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kaija-rayne-author · 8 months

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So, it should be pretty obvious by now that I'm firmly against fans boycotting Bioware and Dreadwolf due to the layoffs. I'll put it in business terms. I've worked for Fortune 500 companies, and I speak from that perspective.

The people who made it are hoping, and have said, that they hope people will love Dreadwolf as much as they do. Even when they were laid off.

It would punish the creatives who made the game far more than it would punish Bioware. They likely can't even talk about it due to NDAs unless/until it's released. Can you imagine not being able to talk about a thing you loved and poured years of your life, creativity, and passion into? I can. It would be heartbreaking.

I don't want to be responsible for harming people who love dragon age enough to make it for us. If I boycott, that's exactly what I'd be partially responsible for. I'm usually very pro-boycott, but in this case, I'm not.

So here's the question... we unequivocally live in a late stage capitalist nightmare world. Do you know how many other companies have laid off employees this year?

This type of behavior has been pro forma for corporate for at least 20 years, probably longer.

So, why would people boycott Dreadwolf and Bioware when they're by far not even the most egregious example of mass layoffs?

In 2022-2023, we've had these mass layoffs.

Meat giant Tyson Foods is laying off about 15% of senior leadership roles and 10% of corporate roles, according to an internal memo shared with CNN.

Y'all gonna boycott meat? I didn't think so.

3M announced significant layoffs as part of another major restructuring plan. The brand behind Post-It Notes and Scotch Tape said in a statement it would lay off 6,000 staff around the world.

Gonna boycott tape? Ear plugs? Sticky notes?

Lyft (LYFT)’s move in November to cut 13% of its workforce, citing fears of a looming recession.

Buzzfeed announced a 15% reduction in its workforce, or about 180 employees.

David's Bridal is eliminating 9,236 positions across the United States but did not specify how many stores would be affected.

Walmart is laying off more than 3,000 workers.

And I know many people can't afford to boycott Walmart.

Meta announced an additional 10,000 layoffs across several months on top of mass layoffs in 2022.

You still use Facebook? I personally loathe it and only keep an account for marketing reasons. I can barely even make it work anymore.

Three rounds of layoffs hit Disney (DIS), announced through a March 27 internal memo to employees. Around 7,000 people will be affected by the move over the next several months.

Amazon (AMZN) said in March it would cut 9,000 jobs, bringing the total number of Amazon (AMZN) staffers eliminated this year to around 27,000.

Indeed.com announced cuts of approximately 2,200 employees, representing almost 15% of its total workforce, the company said in March.

Satellite radio giant SiriusXM laid off 475 people, or about 8% of its workforce, as part of a broad restructuring.

Zoom (ZM) said it will lay off about 1,300 employees, or approximately 15% of its staff, in a memo to employees in Feburary.

Dell (DELL) laid off roughly 5% of its workforce, the company said in a regulatory filing in February. Dell had about 133,000 employees, the company told CNN. At that level, the 5% cut represents more than 6,500 employees.

Gonna refuse to use your computer?

Microsoft said in January it would be laying off 10,000 employees, according to a securities filing.

This was only up to around March of this year. There's loads more.

Point being it's ridiculous to boycott a company and hurt the people who made a thing they love just because they got laid off.

This is what corporations do. There is 0 loyalty to the employee at a corporation. It's all about the bottom line.

Maybe all y'all haven't worked in corporate, maybe people are hopping on the 'I'll boycott too' bandwagon. IDEK.

I honestly don't care if I change anyone's mind about it all, but it’s silly. Just outright ridiculous to expect a corporation to do anything but what corporations do.

It's not right. It's awful. I hate that Bioware basically backstabbed the creatives who made them what they are. But it's not new or even remotely rare. Bioware has laid off roughly 125 employees in the past handful of months.

Every company I named laid off far, far more. And if you think I'll believe you're going to boycott Microsoft, you must have a bridge you want to sell me, too.

Here's the source, if you want it.

#dragon age series #dragon age #dragon age confessions #dao #dai #da 2 #bioware critical #Bioware #Dreadwolf #dragon age: dreadwolf #dragon age inquisition

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murfeelee · 3 months

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BG3 INSP: Escape the Nautiloid

Githyanki Woman: Abomination! This is your end! Narrator: Your head throbs and your skin tingles. Visions run past: a dragon's wing, a silver sword--and a flash of your face seen through the strange woman's eyes. Githyanki Woman: Ugh, my head! What is this? Tsk'va! You are no thrall? Vlaakith blesses me this day! Together, we might survive. Imps block the path forward. You will assist me in destroying them--we must reach the helm before we transform. Ryuu: Transform? What do you mean? Githyanki Woman: We carry Mind Flayer parasites! Unless we escape--unless we are cleansed--our bodies and minds will be tainted and twisted. Within days we will be ghaik: Mind Flayers! Ryuu: We are turning into Illithid? There must be something we can do! Githyanki Woman: We can do nothing until we escape--that must be our priority. Ryuu: I am Ryuu; who are you? Lae'zel: Who am I? Your only chance of survival, Lae'zel. Ryuu: Is the helm our way out of here? Lae'zel: It is where we might gain control of the gh'ath--this Nautiloid ship. Once in command, we will deal with our ghaik captors. We will address the matter of a cure for this infection once we reach the Material Plane. Ryuu: Onward then. The ship won't be able to take another dragon attack. We need to get out before it's too late.

-- Baldur's Gate 3

MY THOUGHTS (mini rant) & CC CREDITS

MY THOUGHTS

Unpopular opinion, but I LOVE Lae'zel. She's my favorite character in the whole game (EASY #2's my daughter Karlach 🥰). People say Lae'zel's hella mean, but I like her whole melting the ice queen shtick.

My biggest complaint about BG3 is that most of the companions are way too irrelevant--other than Halsin, Lae'zel's the only one closely tied to the actual frikkin plot (unless you count that annoying wench Shadowheart blabbing about Lady Shar all frikkin day. I haven't dealt with her & the Nightsong yet). I was with Lae the whole time: get these nasty AF parasites out of my frikkin body RIGHT NOW. 🤮 To the creche! (Then we got to the creche and I was like jfc. 👀💀)

And her going on & on about Queen Vlaakith was way more interesting than Shadowheart with Lady Shar & her whole amnesia excuse (plus I just don't like her, so.... XD).

The Githyanki were giving me strong Qunari vibes from Dragon Age--but that's not surprising, since Bioware made the first two Baldur's Gate games & DA likely lifted at lot from D&D. Lae's kinda like a way more intense Sten or Iron Bull? And both the Gith & the Qun have dragon-obsessed cultures; these are my people. 💪😤

CC CREDITS

- Midnight Hollow lighting mod

- Tank pose w/ 75% OMSP resizer

- Skyrim dragon by me

- Fireextinguisherfailfx is a GREAT Fog Emitter fire-breathing effect, which I realized when I had Ryuu detonate the parasite pool, and the explosion set sim!Lae'zel on frikkin fire! That orange burst when the extinguisher fails is just perfect.

