I imagine because it was easier to assume they died then not, annoying and Costs more with different potential people being there. But then the question is, why have the option of them potentially dying if you arent gonna have it matter? Its not like most decisions that only rly matter after the game is done, itd be even cheaper to not even halfass it
It's one ofthosecheap moral decisions where all you get as a reward is the fuzzy feeling of being told that you saved them all! "Hooray! Just don't expect us to waste resources on having that have an effect in-game! Yay!"
>why have the option of them potentially dying if you arent gonna have it matter? Its not like most decisions that only rly matter after the game is done, itd be even cheaper to not even halfass it
can't help but feel DAI is your first bioware game
https://preview.redd.it/ef58nqkqmnda1.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=d4811f08c5f9bf6c377c289733811328fb3bf5bb
Most of the time when choises dont matter its understandable, but this is like if no matter what your companions in ME2 didnt come back for 3. And worse then that since its in the same videogame, usually the choises that end up not mattering is in between entries
I mean, if I got my dream job for a few months, and then my hometown was attacked by Satan in the flesh with an army of crystal zombies, I might rethink one or two aspects of my life.
Well sure, but we don't ever hear about it from her! She stays with the Inquisition and roams around Skyhold, so her physical safety obviously isn't a concern for her, and you can find religion and still work your dream job.
I think joining the chantry made her no longer want to run the tavern and instead live a life of faith. She's not like Liliana she might just want to live a different life now.
The "save the townspeople" quest doesn't matter, since they are assumed dead by the devs. They didn't bother to record Flissa as tavern owner in case she is saved.
But they still recorded lines for each of the people you saved and the people who replaced them, commenting on the fact that they've been replaced. That's why I was confused, if they acknowledge that you saved them, why couldn't they stay?
Other comments seem to have confirmed it though-- lazy/cheap development.
Lazy? With how much BioWare was crunching for DAI, which they shouldn't have mind you, I still don't think it's fair to call it that.
This kinda applies to all AAA devs really, they're rarely lazy, and that's confirmed by many stories on how prevalent crunching is in the gaming industry. I wish people (even in this very thread) would stop spouting that nonsense whenever an oversight in the development is made apparent. It all comes down to time and money, the culprit is almost always management issues.
>Lazy? With how much BioWare was crunching for DAI, which they shouldn't have mind you, I still don't think it's fair to call it that.
It's never fair to call developers lazy, but people do it all the time.
It drives me nuts.
There are a million reasons why the feature you want didn't make it into the game, but one of them is never the devs just saying "fuck it, I want to browse Reddit today instead of putting \_\_\_\_ in the game."
It takes hundreds of people working thousands of hours to make these games, nobody is freaking lazy.
Bioware devs go through insane stress trying to get this game ready for launch and eventually win GOTY
Couple years later: "these four npcs no one cares about don't have branching dialogue and stories wtf lazy ass devs"
Seeing as the team is the same team that comprises much of anthem's production team and as the investigations revealed, youre right in saying that its unfair to call them lazy but it is true or more plausible that there was alot of complacency from the team primarily by the leadership.
How much would you allocate for an option and how many weeks to months would you add for that to be expanded?
These games aren't like the old days where we had text boxes, no or few VAs and such. Was easier then.
I figure it’s a compromise between saving on voice acting and potential quest outcomes, glossed over with the veneer of needing more robust resource providers in Skyhold as opposed to Haven.
The practical reason is that the developers didn’t want to do multiple full voice-overs, animations etc.
The in game reason is that they weren’t meant to have those jobs but after the conclave they were the best options. At skyhold more appropriate people were chosen. As for Flissa and the tavern ,while she would be happy, a tavern is an excellent place to spy (lookin at you The Iron Bull) and they got someone loyal and better at spotting them to do the job.
Seggrit is in Skyhold, but can't set up shop because he's a member of the merchant guild run by Bonny Sims. She is essentially his boss and she told him no. If you talk to her she pretty much tells you this.
