Dragon Age [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

T.G. Oskar

2012-11-05, 02:34 AM

Dragon Age (at least Origins) + limited time = not a good idea. It's a pretty extensive game, particularly if you like to explore everything. The game pushes you to explore everything, since the core quests are pretty long, and there are a good amount of sidequests, particularly if you want the right amount of levels and whatnot.

Limited money, and still interested in playing? The Ultimate Edition of DA: Origins gives a lot of value for your buck, because it has essentially all downloadable content in two discs. It contains Awakening (the game's expansion) for extra hours of play, plus a few scenarios (one where you control the main enemies of the game, one where you learn about the story of an NPC, a "stand-alone" scenario and what's essentially an epilogue) for extra playing time.

Can't say much about DA II, except it doesn't has a Ultimate Edition (as far as I know of) and most people believe it's an inferior sequel. It has a fixed main character (you can customize him/her, but it's mostly a human), and the story is a bit more contained than the first one.

The third game in the series is coming about one year from now, so no one can tell you if that's the game you should play. In any case, if you're decided to play a game, it's best to start with the beginning for a wide variety of reasons.

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-05, 02:41 AM

Dragon Age origins is by far the better game IMHO, but then I am old school and DA:O is very close in gameplay to an updated Baldur's Gate.

DAII is more of a bastard child between Diablo and Neverwinter Nights (and not in a good way) with the dialogue system from Mass Effect.

I have rather strong oppinions on the matter, but for me: DA:O is one of the top 5 games I have ever played, while I never bothered with finishing DAII.

Yora

2012-11-05, 04:39 AM

DAO is a great game if you like older RPGs like Baldur's Gate and the like. But it's long, at times slow, and doesn't play well on console.
DA2 is a good game if you like action-rich RPGs and it plays far better on console than on PC. It's not as phenomenal as most other games by the developer, but that still makes it a good game. DA2 also has no direct links to DAO and the character has no knowledge of anything that happened in the first game. It's the same world, but mostly entirely seperate games.

I played through 1 once, and got maybe halfway into the Addon, but I don't think I'll give it another try. DA2 is something I like to get out every now and then as it is much faster paced and gameplay is more exiting.

Morty

2012-11-05, 08:20 AM

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-05, 09:13 AM

I agree that DA2 does not deserve the bad rep it gets. Perhaps it's because I don't consider DA:O to be a terrific game, merely a good one. There are problems with DA2, definetly, but there are also things it gets better than DA:O.

It's all subjective of course. I have less problems with the gameplay part of it (I like the dialogue wheel, and can accept the combat (minus the stupid wave mechanic)) but cannot STAND the "story" or most of the characters.

Eldan

2012-11-05, 09:40 AM

I'll agree with the person who said that DA was incredibly dull. The story was nice-ish, but nothing new, the characters weren't unlikeable, but didn't really stick in my mind and the setting had a few interesting spins on old ideas. That's the good part.

The bad part is the gameplay. My god was that horrible. You'll fight the same three types of enemies over and over and over and over for hours. There are areas where you really only walk about three steps betwen random encounters with yet more black magic zombie orcs.

Yora

2012-11-05, 09:50 AM

Well, the Gameplay is Baldur's Gate Gameplay with updated graphics. :smallbiggrin:
I think it did an excelent job as a Baldur's Gate successor, but 15 years later that is not neccessarily the best way to make RPGs.

And the problem with the story is that it seems so complex and exciting at the end of the prologue and you really want to know what everything means and what things you don't know and will discover later on. But unfortunately, at the end of the prologue the story is basically over. There are four decent side-plots, but the main story is nonexisting.

I wouldn't say that DA2 is clearly the better game. I think I even would go so far to say that overall, DAO is of considerably higher quality. But regarding the opening post, I think DA2 would clearly be the better choice. That doesn't sound at all like something for which DAO would be a good suggestion, but DA2 might very much fill the bill.

warty goblin

2012-11-05, 11:26 AM

Well, the Gameplay is Baldur's Gate Gameplay with updated graphics. :smallbiggrin:
I think it did an excelent job as a Baldur's Gate successor, but 15 years later that is not neccessarily the best way to make RPGs.

And the problem with the story is that it seems so complex and exciting at the end of the prologue and you really want to know what everything means and what things you don't know and will discover later on. But unfortunately, at the end of the prologue the story is basically over. There are four decent side-plots, but the main story is nonexisting.

My problem was that my origin story was at least mildly interesting. By the time I got the big old Helm's Deep battle where long odds says Obi-Wan bites it, it was abundantly clear that the story I was actually getting was a chirpy YA rendition of watered down sub-Tolkien drival that had been thoroughly played out twenty years ago. I maybe could have shlecked through to unite the peoples and stop the ancient evil yet again, but it was pretty hard to care about that when the game had just shown me it could do better. Not stupendously better perhaps, but the origins were at least trying.

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-05, 01:32 PM

Both games are dirt cheap right now, though DA2 is cheaper. Also, the demo for DA2 is still available, so if you're REALLY broke you could always download it and see what you think.

I would say that Origins is the better game, if only because they put some more effort into it. That's not to say DA2 is bad, but it's generally accepted that it would have been better if they hadn't rushed it.

Tebryn

2012-11-05, 02:26 PM

I'm also one of the few who find DA2 to be the better game. DA:O was boring with dull characters, a brown and gray world on brown and gray armor with brown and gray bosses. It's realistic, but dull dull dull. The complains lodged at the enemies is a bit true, you fight maybe 4 different types of enemies through out the entire game and that does get a little boring. It only takes 20 of the same world ravaging enemies killed by fire balls for me to seriously doubt the veracity of the threat. The characters in Origins are for the most part... unlikable or just paper cut outs. Maybe that's just my own feelings projected but it sort of suffers from Bioware's inability to set up a good cast in their first game. They're mostly just the generic adventuring party you find in any game. Fiesty Dark Woman, Happy Religious Woman, Optimistic Knight, Drunk Dwarf, Wispy Elf Ranger, Motherly Healer. The list goes on. None of them are offensive or all out bad but...they've been done better other places. It does feel rushed, the first Act by far the best act, but even the other smaller acts are enjoyable.

DA2 is much flasher with a superior combat system. Sure, the storyline is a little cliche but DA:O is as well so you get what you give I guess. The enemies are a bit more varied and they at least tried to make it seem like you were in a wretched hive of scum and villainy what with enemies descending from the rooftops to try and kill you for the fun of it. The city isn't ugly but it is a shame that is pretty much the only thing you're going to see. The characters in 2 are a bit more fleshed out with actual wants and desires. They're still a bit cliche but they still come across as more believable. Dialogue wheels and the added morality system has the problems that system always does but it never really feels important.

So, if you want more gritty and brown tactical based combat then go for DA:O and it's many DLCs. If you're looking for flashy combat than go for DA:2. My suggestion would be to skip DA:O, it's a time sink you really don't need to delve into.

darksolitaire

2012-11-05, 03:55 PM

Seeing I have 12 named characters in Origins character creation screen and 3 in Dragon Age 2, I recommend the former. I don't even want to tell my playing hours, but if you are a perfectionist and wish to do all the side quests in game, first play trough of Origins will take around 60 hours. Origins has good metascore of 91/100 and was more successful game of the two. Bioware even bailed out making an expansion to DA2.

Pronounceable

2012-11-06, 05:58 AM

I'll also echo the sentiment to not buy any Dragon Age. First one is an average game of standard orc bashing generic fantasy and second one is a bad game made of terribly executed dumb ideas. They're both all right if you're a diehard CRPG lover. But limited time and money is definitely better spent elsewhere.

Aotrs Commander

2012-11-06, 06:30 AM

DA:O was one of those games I really enjoyed the first time I played it, but then on reflection and later replays seemed to lack the same grab. It hasn't held up to me as much as Planescape Torment on repeated playing, despite all the former's flaws and more clunky interface.

DA2 I haven't played more than an hour or so (ditto DA:O Awakenings), so aside from those facts alone, I can't really past judgement. (Though that, I think, somewhat speaks for itself.)

PS:T, by the by, if you haven't played it, is available dead cheap, and is still arguably the best RPG ever made in my book. (Provided you're prepared to accept having to deal reading all the dialogue and dealing with some of the eccentricities of AD&D and dealing with the fact your main character is pre-generated for you (the whole point of the plot).) I think it just hit the perfect storm of clever writing, good companions (with a lot of interaction), mystery and a unique setting (and I don't even like Planescape all that much normally) and a flexibility in actions that in a lot of ways, is better than most open-world games (different kind of flexibility, but better.)

I'm hoping Oblivion's upcoming Eternity will be closing on Torment territory; I am beginning to think DA:O just wasn't quite different enough (unlike, say, Jade Empire) to rise above the crowd.

DA:O is, in my opinion, still a very solid game, though.

The_Jackal

2012-11-06, 11:48 AM

I'm actually with Warty on DA:O being bad. It got lots of attention for good graphics and (snort) adult content, but the story was trite, and the cast of supporting characters falls squarely into Bioware's predictable tropes (http://www.cracked.com/funny-3872-bioware/). All that may have been reasonable to deal with had the game not been mechanically a poorly designed shambles. The magic system was insanely broken, to the point where it trivialized the entire game. The AI's default behaviour (for your party) was abysmal, and the scripting system they used to allow you to manage your party's behaviour was arcane, took away from your companion's other utility, and still wound up producing awful results.

mangosta71

2012-11-06, 12:52 PM

I enjoyed DA:O enough to play through it multiple times. DA2, though, I decided not to bother with after going through the demo.

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-06, 01:00 PM

I'm actually with Warty on DA:O being bad. It got lots of attention for good graphics and (snort) adult content, but the story was trite, and the cast of supporting characters falls squarely into Bioware's predictable tropes (http://www.cracked.com/funny-3872-bioware/).