I was dying when Ryuu just STOOD there while she did all the work putting out the fires, after I told him to put out the fire FIRST! Typical; Dark Urges can't be bothered helping people, I guess. XD

Fortunately for sim!Lae, there was a nifty Restoration Station nearby where she could wash all the soot off:

- Lae outfit from Dragon Valley, boots & bracers at TSR

- Ryuu Dragon Age staff acc by @greenplumbboblover

#sims 3 baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate 3 #mini rant #sims 3 sakura avatar gameplay #sims 3 gameplay #sims 3 wips #dragons #did i mention dragons #Dungeons and Dragons

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lily-orchard · 4 months

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Given all the talk of BioWare, it seems like something happened around DA:I that caused a lot of their games to suffer. What was it about that game that hurt the company so badly?

Well EA mandating their god awful Frostbite engine certainly didn't help. But the actual culprit is Retake Mass Effect, one of the most notorious and vile harassment mobs, second only to Gamergate.

When Mass Effect 3 first released, fans threw a months long bitch tantrum over the ending and harassed the developers up to and including threatening them, with the women on the team getting even worse harassment.

BioWare eventually caved and put the team on the worst crunch the company would ever experience to push out the Extended Cut, and the developers had to deal with not only the stress of four months of crunch, but also four months of continued harassment, death threats, rape threats, suspicious packages sent to the studio, among other things.

Mass Effect had all of BioWare's best staff working on it. People who had been working there since the Infinity Engine. Most of them quit and left the industry altogether because of the sheer avalanche of harassment.

Inquisition was made by the Dragon Age team, but Andromeda and Anthem were made by all new teams working with the single worst engine in the modern day.

Similar troubles afflicted BioWare Austin while they were making The Old Republic, as the Hero Engine was untested and the team was new, but twelve years later the team working on that knows that engine and its capabilities like the back of their hands.

But yeah, that's why. BioWare had cultivated a staff over fifteen years that was really good at making the kind of games BioWare made, and then all of them quit because of sustained and heavy harassment and stalking.

The cruelest irony is that all of this was done because the final cutscene of the game didn't have enough variations to account for every decision you'd made. Now in 2023, the winner of "Game of the Year" can forget to write the entire final act of it's own story and people go "Welp what can ya do."

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midorisudachi · 8 months

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"The Dreamer, Walker of the Fade"

Here is my second art piece for my "Countdown to Dragon Age Day" (which will be in December). Please visit my first DA Inquisiton piece (prior to this artwork) if you have not seen it yet. As mentioned in the first piece ("The Herald of Andraste"), I will be submitting a DAI character fan art every other Monday until DA Day.

Solas is quite the mysterious, intriguing character, isn't he? Especially at the end of the DLC Trespasser. I like his accent and his manner of speaking, and his views on the world. I also like his murals (in Skyhold) as the story progresses. My first DA character/Inquisitor actually wasn't Bryony (she is in my first/previous fan art)...it was an elven mage: Zephyra Lavellan, and I had made Solas her love interest. I also don't want to give away any spoilers, so I'll write more about Solas at the bottom of my description. Be warned!

I drew Solas in the outfit that I had him wearing [the 2nd time I played DAI]. He is wearing the "Overseer Cowl" schematic on his head, which gives him a totally different look rather than his well-known shiny bald head. Ha ha. His outfit was another mage schematic (I can't remember the name at the moment), and I had used Dales Loden Wool (the bluish-purple) and Royale Sea Silk (the silvery brocade). I drew him holding a "Magister Fire Staff".

I've never been good at backgrounds, but so far I am enjoying drawing the DAI characters with backgrounds inspired by their "tarot card" looks in the game. It's been interesting trying to figure out what kind of background & design to come up with, to suit the character.

Drawn with Sakura Pigma Micron pens, then coloured in with a mix of Copic Markers & Ohuhu Markers. White accents & lines were done with a gel pen. The gold is Golden Paint acrylics, but for some unknown reason, the scanner murders the spectacular shiny gold and it looks “flat”. Font & glowing effect around the orb was done in Photoshop Elements.

Fan artwork © Jacqueline E. McNeese

Dragon Age Inquisition/Solas © Bioware & Electronic Arts

All hearts/Likes are SO much appreciated!

***Spoiler Time!***

So...

...

The "end" of the game (before I had the Trespasser DLC) had me totally surprised the 1st time I played the game. Fen'Harel? Damn you, Solas! The whole time, he lied! He was very convincing. Especially when I had made my 1st character (Zephyra Lavellan, the elf) fall for him, and then he bloody breaks her heart! The first time I played, I didn't have the DLCs. The 2nd time I played the game (this past March through July), I made my character "Bryony Trevelyan" the human warrior, who fell for Cullen. Cullen & Bryony were so cute and I loved their relationship. Zephyra & Solas? Tragic! And the Trespasser DLC (2nd time I played the game) really tied everything together! I wish I had known about the DLC the first time, to see how Zephyra would have reacted to seeing Solas again. With Bryony, I just wanted to kick Solas/Fen'Harel's arse, but I made her calm and ask why he did what he did.

I so can't wait for Dragon Age 4!!!!! ***End of Spoiler***

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finitefantasy · 4 months

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In the scope of Things Happening Right Now, it doesn’t matter, but I really am sad that in so many ways… Dragon Age is over, at least for me.

It always had problems—I hate Bioware’s take on grey morality and how it conflates petty personality issues with like… war crime apologism and oppression—and it’s never, ever reached its potential but like… it was a cozy place to be for years. The criticism was fun, even. Because for everything I hated, there was something or someone I loved.

But it was a constant back and forth.

I love the cast. But then a new comic, new book comes out and it refutes my canon for them. Like, sure, Fenris never considered the crew his family and after DA2 he leaves them all. Ouch. That’s not at all in line with my game but !!! Whatever. Different canons, different consequences.

But that made me hope for characters to NOT come back in Dreadwolf. Which made it harder to care about dreadwolf because if it’s just about Solas and no one I love… why bother?

Now it’s been a decade of waiting and Bioware treats its staff like shit. The writers who gave me what I liked are fired and rehired and then quitting. They treat fans like shit too, giving less than crumbs while hoisting up Mass Effect.

Half the games are trapped on PS3 and won’t be remastered/remade.

The company doesn’t even like the DA2 crew (my favorites) enough to make merchandise of them.

So like… what’s left?

The game is gonna suck and I waited too long anyways. The extra canon makes the previous, good games worse. At this point, it’s barely ethical to give bioware money.