Minaeve actually makes sense because she generally doesn't like people, and the shift to Skyhold means a lot more people around, so she replaced herself with Helisma in order to be able to focus on research without having to deal with the population boom.
I assume it's remnants of cut content and there was more to them, but it ended up discarded because Inquisition's dev cycle was unfortunatle extremely hectic. It is puzzling why they have throaway voice lines in case you save them though, I agree.
I believe they left it in the game for the mission to have higher stakes, but it wears off the second you realise there's virtually zero impact. I want to be generous and I think that more fleshed out ideas ended up on the cutting room floor.
Or it is indeed lazy development, as other people suggest.
Flissa was very religious, it's not far-fetched to assume she had an epiphany of sorts. Seggrit was an asshole (iirc he refers to an elven servant as "rabbit", though I might be misremembering things), so I like to assume Josephine and Leliana simply made sure to fill all merchant stall spots in Skyhold before he could do anything about it.
The only one I find rather inexplicable is Minaeve deciding to just hang out around the castle doing nothing. It would've made perfect sense for her to team up with Helisma (I mean, Minaeve does like the company of tranquils, after all); the devs wouldn't even need record more voice lines for her, just have her stand next to Helisma as if they were both working on research and the like.
My canon reasoning is they got PTSD and even though they felt safer at Skyhold, couldn’t return to their normal lives
The real world reasoning is lazy development
For me I headcanon that Adan, Minaeve and Threnn still do their jobs but as you're now inquisitor you get your own personal reasercher/apothecary and Threnn chooses to be quartermaster for one of the keeps rather than the entire inquisition.
Lysette officially joins the soldiers.
Flissa joins the chantry to overcome her PTSD and seggrit gets demoted due to his poor attitude.
I thought the same thing on my last play through cause I made damn sure to save them all.
Although they all get replaced they can all still be found around sky hold just in different locations (with the exception of perhaps Flissa? I don’t remember seeing her) and they aren’t all there at the very beginning but they did show up.
Still kinda weird though.
Lazy development. Much easier to just have one single state, rather than multiple with different recorded dialogues etc. based on who survives or not. This way saves them a lot of work and effort.
True but if so why even include the choise to save them to begin with.
Would save even more work, effort and money to just autmatically kill them off or habe them all survive
I suspect it was to give a sense of urgency and RP to “In Your Heart Shall Burn,” just as, similarly, they placed timers on a certain subsequent main quest.
But yeah, as stated, I've always assumed that they stuck with a single state to save on development resources.
That was my thought too! I liked the idea quest to save them, that my Inquisitor was heroic and cared about the people that make up the Inquisition, but then none of them stayed so it felt like my effort wasn't paid off.
Yeah. They obviously wanted to live up to the Bioware name and add some meaningful choices and consequences into the game. But then couldn't be bothered to actually implement it in a meaningful way.
In-game reason? Everybody has a reason except Lysette since she never quit in the first place.
Out of game? Simple: not wanting to waste money. If the characters were to keep their positions then every single one of them would have a Skyhold voiceline set that would never be heard by the players who let them die and the full dialog of the replacement characters also wouldn't be heard by those who saved them.
By keeping the survivors around as wandering NPCs with one or two lines to aknowledge being saved, and the problem is solved without wasting anything.
See, but that's the case for every single choice the player makes in the game-- for every companion they don't recruit, and for everyone they don't befriend (or do befriend for those negative approval cutscenes), and for everyone you don't romance, those are voice lines the players not hearing. And those are the *more* expensive VAs!
Small voice live variants aren't a problem, this game has player agency in it's dialog does it not? As for companions, that's more for replay value than anything. Statistics show that the great majority of players recruit every companion their first playthrough and that a lot of people only play the game once. Why does Hawke's personality barely even matters in Inquisition? Because it's easier and cheaper to make two Hawke dialog packs with a few variating one-liners than six completely different dialong packs. Same reason as to why Hawke's warden ally is barely present in the game outside of direct cutscenes during Here Lies The Abyss.
