I’m playing DA:I and realizing that the notions of aggro and tanking might be the MMORPG’s most distinctive contribution to gaming. You got it showing up in 1p here, you had it in that one edition of D&D. (The grid miniatures one, I think. After the open source one, before the one that gave everyone per-encounter spells.)

Game’s fun. The autopilot MMORPG-style battle is sorta like FFXII. There’s actually a lot - the music, the costume design, the environment design - that somehow comes awfully close to Square house style without ever actually evoking it, can’t quite put my finger on it.

The obvious comparison would be to Skyrim but I noticed more the difference, and the way that lined up with their maker’s house styles, each one playing to their narrative strengths - BioWare in dialogue, with thoroughly branched conversations and memorable party members riffing off each other; Bethesda in scene-setting, rigging up little tableaux that told tales by implication.

And suffering from their mechanical weaknesses - the fact that Bethesda doesn’t so much have a game engine as a stats engine on speaking terms with a 3d animator, while 6 games into its console era BioWare still can’t craft a reasonable equipment menu.

Well, good on ‘em.