How can I justify caring? I can’t even get excited for scraps of Fenris or Hawke or Zevran or Isabela material. It’s just… gone. It’s over.

Bioware found a way to ruin a decent franchise in every conceivable level. A death by a thousand cuts finished off via employee lawsuit shotgun blast.

Makes the near decade of waiting for like they stole time and affection from me.

#if the last line doesn’t make it clear #*second to last #obvs the employee payment issues is the worst bit of this #but it’s just.. they rly ruined it on every front #and for what???#for money???#money they can’t even spend compensating their employees?#pulling illegal severance bullshit??

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fandom-geek · 1 year

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obligatory reminder that, as recently as 2019 (after dreadwolf was announced), dreadwolf was meant to be a live service game using anthem's code

A tiny team stuck around [after October 2017] to work on a brand new Dragon Age 4, code-named Morrison, that would be built on Anthem’s tools and codebase. It’s the game being made now. Unlike Joplin, this new version of the fourth Dragon Age is planned with a live service component, built for long-term gameplay and revenue. [...] When asked, a few BioWare developers agreed that it’d be technically possible for a game built on Anthem’s codebase to also have an offline branch, but it’s not yet clear whether Morrison will take that approach.

or as i like to say - have no hope, ye who enter here, because shit's been fucked for at least half of this game's development cycle.

and yes, they've since said it's going to be single player, but the game is fundamentally built on an always-online codebase. with that in mind, i would be very surprised if it doesn't require an internet connection. it's hard to rewrite an entire codebase four years into development.

also to include the list of all major dreadwolf staff who have left since development started in 2015 (with sources)

mike laidlaw (creative director 2015 - oct. 2017) - 14 years at bioware

fernando melo (lead producer 2015 - aug. 2019) - 12 years at bioware

mark darrah (executive producer 2015 - dec. 2020) - 23 years at bioware

casey hudson (bioware general manager 2017 - dec. 2020) - 20 years at bioware

matt goldman (senior creative director oct. 2017 - nov. 2021) - 23 years at bioware

christian dailey (executive producer dec. 2020 - feb. 2022) - 4 years at bioware

mac walters (production director [replaced christian dailey] feb. 2022 - jan. 2023) - 20 years at bioware

other dragon age-related staff who have left since development on dreadwolf started

david gaider (moved to a non-DA project in 2015, left bioware in 2016) - 17 years at bioware

cori may (editor/designer, left in 2019 according to her linkedin) - 17 years at bioware

since 2015, bioware has lost at least 150 years worth of experience from employees leaving the company.

#bioware is on fire and actively screaming for help #bioware #dragon age #dreadwolf #da: dreadwolf #dragon age: dreadwolf #da:d #da:dw #video games

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ishaslife · 1 year

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Dragon Age: Dreadwolf Doubts

(possible spoilers)

This is a random post but mostly out of fear and anxiety for dreadwolf. They have been hyping the game way too much and we haven't even gotten a proper trailer yet. For a game that's supposed to come out probably by the end of next year, we have only a couple teasers, a behind the scenes and an in-game cinematic. Having seen analysis on the game cinematic, I feel a bit more hopeful that Bioware won't fuck up as they've added lots of symbolism. But I am afraid of where they'll take Solas' arc, whether the companions and the hero will be handled well and so and so forth. I love dragon age 2 but I think we can all agree that it is black sheep of the series and most of its charm comes from the characters rather than the story and the location it is set in (let's be real, Kirkwall looks like the garbage disposal of Thedas). I don't want another dragon age 2 but nonetheless I'm trying to keep my expectations low for DA:D.

Another reason I'm not too sure about Dreadwolf is because of the old Bioware staff that has left during its making, I wonder if it was because of disagreements on the project or if major changes were being made to the story that they didn't agree with. Also, Dragon Age is grim, gruesome and forces you to make choices for the good of your friends or the people you are trying to help along the way. I don't want it to lose that. It was so hard to be able to leave Ruck in the deep roads and tell his mum he's dead when we knew he wasn't or deciding whether to kill our good friend Anders, who we know has been through so much, or even feeling torn when it comes to Solas, these are difficult choices. I don't want dragon age Dreadwolf to become a simple story, I want it to be complicated, to make us see things from solas' eyes, to make us realise how we are two sides of the same coin. We are trying to save our world from him and he's trying to save his world from us. A very FFXIV story line.

Overall, I just don't want the story and characters to be ruined. Please please Bioware, do not mess this up. (disclaimer: these are all just my opinions)

#dragon age #dragon age dreadwolf #da:d #dragon age origins #dragon age inquistion #dragon age 2

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ziracona · 2 years

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Yeah, they really made an absolute dogs breakfast of the writing in Inquisition? It's so abysmal that I don't know if it'll ever recover, much less if the writers would even WANT to. In all honesty, I know the previous two games were far from perfect but at least the writing was more or less consistent, can't say the same for DA:I unfortunately...

Yeah. I kept hoping the end would somehow fix stuff but the end was worse than most of the game. O_O I could have written a god-tier game with the concept and basic outline for Inquisition, but alas I am not head BioWare staff. And we sure as hell did not get a god tier game. Tbh I have no interest in DW unless I hear they’ve like, wildly changed the game/writing course of their development. And I don’t exactly have high hopes, because they seem to have mostly staff from Inquisition on it. But I in good conscience can’t keep forking over piles of money for a tripple A game and DLCs when they U-turn from lauding me for massacring a bannon for what they did to my husband, Alienage, and friend, and even Lady agreeing that while she wants the descendants free, the original humans the Keeper went after absolutely deserved their fate, with a little DLC that talks about the cultural appropriation of indigenous people in the world and the loss of their own history to their invaders to the point a circle mage can read and speak more elvish than the Dalish companion, and how terrible it is, to a game where they refuse to take any stance really, finally to a game where they frame Briala & Celine together as cute & sweet with no tell to player who hasn’t read TME on their own what that woman did, retcon the godhood of every culture they based (often not just visibly but explicitly Word of God as well) on minority cultures until the only not retconned god is Fantasy Catholic God, so the only paths forward are Fantasy Catholic (traditional white Europeans are right & all other cultures wrong) or Atheism (modern white European ideology is right and all other cultures wrong), both terrible, and are so allergic to a minority rights narrative they retcon the entire elven history of the franchise to make it Opulent Suddenly European And Slaver Society back in its glory days, and kneecap the game’s second best character by making his sudden face heel end game goal Racial Supremacist Genocide to go back to Opulent Suddenly European Styled Culture for Elves?? And-ah forget it this would go on for a while day. Just. Yeah. It had wild potential as a game and I loved scenes and characters, and am retreating to DAO->DA2 with the things I liked in the divorce, and I could have made SUCH a DAI. But as it stands, I just. Both don’t and can’t really care going forward. I love the games I played and characters and that won’t change, but I have no faith they’ll not just keep getting worse (personally), and I’m not Paying to see that. But yeah, the others ain’t perfect, but they’re fun and solid enough. Even though I think DAO is easily the most well made, DA2 has such a fun cast and interesting concept and story, and such moments, it was my favorite. And he’ll, Nothing is perfect. That’s normal and expected. But there’s a big difference between ‘I don’t like these aspects but I like the whole enough’ and like

