Dragon Age III Inquisition

So we are in the year 2013 and next year holds a special promise for me... Supposedly Dragon Age III Inquisition will come out. As I rub my hands like a greedy dwarf and smirk like a blood mage who has been promised something amazing by a desire demon, I try to keep up with the annoncements of bioware so as to see what they are planning on doing.

I understand that this 3rd series of Dragon Age games will be likely to take place in "Somewhere French" which I can only assume would be Orlais. I dont know where that leaves us with the previous games though. Because:

!!!!SPOILERS!!!!!!!!! (Do not watch the video or read the paragraph below)

At the end of the Dragon Age II we see Lelliana telling Cassandra -the seeker of the Chantry whose surname escapes me though I believe it was something like Pentagust or something- that Hawke is gone just like the Warden. It is so very obvious that they were thinking of a sequel when Lelliana says: "That is no coincidence". You can observe that in the video. According to Bioware it is likely that we will have a new protagonist and so the story of Hawke may be done. If it is true that leaves DAII's ending hanging in the air a little bit. The end of DAO is pretty decided when compared to DAII and so you get a better closure whereas in DAII one would think that they should have gone for a sequel. Oh well we will see. I suppose what we will see next is the open war between mages and the templars. Either way I believe Bioware is capable of producing great games. Besides it will be fun to explore a whole new area.

!!!! END OF SPOILERS!!!!!!!

According to wikipedia here is what the combat will be like:
"Combat is expected to differ somewhat from its predecessors and focus more on a player's ability to prepare, position, and form a cohesive team with his or her party members, requiring fewer repetitive finger strikes but better thinking."

Reminds me of Baldur's Gate a little. An improved BG style combat. I am not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand I do like the idea of being challenged in a fight but my major qualms about having way too many fights in a game which I play for the plot itself is that it prevents me from playing it repeatedly hence preventing me from exploring all the outcomes of various storylines. I guess I wil have to wait and see how much I like or dislike it within the game itself.

What I really liked hearing was how they are thinking of opening the world map for exploring since they liked what they saw in Skyrim and have said so on so many occasions. If there is one thing I miss in other games whilst playing Dragon Age series is the jump button. I am glad to hear that I might get my spacebar back as jump. hehe

No recycled dungeons. That is one more thing they are correcting...permission to go for a high pitched yaaaay...

One of the things which is confirmed is that we will be able to transfer our save files from previous games to DAIII, well I was kind of depending on that anyway.

But above everything else I am jumping up and down in joy because it has been confirmed that the character will be fully voiced and they will make use of the dialogue wheel from DAII. Guilty as charged, as I mentioned it in previous posts, I loved that about DA2 and if there was one thing I really wanted to see in DAIII it was that. So for me what I hear for now really suits the phrase: "So far so good".

Wish I could hibernate till DAIII came out...but thats not an option I guess...

SWTOR Free to Play???

Now that I have levelled my first character to 50, I have got a pretty good opinion on how Star Wars Online works and among the mmorpgs I have tried so far it is the second in line that captured me enough time to care to level my characters and it still does.

Just to be clear though this is not a discussion on whether the game is worth playing or not because in my honest opinion it is a game very well worth purchasing.

But it is it Free to play?

Lately a lot of companies have been playing fast and loose with the term free to play and Bioware/ Lucas Arts' Star Wars has recently become one of them. It is a lovely little marketing trick to lure in more players and earn from quantity rather than quality both game and content wise. My most beloved game LOTRO had been periodically destroyed after it had gone free to play because the company did not care about keeping loyal players satisfied any longer but rather adopted a corporate philosophy of "dont look back and keep 'em coming". But we are not discussing LOTRO here.

The same worries do not apply to Star Wars however because it aint free to play. Guild Wars 2? It is Free to Play, you purchase the game once and then play for free with all essentials and quests intact in the package.

Star Wars? Not so much...

When you have to buy the "hide helmet" option it aint free to play.
When you have to buy skill bars so that you can use your damn skills it aint free to play...
When you have to pay for each and every essential point that allows you to play a game, that game aint free to play.
Unless what you mean by free to play is make rounds to do some sightseeing in your helmet....

So what is it:
It is a delusional lie to excite the expectations and try to entice new customers if you can.

But then again I knew that it would not have been free to play from the beginning; the very beginning when I first purchased the game and for the first time in my gaming life was I subjected to extra 2 months payment to log in to the content I had just purchased. Now that was very very very cheap on Bioware's part. Shame!

Did I do it though? Hell yeah! Their philosophy might be cheap but the game they came up with is simply superb. Lets face it, it is much better than not getting your money's worth. That was the reason why I quit LOTRO and I was not even paying for it due to my lifetime subscription. I was not getting even my imaginary money's worth.



So my point? Game time card or monthly payment in Star Wars, kicks free to play in the crotch.