You can pigeonhole any character into a category if the requirements are broad enough. For instance, that list also describes the cast from Firefly:

Charming Lead- Mal
Naive Minx-Kaylee
Wise Mentor-Book
Bitch- Inara
Murderous Sociopath-Jayne

Or Order of the Stick:

Charming Lead-Roy
Naive Minx-Haley
Wise Mentor-Durkon
Bitch-Vaarsuvius (well, s/he may not have breasts, but it fits otherwise)
Murderous Sociopath-Belkar

Man, these are character archetypes. You might as well deride them for the cliché of speaking English.

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-06, 04:14 PM

Basically it boils down to:

What kind of RPG do you like?
Old School "proper" RPGs? Clearly you will enjoy DA:O.
Action RPG? Clearly you will prefer DA2.

Do you have the ability to enjoy a depressing and dark adventure?
If not at all? Neither game is for you.
If yes, as long as the game has strong silver linings: DA:O, but not DA2
If yes, period: Both games.

Do you prefer voiced protagonists?
Yes: DA2
No: DA:Origins
Doesn't matter: Both games, obviously

And the last one is very subjective and just put here because I enjoy ranting:
What kind of companions do you prefer?
Well written characters with unique backstories and compelling personalities? DA:O :smallbiggrin::smallsmile::smallcool:
Badly written Emo characters with too much JRPG influences and carrying idiot balls the size of an arch-demon: DA2. :smallmad::smallyuk:

Aux-Ash

2012-11-06, 04:44 PM

DAO is fairly typical for a Bioware rpg. If you've liked most of them, chances are it will entertain you to some degree at least. The world is fairly well crafted, the companions fair, the plotline decent (if not very original) and as a whole knitted together quite well. It's not a work of art by any stretch of imagination, but it's a quite well made game.
The mechanics suffer a bit from artifacts from older games, so depending on how high tolerance you have for such systems that can alter your perceptions. The origins themselves were fresh and interesting, but not nearly as well utilised as they could have been sadly.

DA2 is bolder, but suffers a lot from execution. It's the first time in a long time Bioware moved away from their "standard plot model". It's still unmistakingly a bioware game, and if that is not your cup of tea then I doubt the plot will excite you much. The protagoniost is much less of a blank slate though, which has the benefit of actually being able to interact with the plot but may result in a percieved loss of agency.
The mechanics are largely the same, but with a few crucial changes to creation, encounters and pacing. It's much faster than DAO.
The companions are quirky and provides less setting exposition than in DAO, but are very involved in the plotlines and have their own story-archs through their multiple companion quests.
Sadly, the game suffers a lot from a short development cycle and perhaps from a poor decision or two. The DLC adventures shows significant improvement in these regards, but if you didn't like the original then it's no point in acquring them.

A key difference is that DAO is fundamentally an epic, it's about heroics and adventuring and in the end of the day triumphing but perhaps with a bittersweet note.
DA2 is not. It's more of a drama or a tragedy.It's not about adventures, it's not about saving the world. It's about you and being dragged along in a series of events.

I personally liked DA2 more than DAO (but I love that game too), but that's neither here nor there.

GolemsVoice

2012-11-06, 06:03 PM

Also, one thing that DA:O had going for me was that it's HUGE, or rather, LONG. If you like it, you'll get a lot of game for your money.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-11-06, 08:28 PM

My problem was that my origin story was at least mildly interesting. By the time I got the big old Helm's Deep battle where long odds says Obi-Wan bites it, it was abundantly clear that the story I was actually getting was a chirpy YA rendition of watered down sub-Tolkien drival that had been thoroughly played out twenty years ago. I maybe could have shlecked through to unite the peoples and stop the ancient evil yet again, but it was pretty hard to care about that when the game had just shown me it could do better. Not stupendously better perhaps, but the origins were at least trying.

I disagree: The plot in DAO isn't exactly riveting or interesting, but it's not supposed to be.

DAO's plot was more of a roadtrip story than a heroic epic, even though it tried to sell itself as the latter (not the least of its marketing mistakes, so I hear). It's a set of Interesting Things for the audience to marvel at while the plot serves as little more than a device to shuffle the audience (in this case, the player) from one Interesting Thing to the next.

Think of it like The Odyssey, or Alice in Wonderland, or The Wizard of Oz: The plot in all three of these is simply that the main characters want to go home, but keep getting caught into obstacles that prevent them from doing so. It's not the process of overcoming these obstacles that makes these stories interesting, but rather what the obstacles themselves have to show us.

Now, whether or not the journey in DAO was Interesting enough to draw you in is a whole 'nother story, and I'm definitely not without criticisms for the game. Personally though, the world of Thedas was enough to keep me playing. There's plenty of interesting stuff there beneath the obvious Tolkien influences (which, really, are mostly satirical) if you take out the time to look.

warty goblin

2012-11-06, 09:29 PM

I disagree: The plot in DAO isn't exactly riveting or interesting, but it's not supposed to be.

DAO's plot was more of a roadtrip story than a heroic epic, even though it tried to sell itself as the latter (not the least of its marketing mistakes, so I hear). It's a set of Interesting Things for the audience to marvel at while the plot serves as little more than a device to shuffle the audience (in this case, the player) from one Interesting Thing to the next.

By the time I canned DA:O, I had seen:
1) Westeros Decaf Lite. I played the human noble, dwarf noble and dwarf commoner origins, and continued the human noble. That one came with one of the more unintentionally hilarious death scenes I've witnessed in a while, mostly because the pool of Eddard Stark's blood kept disappearing and reappearing between every camera cut. This could have been interesting.

2) Skim Milk with a shot of Real Imitation Tolkien Decaf Lite Flavor! Let's see: world under threat from ancient evil god? Check. Lots of corrupted evil beings? Check. Desperate last stand at a mountain fortress? Check. All this built around philosophical musings about the nature of divinity, evil and creation? No. Lots of yammering about blood though, so let's add pretentious metaphors lifted from Vampire the Masquerade to the list.

3) The set of a really low-budget episode of Xena. For a supposed military encampment, Helm's Deep sure felt like a soundstage after the extras budget had gotten axed. And the backgrounds really sucked. Halo had better distant landscapes than this. Also the art was godawful.

4) I see annoying people. Mostly I remember wanting to beat most of the NPCs to death with a mop. It would have been less soggy than keeping them around. I tend to find Bioware's companion characters so transparently pandering I can't take them seriously, and this lot were no exception. It was like a line-up of obvious tragic pasts and personal flaws just waiting for the healing touch of my special snowflake-ness. Also my special snowflake crotch, because only sex with a PC can really lead to emotional healing.

5) Should I fall asleep in battle. Combat was boring. There was too much of it, much of it serving no detectable narrative function. I'm OK with spending a lot of time in games killing things, but please make it fun, and change up the formula a bit, OK?

6) Fine grit sandpaper. So it's all dark and stuff, and there's metaphors about corrupt blood and the church is super-mean to mages but it's complex because the mages can turn into demons at any time also people are racist toward elves and... and everybody acts like a middle class American white guy with whom you'd have a slightly annoying conversation at Starbucks. Also you can still totally kill everybody who pisses you off in a dialog-tree approved fashion and feel awesome about it.

See, Dragon Age is the sort of fantasy I thought the world needed when I was like sixteen or eighteen. At some point in the preceding years I'd realized that people didn't take fantasy seriously because all the stuff I had liked up to that point was a way for the consumer to pretend to be a wizard for a few hours. So what fantasy clearly needed was to be all Dark and about Real Stuff, while of course still letting me pretend to be a wizard. Obviously if I wasn't pretending to be a wizard, I might as well go read boring real-world books.

I think of this as the 'Terry Goodkind doesn't suck' period of my life. Looking back on it it's quite embarrassing, but there you have it. The problem I have with this sort of thing is that the intersection of dark'n'gritty and wizard power fantasy doesn't really work very well. It's a lot easier to deal with special snowflake protagonists in a world that's clearly set up for fun adventure times. Soon as you turn on the grit though, the specialness of the protagonists goes from fun to slightly weird.

Basically go Witcher, go Drakensang, or go home. That is to say either do grit, do wizard adventure fantasy fun time, but please don't try to do both.

Think of it like The Odyssey, or Alice in Wonderland, or The Wizard of Oz: The plot in all three of these is simply that the main characters want to go home, but keep getting caught into obstacles that prevent them from doing so. It's not the process of overcoming these obstacles that makes these stories interesting, but rather what the obstacles themselves have to show us.

Now, whether or not the journey in DAO was Interesting enough to draw you in is a whole 'nother story, and I'm definitely not without criticisms for the game. Personally though, the world of Thedas was enough to keep me playing. There's plenty of interesting stuff there beneath the obvious Tolkien influences (which, really, are mostly satirical) if you take out the time to look.
So wait, your entire plot being about an ancient god trying to conquer the world with an army of corrupted creatures, while warping the minds of any who have contact with said god is Tolkien satire? What's it look like if you play Tolkien straight?

There are some worlds that I genuinely want to spend time in for their own sakes. They have to be considerably weirder though, because that thing where I journey to exotic locales to unite the people in a fantasy-land of elves and dwarves and men? I've done it. I've done it a lot. I can even still enjoy doing it, but I need a stronger atmosphere than what feels an awful lot like somebody's highschool D&D game from circa 1995.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-11-06, 11:01 PM

Before we continue I should make something clear: My perspective on DAO is very different from that of most players for two reasons:

1. I played DAO totally blind, going in knowing absolutely nothing about it. This doesn't sound like such a big deal but when I read pre-release material on the game it feels like it's describing a completely different game entirely. Many of the complaints leveled at DAO (not necessarily yours) seem to stem from mismatched expectations.

For example, I'd have never called DAO "dark" in a million years until I saw this was how Bioware themselves referred to their own project, and I never really felt like it was merely trying to be dark but failing. It felt, as I was playing it, like it was trying to be a silly adventure story that takes a few stabs at de- and re- constructing its own genre along the way. This is why I find things like, say, the Mage-Templar thing to be effective rather than simply juvenile. The situation isn't complex because mages turn into abominations, it's interesting because Knight Commander Gregoir is a perfectly reasonable human being who 100% believes that what the templars do is right. That fact alone speaks volumes about the real sociopolitical issues at work in the setting than any amount of "BWAR HAR HAR DEMONIC POSSESSION AND RAPE IT'S ALL SO DARK OOOOOOH!!!" could ever accomplish. This, by the way, is why Dragon Age 2 ruined the whole damned thing.

