New vid: Radioactive (Dragon Age: Inquisition), VVC premieres

[shati]

Source: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Song: Radioactive (Imagine Dragons & Kendrick Lamar)
Content notes: lots of flashy video game lights; persistent gore; no elcor; surprisingly few dragons; ironically, spiders

Summary: Welcome to the new age.

Thank you to
agonistes,
thirdblindmouse, and
some_stars for betaing!

Download link

You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com

I virtuously wrote this post on Wednesday, then left my laptop (and as a result, the actual vid file) in Boston. I was going to add more that wasn't just a list of flycam tragedies, but then...I did not.

In the end, the real epic struggle was the process of getting footage. Even though it's like 90% cutscenes! An incomplete list of things I did for this vid:

Replayed the intro scene with a human PC, because the intro with the elf Inquisitor isn't calibrated right for her height, and her hand ends up hovering over Justinia's upper arm, and it's like...some of the drama is lost...because she could easily grab the outstretched arm at any time...

Played EVERY SINGLE possible ending of the Winter Palace, which (a) got pretty boring, and (b) meant I needed every single halla statue, which (c) meant I had to get the one in the kitchen, which (d) meant I had to run across the entire kitchen on the ceiling beams, on a timer, again. Fuck that halla statue, fuck that kitchen.

Treacherously played both the mage and the templar plots early on, which was actually fun! I still like the mage one more, though. No timed sections.

Enabled Leliana's murder habit, got Cullen back on lyrium, killed Hawke with Varric there, made Cassandra so angry she got drunk and yelled that she like invented me, sacrified the Chargers, and...er...never finished Blackwall's quest, I just realized. Like, I found out his secret, he was gonna be on trial, and I think...I think I forgot to follow up? at all? Like I left him there but without actually making the decision to leave him there...sorry, Blackwall.

Played through the Fade, killed Loghain. Replayed the last fight, left Hawke there instead, insisting to myself that she was still alive. (Played through again with Varric there, left Hawke again.) Went through my save painstakingly editing all the flags I could find that referenced the Alistair vs. Loghain parts of DA:O, reloaded a save prior to the Fade, went to the Western Approach, and found Alistair was there, great! Excitedly tried to play through the Fade again with Alistair. Realized that -- not every time, not consistently, but just often enough to scare the shit out of me -- Alistair would open his mouth and both his line and Loghain's line would come out. HE SOUNDED LIKE A DEMON. IT WAS WAY SCARIER THAN THE ACTUAL DEMONS, WHO ARE PRETTY CHILL. Played through the Fade again, killed Alistair. Breathed a sigh of relief.

The best unused mage armor I had at the point of the time travel quest was the skimpy stomach-baring armor, so I put it on Dorian. And forgot I was going to be using several clips of Dorian in it. Then I got better mage armor, so I gave the fancy bra armor to Varric because I didn't bring him to literally any fights and Varric likes showing his chest, and then...I forgot, again. He is in that ridiculous armor in the shot of him finding out Hawke is dead.

Edited the Divine flags, and reloaded a Trespasser save where I think Vivienne was already there, because when I got to the Divine, both Vivienne and Cassandra were staring at me in their Divine robes. Cassandra looked disgusted.

Tried to get the Wicked Grace game to trigger. Realized I'd have to do Varric's quests. Did Varric's quests, started Wicked Grace...realized Cassandra wasn't there. Decided it looked too meaningful to have that one empty seat. Did Cassandra's quest. Did Cassandra's other quest. Unlocked new areas to continue fulfilling Cassandra's endless demands. Finally learned about Cassandra's erotica preferences, was like, Yes! We're friends now! She'll -- No: still no Cassandra in Wicked Grace. Turns out I had to actually ask Varric to write more porn, and if I tried to ask him the Wicked Grace game started (without Cassandra) first, so I (a) edited the game so Varric fucking hated me, and asked him, my sudden worst enemy, to write more porn (Varric: a nice dude, will write more porn for you even if he hates you), relayed the good news to Cassandra, (b) edited the game so Varric loved me again, and (c) triggered Wicked Grace. Cassandra was there! Everyone who can show up was there! The clip I used from that scene is literally about a second long. At least Cassandra has her porn now. I hope she's happy.

I couldn't bring myself to actually disappoint Cole, so I edited the save to make his approval low, clipped the scene where he leaves, and then apologetically reloaded the original save.

I really wanted some alternate angles on the opening scene, so I tried...like fifteen times...to recreate my Inquisitor and replay it with flycam. Here's the thing nobody told me about flycam: flycam doesn't load where your Inquisitor is. Flycam loads wherever it wants to. Sometimes that is under the ground. Sometimes it's inside of a wall. Sometimes it's somewhere in the middle of a random mountain in the Fade. I spent at least a half hour zooming slowly through the Fade, unable to find signs of life beyond the occasionally spider, totally unable to tell which direction was up, and then...unflycam'd, and found myself staring at my Inquisitor's face in the interrogation cell, except she wasn't saying her lines. She wasn't frozen, either, she was just staring into space. I hit flycam again. I was zooming softly through the green spidery void. Unflycam'd. My Inquisitor stared blankly into space. I felt like I was watching onscreen a beautiful metaphoric expression of my own impending fugue state. I zoomed through the Breach and found myself in the Temple of Sacred Ashes. My Inquisitor stared blankly into space. I exited the game.

The first time I tried to use flycam was in one of the temples in Trespasser. It loaded in the middle of a wall on a different floor than the Inquisitor was, and everything was dark, and I didn't know where I was. I screamed continuously until I zoomed up through the skull of an alive raven to reach air. I think both roommates checked if I was dying.

Either fraps or I kept messing up on the cutscene after the battle with Corypheus, so I played that battle about 5 or 6 times (and still never got a good full clip of the cutscene). By the end I was kind of grateful that Corypheus is an anticlimatic failure of an antagonist.

Went back to a save in the floating Eluvian library to get some more clips with flycam, and accidentally stumbled on the schematics for the armor made from skin. Tried to find my way out of the floating Eluvian library so I could find the Golden Nug, and just...couldn't. I spent like two hours just desperately jumping through mirrors clutching this creepy skin amor sewing pattern, and I never found my way out. In that save branch, I'm still there. Waiting. Probably once you're in you need to finish the whole thing before you get out, but I'll never know, because I got two days' worth of lost in that library the first time, and THERE ARE NO MAPS THAT HELP. I CAN'T EVEN NAVIGATE A GRID CITY. I like to imagine how this reality went on: Solas getting increasingly huffy about the Inquisitor failing to arrive, Orlais and Fereldon impatiently waiting for the trial to resume, the Inquisitor sitting on a chunk of weird rock, staring into space, clutching this fucking skin thing, forever.

When I first played through the scene where Solas explains his plans, I asked every single available question, because I wanted to collect as many expressions/reaction shots as possible. Well, as usual, I messed up, or fraps did, and I lost almost all of the scene. I was too annoyed to replay the whole thing, so when Solas said "I assume you have questions" I picked the "Actually, no" response and his huffy offended Cliff Notes version was honestly beautiful. What a good scene. That is what is in the vid.

I used fraps to capture footage, the DAI Cinematic Tools to get lost inside walls and start screaming, and a save editor I will find again someday to get the Divine variations and to edit demon Alistair into existence.

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