Forum:The Spoilers of War

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With giving tips to new players, recently, something occurred to me...

When discussing DA:O, it's still considered bad form to say who the Secret Companion is.

Within a day of DA2's release, however, every last detail of the plot was being discussed openly & without spoiler tags.

Maybe one reason for this, is that several quests' names in DA2 are spoilers. ("Gee, Hawke, the quest is named The First Sacrifice. I sure hope Ninette is safe and sound!) One thing I've complained about over and again is that the very first image you see, before even starting the game, is the First Enchanter holding a staff, festooned with the symbol the Blood Mages in Denerim had in their Deserted Building.

Why do you think this is? Did the advertising set the tone? Does the plot telegraph too much to make the secrets worth keeping? Are the twists too fantabulous to keep to oneself? Futonrevoltion (talk) 22:07, May 29, 2011 (UTC)Futonrevoltion

I agree, but think a large amount of the spoilers is to give some flavour to those who are using Dragon Age II as an entry point. For example, people who heard Varric talk about Loghain's desertion might think, "Ooh, I'd like to see that for myself." and go and pick up Originsm while it would just provide enough background to understand the basic plot points of Origins. King Cousland (talk) 22:14, May 29, 2011 (UTC)

Honestly, I think it was because of the early game leaks. Before the official release, I was roaming the Bioware social site, and about 5 weeks before, a spoiler thread was created to discuss collected information about the plot, characters ect. Originally this thread had remained dead for a while.. until some members started to leak live streams of the game. Because of this, before I had gotten the game I knew the fate of Hawkes mom, found out that Anders pulled a "Sephiroth" as it was called, that the deep roads could cost me one of my siblings, and that both Anders and Fenris were Bi. And the BSN wasn't the only place that did this; 4chan, and a few videogame review sites leaked info and footage as well, spoiling a good bit of plot in the process. As for the stuff like the obvious title screen, I guess BW thought it would be one of those "you won't understand it until to see it" scenarios, in which you could see that title screen when you first get the game, but until you played the game fully at least once, you won't understand its significance. Still, if you were able to put two and two together by the end of Act 2, then it becomes obvious what the final plot of the game was. In short, it was a possible spoiler, one that shouldn't have been put there. Perhaps it would have made more sense if they did what Portal 2 did, in which after you completed the main campaign, the title screen changed to reflect the ending. Sadly though, this is not so. Sevarian10 (talk) 22:41, May 29, 2011 (UTC)Sevarian10

I think it is probably because a lot of people didn't like DA2 and don't care about giving away spoilers to a game they don't like --The Prophet Hawke (talk) 22:51, May 29, 2011 (UTC)

I really hated the spoilers in quests in DA2. Some in Origins were a slightly spoilerish (for example you knew as soon as you left Lothering that the Orzammar treaty would involve a Paragon, and if you're a Dwarf you can already guess it's Branka since she's the only one alive, otherwise you can guess this as soon as you enter the city) but those spoilers were mostly minor and more a sort of "oh that's what that meant" in hindsight. in DA2 you meet up with Anders and he asks you to rescue a mage and you instantly know said mage has been made tranquil since the name of the quest outright says so. if even the game itself doesn't care about giving spoilers it's no wonder the fans don't. It also doesn't help that BioWare make only a token effort to keep spoilers off their own forums. They're still refusing to make a Mass Effect 3 forum section for example, so the sections not even supposed to have ME2 spoilers in them are full of ME3 spoilers. Same thing happened with DA2 before it was released. I really didn't want to know Merrill was a blood mage or that Anders and Justice had merged or that the Viscount would be killed by the Qunari (and that one was given away in the bloody trailer!) before the game was even released. Rayvio (talk) 23:52, May 29, 2011 (UTC)