2. Most of my interest in the setting (and thus, the Interesting Bits you're shuffled along to on your quest to destroy Sauron Urthemiel) comes from subtext rather than the things that are explicitly said; Subtext the authors may have never intended. To be honest, Thedas in my head is probably much cooler and more interesting than the "canon" of the official conception in the heads of the folks at Bioware. I don't really think this is a problem: Death of the author and all that, and it's a sign of the quality of the work that it was able to provide this subtext at all. Besides, puzzling out the mysteries for yourself is fun! Much more fun than sitting down and being told things. However, not everyone feels the same way as I do about subtext being able to provide a replacement for concrete lore and dialogue writing, and even those who do may find subtext entirely different from mine, due to how these things are necessarily dependent on personal interpretation.

In short, if aren't the kind of gamer who likes to sit up half the night wondering about what the Black City really is, we're not going to see eye to eye on this, and that's that.

Hint: The Chantry's account is demonstrably proven false in a DA2 DLC.

So wait, your entire plot being about an ancient god trying to conquer the world with an army of corrupted creatures, while warping the minds of any who have contact with said god is Tolkien satire? What's it look like if you play Tolkien straight?

I was referring more to the whole Men/Elves/Dwarves/Orcs Darkspawn thing (which to be honest is more accurately a satire of cheap Tolkien ripoffs moreso than Tolkien himself), and it should also be noted by "satire" I meant the non-comedic type. Did you ever go to Orzammar?

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-07, 03:00 AM

DAO ... The mechanics suffer a bit from artifacts from older games, so depending on how high tolerance you have for such systems that can alter your perceptions.

Of course the major criticism against DA2 is that it DIDN't incorporate these things. The reason for DA:O success was that it promised to be the spiritual successor of the Baldur's Gate games, something it also delivered on. To say that DA:O suffered from being like an old fashioned game is like saying that XCOM: Enemy Unknown suffers from being turn-based.

In fact I dare say that this is why the sales of DA2 plumeted and never recovered after all the prebooked and early hype games were delivered (if you compare the sales curves between the two games it is clear that DA:O sold mainly because of word of mouth, while DA2 hit rock bottom two weeks after launch and only sold as much as it did due to pre-orders from DA:O fans).

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-07, 03:14 AM

Hint: The Chantry's account is demonstrably proven false in a DA2 DLC.

No, it ain't. The Magisters still travelled to the Fade and were still transformed into the first darkspawn. The only point called into question was whether there was ever a Golden City; Corypheus says it was black when he got there.

Eldan

2012-11-07, 08:30 AM

I wouldn't have minded the story. It was nothing new, but it was told competently. It was the combat that was so dull that I just couldn't go on.

Morty

2012-11-07, 09:03 AM

There's a mod that speeds up combat in DA:O. It basically increases the speed of every weapon by a large margin. I ran an entire playthrough using it and it was interesting. Combat was quicker and more dynamic. I can't say I didn't have any doubts about balance, though - it seemed as though enemies using "natural" weapons like dragons and ogres were less challenging. But maybe it was just because I'd beaten the game before and knew that I was doing. It certainly gave warriors and rogues an advantage over mages, but that's a good thing.
As for the story:
Corypheus does put some things into question. On the one hand, it means the Chant of Light is partially true - the Magisters did step into the Golden City and the Old Gods convinced them to do it. On the other hand, the City was already black when they got there...
All in all, I'd enjoy DA2 a lot more than DA:O, if it had been handled better. I enjoyed the structure of the story, and there was actually some moral ambiguity to the central conflict, something I would never have expected from BioWare. But it all lacked polish. So the games are mostly tied for me. While I enjoy Baldur's Gate immensely, I really don't think modern games should imitate it.

Aotrs Commander

2012-11-07, 09:37 AM

While I enjoy Baldur's Gate immensely, I really don't think modern games should imitate it.

No, they should really be following Planescape: Torment's example... (As hopefully Project Eternity will do.)

Morty

2012-11-07, 09:39 AM

And when you think about it, Torment was similar to "modern" (using that term veeery losely) RPGs in one way - it presented us with a defined protagonist. Well, alright, he was a complete blank slate but nonetheless he was clearly defined as such - an amnesiac male human covered in scars who woke up on a slab in the Mortuary.

Zevox

2012-11-07, 10:58 AM

Aux-Ash

2012-11-07, 12:14 PM

Of course the major criticism against DA2 is that it DIDN't incorporate these things. The reason for DA:O success was that it promised to be the spiritual successor of the Baldur's Gate games, something it also delivered on. To say that DA:O suffered from being like an old fashioned game is like saying that XCOM: Enemy Unknown suffers from being turn-based.

In fact I dare say that this is why the sales of DA2 plumeted and never recovered after all the prebooked and early hype games were delivered (if you compare the sales curves between the two games it is clear that DA:O sold mainly because of word of mouth, while DA2 hit rock bottom two weeks after launch and only sold as much as it did due to pre-orders from DA:O fans).

Why is it that you think the things DAO suffered from and the things that people (or you?) felt were missing in DA2 are one and the same? :smallwink: These were not the only things that were changed, after all.

DAO's issues was not that it was old fashioned (it was in fact not), but that certain systems fit very poorly to the game they had made. The skill system for example; the idea of a skill system is not bad, but DAO's skills were rather poorly fitted into the system. It actually held you back if you wished to invest in things other than combat (which is like 90 % of the gamecontent). It provides you with plenty of options, but has a skill that is required to invest in higher ability levels. This could have been a very interesting balancing mechanic... had most of the skills been useful outside of a few select moments/tasks.

Wether it was right to completely remove the skills rather than improve them in DA2 is a discussion that is best left for another topic. But, to me anyways, the skills in DAO came across of having been added for the sake of having skills. Not them actually adding benefit to the game as such. Which is what I meant with artifacts of older games.

Using old mechanics is fine (I wouldn't ask them to get rid of hit points for example, even if I personally don't like hit points as a system much) as long as it makes the game better. Otherwise it will detract from the experience (but that might be tolerable if the rest of the game is enjoyable).

I hope that clarifies might statement somewhat.

Tiki Snakes

2012-11-07, 01:01 PM

Haven't played DA2, but I did run through DA:O. It was okay. I found the soundtrack interminably boring so I had to swap it out for my own, (A mixture of Diablo music, Hellraiser themes and other atmospheric stuff). Helped a lot.

Also Mages were hilariously overpowered. Running through as a really short elven Richard O'Brian mage through the game certainly made the often cringeworthy romance interludes more hilarious.

But mostly my over-riding memories of the game can be summed up in my two unnofficial tag lines for the game.
Dragon Age Origins: And I for one will not explain it to you.
Dragon Age Origins: And then you are covered in blood.

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-07, 03:42 PM

There's a mod that speeds up combat in DA:O. It basically increases the speed of every weapon by a large margin.

I must say I was slightly disappointed in the speed too. It was a little too fast in DA:O compared to Baldur's Gate. Plus, much fewer options for setting autopausing.

I don't see how that's possible. DA2's combat system is just DA:O's sped up and with a rebalanced talent/spell system, plus a couple of odd additions (cross-class combos) and subtractions (spell combinations). The base mechanics are the same, the real-time-with-pause type of system seen in KotOR but without turns running in the background.

Zevox

On paper, maybe. But the FEELING was completely different. Especially the higher speed, the much worse camera (no overhead view) and the hillarious overkill violence (cutting a grown man in half using DAGGERS???). But even without those specific things, as I said, the feeling of the gameplay is just... off.

Regarding skills: I don't feel there is anythingwrong with the skills in DA:O. They are no more combat oriented than in BG1 or 2.

Aux-Ash

2012-11-07, 04:22 PM

... and the hillarious overkill violence (cutting a grown man in half using DAGGERS???).

To be fair... that was actually a bug.

Re: skills: Oh they were certainly not. Except combat training... which sits there as a point sink you have to spend your skill points in as a warrior or rogue if you wish to pick higher tiered abilities.
So you have to take the skills -at the expense- of combat ability. Which would be fine if the rest of the game mechanics took that into account. But they do not.

Zevox

2012-11-07, 05:31 PM

On paper, maybe. But the FEELING was completely different. Especially the higher speed, the much worse camera (no overhead view) and the hillarious overkill violence (cutting a grown man in half using DAGGERS???). But even without those specific things, as I said, the feeling of the gameplay is just... off.
Which are all completely aesthetic things, not mechanical ones, which are what the post you were originally responding to was talking about.

And personally, I didn't think it "felt" any different, aside from faster, which was an improvement in my book.

The overkill violence is silly and distracting, I agree with you there. But Origins has a lot of that as well, with the buckets of blood you can get smeared all over you. That's just something they went with for the series as a whole for some reason.

Zevox

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-08, 02:20 AM

People often refer to enemies exploding when hit by a dagger, but I hardly ever see it on Normal or above difficulty. Once in a blue moon, when some low-HP schlub has been hit by a particularly effective cross-class combo, I will see his body parts fly in multiple directions. But beyond that, the only time enemies explode with any degree of reliability is during the exaggerated bits, like when Varric does his Tony Montana impression.