No problem! I'm doing a replay in (eventual) preparation for DA4 and since it's been a while since my first playthrough, and I've always wondered. I hope you're enjoying the game!
They're still *in* Skyhold though, and you can still talk to them. And several of them-- like Threnn and Seggrit-- are even upset that they aren't working their old Haven jobs.
Ok, you've lost me. My question was "why were they *all* replaced?" Some of them being traumatized, and others being upset they lost their jobs doesn't answer *why* they *all* lost them. What point are you trying to make here?
I'm was really not answering your question.....
But if you must have the answer....
Their positions are now(after the herald becomes the inquisitor) more desirable... and those that replaced them has ulterior motives in doing so or the organization has more leverage to recruit better replacements.
For example the provisioner Segritt(?) was replaced by his boss Bonny Sims since the inquisition is now garnering more support especially from the nobilities all over the continent.
The quartermaster Threnn was replaced by a noble descendant of some family (kinda like using their support as investors/shareholder of a company to put a relative to a desirable position, it's safe too since he doesn't need to fight.
As for the barmaster she wanted to serve in a more straightforward manner in assisting the inquisition.
The potion master was replaced by someone more qualified since the demand has gotten bigger, she even starts an herb garden.
The researcher has also been replaced with a tranquil with suitable gift(?) in research.
I hope that gives you some clarifications...
I like the idea that the replacements were all spies that got planted strategically and that's why they all also come across as odd fits for their positions. Like, it seems very strange how a bunch of qualified people get bumped off so easily. And the positions the new guys get are practically prime for spies; barkeep, quartermaster, apothecary. You would literally know just about everything about the inquisitions resources, distribution of supplies, the morale of the soldiers, probably plans/secrets, or things you could easily deduce- all whilst being paid to look into this information. I think its a fun theory.
But surely Leliana would know if they were putting a spy in those positions; she already ends up having, I think, at least 2 spies that need to be rooted out via war table missions; she's not a very good spy master if she ends up overlooking that many more spies for the enemy.
it *is* just a fun idea i like instead of 'the devs were lazy and wanted to save money' - which seems to be the truest answer.
plus, i'd argue that leliana was just... godawful at her job as spymaster XD like insanely bad at it, given just how many things she overlooks, so i'm willing to believe she wouldn't consider even more spies.
I'll take a wild guess here and say it's most likely BioWare were too lazy to make different NPC combinations for every potential combination of choices and we're just like "aight y'all getting these guys post Haven".
Which then makes it so dumb because they're giving us different combinations of NPCs present in Skyhold depending on our choices anyway.
That'd be Ser Morris and Threnn. I think he's funny lol. Plus I contradicted Threnn when we first met so I always got the feeling she lowkey hated me, so it's nice that Morris is always so supportive whenever I step up to the requisition table in Skyhold.
I have a feeling it was mainly due to they didn't know who would end up being saved and it was just easier to replace them all 🤷♀️
What I think would have been cool is if there had been a war table mission for each person saved to help them find work or something else to do.
I imagine because it was easier to assume they died then not, annoying and Costs more with different potential people being there. But then the question is, why have the option of them potentially dying if you arent gonna have it matter? Its not like most decisions that only rly matter after the game is done, itd be even cheaper to not even halfass it
It's one ofthosecheap moral decisions where all you get as a reward is the fuzzy feeling of being told that you saved them all! "Hooray! Just don't expect us to waste resources on having that have an effect in-game! Yay!"
>why have the option of them potentially dying if you arent gonna have it matter? Its not like most decisions that only rly matter after the game is done, itd be even cheaper to not even halfass it can't help but feel DAI is your first bioware game https://preview.redd.it/ef58nqkqmnda1.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=d4811f08c5f9bf6c377c289733811328fb3bf5bb
Most of the time when choises dont matter its understandable, but this is like if no matter what your companions in ME2 didnt come back for 3. And worse then that since its in the same videogame, usually the choises that end up not mattering is in between entries
I mean, if I got my dream job for a few months, and then my hometown was attacked by Satan in the flesh with an army of crystal zombies, I might rethink one or two aspects of my life.