#ask #anonymous #dai spoilers #I still can’t BELIEVE they gave Solas one of the most God-Tier charcaters of all time in DAI and then in Trespasser went ‘haha psych! time #for racism species Supremacist Genocide Intellectual Dude Bro motives!’ like wtf I’m taking him & Cole in the divorce and leaving #they really had a charcater all game that was ‘pretending to be a calm Lawful Good professor but he’s Wearing the Mask & sometimes it cracks #but when you see behind it it’s not death sidius it’s Bugs Bunny sawing florida off the United States and ALSO he’s a big wolf’ and then #didn’t even let him actually be a trickster god just some dude who’s willing to kill every species in existence to hit race supremacy again #UNBELIEVABLE writing move in the worst way. I could have made the most amazing upsetting Solas starts a war finale while he’s still a god #and elves keep their elf culture and shaken the franchise to its knees and delivered writing unknown to man and done RIGHT by the bald man #but the devs fkn decided to massacre their franchise and my boy right in front of me #well not on my watch. I’m taking him and leaving back to previous games and writing my own - better inquisition in my head #if this timeline won’t deliver I’ll make my own! it won’t be the first fkn time #GOD it’s the little things too! in DAO I can help my bestie kill her abhsive mom but in DAI I’m supposed to find Flemeth sympathetic??? shes #the same flemeth who ruined my girl’s life as she has countless others! they really nosedive into so many piles of shit in DAI #to unfortunately paraphrase Trespasser Solas: I would be /thrilled/ to be proven wrong by BioWare. like you can’t imagine #but I’m not holding my breath. one fan who loves a charcater generates in a month 12x more usable DAI story and lore than the entire team in #the last 9 years

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jcmarchi · 3 months

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Lords Of The Fallen Publisher CI Games Lays Off 10% Of Its Staff

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/lords-of-the-fallen-publisher-ci-games-lays-off-10-of-its-staff/

Lords Of The Fallen Publisher CI Games Lays Off 10% Of Its Staff

CI Games, the publisher behind last year’s Lords of the Fallen and the Sniper Ghost Warrior franchise, has laid off 10 percent of its staff, as first reported by GamesIndustry.biz. The publication says its sources pointed to laid-off staff posting about the job cuts on LinkedIn, but has since received confirmation from CI Games.

It’s currently unclear how many people 10 percent of the company translates, too, considering CI Games is a publisher that also owns studios like Lords of the Fallen developer Hexworks and Sniper Ghost Warrior developer Underdog Studio.

[embedded content]

CI Games CEO Marek Tymiński told GamesIndustry.biz the following:

“To preserve business strength and stability, CI Games has made the tough but necessary decision to implement a targeted round of redundancies, affecting approximately 10 percent of employees across the company,” Tymiński told GamesIndustry.biz. “We would like to thank each of them for the part they’ve played during their time with us.”

Unsettlingly, Tymiński seems to indicate more layoffs are on the horizon, possibly referring to job cuts as “optimization.” Tymiński told GamesIndustry.biz, “Further business optimizations are being made to the organization’s pipelines and processes.”

These job cuts come after CI Games published Hexworks’ Lords of the Fallen last year, a Soulslike that sold more than 1 million copies in less than two weeks.

These CI Games layoffs join a string of other disheartening 2024 job cuts, which total more than 2,500. We recently learned Unity would be laying off 1,800 people by the end of March, and that Twitch was laying off 500 employees. Discord also announced it had laid off 170 employees. Yesterday, Game Informer covered layoffs happening at PTW, a support studio that’s worked with companies like Blizzard and Capcom, and at SteamWorld Build company, Thunderful Group, which let go of roughly 100 people. Earlier this morning, Game Informer covered news about Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive reportedly laying off 45 people, too.

Last year, more than 10,000 people in the games industry or game-adjacent industries were laid off.

In January of last year, Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees amidst its ongoing $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which it completed in October.

Striking Distance Studios, the team behind 2022’s The Callisto Protocol, laid off more than 30 employees in August of 2023. That same month, Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer BioWare laid off 50 employees, including long-time studio veterans. The following month, in September, Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios laid off roughly 45% of its staff, and Fortnite developer Epic Games laid off 830 employees.

In October of last year, The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog laid off at least 25 employees, and Telltale Games also underwent layoffs, although an actual number of affected employees has not yet been revealed. Dreams developer Media Molecule laid off 20 employees in late October.

In November, Amazon Games laid off 180 staff members, Ubisoft laid off more than 100 employees, Bungie laid off roughly 100 developers, and 505 Games’ parent company, Digital Bros, laid off 30% of its staff.

In December, Embracer Group closed its reformed TimeSplitters studio, Free Radical Design, and earlier in the year, Embracer closed Saints Row developer Volition Games, a studio with more than 30 years of development history. A few weeks before the winter holidays, Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering owner Hasbro laid off 1,100 employees.

The games industry will surely feel the effects of such horrific layoffs for years to come. The hearts of the Game Informer staff are with everyone who’s been affected by layoffs or closures.

[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]

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epicapplicationsusa · 2 years

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I can’t keep up with The Elder Scrolls Online’s rapid content drops – and that’s a good thing

Whereas we watch for The Elder Scrolls 6 to in some way come out, and now wait even longer for Starfield, The Elder Scrolls On-line stays Bethesda’s flagship, limitless title. And it isn’t even developed by Bethesda Sport Studios.

There’s an awesome Elder Scrolls recreation you’ll be able to play when you watch for the following major story within the collection, you realize…

When it launched in 2014, TESO made quite a lot of errors – one thing that sadly appears like custom for giant on-line video games. Chief amongst these was the choice to go for a subscription-based mannequin, in an try and take a chunk out of the true state of World of Warcraft. The Previous Republic could not obtain that, even with all the facility of the Star Wars IP and BioWare’s experience. Unsurprisingly, issues did not go too effectively for ZeniMax On-line’s MMORPG at first; lower than a yr after launch, TESO dropped the obligatory subscription and was working in direction of truly getting The Elder Scrolls (however) On-line.

Frankly, WoW will not be a patch on TESO lately.