Mx.Silver

2012-11-08, 10:06 AM

DAO's plot was more of a roadtrip story than a heroic epic, even though it tried to sell itself as the latter (not the least of its marketing mistakes, so I hear). It's a set of Interesting Things for the audience to marvel at while the plot serves as little more than a device to shuffle the audience (in this case, the player) from one Interesting Thing to the next.
But the problem is that there's a noticeable dearth of Interesting Things. Leaving aside that Thedas is one of the most derivative, uninteresting settings I've seen in a fantasy game, (something which the art design does nothing to alleviate, by the way) the fact of the matter is that the central conflict of the story undermines any real investment to the game world. All the places you go to are just boxes you have to check on a to-do list to stop the Darkspawn and in almost all of them (or just all of them if you're a human noble or dalish elf) the player is the outsider who has to go in and fix everyone else's problems. If you didn't play as a dwarf you won't exactly find yourself being particularly bothered about who succeeds the dwarven throne because all that matters to you is that somebody does and note that we're talking about one of the few instances where the game isn't just going for a straight 'good or evil/bad' choice.
The fact that the outcomes of these choices can so dramatically effect the game world just makes things even worse. There's no sense of permanence or persistence to these conflicts because you fix most of them, usually within a few hours of having been introduced to them. It just demonstrates that Ferelden pretty much revolves around whatever the Warden decides and that gives the impression that you aren't exploring a world, you're just cleaning up someone else's mess.

Think of it like The Odyssey, or Alice in Wonderland, or The Wizard of Oz: The plot in all three of these is simply that the main characters want to go home, but keep getting caught into obstacles that prevent them from doing so. It's not the process of overcoming these obstacles that makes these stories interesting, but rather what the obstacles themselves have to show us.
But again, the thing is these aren't obstacles so much as they are check-boxes on a to-do list. You don't have to deal with the werwolves to get through the forest to continue your quest, you have to do it because you can't do your mission without crossing off 'go off to the woods to sort out the dalish elves' on your checklist. That's not a roadtrip, that's spring cleaning and this goes on for most of the story.

Personally though, the world of Thedas was enough to keep me playing. There's plenty of interesting stuff there beneath the obvious Tolkien influences (which, really, are mostly satirical) if you take out the time to look.
The thing is, most of this 'interesting stuff' is just cribbing from slightly different sources. The mage situation is nearly a straight copy of Warhammer Fantasy (minus the actual chaos stuff, which have been replaced by the fade when the games bother to remember it exists) and most of the decidedly half-arsed attempts to inject some kind of racial themes read like a watered down attempt at something like the Witcher. The only vaguely noteworthy thing about the setting's cosmology is that it's agnostic and essentially nothing has been done with that so far. The Fade had potential but has so far only ever shown up as a gimmick dungeon once per game. The only other thing it could potentially have going for it is the Qunari and they were barely present until DA2.

Also, one other point: this 'non-comedic satire' thing. I'm not entirely sure how you draw the distinction between that and just playing it straight and I'd be interested in seeing where you draw the distinction here.

Eldan

2012-11-08, 10:37 AM

Hm. That just makes me think how much I would love a real "Roadtrip RPG". No main quest, just a gigantic map full of Interesting Things (tm), short quests and interesting NPCs.

Tiki Snakes

2012-11-08, 10:52 AM

Hm. That just makes me think how much I would love a real "Roadtrip RPG". No main quest, just a gigantic map full of Interesting Things (tm), short quests and interesting NPCs.

Legend of Mana on the PS1 kind of had a similar thing going. It was in many ways a very strange game, but essentially it was entirely made of up sidequests and random interludes concerning the people you met as you uh, put the world back together. Some of the quests chained together into several larger narratives and there was a final boss of sorts too, but it was otherwise refreshingly free of main-quest-narrative stuff.

warty goblin

2012-11-08, 12:06 PM

Hm. That just makes me think how much I would love a real "Roadtrip RPG". No main quest, just a gigantic map full of Interesting Things (tm), short quests and interesting NPCs.

Drakensang: The River of Time has a main quest, but it's essentially a roadtrip. Well, river trip really. It mostly is an excuse to go interesting places and do stuff. Since the main quest is considerably lower key that saving the whole world everywhere it gives the game a very different feel.

Mx.Silver

2012-11-08, 12:14 PM

Hm. That just makes me think how much I would love a real "Roadtrip RPG". No main quest, just a gigantic map full of Interesting Things (tm), short quests and interesting NPCs.

That... could actually work. Heck, if you were willing to hybridise genres a bit there's a good potential for a sci-fi game with elements of the old 'space trade sim' genre (that doesn't get enough presence these days). Or just actual boats if you wanted a more fantasy approach, you don't see many oceanic settings after all.

Eldan

2012-11-09, 12:57 AM

Which now just sounds like an excuse for an Earthsea game.

Xondoure

2012-11-09, 01:13 AM

Almost everything original or unique about Dragon Age comes from Jade Empire.

Still, I like the games. Combat is fun in both if a bit repetitive.

Zevox

2012-11-09, 02:59 AM

Almost everything original or unique about Dragon Age comes from Jade Empire.
:smallconfused: How is Dragon Age like Jade Empire at all? Outside of the generic similarities in Bioware's game design (i.e. structure of the main quest), that is.

Zevox

Xondoure

2012-11-09, 03:43 PM

:smallconfused: How is Dragon Age like Jade Empire at all? Outside of the generic similarities in Bioware's game design (i.e. structure of the main quest), that is.

Zevox

Heavenly spirits in another dimension which can turn into demons, and giant automatons of war created by sacrificing living beings. Not to mention the main character is the last of an ancient order tasked with restoring balance to the world.

Aotrs Commander

2012-11-09, 04:10 PM

Heavenly spirits in another dimension which can turn into demons, and giant automatons of war created by sacrificing living beings. Not to mention the main character is the last of an ancient order tasked with restoring balance to the world.

That's a pretty broad basis for comparison; I bet their are probably half-a-dozen JRPGs (or anime/manga) which could arguably fit that definition (or at least very, very close to it).

Xondoure

2012-11-09, 05:10 PM

That's a pretty broad basis for comparison; I bet their are probably half-a-dozen JRPGs (or anime/manga) which could arguably fit that definition (or at least very, very close to it).

*shrugs* When both games are made by the same company it's hard not to draw comparisons. And while yes, protagonists being the last of an ancient order is a done to death trope, golems (being powered by transplanted souls) and demons as corrupted spirits are less so. Especially when there's Wild Flower with her whole possession thing going on pretty closely matching Wynne and Anders. Yes, none of these are exactly the same in either form, but I think it's fair to say Bioware wasn't done telling these stories.

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-09, 05:53 PM

The Warden wasn't the last of his/her Order; Alistair was also a Warden. And there were Grey Wardens in other countries.

Mx.Silver

2012-11-09, 06:30 PM

*shrugs* When both games are made by the same company it's hard not to draw comparisons.
Why stop with just those comparisons though? I mean both have a lot of humans in them, some of whom can use magic to cast spells. They have earth-like gravity and climate, with similar length solar days too. And years of an earth-like length with four distinct seasons.

Xondoure

2012-11-09, 06:33 PM

The Warden wasn't the last of his/her Order; Alistair was also a Warden. And there were Grey Wardens in other countries.

Yes, but you know what I meant. :smalltongue:

Zevox

2012-11-09, 10:57 PM

Heavenly spirits in another dimension which can turn into demons,
:smallconfused: Neither game has that. The closest that anything comes to that description is Justice becoming warped by merging with Anders in DA2. In both cases otherwise there's a difference between good spirits and demons. Which is a very generic fantasy thing.

and giant automatons of war created by sacrificing living beings.
:smallconfused: The Golems in Dragon Age play a minor role in the backstory of the problems of Orzamar. Their method of creation may bear some resemblance (though not a perfect one) to those in Jade Empire, but the role and importance of them in each game is quite different.

Not to mention the main character is the last of an ancient order tasked with restoring balance to the world.
Which is another typical fantasy thing.

Also, I was going to point out the thing about the Warden not being the last anything, but I see Candle Jack has done it for me.

Zevox

VanBuren

2012-11-10, 07:58 PM

Mx.Silver

2012-11-10, 09:11 PM

Nah. Hawke has far too little agency for DA2 to qualify as a tragedy. That is to say, bad things happen to Hawke regardless of what Hawke does.

That doesn't mean it's not a tragedy, just that's it not a specific type of tragedy. 'Classical tragedy' (where the suffering of the protagonist is a result of their action of mistake) does not account all forms of tragedy, which is why there are works that do, in fact, consist of bad things happening to the protagonist in spite of what they do (e.g. Grave of the Fireflies). Trying to argue otherwise is akin to claiming that something can only be a comedy if it follows the conventions of a farce.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-11-10, 09:48 PM

That doesn't mean it's not a tragedy, just that's it not a specific type of tragedy. 'Classical tragedy' (where the suffering of the protagonist is a result of their action of mistake) does not account all forms of tragedy, which is why there are works that do, in fact, consist of bad things happening to the protagonist in spite of what they do (e.g. Grave of the Fireflies). Trying to argue otherwise is akin to claiming that something can only be a comedy if it follows the conventions of a farce.

I dunno, I think the medium changes things a little. If the point of a tragedy is to make the audience feel sad or depressed, DA2's "tragedies" fails at doing this precisely because of the player's lack of agency.

They always happen while:

- You're away and you don't learn it even happened until it's far too late to do anything about it. See Mother's kidnapping, the Viscount's death, Shamus's death, Carver/Bethany's death, and the chantry blowing up.

- You're stuck standing around like an idiot because you're in cutscene mode and not allowed to do anything but watch. See the Qunari's initial attack, Bartrand's escape, and the Qunari hostages being executed.

Only very rarely are you allowed to actually try to affect the course of events in some way, but in every single case you either never see the results or the results are overwritten by writer fiat later on, sometimes immediately after. The only people whose lives you're able to actually improve and then see the effects of this improvement are your companions.

I never really felt bad about what happened in DA2 because I was never responsible for what went wrong. The most emotional investment I could possibly have is in emphasizing with the NPCs, and good luck with that. I could sortof get into Merrill and Aveline (at least until Act 2 where her character arc just sputters out and dies) but no one else, really.

warty goblin

2012-11-10, 10:19 PM

I never really felt bad about what happened in DA2 because I was never responsible for what went wrong. The most emotional investment I could possibly have is in emphasizing with the NPCs, and good luck with that. I could sortof get into Merrill and Aveline (at least until Act 2 where her character arc just sputters out and dies) but no one else, really.

