Quick thoughts on the new DA:I trailer

[owlmoose]

Since, as I mentioned to vieralynn in comments, I can't imagine I can avoid what's in the trailer forever, and I'd rather learn it by watching now than via random, not-as-vague-as-they-think-they-are comments in random Tumblr posts. :)

• October 7??? That's a full month earlier than I was expecting. Which is very welcome news.


• Featuring a white human male warrior as the default Inquisitor. Surprise!


• That said, having Cassandra as one of the narrators of the trailer pleases me greatly. Her inclusion as a companion is one of my favorite things about the upcoming game. I'm less excited about Varric and especially Cullen coming back, but I'll keep an open mind. (I like Varric a lot, I'm just not sure he belongs here. And my mixed feelings on Cullen as a companion are well-known, I think.)


• The environments look fantastic. I'm sort of back and forth on the new game engine. It's clearly more sophisticated, but everyone looks so different. Much craggier. Maybe that's the point, though. Probably I'll just have to get used to it.


• The hints dropped about the Inquisitor's backstory (sole survivor of the opening of the rift in the Veil) are pretty intriguing. I'm curious to see if and how it changes for the different race and class combos.

October? October. Good deal.

Comments

Re: The woes of spoilers, Alistair, very non-spoilerish DA:I talk.

[sarasa_cat]

DA2's intro scenes and intro quests for Isabela and for Merrill showed everything that a new player needs to understand about them without requiring the new player to play DA:O.

On the other hand, while Anders (JAnders) has a self-contained story in DA2 (I say that based on what others have said when playing DA2 without playing DA:O/A), it is enlightening to have the backstory for Anders & Justice, and Anders was definitely a character who was loved and hated by Awakening players so people were coming in with biases. Still, I know people who fully appreciated DA2's Anders without playing Awakening.

Based on how the team brought Anders forward into DA2, I generally trust Bioware's writers to put together a self-contained story in DA:I for Cullen that doesn't require seeing any of his various prior story arc. In series like these, writers almost always make it possible to on-board new players without forcing them to play through the entire franchise.

Looking at this with some a narrative theory perspective, Cullen has had a full story arc (introduction, inciting incident, conflict, climax, resolution) across DA:O+DA2 so I'm pretty certain the writers have written a completely new story arc because ... there really isn't a choice once an arc is finished. That said, unlike Anders, people are expecting some sort of hole filling. I have a few educated guesses on how they will write it without relying on branched/flag-triggered dialogue.

...

On a different topic: is it me or does the new DA:I trailer look just like the new Skyrim trailer?