2015 and 2016 spawned the adjustments that primarily turned TESO into the distinctive MMORPG it’s right this moment. After all it was a giant step ahead to alter the obligatory subscription to an non-obligatory provide for the extra hardcore gamers, however it was the One Tamriel replace in late 2016 that received many gamers over. The key rework of the sport eliminated stage restrictions associated to areas and core actions, successfully including the layer of player-driven freedom that has characterised Bethesda Sport Studios’ video games for over a decade.

Thoughts you, TESO nonetheless performs like a contemporary MMORPG, however it’s one of many few main on-line titles that does not continuously take you to the following huge step in a protracted record of obligatory missions and progress. It seems that TES diehards did not need a World of Warcraft reskin, however simply The Elder Scrolls On-line. Who would have thought?!

When you’re uninterested in different MMOs, simply go to Elsweyr.

As soon as ZeniMax completed the primary batch of main DLCs and reworks of the core recreation, 2017 launched the Morrowind Enlargement Pack, taking the sport’s first step towards an annual mannequin of updates constructed round larger content material drop – very like Future 2’s. It is a technique that has labored amazingly for Bethesda and ZeniMax, and one which has made following TESO’s overarching story and fixed evolution that a lot simpler.

For a daily MMORPG participant like me, it is exhausting at greatest and mind-numbing at worst to understand a continuous flurry of updates and reworks. And that is inevitable within the age of ever-expanding on-line video games that wrestle to satisfy the unrealistic calls for of gamers with an excessive amount of free time. However the TESO staff appears to have struck a pleasant steadiness between entertaining the rabidest a part of its participant base and gracefully guiding informal gamers by means of Tamriel’s many adjustments.

Tamriel is stuffed with pleasant faces.

You’ll be able to all the time anticipate a strong livestream early within the yr to let you know what the following huge factor is within the seemingly countless TESO saga. Timed occasions and minor updates, that are punctuated yearly, could be talked about, however the highlight is placed on the primary attraction. Plus, the minor DLCs main as much as — and persevering with — the storylines of the foremost expansions are clearly outlined in roadmaps that are not bloated with video game-esque stuff associated to different points of the MMORPG.

In stark distinction to Blizzard’s headache-inducing streams and shows for WoW, ZeniMax cuts all of the numbers and extra technical BS to deal with what makes TESO — and The Elder Scrolls as a complete — necessary to so many individuals: the world and the story. The place are we going? Who can we meet? Who’re we combating? I can definitely examine each little tweak and system rework in weblog posts and patch notes.

To appear acquainted?

For instance, probably the most technical factor these streams ever get is outlining tangible adjustments in how the case or related techniques work, possibly giving gamers an replace on how the optimization efforts are going… It often is. Nonetheless, and as I stated earlier than, all the knowledge I want is obtainable elsewhere. And this order of priorities can be felt within the recreation, which is why I am penning this piece within the first place.

We have already coated how TESO might be the right solo-friendly MMORPG expertise, and it largely has to do with how the developer has dealt with its strategy to the franchise’s signature open-world RPG freedom. However there’s additionally a particular sensitivity to how the studio delivers the content material and lets gamers move by means of it.

Everybody – are available in right here and say good day!

First, I by no means really feel like I am lacking something. Sure, the sport’s many actions could be layered, and timed occasions are screaming in my face “come and get these shiny loot crates” each time I log in, however it’s actually not a requirement to take pleasure in my enjoyable on this planet of TESO and lots of many many extra. optimize quests… and even the excessive stage dungeons!

With One Tamriel “softening” the enjoying subject for TESO’s major portion of areas and quests, going by means of storylines and leaping between areas is easy as butter, and a lot of the group actions I (presumably) shut me down each time I leap into the sport. not outdoors as a result of I miss the newest meta construct.

You’ll be able to’t wriggle out of right here.

Plus, I can embark on any quest I need and perceive the largely contained story with out having to learn/play years of dense TES data. As interconnected as every little thing is, the sport’s greater tales work effectively sufficient on their very own, and I by no means really feel like I am lacking a selected little DLC to know the newest main enlargement.

Better of all, the general expertise for hardcore gamers hasn’t suffered from TESO’s love for its informal viewers. The endgame has lots to chew on, characters can develop nearly endlessly, and the huge PvP could be loved because the sweatiest on-line battle if you need. After all, some restrictions apply, however there needs to be some form of reward for individuals who put a whole bunch of hours into the identical recreation, proper?

For now, I am eagerly awaiting the Excessive Isle enlargement pack – due out in June – as I purchase new furnishings for my cozy mansion within the countryside of Skyrim that nobody ever visits, and I play a major collection that dropped out almost two years in the past. And who is aware of, possibly I am going to roll in a brand new character. I am going to meet up with you all… ultimately.

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source https://epicapplications.com/i-cant-keep-up-with-the-elder-scrolls-onlines-rapid-content-drops-and-thats-a-good-thing/

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felassan · 3 years

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Jon Renish (Foundation Technical Director @ BioWare, working on DA4) recently did a Twitch stream where he played through some DAO. Although he works on DA, this is his first time playing through DAO. He’s playing through it looking at random details from a dev perspective as he’s currently working on DA4 and therefore wants to know more about the previous games.

On the stream he mentioned some tidbits on the development of DA4. There were also some insights and anecdotes about the development of DAO and similar. It’s a 3 hour stream so I collected them here in case that’s of use to anyone (for example not everyone can watch streams which don’t have subtitles/captions). The stream is a fun/interesting watch though, so if you’re curious or able to watch I recc doing so. 😊 The rest of this post is under a cut for length.

Please note that there’s some paraphrasing on my part, this is not a transcript. There are also some additions from another dev who featured on the stream to give some commentary. The stream also contains more snippets that at times I couldn’t make out (I tried my best!).

(There is a mention of Cullen’s VA in the text below.)

DA4

Jon said he can talk about things about DA4 that aren’t “consumer-facing”, but he can’t say anything about the game that would be consumer-facing but which isn’t already publicly available. There are several reasons for this. One, that’s not his job, there are people whose job this is and they let each other do their respective roles. Two, BW are a publicly-traded company, so if he said something that could affect that that would be insider trading. Three, they’re not done making DA4 yet, so if he said that they have added [x] to the game and people got all excited about that or pre-ordered on that basis, but [x] ended up being cut, people would be like ‘BioWare lied to us’, when it’s just that things changed during the course of development, as is often the case

He’s glad that fans are excited for the game but notes that fan expectations are always double-edged. It can be really tough as some people started ‘playing’ the game in their heads as soon as they heard of it. That’s fine, he loves that, but he hopes that peoples’ expectations don’t turn into requirements. Clearly BW have alluded to certain characters, like Solas, being in the game, but some fans say things like “If [say] Morrigan isn’t in the game, then, rahhh!” Y’know, there’s a lot of talk about how certain characters have to be in the game, and yeah.