I suspect that the real problem is that the Bioware model of RPGs is spectacularly unsuited for making a tragedy. The main characters - even those of the Shepard variety - are essentially personality voids, and the entire supporting cast are almost entirely defined in their relation to those main characters. Sure they all have some mega-cool backstory, but once you show up they do pretty much squat without you telling 'em to. This makes it pretty hard to do anything tragic to the protagonist, who doesn't actually have emotions, and the supporting cast is too agency-deprived to be an interesting tragic focus either. While you don't need a tragic flaw to be a tragic hero, some degree of physical and emotional activity probably is. Neither protagonist or supporting cast manages to combine both.

And it's not like they can let you make a super-tragic choice. On the rare occasions when one of the outcomes isn't a showcase of how totally awesome the protagonist is, they still get out unscathed. They have to, since inflicting a mechanical penalty on the player is bad design, and it's hard to inflict emotional trauma on a character black hole. Actually doing something tragic to the lead as a result of player choice requires both that the lead is enough of a person to do something tragic to, and that the player had a very different understanding of how decision making worked in game.

Right now making choices in a game is about determining how to be badass. In a tragedy it's about choosing how you fail.

Oh, look, it's Spec Ops: The Line again...

Zevox

2012-11-10, 11:07 PM

Sure they all have some mega-cool backstory, but once you show up they do pretty much squat without you telling 'em to.
That is not the case in Dragon Age 2. Very much so in fact, given that one of your companions is chiefly responsible for how the game ends, entirely against your own (most likely) wishes.

Anders, a Mage who has merged with a spirit of Justice, spends most of the game attempting to help other Mages and oppose the Chantry's Circle system, which is used to both teach Mages to use their powers and basically completely control their lives once they're finished with that learning phase. The tension between the Templars, who maintain the Circles, and the Mages, is present throughout the game in various side-quests, and the third act focuses on it exclusively. And in the end, Anders decides upon a desperate course of action: blowing up the city's Chantry, with its high Priestess, who has been one of the main forces keeping the Templars and Mages from coming to blows in the third act, inside of it.

Long story short, this ends in a full-blown war between Mages and Templars erupting not only within the city the game takes place in, but throughout the continent. Which is exactly what Anders had hoped it would do, as he saw no other way to free the Mages of the world from the Chantry's oppression.

Many players actually complained about this, since it left the player unable to resolve the dispute peacefully or prevent the war. Myself, I see it as a high point of the game, and a good sign for Bioware, since you're quite right that other characters acting only on the protagonist's whims is a problem they have in other games.
Zevox

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-11, 01:02 AM

I don't really see why agency is required for a tragedy to occur. I hear what Craft Cheese is saying, but I'm not connecting the dots.

I guess I just take things at face value. Leandra was Hawke's mother, and she died in a horrible way. Besides the fact that she was generally a nice person and didn't deserve to die like that, her death makes Hawke sad, and because I've been playing as Hawke for 40-plus hours now and I generally like the guy, I'm sad too.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-11-11, 01:32 AM

I don't really see why agency is required for a tragedy to occur. Why does an inability to prevent Leandra's death make it any less sad?

It's not really the inability to prevent Leandra's death that bothered me... it's that the player really has no involvement in it at all. You slaughter the monsters in Quentin's lair but other than that the entire sequence is in cutscene mode.

If you want an example of a game I felt did this sort of thing better?

Bastion. At the end of the Tazal Terminals, you can put down your weapon and pick up Zulf's dying body and slowly carry him along to the exit while enemies shoot at you. You can do nothing but try to press on and chug health potions to keep your strength up.

Somehow, this scene was a hundred times more gripping than Leandra's death scene in DA2. I wasn't just watching the Kid struggle, I was feeling his weight on my shoulders as I stumbled along, taking a dozen crossbow bolts to the back, refusing to give up on saving him.

It's not like they even have the decency to let you take it out on Quentin when you're out of the cutscene either, you have to fight like 5 waves of demons and abominations before his Plot Armor of Invulnerability wears off. By then all the tension was just gone.

Tebryn

2012-11-11, 02:10 AM

Ya, Hawkes mother dying in DA2 was honestly my least favorite part because there really wasn't anything you could do to stop it. Almost made me put the game down for a few days out of agitation just on how it was handled. It could have been an awesome moment in the game and a moment to really have Hawke not just have the world work around him.

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-11, 02:21 AM

I haven't played Bastion, so I can't really speak to how that worked.

Quentin might have gotten off a little too easily — it might have helped that scene to see Hawke walk over and stamp on his neck a few times —*but I don't feel removed from the tragedy because I couldn't stop it.

To take an example from Bioshock:

I find the scene where you beat Andrew Ryan to death no less powerful because I'm not swinging the golf club.

Zevox

2012-11-11, 02:25 AM

Yeah, I'm with Candle Jack on this one. Though I'm sure most of you have seen me discuss my opinion on things like "player agency" and video game storytelling in general before, so perhaps that goes without saying.

Zevox

Aux-Ash

2012-11-11, 03:09 AM

Guys! Guys! Spoilers! This is a recommendation thread! The op, who may or may not be reading still, haven't played it. Hide those things, let's at the very least let him or her experience that for themselves.

As for tragedy:

I do believe it is, but as has been mentioned not the kind based on a mistake. Rather it is, as Flemeth explicitely tells us, about fate. This is a story about a man or a woman who walks from the wrong place at the wrong time to the next wrong place at the wrong time. Ending in the centre of disaster after disaster seemingly at chance.

You have some leeway in how to feel about it and some ability to "move about" in your journey there, but the fickle nature of fate means that ultimately the only viable course is the one that leads to the next fix point. The terrible truth is that no matter how hard you try, you cannot change fate. Like Oedipus, where father and son did their utmost to prevent a fated tragedy... but in the end managed to fulfill it themselves.

So in the end, the game is about either struggling against fate and failing, or accepting it and playing with the hand one is given.
Which, incidentally, is pretty much what the trailer outright told us. :smallwink:

Regardless, there might have been better games to tell this story in. And it might have had a bigger impact had it allowed a greater illusion of player agency. The story did indeed not work as well as it could have. But I personally enjoyed it and quite frankly I am glad they tried this story, even if it didn't turn it as good as it could have. If nothing else, it's a greate opportunity to learn.

Mx.Silver

2012-11-11, 08:02 AM

I dunno, I think the medium changes things a little. If the point of a tragedy is to make the audience feel sad or depressed, DA2's "tragedies" fails at doing this
Surprisingly enough, given what I said earlier, I didn't find DA2 particularly tragic either. However, this isn't because of 'player agency' and but the result of other elements of the game. For a start, Hawke's not really much of a character in his/her own right. More importantly though is that when you look at the tragic events of Hawke's life the most obvious thing they all have in common is that Hawke comes out of them sad, but fundamentally ok enough to get on with things. This holds true for most of the NPCs as well, aside from the mages, who by are likely to end the game in a better position than they entered it. Even Betheny/Carver can come out of things reasonably alright

Basically, my point is that if you want to attack DA2's tragic effectiveness it's better to stick to actually valid targets rather than resorting to the 'player agency' card. I mean, yeah that scene in Bastion worked well, but then so did a lot of the tragedy in Shadow Hearts 2 and that game has very little player agency at all. The ending of the first Fallout also derives most of it's effectiveness because it happens regardless of what the player's done in the game.

Morty

2012-11-11, 09:11 AM

The plot in Dragon Age 2 is one of those things that I liked in theory, but the execution suffered. There's no grand, overreaching super-plot with a huge villain at the end, which is good... but sometimes it feels like they wanted to make it look like that anyway and it ended up rather awkward. And of course, your choices don't matter as much as they should. Again, this is good in theory - it's refreshing if the protagonist doesn't change the world with his/her every decision. But those decision should matter nonetheless, especially those connected with Hawke's private life. And now for some more spoiler-y musings.
One thing I particularily didn't like was Meredith's lyrium sword. It effectively replaces her as the villain, because it both makes her crazy and provides her with frankly ridiculous powers. It was a painfully clumsy attempt at shoehorning a "cool" boss fight at the end that was completely unnecessary. Couldn't Hawke just fight Orsino if he sides with templars and Meredith if he sides with mages? The other leader could still die if they really wanted both of them dead at the end. And it would have made our decisions actually matter.
Still, it's progress for a BioWare RPG. The conflict between mages and templars is actually pretty grey - even if skewed in the mages' favor - which is more than I expected. After DA:O and Mass Effect, I was convinced BioWare can't write moral ambiguity to save their lives. And I still enjoyed DA2, even if less so that I could have.

Falgorn

2012-11-11, 10:10 AM

Still, it's progress for a BioWare RPG. The conflict between mages and templars is actually pretty grey - even if skewed in the mages' favor - which is more than I expected. After DA:O and Mass Effect, I was convinced BioWare can't write moral ambiguity to save their lives. And I still enjoyed DA2, even if less so that I could have.

I agree with most of what you said, but I do think that DA: O did have some moments of ambiguity.
Like choosing the dwarf king. I thought that the options were solid - a power hungry dictator who honestly wants to improve his country, and is dead-set on doing so and a likeable politician who wants his country to remain traditional, even though it makes literally zero sense. Most of the story was pretty black and white, but I thought that this was a good enough moment.

Morty

2012-11-11, 11:06 AM

I agree with most of what you said, but I do think that DA: O did have some moments of ambiguity.
Like choosing the dwarf king. I thought that the options were solid - a power hungry dictator who honestly wants to improve his country, and is dead-set on doing so and a likeable politician who wants his country to remain traditional, even though it makes literally zero sense. Most of the story was pretty black and white, but I thought that this was a good enough moment.

Yes, that's one of the moments where things are ambiguous. Of course, in the epilogue it's rather clear that Bhelen did a lot of good for Orzammar, whereas Harrowmont kept things stable, but nothing more. Which is pretty typical for BioWare - the choice looks even when you make it, but the results are one-sided.