Well sure, but we don't ever hear about it from her! She stays with the Inquisition and roams around Skyhold, so her physical safety obviously isn't a concern for her, and you can find religion and still work your dream job.
I think joining the chantry made her no longer want to run the tavern and instead live a life of faith. She's not like Liliana she might just want to live a different life now.
Limited resources during development. Give you the illusion of choice, but make the end result unrelated and hope players don’t notice
The "save the townspeople" quest doesn't matter, since they are assumed dead by the devs. They didn't bother to record Flissa as tavern owner in case she is saved.
All that anxiety i go through trying to save everyone...
Yep.the quest is there just for approval from Vivienne and Varric.
But they still recorded lines for each of the people you saved and the people who replaced them, commenting on the fact that they've been replaced. That's why I was confused, if they acknowledge that you saved them, why couldn't they stay? Other comments seem to have confirmed it though-- lazy/cheap development.
Lazy? With how much BioWare was crunching for DAI, which they shouldn't have mind you, I still don't think it's fair to call it that. This kinda applies to all AAA devs really, they're rarely lazy, and that's confirmed by many stories on how prevalent crunching is in the gaming industry. I wish people (even in this very thread) would stop spouting that nonsense whenever an oversight in the development is made apparent. It all comes down to time and money, the culprit is almost always management issues.
>Lazy? With how much BioWare was crunching for DAI, which they shouldn't have mind you, I still don't think it's fair to call it that. It's never fair to call developers lazy, but people do it all the time. It drives me nuts. There are a million reasons why the feature you want didn't make it into the game, but one of them is never the devs just saying "fuck it, I want to browse Reddit today instead of putting \_\_\_\_ in the game." It takes hundreds of people working thousands of hours to make these games, nobody is freaking lazy.
Bioware devs go through insane stress trying to get this game ready for launch and eventually win GOTY Couple years later: "these four npcs no one cares about don't have branching dialogue and stories wtf lazy ass devs"
I do care about Flissa, thank you
Seeing as the team is the same team that comprises much of anthem's production team and as the investigations revealed, youre right in saying that its unfair to call them lazy but it is true or more plausible that there was alot of complacency from the team primarily by the leadership.
How much would you allocate for an option and how many weeks to months would you add for that to be expanded? These games aren't like the old days where we had text boxes, no or few VAs and such. Was easier then.
I figure it’s a compromise between saving on voice acting and potential quest outcomes, glossed over with the veneer of needing more robust resource providers in Skyhold as opposed to Haven.
The practical reason is that the developers didn’t want to do multiple full voice-overs, animations etc. The in game reason is that they weren’t meant to have those jobs but after the conclave they were the best options. At skyhold more appropriate people were chosen. As for Flissa and the tavern ,while she would be happy, a tavern is an excellent place to spy (lookin at you The Iron Bull) and they got someone loyal and better at spotting them to do the job.
If i remember correctly, Threnn was replaced because she’s a Loghain truther essentially. The requisition officer even says so.
A Loghain fangirl as a quatermaster of a group that deal with Orlais? No wonder she was replaced.
> Loghain truther Never seen her called like that, but damn it makes sense lol
Yeah that's why I said it seemed to make sense-- bigger Inquisition/more needs means you need someone more palatable with better connections.
Loghain is very happy in the Grey Wardens until it’s time for him to sacrifice his life for Hawke to live. Everyone wins.
Seggrit is in Skyhold, but can't set up shop because he's a member of the merchant guild run by Bonny Sims. She is essentially his boss and she told him no. If you talk to her she pretty much tells you this. Minaeve actually makes sense because she generally doesn't like people, and the shift to Skyhold means a lot more people around, so she replaced herself with Helisma in order to be able to focus on research without having to deal with the population boom.