On characters which are quantum (i.e. characters which can die or which can have similar end-states as death in previous games): their being quantum makes it really hard for the devs to work with those characters in subsequent games. The devs naturally aren’t going to put as much effort into characters which could have died previously. A character can have had an amazing appearance throughout/role in a previous game, but if there is a risk of something happening to them and of them being removed [effectively] from the plot, it just doesn’t make sense to have them as a major character in a subsequent game. If a character can, say, sacrifice themselves in some glorious ending, the devs have to make sure that if they use them again, in worldstates where the character didn’t do that, the character is kind of ‘muted’, as the devs don’t want to disrespect the players who made a different choice

A comment in chat expressed a wish for Shale in DA4. Jon’s response is that he has no idea on that front

Bugs don’t come out of crunch, they come out of development in general. Crunch does impact on the quality of a game though. In recent years BW are always really trying to reduce crunch, they’re currently working really hard to bring it down. The best way of doing that is by controlling scope. As creatives it’s tough to balance wanting to make great stuff and be industry-leading with the desire to constantly do extra passes over things they’ve created like the audio, art etc. Their biggest enemy is time, other ways of reducing crunch or time spent in general include iterating tools to make often-repeated processes as time-efficient as possible

I think the following was an observation on the industry in general as opposed to a BW-specific/-exclusive comment: he thinks that as a result of this sort of thing [working to reduce crunch], a lot of games are going to have to be smaller and a lot more focused in scope i.e. the devs will have to focus on hitting the key selling points of that particular game/series as hard as they can, and cut down on branching out sideways/wide on a bunch of random other stuff

Jon doesn’t personally engage in character creators in games, but he knows that for some players that expression is worth a lot of time and focus. BW want to be industry-leading in this kind of stuff as it’s something which is interesting/key/integral to their games

In a way BW have made their own nest of problems what with every DA game being so different to the previous one. Still, he notes that each game has a staunch fanbase that says that their particular favorite game is the best one in the series

He doesn’t want people who think that DA4 isn’t what they want to buy it and be upset - there are so many other great games out there! BW are going to make the game they’re going to make - if some people like it, that’s great, and if some people don’t, that’s cool. Sometimes waiting until reviews are out and/or really seeing beforehand if a game is something that you want [has things/features in it that you want] prior to getting it - as opposed to jumping right in or pre-ordering - is a good idea. Fans don’t always know what they want, but they do know what they like - these are 2 different things

He hopes that whatever they ship for DA4, people go “I enjoyed this experience”, and that then, if there’s additional content for it down the road, people can decide, “do I want this further content?”

On hair: BW are using the new hair technology in the latest version of the Frostbite engine, so they’ll see what they can do! This was said in response to a comment about the hair in the latest FIFA games (as EA make FIFA)

A comment in chat asked about a flying mechanic (griffons). Jon’s response is that flying is such a heavy gameplay mechanic that you can’t put it in a game without everything in the game being built about it (see Anthem)

Relating to the above comment, in DA4 mounted combat would be cool but then they’d have to make the game ‘around’ mounted combat and make the mounted combat feature meaningful

On the underwater concept art: it should not be interpreted as a promise of gameplay. BW have amazing artists who sit down for a couple weeks while they’re in early production and just draw loads and loads of all kinds of stuff. Concept art is like a moodboard or Pinterest board. Elsewhere in the stream he advised, take all the concept art together like a mosaic and ask, ‘what is the overall theme[s] here?’, and to zoom out from individual details. [This stuff echoes PW’s word on concept art]

BW don’t generally write things or the choices as bleak as the choices in DAO were anymore. This is a conscious choice on their part, they want their game to be fun [note: this was said when the side quest in Orzammar where the Warden has the option of convincing a dwarven mother to abandon her young baby to die was being played through. It seems to refer to intensively grimdark choices/beats of this kind]

I think this was more of a general comment on games: SSDs (solid state drives) mean that players will see shorter elevator rides (Mass Effect - was this a reference to the remaster?) and fewer switchback corridors (those are actually loading zones). Generally, these are going to change mechanically the time it takes to do stuff in games

The devs have lots of features on their backlog that they’d like to offer players but each will ofc involve implementation and subsequent maintenance, and each one that is chosen to add is being chosen over something else. And sometimes, it’s hard for them to tell if [x] feature or [y] feature would be better to add to the game

They’re about to work on a giant feature (a pure tooling feature, something that isn’t consumer-facing) that is probably going to take ~2 staff years of effort [I think “staff effort” includes multiple staff working concurrently, so 2 years of staff effort doesn’t = 2 years of time chronologically] to get done in the next few months. They’re investing all this effort across the people working on it because they don’t want their artists and designers etc to have to deal with the problem that it’s going to solve anymore. I’m not sure what this feature is but elsewhere in the stream they referred to tooling and automation and gave the example of, the better your tooling is, the fewer times you have to manually set the camera for a human vs elf vs dwarf position, for dynamically-generated [cinematic?] content and for the first pass to be automated (if this is the case, less time is spent/wasted on redoing it and manually touching it up) [see last bullet point in this section]

He doesn’t know how big DA4 is going to be but said “let’s ballpark and say like most games it’ll be somewhere between 70 and 100 GB”

If we kept our Wardens as the PC throughout all 3 games, at the end they would be so powerful that it’d be a bit like “Let’s just do [thing], I’ve killed gods before, whatever”. He thinks it’s good that they have fresh characters each time in DA in order to reset that power level. Some people want more Commander Shepard in the next Mass Effect and he feels like, ‘what else could you possibly want / what else could that character possibly do after 3 games?’

When asked how much freedom he/they have now to focus on next gen, he said that there’s actually almost no difference on that front. The problems never change. They now have better renderers, better ray-tracing, better graphics cards etc, but they have always made DA games for high- and low-spec PCs, so it’s actually about gameplay systems. The freedom isn’t power-based and them getting access to more cores and more RAM generally isn’t going to change how the games are played. The games still have to be made for hard drives on PC. Dev creativity matters more than power here. The challenge of building a BW game is more about/from managing loads of different plotstates, loads of different art pieces, etc

On the title situation (two): names are the last thing they worry about because names have to go through legal before being approved. Every name, including character names, has to be checked in case it’s a famous person, or associated with something bad, or offensive in a different language due to localization etc

They don’t do face scans of people with big beards

There was also a bit about changes/developments to/in the cinematic design process and associated tooling [?] but I found it too hard to follow sorry >< This bit of commentary begins at timestamp ~ 1:52:45 and continues til ~ 2:00:05 [keep listening through the bit where they pause for a cutscene]

General BW

There’s currently ~350 staff in Edmonton, ~200 in Austin and more elsewhere

He notes that DA games sell pretty well, but relative to EA games in general, they’re a drop in the bucket compared to FIFA

DAI

5% of players of DAI never created a character [Q: does this refer to people who just used the default appearances/presets with no editing, or people who only played multiplayer?]