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-11, 12:23 PM

Falgorn

2012-11-11, 04:41 PM

I stopped playing the game when I found out there is no way to save your mother. The game is just too depressing and too pointless.

Someone said this already, but since this is a recommendation thread, maybe we should spoil the spoilers?

I disagree with that, though; I would've been more upset if there was a secret way to save her. DA: II is supposed to show how random, cruel, and chaotic life is, and it shows the true downsides to living in a fantasy world. It's not quite a deconstruction of the traditional "heroic fantasy" world, but I do like how they show that, even in a world with supercool magic and other sentient species, life sucks, even when you ignore the stereotypically evil apocalypse people. Even more than in our world, perhaps.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-11-11, 06:00 PM

Unfortunately I can't source this, but I read somewhere that there originally was intended to be a way to save her, but this had to be removed due to the time crunch. Take it for what it's worth.

Luzahn

2012-11-11, 06:11 PM

I stopped playing the game when I found out there is no way to save your mother. The game is just too depressing and too pointless.

Wasn't the tagline of the entire game something about going along with fate?

It actually fits kind of nicely with that. :smallannoyed:

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-12, 12:00 AM

I disagree with that, though; I would've been more upset if there was a secret way to save her. DA: II is supposed to show how random, cruel, and chaotic life is

To each his or her own. If I want that, there is always IRL. I don't get the need to "experience" things like this, but then I watch the news religiously, so I guess I get my share anyway.

I play games to FORGET about the real world, not experience it all over again. I have a very low threshold for this kind of thing because of that. I don't watch tragedies, I don't play tragedies, I tend to not be part of IRL tragedies.

Also: It would have been nice if they had been up front about this when marketing the game, which would have made me not waste a lot of money on a pre-order expecting a typical Bioware RPG.

Wasn't the tagline of the entire game something about going along with fate?

I missed that quote. Anyway, that might explain why all your choices are pointless. :smallmad:

warty goblin

2012-11-12, 12:26 AM

Wasn't the tagline of the entire game something about going along with fate?

It actually fits kind of nicely with that. :smallannoyed:

Isn't the tagline of around half the RPGs ever made something about fate?

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-12, 12:33 AM

I like things that make me sad. It's cathartic. Sometimes a work can get a little too sad, but I don't think DA2 crossed that line.

Also: It would have been nice if they had been up front about this when marketing the game, which would have made me not waste a lot of money on a pre-order expecting a typical Bioware RPG.

You have only yourself to blame, Avilan, if you played DAO. Or did you somehow miss the parade of tragedies that occured in that game?

Aux-Ash

2012-11-12, 01:06 AM

Also: It would have been nice if they had been up front about this when marketing the game, which would have made me not waste a lot of money on a pre-order expecting a typical Bioware RPG.

They did. Several times over. I mean... go look at the trailer again. Flemeth outright narrates that it's about fate. She even says that if you don't accept fate than you will suffer. The devs mentioned several times that it was about the journey to greatness, that it wasn't about what you did but who you were.
They couldn't have been more overt about it short of spoiling the game or start describing it in absolute negative terms.

I suspect that a lot of people didn't take it as seriously as they should. Rationalising that it was a Bioware game and as such they'd probably like it (I saw this a lot the months before release).

Warty goblin has a point though, most games speak about fate despite not meaning it. Usually you achieve stuff by your own power despite being "fated". So I suppose the term was a bit diluted as well.

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-12, 02:28 AM

Warty goblin has a point though, most games speak about fate despite not meaning it.

Like The Witcher, for instance? :smallbiggrin:

I generally find any rumifications on destiny and fate in Dragon Age tend to be connected with Flemeth, who has a (limited) ability to see the future.

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-12, 02:43 AM

You have only yourself to blame, Avilan, if you played DAO. Or did you somehow miss the parade of tragedies that occured in that game?

Not more, really, than in most other Bioware games. Besides, there was really just enough tragedy and darkness that if you didn't play like A) a complete fool or B) a complete bastard you did make the world a much better place at the end. I would caracterize DA:O origins as a "realistically dark" fantasy game where not everything ends up with sugar candy and unicorns, but where the good outweights the bad several times over (depending on your actions, of course).

DA2 is the mirror image: No matter how much you struggle, about three quarters of all things that happens to you, to your friends or just the general public are horrible, horrible things.

They did. Several times over. I mean... go look at the trailer again. Flemeth outright narrates that it's about fate. She even says that if you don't accept fate than you will suffer. The devs mentioned several times that it was about the journey to greatness, that it wasn't about what you did but who you were.
They couldn't have been more overt about it short of spoiling the game or start describing it in absolute negative terms.

I suspect that a lot of people didn't take it as seriously as they should. Rationalising that it was a Bioware game and as such they'd probably like it (I saw this a lot the months before release).

Warty goblin has a point though, most games speak about fate despite not meaning it. Usually you achieve stuff by your own power despite being "fated". So I suppose the term was a bit diluted as well.

Funny, the marketing I saw was all "Epic journey", "Most important man in history", "Fulfill your destiny" (which is basically the same line Bioware has used to market games since Baldur's Gate (the first one)), "Epic Button of Awesomeness" and "SEQUEL TO DRAGON AGE ORIGINS!!!!!!1!1"

Seriously, as Mr Goblin points out... the Destiny wording is about as meaningful in RPG marketing as "large world", "choices", "Unique personalities"... Standard phrases.

Edit: Also, I think the whole "Journey" bit was interpeted by a majority (including me) as "You get to shape your future! With choices!", not "you can try to struggle against destiny with your puny choices, but it won't matter because we have it all set in (depressing) stone.

I have said it before: I LOVE the fact that they tried something different. I applaud their attempt. I LOATHE the result and I blame it on two things, the most important and worst being that the Bioware writers just aren't skilled enough to pull this off and second I think they also made some bad design decisions.

It is bad for the company with two disappointments after eachother. Basically DA2 was a failed attempt at something very different. ME3 was just a frackup. But at least they are releasing both a DA3 and ME4. I will never again pre-order a Bioware game though after being burned twice in a row.

warty goblin

2012-11-12, 11:25 AM

Warty goblin has a point though, most games speak about fate despite not meaning it. Usually you achieve stuff by your own power despite being "fated". So I suppose the term was a bit diluted as well.

Also setting up a bunch of waffle about 'fate' in a format entirely dictated by the whims of the writers is prone to going all faux-depth right off the bat. About the only thing interesting to do with fate in a story is to make those fates known to the principal characters, and using their processing of that understanding as character development.

Pausing at the end to say 'it's all fate all along dya'see' is fairly meaningless since all it really does is point out to the audience that the schmuck who wrote everything has complete control over what he/she has written. Starting off with a bunch of waffle about fate, ignoring it for the course of the story, then whipping it out at the end basically shows that the author knew the plot before writing it, but not a lot else.

(Naturally having characters 'break' fate is also totally meaningless. All it means is that they obeyed the higher destiny of author chosen Plot, rather than stated, inter-story fate. Doing this also tends to go hand in hand with terminal cases of Special Snowflake Syndrome)

I've got no problems with not being able to change or alter certain outcomes in games in principle*. I don't necessarily even mind if my failure to alter those events comes off as arbitrary. But if the game starts smearing fate all over everything, it doesn't make that failure more poignant unless I knew I was going to fail beforehand. It's just the author pointing out how clever they are in the most unbearable and wanky way possible.

*There are obviously exceptions, such as when all my choices are completely stupid.

Aux-Ash

2012-11-12, 12:04 PM

Avilan: Fair enough, but then the complaint is rather that they failed to communicate that this time they meant it, rather than that they didn't say so. But then, DA's marketing haven't exactly been stellar. Remember Origin's? It wasn't exactly representative of that game either.

I so wish they (rpg makers in general) could actually discuss what they were thinking, what they sought to explore, what you will face (narratively) with their games rather than show off a few flashy bits. I imagine it'd give us customers a fairer idea on what to expect. You know, treat their games seriously rather than flashy. But then again... that's just a layman speaking.

Also, as a side note. You do realise the game can be a bit brighter than you experienced? Depending on your approach to certain matters the outcomes, short of two (All that Remains and Last Straw), can actually be quite favourable and more on the sweet side in bittersweet (still sligthly bitter though).

I'm not saying this to convince you to like the game. I just wanted to check you actually knew that you probably ended up in the least positive way the plot could turn out.
If that changes nothing then fair does.

Warty Goblin:
Indeed, fatalism is a subject best used with care. Many of the greek plays make excellent use of it to tell the story of people. But using it in a story is fraught with traps. Wether DA2 managed to avoid them? Not all certainly, but it could certainly have done much worse (like your examples. Outright hitting the player over the head with it, would have been terrible. At least it's subtle in the game).

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-12, 04:48 PM

Avilan: Fair enough, but then the complaint is rather that they failed to communicate that this time they meant it, rather than that they didn't say so. But then, DA's marketing haven't exactly been stellar. Remember Origin's? It wasn't exactly representative of that game either.

I so wish they (rpg makers in general) could actually discuss what they were thinking, what they sought to explore, what you will face (narratively) with their games rather than show off a few flashy bits. I imagine it'd give us customers a fairer idea on what to expect. You know, treat their games seriously rather than flashy. But then again... that's just a layman speaking.

Also, as a side note. You do realise the game can be a bit brighter than you experienced? Depending on your approach to certain matters the outcomes, short of two (All that Remains and Last Straw), can actually be quite favourable and more on the sweet side in bittersweet (still sligthly bitter though).

I'm not saying this to convince you to like the game. I just wanted to check you actually knew that you probably ended up in the least positive way the plot could turn out.
If that changes nothing then fair does.

This is exactly my point above. If you re-use the same buzzwords as you always has, but mean them this time...?

Regarding your spoilery part: I guess a problem is that I, and many that gave a certain someone killed in act II, were just a tad too genre savvy.
basically, if an RPG INSISTS that a person will get into trouble if they follow you, my instinct is to bring them with me. Because the game is trying too hard to convince me.

Aux-Ash

2012-11-12, 05:11 PM

This is exactly my point above. If you re-use the same buzzwords as you always has, but mean them this time...?

