annoying at worst, and my Inquisitor felt bland, and the dialogue options/replies seemed to forget at times that my character was a Qunari.  I hit the Orlesian ballroom scene, was like “I’m too bored to do this, I just don’t care” and dropped the game.  ME:A had pretty much the same issue for me - I think I quit on that one even faster than with DA:I.  

how is it? I really dislike the new plot but the aesthetic/potential of playing Warlock is tempting

I’m having a load of fun with it.  I just got the Stormcaller subclass which is the whole reason why I picked Warlock and CHAIIIINNNN LIGHTNINGNNGGGGGG!!!!! Er. That is. The aesthetics are super.  Love the feel of many of the weapons, and the abilites are fun and flashy but not like, overwhelmingly so?

So far the only thing I truly don’t like is the jumping, because I’m utter shite at jumping, and the Warlock jump feels extra weird.  There are places in quests where you have to jump across things to continue on and ... I may have been stuck in some of them for a while because I’m really bad at jumping. It’s ok when I’m by myself, but I’m hesitant about group stuff due to it.  

It starts out feeling too easy almost but then ramps up, which I loved.  Also I like playing with others, but I’m actually enjoying soloing a ton in the game, especially because I’m sort of a slow, hide and snipe player if I’m not going full Leeroy, and that means I end up with a low kill count compared to others who are running in guns a-blazing, which hurts my epeen rofl.  

I am sort of curious how Leeroy I can go in with the Titan eventually, because right now, when I just charge in stomping and punching and pew pewing I just die XD. 

This sums it up for me also - there was far more that appealed to me other than the story. The ability wheel, the freedom to choose your own weapons and builds from day one, to choose how you explore and quest, choose how you gear, and yes the phenomenal dungeons. They just won't be the same with reticule combat, nor will much of the endgame. 

Yeah. Those are some of my favorite things about oldschool TSW to be honest, and part of why I never found another MMO I liked nearly as much.  I dislike classes, I love being able to try out, fail, revise, rework, and conquer, I loved the freedom of gear and the way BBs were rather than shitty RNG loot, I liked tweaking gear and signets and etc, I loved making good and shite builds and fine tuning them and adapting them to game challenges...

Playing/enjoying SWL sounds like it requires me to chuck out my favorite things about TSW and accept replacements to things I did not think were flawed in the first place, reworked by a team that, by all signs and public statements, didn’t like the things I liked about the game other than story and atmosphere.   

(Ask is referring to this post)

I KNOW THIS FEEL at this rate everything I want to do for my writing will already be its own separate show

Hahaha yes.  The story I’m writing now has a LOT of overlap, totally unintentionally, with a lot of stuff that’s out there that I’ve written and watched lately and I’m annoyed because... it’s not because I’m trying to emulate or riff off them... it’s literally things I have had kicking around my head for ages D:<

It really is. You actually stopped before one of their best missions ever imo, the only con to the Winter Palace is the time limit on approval when the instinct is to explore. That can be cool though to feel a bit of pressure and want to max it out. Into the Abyss later and then the penultimate mission whose name I don’t recall are like top notch BW. Like you say, I play their RPGs for story and character driven gameplay, not aimless wandering around.

Haha - others have said they thought it was great too.  I don’t know, I just didn’t care, I didn’t want to talk to everyone, then I missed a statue (or whatever it was) somehow and that put me off super badly because Reasons, and I saw that there was some sort of timer and I couldn’t complete it properly unless I completely restarted, and that’s when I went “fuck this, IDGAF, goodbye” and never came back.