The mounts don’t actually go faster than running, this is an illusion

I think they said it has 55,000 lines of dialogue. [I’m pretty sure I remember devs elsewhere saying it has 80,000 lines of dialogue]

One of the companions had to have their name changed during development because of legal/translation reasons. It sounds like the original name sounded too close to something offensive

DA2

Back when DA2 was internally code-named “Nug Storm”: this was at the beginning when it was pitched to the team on a set of slides. The image on the slide for that pitch had devil horns, a metal hand and no flesh, it was just made out of fire and flames

DAO

The engine DAO is made on is the third engine that they tried for it during development. [David Gaider has gone into the DAO engine stuff some on Summerfall’s series of DAO playthrough streams]

The cracks on the cracked eluvian asset are modelled after the crack on the Tardis in Doctor Who from around that time, as at the time some devs had been talking about Doctor Who a lot. A dev actually added this factoid to DAO’s entry on TV Tropes but someone else (evidently not a DA dev) came by and deleted it saying that it was too much of a stretch x)

Before the game had its name there was an HTML script that randomly generated possible titles for consideration, it adds verbs and nouns together e.g. “Grim Dark”. One of the craziest possibilities that it once generated that the devs always remember is "Bone Wind”

One of the portraits that’s used for decoration around the world in-game (it’s of a bearded human man) is actually of a specific BW staff member

He played through Stone Prisoner, where Wilhelm’s son Matthias gives exposition in the cellar. Matthias is voiced by GE and this had been pointed out to Jon earlier on. Jon: “I don’t think that character’s voice acting was super strong there”

On the in-game area towards the end of Stone Prisoner: Outdoor areas in games are large and one of the things needed for them is streaming, so different chunks can be ‘streamed in’. There’s a tower [?], and technically the top of the tower was made an outdoor level so that sky stuff could be there, though it didn’t really need to be. The person that made it an outdoor level chose the very smallest chunk size for the terrain mesh, which determines how fine of a streaming they do. So when playing, every time you moved like 4 meters, the game would stream out 50-100 chunks behind you and the same in front of you (this is the bubble around the player of what actually exists). Because it was so small, it was constantly thrashing the CPU and disc to do all the loading. The devs were like “this isn’t going to work”, but they barely had any time. The solution: they made a new level that was outdoor and copied all the sunlight and other settings, but with the largest chunk size. They copy-pasted the entire level from one to the other. The problem with that many chunks then is that there was a giant expanse of flat terrain sticking out of the middle of the tower. They didn’t know if the story was going to involve shots of the outside of the tower for this sequence or not, so they took the terrain deformation tool and bundled all the terrain vertices at the bottom of the tower in a giant clump. So to this day there’s a mess of vertices and twisted terrain at the bottom of the final level that probably no-one has ever seen [not sure though if this anecdote is in reference to a place in that DLC or somewhere elsewhere in the game?]

There were also some tidbits on Anthem, however I didn’t note them down (sorry).

If you think I misheard or misunderstood anything from this stream please let me know and I will edit/fix it. :)

(Thankyou to some of my friends who explained a tech detail from this to me.)

[source] <-- current rewatch link

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #dragon age #bioware #video games #greg ellis mention #morrigan #queen of my heart #solas #mass effect #anthem #next mass effect #i love these factoids and insights into game dev it's so interesting and fun #i actually started this post yesterday but 2 hours in I was so sleepy (it was mad late) so I called it a night

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valoniya · 3 years

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Mark Darrah’s resignation from Dragon Age + Bioware: something’s not right. (With receipts)

Apologies for the long post, but I do have some thoughts. Yesterday, Mark Darrah (and then Casey Hudson) announced his retirement from Bioware after 23 years as an employee. Mark was a veteran who was there since BG1 and served as the Executive Producer for Dragon Age: Origins, 2, Inquisition, and the upcoming sequel. He has been well loved by the fandom (he’s the guy that retweets all the fanart and trolls us by teasing new content) and by the developers (even the ones that left), and his abrupt departure has become a talking point. Bioware and Mass Effect have both been trending on twitter because of it. But unfortunately I, and many others believe that this may not have been his choice, and that a certain right-wing voice actor may have been involved. I have to state for my protection that this is speculation

the reactions have been shock from the people that used to know him, this wasn’t what the reaction was like when say, vet Producer Fernando Melo left, or even when David and Mike left themselves:

Even his profile has been changed so that his header, pfp, bio and pinned post are all his statement. It feels more legal than anything else tbh (and casey hudson has not done the same)

Mark was also present in the BTS video (as was Casey) so I do believe this was a decision that was made recently. Back in August, when the BTS video was made, said voice actor joined in on the talk (going to call him Bread). Bread tweeted out that he was excited and asked his fanbase if they were ready for it. This prompted a lot of uproar, with a lot of fans upset that a transphobic, right-wing actor would be part of a game that promotes equality and love with the LGBTQ community. The fans then tweeted at Patrick Weekes and Mark Darrah. Patrick blocked most of said concerns (perhaps they did not have the power to address these concerns) and Mark copied and pasted a statement from his lawyers.

said voice actor was NOT happy with this statement, and put out a very...threatening reply:

This strongly suggests that he was planning on taking legal action against Mark and Bioware, but since we heard little else after this, most people thought that the matter was done and Bread was miffed that he wasn’t going to get called back in.

Understandably, there has been an outpour of support and love given to Darrah (and a lot of sadness of course) he had 194 replies to his tweet, and he responded to only 1 reply:

A “lol” could mean anything of course, but he must know that something like this would cause speculation. I think he knew what he was doing.

At the same time, a smaller twitter account posted that Bread had requested them to take down some tweets during that same period.

They then made a post that they would be going private, perhaps forever, which prompted a lot of worry from their followers. (this tweet was deleted so I couldn't catch it). Afterwards the same day Mark announced his retirement, they followed up with this:

Addendum: When checking Marks responses, I saw that Bread had made responses on the 30th Nov and 1st Dec, why did he reply so recently? Especially to a post made in August?

Of course, on the day of Darrah’s retirement, he tweets THIS:

If bioware sided with a right wing bigot over their own staff, and unfairly fired him for doing so, I will be VERY unhappy and will no longer feel comfortable supporting their games. It is all speculation, but I wanted to put it out there.

#dragon age #mass effect #bioware #cullen rutherford #mark darrah #dai #mine #long post #i censored everything bc hes being legal and nasty

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thessalian · 2 years

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Thess vs Bioware Magic

So apparently Bioware is hiring. I found out about this on Twitter and there’s even a job for which I have experience: Executive Assistant (glorified term for Secretary).