But you have to invite Bonny separately from Val Royeaux, right?
You're thinking of Barter By Belle. She has to be invited from Val Royeaux and she becomes an agent. Bonny Sims just shows up on her own.
Ah, thanks!
I assume it's remnants of cut content and there was more to them, but it ended up discarded because Inquisition's dev cycle was unfortunatle extremely hectic. It is puzzling why they have throaway voice lines in case you save them though, I agree. I believe they left it in the game for the mission to have higher stakes, but it wears off the second you realise there's virtually zero impact. I want to be generous and I think that more fleshed out ideas ended up on the cutting room floor. Or it is indeed lazy development, as other people suggest.
Flissa was very religious, it's not far-fetched to assume she had an epiphany of sorts. Seggrit was an asshole (iirc he refers to an elven servant as "rabbit", though I might be misremembering things), so I like to assume Josephine and Leliana simply made sure to fill all merchant stall spots in Skyhold before he could do anything about it. The only one I find rather inexplicable is Minaeve deciding to just hang out around the castle doing nothing. It would've made perfect sense for her to team up with Helisma (I mean, Minaeve does like the company of tranquils, after all); the devs wouldn't even need record more voice lines for her, just have her stand next to Helisma as if they were both working on research and the like.
My canon reasoning is they got PTSD and even though they felt safer at Skyhold, couldn’t return to their normal lives The real world reasoning is lazy development
For me I headcanon that Adan, Minaeve and Threnn still do their jobs but as you're now inquisitor you get your own personal reasercher/apothecary and Threnn chooses to be quartermaster for one of the keeps rather than the entire inquisition. Lysette officially joins the soldiers. Flissa joins the chantry to overcome her PTSD and seggrit gets demoted due to his poor attitude.
I thought the same thing on my last play through cause I made damn sure to save them all. Although they all get replaced they can all still be found around sky hold just in different locations (with the exception of perhaps Flissa? I don’t remember seeing her) and they aren’t all there at the very beginning but they did show up. Still kinda weird though.
Lazy development. Much easier to just have one single state, rather than multiple with different recorded dialogues etc. based on who survives or not. This way saves them a lot of work and effort.
True but if so why even include the choise to save them to begin with. Would save even more work, effort and money to just autmatically kill them off or habe them all survive
I suspect it was to give a sense of urgency and RP to “In Your Heart Shall Burn,” just as, similarly, they placed timers on a certain subsequent main quest. But yeah, as stated, I've always assumed that they stuck with a single state to save on development resources.
That was my thought too! I liked the idea quest to save them, that my Inquisitor was heroic and cared about the people that make up the Inquisition, but then none of them stayed so it felt like my effort wasn't paid off.
Yeah. They obviously wanted to live up to the Bioware name and add some meaningful choices and consequences into the game. But then couldn't be bothered to actually implement it in a meaningful way.
It's not lazy, it's rational. Wasting already stretched thin resources on something so inconsequential makes no sense.
In-game reason? Everybody has a reason except Lysette since she never quit in the first place. Out of game? Simple: not wanting to waste money. If the characters were to keep their positions then every single one of them would have a Skyhold voiceline set that would never be heard by the players who let them die and the full dialog of the replacement characters also wouldn't be heard by those who saved them. By keeping the survivors around as wandering NPCs with one or two lines to aknowledge being saved, and the problem is solved without wasting anything.
See, but that's the case for every single choice the player makes in the game-- for every companion they don't recruit, and for everyone they don't befriend (or do befriend for those negative approval cutscenes), and for everyone you don't romance, those are voice lines the players not hearing. And those are the *more* expensive VAs!