Heh, yeah. But then, how could they have communicated it any other way?

Let's just agree that both games marketing was pretty atrocious (marilyn manson and fountains of blood , anyone)?

Hopefully they learn that lesson at least...

...

No, I don't expect it either. :smallwink:

Mx.Silver

2012-11-12, 06:02 PM

Let's just agree that both games marketing was pretty atrocious (marilyn manson and fountains of blood , anyone)?

In fairness, the fountains of blood turned out to be pretty accurate. The song choice was particularly baffling though, given that the song in question is largely an attack on the sort of mindlessly consumerist marketing exemplified by Origins' trailers.

SierraB109

2012-11-15, 11:39 AM

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but a console RPG is basically someone else (e.g. Bioware) giving you a story to play through. It's like taking Lord of the Rings, removing Aragorn, and letting you fill in the blank.

With a game like DAO or DA2, what with memory and time limits, there isn't much they can do to give you the kind of game you seem to want. If you want umpteen million options, and the ability to affect the game world the way you want to, and not the way that Bioware has set up for you, than you need to stick to pen and paper.

Dragon Age is a time sink, nothing more. Quit whining.

Nothing is easier than denouncing the evildoer. Nothing more difficult than understanding him. - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. - H. L. Mencken

http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/1.jpg (http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm)

CarpeGuitarrem

2012-11-15, 11:45 AM

I feel like the agency issue is as follows: having tasted little bits of choice and agency, players feel as if they need to have more, and I don't fault them terribly much for that.

warty goblin

2012-11-15, 04:40 PM

I feel like the agency issue is as follows: having tasted little bits of choice and agency, players feel as if they need to have more, and I don't fault them terribly much for that.

It's very seldom I've found myself annoyed by a game not letting me make choices. It has happened, but it takes something as utterly linear as a Call of Duty game to do it.

Only having stupid choices annoys me somewhat.

Having the ability to make essentially meaningless choices undermine the game's attempt to tell a story bugs me far more. In my experience the best stories in games have been those that offered either no narrative impacting choice, or very few important choices. Letting me choose a line of dialog every three minutes so I can hear one of three responses that all mean the same damn thing doesn't change the story, it just weakens the writer's ability to know who the characters are.

(I've also never subscribed to the whole 'games are totally superior to everything else ever because interaction' school of navel-gazing. Removing player choice to me isn't going against the One True Destiny of Gaming As Art, it's a perfectly valid choice to better tell a story over which the player may have limited control.)

VanBuren

2012-11-15, 06:19 PM

NeoVid

2012-11-15, 08:26 PM

I just completed DA2, and I'm largely uncomprehending of the level of fury at this game. Though that may be because I haven't had the chance to play Origins, and I had already completed ME3 before playing DA2.

I liked having a smaller scale fantasy story, set entirely in and around one city.

The combat was enjoyable, with only a few excessively hard fights, though I liked it more in the early game, when I could just program my allies and not micromanage constantly (In fact, I was continually reminded of Final Fantasy 12 by DA2, except with a much better pace).

A lot of fantasy RPG cliches were broken... usually in ways that ended up ugly and tragic, but I don't think that's a bad thing.

And then the conclusion, which I'd been dreading because of the reactions I'd heard to it... which made me think, "There are people who think this is a crappy ending? Really?"

One of your own trusted allies triggering the huge, bloody revolt at the end of the game was disturbing and unexpected. My own Hawke was an apostate mage himself, and what Anders did was enough to make my Hawke want to hand Anders over to the Templars personally. The fact that Anders had used my help to kill a bunch of people and trap me in the no-win situation of dealing with it...

It's a painful, disturbing ending, not a badly done ending.

Really, I only found one hole in the plot that was big enough for me to take issue with:

Isabella taking the Qunari book and running out on you. OK, so she cares more about herself than preventing a war with the Qunari, that's believable. But who the hell could she be afraid of to that degree? All that time, I was expecting the solution to be killing the hell out of whoever was pressuring her, so that the book could be returned.

It's very seldom I've found myself annoyed by a game not letting me make choices. It has happened, but it takes something as utterly linear as a Call of Duty game to do it.

The latest Call of Duty has multiple endings depending on how you complete your objectives over the course of the game. I think devs have noticed that players like having an impact on the setting.

Mx.Silver

2012-11-15, 08:29 PM

Grave of the Fireflies is a moving piece of work, but I don't believe it qualifies as a tragedy for those reasons.
Then what is it? Because if you're going to start writing-off works - that are generally classified as tragedy by people who accept that genres can diversify a bit after a couple of millennia - on the basis of what Aristotle had to say about the genre in his lifetime* the onus is kind of on you to explain what these works should actually be called.

*note that if you are following this route by adhering to the 'classical' model, the amount of tragic works you're going to have to re-classify will be fairly numerous, given that another core tenet of the classical model is that the protagonist has to be of high status or power.

Also farce is not the only "classical" form of comedy, so that comparison doesn't fly.
It only 'doesn't fly' if you're applying some special significance to the classical world and (what we know of) it's approach to fiction*. To me this seems a rather bizarre decision given the vast chasm of time in between that period and ours, and the cultural and artistic shifts that have resulted from that. But ok, we'll run with that premise for now, so here's a comparison more suited to it. What you're doing with tragedy is akin to claiming that black/dark comedy isn't a type of comedy.

*in the same way as particularly obstinate music fans will argue that all varieties of a genre that weren't represented at the inception of said genre 'don't count' (e.g. old-school metal fans ranting on about how all this newfangled progressive-/industrial-/death-metal stuff isn't 'real' metal).

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-15, 11:12 PM

I just completed DA2, and I'm largely uncomprehending of the level of fury at this game. Though that may be because I haven't had the chance to play Origins, and I had already completed ME3 before playing DA2.

I've generally found that people who play DA2 first generally like it. Most of the hatred comes from the very hardcore DAO fans, as there were a quite of few gameplay changes from Origins.

Really, I only found one hole in the plot that was big enough for me to take issue with:

Isabella taking the Qunari book and running out on you. OK, so she cares more about herself than preventing a war with the Qunari, that's believable. But who the hell could she be afraid of to that degree? All that time, I was expecting the solution to be killing the hell out of whoever was pressuring her, so that the book could be returned.

Castillon, the slaver who's after her, is fairly powerful. But in fact, if you get Isabela's Friendship or Rivalry score to above +50, she returns during your confrontation with the Arishok. In Act 3, you actually DO kill Castillon, or blackmail him into leaving Isabela alone.

Kalmarvho

2012-11-15, 11:23 PM

I liked both games, but it really depends on what YOU like, OP. For example, I liked Dragon Age: Origins for its big, grand, high fantasy KILL THE EVIL SAVE THE LAND type story, and I liked Dragon Age 2 for its tremendous amounts of melodrama and angsty characters.

In essence, I liked them because I liked X-Men.

But lots of people hate the balls out of Dragon Age 2 precisely for what I mentioned, while others hate Dragon Age Origins for being poorer in the action department.

warty goblin

2012-11-16, 12:01 AM

I've generally found that people who play DA2 first generally like it. Most of the hatred comes from the very hardcore DAO fans, as there were a quite of few gameplay changes from Origins.

Ah, the hatred of game n+1 for being different from game n. Never really understood it myself. For me the relevant question is always 'is this, right now, an engaging and enjoyable way to spend my time?' How it relates to the last thing it shares a title with bothers me not a whit. If I want that experience again, I'll replay the last game.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-11-16, 02:23 AM

(I've also never subscribed to the whole 'games are totally superior to everything else ever because interaction' school of navel-gazing. Removing player choice to me isn't going against the One True Destiny of Gaming As Art, it's a perfectly valid choice to better tell a story over which the player may have limited control.)

I dunno, I both agree and disagree with you on this one. Mostly because I don't think "choice" (which I agree is sometimes good but isn't necessary to make a compelling game narrative) is the same thing as "interaction" (which I disagree; interaction just about always makes a narrative moment better).

For the record, I define "choice" as points where the player's actions can make a major, lasting difference in how the rest of the narrative plays out, like the end of Awakening where you can either kill the Architect, or ally yourself with him.

But "interaction" as points where the player is tangibly and viscerally responsible for what occurs, like that one part of the ending of Bastion I talked about earlier.

You can have moments of interaction without choice (Bastion, Spec Ops: The Line) and you can have moments of choice without interaction (basically every game with dialogue options ever made).

NeoVid

2012-11-16, 02:41 AM

Castillon, the slaver who's after her, is fairly powerful. But in fact, if you get Isabela's Friendship or Rivalry score to above +50, she returns during your confrontation with the Arishok. In Act 3, you actually DO kill Castillon, or blackmail him into leaving Isabela alone.

Huh. So the whole reason it happened that way was that I hadn't put in enough effort to get her to trust my character?

It appears my main annoyance at the game was just killed. Time to try and not screw that up on my second run through.

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-16, 03:03 AM

Ah, the hatred of game n+1 for being different from game n. Never really understood it myself. For me the relevant question is always 'is this, right now, an engaging and enjoyable way to spend my time?' How it relates to the last thing it shares a title with bothers me not a whit. If I want that experience again, I'll replay the last game.

Most of the time it's because people want MORE of the last game (game "N"). Not everyone finds enjoyment in replaying an old game indefinitely; sooner or later you want to move on. The problem is that if there is no game that caters to the "feeling" you got when playing game N, you are basically SOL.

The criticism against DA2 can be summarized in these points. Note that not all players agree on all points:

1. They changed the gameplay from DA:O, making it much more "console-y".

2. They removed the Origins, forcing you to play a human character with a specific origin.

3. They introduced the dialogue wheel and a voiced main character.

4. They made the game extremely railroaded and made your choices irrelevant.

5. They ruined Anders, making him one of the most hated characters ever in video game history.

6. The story is too depressing to be entertaining or even interesting.

7. The story is too dependant on NPC Idiot Balls to work properly.

8. The changed graphics are worse than in the first game, and recurring characters looks nothing alike. (And the darkspawn looks like deranged cuddly toys).