I was tempted. For like ten seconds. And then I realised ... no. I don’t want to work for Bioware until and unless they provably change their entire corporate culture. And with the economy doing what it’s doing, I see them getting way worse before they get better.

Seriously, I get the temptation to work for a company that made some of your favourite games. And granted, they’re not in the press for the kinds of abuse that, say, Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard have thrown at their employees. However. my memory does not shame that of the average goldfish, and so I remember a couple of terms used in various articles (mostly by Jason Schrier) about the development of Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Anthem. Namely: “Bioware magic” and “stress casualties”.

We all know their modus operandi. Flail around with zero direction for a good long while, trusting in “Bioware magic” to make sure it’ll all be alright on the night. And by “Bioware magic”, they mean “crunch crunch crunch”. They overwork their employees to ridiculous levels and have had what they refer to as “stress casualties” - people who’ve had to be off work for weeks or even months for stress. Even those who manage to carry on working under those conditions have reported finding a little room to cry in on a regular basis at the workplace. That belief that “Bioware magic” will solve any and all problems does more than one disservice to the employees. The first, obviously, is the physical and mental health ramifications of that level of overwork. The second is that by using a term like “Bioware magic”, they actively obfuscate the role the ludicrously overworked staff have in making it happen. “Magic” suggests it just happens. No, it does not just ‘happen’. People make it happen. And people are undervalued enough as it is. This is a service economy. People are selling their labour. And bullshit terminology like that undervalues that labour - which is great for the company but bad for the people actually doing the labour.

And the stupid part is, it generally isn’t ‘alright on the night’. However one feels about Mass Effect: Andromeda, fact remains that it launched in a sorry fucking state for a AAA video game. It was a mess of bugs and needed significant patching before it ran remotely smoothly. And as for Anthem, well ... it was half-baked at best, and their road map had to be scrapped because there was too much work to do in order to make it playable before they could move on to actual content, by which point everyone had more or less given up on it. All that frenetic, last-minute bullshit doesn’t even net positive results anymore! It didn’t at the time, frankly, but at least we ended up with fewer bugs when there were fewer moving parts and less focus on open-world, I guess?

So no - while it sounds nice in theory to work for the company that makes some of my favourite video games, I know how they operate. My jobs over the years might have had a lot of stress but they weren’t ... well, that. I’m not having it. No. I’d almost recommend no one apply for those damn jobs if not for the fact that if they don’t have more staff, they’ll just overwork the ones they still have even worse.

Also ... Edmonton, which means Alberta. Fuck you; I’m not living in Alberta. That whole province fucking scares me. @miaaoi calls it “the Texas of Canada” and I’ve heard others call it Albertabama. Ultra right-wing libertarian freaks are in charge over there, and I get enough of that here in the UK, thanks. I’m not moving to one of the few places that’s worse than where I live now, even if the national government might be a sort of checkrein on Alberta if you tilt your head and squint.

#Thess plays video games

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thelittlestboi · 2 years

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Its Sad boi hours

Going through some of my old save files (I tend to make a new save just after every major event so I can use the old file to replay the fun bits) and I came across one that was seemingly a dud, (me bull dorian and Cassandra in the hinterlands collecting shards) but I triggered (either by accident or maybe this is why the file existed who knows) the flirty dialog between bull and dorian the whole "conquer you" bit and I have .... thoughts. This gonna be long so scroll on or buckle up

Imagine if you will, pinning after these two, two of the most handsome men who also happen to be into men, who Also happen to represent two of the biggest parts of yourself. (A mage and a qunari) You adore them, you recognize yourself in them and you unsurprisingly develop huge fat crushes on the both of them.

But its just not quite clicking. You can flirt with Bull all day, he'll let you but its kinda like talking to a wall. He either ignores the more cringe attempts you have flirting (trying to bring up lovemaking after 2 whole conversations), or just kinda skirts the whole conversation.

While flirting with Dorian is like trying to impress the man who is better at everything. Can't complement his face, he knows he's pretty, can't complement his magic, he made time magic, we get it he's great. Can't even give him his amulet back without him yelling at you. (Which is a whole thing. I get it and its heart breaking how love starved Dorian is that he can't even accept a simple gift but thats a different rant) But Mahanon is trying so fucking hard to get these people to like him, he comes back every day and considers himself so lucky to have these men in his live as he tries to figure out who, ultimately, hes gonna really give it his all too.

So he brings them both on missions, he values thier skills and thier input and they get along well enough.... really well... and now Bulls flirting with Dorian.

And thats gotta hurt so bad. Like you've been vying for these men to notice you and instead you've ended up setting them up to each other. And yea bull says "I've got the hints" later and I feel like that makes these moments even worse?

Bull knows the inquistor has the hots for him and he blatantly and I have to belive purposely flirts with others in front of him just to see his reaction. Cassandra and Blackwall no big deal nothing is gonna come of that. But Dorian??? Oh the stab of rejection. The anger and betrayal he feels, mixed with the guilt of being upset.

He should be happy for his friends, excited for this (possibly) happy union of these two amazing men that he respects and looks up too. But he's not, he's angry and hes hurt.

He hears all the things he wished Bull would say to HIM but instead he has to listen to Dorian reject it. Turning down the very thing mahanons craves so deeply(like really that could not be more dead set on mahanon kinks if bioware tried). He wants to scream, he wants to cry, he wants to fire Bull right then and there cause its hard to not take it personal. He wants to shake Dorian till his arms break, wants to scream in his all too pretty face the hes an idiot, throwing away what could have been a perfect moment.

But he can't. Hes the inquistor and frankly there are more important things that need to be taken care of. (Ah to sprinkle in the weight of the world and the crushing need to be everyones savior all while dealing with the growing feeling of imposter syndrome) So he has to swallow all of that up, gotta push it down into a little ball of knots to deal with later. Im both happy and sad there's no dialog options for the inquistor after that scene. I dont think bioware would give me the option to cry silently, but I would and Mahanon does.

He tightens his hold on his staff as his heart tightens in his chest. His lips would tremble as he'd bite his tongue, not a sound would be heard, and from his back you'd think he hadn't even heard them. But the tears that stream down his face, that turn to ice and dissipate into nothingness before ever reaching his chin. They hold all the words he wish he could say.

#the iron bull #dorian pavus #mahanon adaar everybody #im sensitive #like diagnosed bipolar depression kinda sensitive #so that means Mahanon gets to inherite my rejection sensitivity!#and you just know evwn after mahanon ends up with one (or both of then in some cases)#this moment lives like a tumor in thw back of his head #that lite nagging thought of #qould they be happier with someone else?#someone better than you

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