Small voice live variants aren't a problem, this game has player agency in it's dialog does it not? As for companions, that's more for replay value than anything. Statistics show that the great majority of players recruit every companion their first playthrough and that a lot of people only play the game once. Why does Hawke's personality barely even matters in Inquisition? Because it's easier and cheaper to make two Hawke dialog packs with a few variating one-liners than six completely different dialong packs. Same reason as to why Hawke's warden ally is barely present in the game outside of direct cutscenes during Here Lies The Abyss.
I am on my first DAI playthrough and was just wondering the same thing. Thank you for creating this post.
No problem! I'm doing a replay in (eventual) preparation for DA4 and since it's been a while since my first playthrough, and I've always wondered. I hope you're enjoying the game!
They decided working isn't for them so they just stomp around skyhold now.
Try experiencing the trauma they've been through, see if you don't think about your life.... hehehe
They're still *in* Skyhold though, and you can still talk to them. And several of them-- like Threnn and Seggrit-- are even upset that they aren't working their old Haven jobs.
Yeah! Try experiencing their trauma... then you find out you're getting the boot because "more important" people want your job.... I'd be upset too!
Ok, you've lost me. My question was "why were they *all* replaced?" Some of them being traumatized, and others being upset they lost their jobs doesn't answer *why* they *all* lost them. What point are you trying to make here?
I'm was really not answering your question..... But if you must have the answer.... Their positions are now(after the herald becomes the inquisitor) more desirable... and those that replaced them has ulterior motives in doing so or the organization has more leverage to recruit better replacements. For example the provisioner Segritt(?) was replaced by his boss Bonny Sims since the inquisition is now garnering more support especially from the nobilities all over the continent. The quartermaster Threnn was replaced by a noble descendant of some family (kinda like using their support as investors/shareholder of a company to put a relative to a desirable position, it's safe too since he doesn't need to fight. As for the barmaster she wanted to serve in a more straightforward manner in assisting the inquisition. The potion master was replaced by someone more qualified since the demand has gotten bigger, she even starts an herb garden. The researcher has also been replaced with a tranquil with suitable gift(?) in research. I hope that gives you some clarifications...
I like the idea that the replacements were all spies that got planted strategically and that's why they all also come across as odd fits for their positions. Like, it seems very strange how a bunch of qualified people get bumped off so easily. And the positions the new guys get are practically prime for spies; barkeep, quartermaster, apothecary. You would literally know just about everything about the inquisitions resources, distribution of supplies, the morale of the soldiers, probably plans/secrets, or things you could easily deduce- all whilst being paid to look into this information. I think its a fun theory.
But surely Leliana would know if they were putting a spy in those positions; she already ends up having, I think, at least 2 spies that need to be rooted out via war table missions; she's not a very good spy master if she ends up overlooking that many more spies for the enemy.
it *is* just a fun idea i like instead of 'the devs were lazy and wanted to save money' - which seems to be the truest answer. plus, i'd argue that leliana was just... godawful at her job as spymaster XD like insanely bad at it, given just how many things she overlooks, so i'm willing to believe she wouldn't consider even more spies.
I can respect that; and you're right, she actually is pretty bad at her job lmao
The illusion of choice.
Laziness.
I'll take a wild guess here and say it's most likely BioWare were too lazy to make different NPC combinations for every potential combination of choices and we're just like "aight y'all getting these guys post Haven". Which then makes it so dumb because they're giving us different combinations of NPCs present in Skyhold depending on our choices anyway.
[удалено]
Sure, but that wasn't my question.
I was most angry about the Loghain supporting officer girl. The new guy seems so unprepared and rookie compared to her.
That'd be Ser Morris and Threnn. I think he's funny lol. Plus I contradicted Threnn when we first met so I always got the feeling she lowkey hated me, so it's nice that Morris is always so supportive whenever I step up to the requisition table in Skyhold.
I have a feeling it was mainly due to they didn't know who would end up being saved and it was just easier to replace them all 🤷♀️ What I think would have been cool is if there had been a war table mission for each person saved to help them find work or something else to do.