Of these I, personally, agree with 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, with 6 being the one issue that made me stop playing. Others might only have a problem with one of these, others have a huge problems with all eight.

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-16, 03:08 AM

Huh. So the whole reason it happened that way was that I hadn't put in enough effort to get her to trust my character?

Isabela will still ditch you at the end of "To Catch A Thief" no matter what your relationship is with her. But if you have built up sufficient friendship or rivalry, she pulls a Han Solo and returns just as you are confronting the Arishok. She hands over the Tome of Koslun. However, you may end up fighting the Arishok anyway for other reasons. I daren't say more.

Kalmarvho

2012-11-16, 03:14 AM

3. They introduced the dialogue wheel and a voiced main character.

I actually liked this bit, myself. The voice acting was decent, so nothing really suffered (it's not like DA: O was known for god-tier writing, anyway)

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-16, 03:24 AM

I actually liked this bit, myself. The voice acting was decent, so nothing really suffered (it's not like DA: O was known for god-tier writing, anyway)

As you see above I don't have a problem with that either.:smallsmile:

Tebryn

2012-11-16, 03:29 AM

1. They changed the gameplay from DA:O, making it much more "console-y".

I've heard this argument. I find the controls of DA2 far superior.

2. They removed the Origins, forcing you to play a human character with a specific origin.

No one had a problem with this in Mass Effect. It seems a hollow complaint at best to me.

3. They introduced the dialogue wheel and a voiced main character.

Same as above. The wheel works as well as a Moral system is going to work in video games.

4. They made the game extremely railroaded and made your choices irrelevant.

Can't disagree with this in some parts.

5. They ruined Anders, making him one of the most hated characters ever in video game history.

Agree with this. This is what I'd call a valid issue with the game. But it doesn't make the game -bad-. It just makes the game against what I personally like.

6. The story is too depressing to be entertaining or even interesting.

You're the first person I've ever heard field this issue to be honest. I don't know what game series you or anyone else have been playing if this is an actual criticism but the world of Thedas is pretty crap sack. The world has to face the rebirth of a Dead God in the form of a giant demonic dragon that commands hoards of corrupting monsters whose very presence poisons the lands on one side. A militaristic socio-religious order whose only desire is to make everyone like them on another and a religious order that stamps down dissidents and carries out massive holy wars because it's the flavor of the week and someone was caught line dancing on the other. Add on to that that peoples DREAMS are deadly and magic means you walk a line between a difficult life of cloistered solitude away from society, being hunted like a dog every day of your life or ya know.. possessed by a demon and used as flesh puppet into the mix and...the list goes on. I could exhaust the text limit on just how crappy Thedas is as a world to live in.

My point however is, if you somehow thought that Dragon Age was about anything other than a struggle against a dark and uncaring world even from Origins then really, you only have yourself to blame. And that counter criticism goes to anyone who somehow thinks that Dragon Age 2 having some rather depressing elements as a determent to the game. If you want a happy, joyous game then I'd suggest another game series. Heck, another game company. Bioware as far as I've experienced doesn't make games where everything is happy and fluffy from Baulders Gate to Mass Effect 3.

7. The story is too dependant on NPC Idiot Balls to work properly.

At times sure.

8. The changed graphics are worse than in the first game, and recurring characters looks nothing alike. (And the darkspawn looks like deranged cuddly toys).

Changed graphics to make the races look more distinct? I don't see how that could ever be a bad thing. Qunari don't look like tall humans. Elves don't look like humans with pointy ears. Those are the two major changed races as far as I know. As for graphics being worse? That's just demonstrably not true what so ever. Maybe graphically different than the first game but worse? I just don't see how such an argument for it when screen shots alone demonstrate this isn't the case.

Making the Dark Spawn look more monsterous...meh. They aren't even a main focus in the game. You see them a bit at the start of the game and a bit at the end of the first Chapter. That seems a hollow complaint for the game as well. Also giving a wider pallet other than the gray, brown and more gray of Origins is a good change. Not that DA2 has a bigger color wheel to work with but hey, it shows and that's what I care about.

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-16, 04:23 AM

I've heard this argument. I find the controls of DA2 far superior..
To each his or her own. I didn't HATE the controls, but I did dislike them, and I hated the inferior camera. Of course I prefer old fashioned RPG controls, like in DA:O or BG.

No one had a problem with this in Mass Effect. It seems a hollow complaint at best to me.
...
Same as above. The wheel works as well as a Moral system is going to work in video games..

It is not a hollow complaint if you do not like those kind of things. In fact the addition of the dialogue wheel and the voiced character is one of the MAJOR complaints against the game (I do not have a problem with it, as I said); many fans of BG and DA:O dubbed this game "Dragon Effect 2" due to this, for instance, and it was not a term of endearment.

You're the first person I've ever heard field this issue to be honest. I don't know what game series you or anyone else have been playing if this is an actual criticism but the world of Thedas is pretty crap sack. The world has to face the rebirth of a Dead God in the form of a giant demonic dragon that commands hoards of corrupting monsters whose very presence poisons the lands on one side. A militaristic socio-religious order whose only desire is to make everyone like them on another and a religious order that stamps down dissidents and carries out massive holy wars because it's the flavor of the week and someone was caught line dancing on the other. Add on to that that peoples DREAMS are deadly and magic means you walk a line between a difficult life of cloistered solitude away from society, being hunted like a dog every day of your life or ya know.. possessed by a demon and used as flesh puppet into the mix and...the list goes on. I could exhaust the text limit on just how crappy Thedas is as a world to live in.
...
My point however is, if you somehow thought that Dragon Age was about anything other than a struggle against a dark and uncaring world even from Origins then really, you only have yourself to blame. And that counter criticism goes to anyone who somehow thinks that Dragon Age 2 having some rather depressing elements as a determent to the game. If you want a happy, joyous game then I'd suggest another game series. Heck, another game company. Bioware as far as I've experienced doesn't make games where everything is happy and fluffy from Baulders Gate to Mass Effect 3..
Many people have expressed this complaint but it tend to be baked into the complaint regarding the railroading and the lack of meaningful choices. I broke the two appart in my list above but usually the complaint goes "No matter what I do everything goes to hell!".

I am comparing this game to the rest of the Bioware portfolio, and that includes DA:O. Origins was a MUCH happier game; you really felt like you were making a difference! (and that is the main difference!). Yes, the world is a dark and horrible place. But there is genuine hope; the warden is truly HELPING, and the choices you make can (unless you are a moron or a true bastard) really make Ferelden a better place. DA2 reeks of "Let's punch the player in the stommach as many times as we can! Let's make his brother die! Let's make his sister be caught by the templars! Let's make Anders a truly evil psychopath!
I can't decide if the writers truly thought this was a more "deep and meaningful" / "artsy" choice or if they just decided to troll DA:O players.

As I said, I don't play games to make myself feel bad. Quite the opposite.
(which btw is why I would never consider playing The Path, for example).

Changed graphics to make the races look more distinct? I don't see how that could ever be a bad thing. Qunari don't look like tall humans. Elves don't look like humans with pointy ears. Those are the two major changed races as far as I know. As for graphics being worse? That's just demonstrably not true what so ever. Maybe graphically different than the first game but worse? I just don't see how such an argument for it when screen shots alone demonstrate this isn't the case...
...
Making the Dark Spawn look more monsterous...meh. They aren't even a main focus in the game. You see them a bit at the start of the game and a bit at the end of the first Chapter. That seems a hollow complaint for the game as well. Also giving a wider pallet other than the gray, brown and more gray of Origins is a good change. Not that DA2 has a bigger color wheel to work with but hey, it shows and that's what I care about.
My point is that the graphics, as demanding as they are on your computer, sucks. And for the record the complaint is that the darkspawn (and most other enemies too) looks LESS scary. My first reaction when I saw the DA2 ogre was "OOO big teddy bear! Lets give it hugses!". Basically the DA2 graphics have a number of flaws:

1. The over all style is far more cartoony. This is on purpose, however so I guess they succeeded with that.

2. The armors look LESS realistic than in DA:O. They all look like they are made of plastic, to boot (something with the surface effects).

3. The monster designs are disappointing, especially the darkspawn but also demons.

4. The deliberately change of certain characters (Isabella went from "Awesome sexy caucasian rogue" to "Dark skinned porn star with piercings"

5. The complete failure when it comes to make recurring NPC characters (Leliana, Alistair etc) look even remotely like their old selfs.

Now there is one good thing: The qunari looks good.

Tebryn

2012-11-16, 12:46 PM

It is not a hollow complaint if you do not like those kind of things. In fact the addition of the dialogue wheel and the voiced character is one of the MAJOR complaints against the game (I do not have a problem with it, as I said); many fans of BG and DA:O dubbed this game "Dragon Effect 2" due to this, for instance, and it was not a term of endearment.

They didn't hide the fact that it was going to have a voiced protagonist. It's not like the hid the fact. I find it hollow when people knew about the fact already and bought the game anyway. If you don't like it, don't buy it and show the game developers your opinions through lack of sales. One million copies of the game being sold in two weeks shows that this didn't happen.

Many people have expressed this complaint but it tend to be baked into the complaint regarding the railroading and the lack of meaningful choices. I broke the two appart in my list above but usually the complaint goes "No matter what I do everything goes to hell!".

Yes well, that is the theme of the game. The game was never "You save the world." It starts out telling you the world went to hell. Like, the opening cut scene. The game is just telling you how and what your role was in it. Being surprised with what you get when you're told is rather silly isn't it?

I am comparing this game to the rest of the Bioware portfolio, and that includes DA:O. Origins was a MUCH happier game; you really felt like you were making a difference! (and that is the main difference!). Yes, the world is a dark and horrible place. But there is genuine hope; the warden is truly HELPING, and the choices you make can (unless you are a moron or a true bastard) really make Ferelden a better place. DA2 reeks of "Let's punch the player in the stommach as many times as we can! Let's make his brother die! Let's make his sister be caught by the templars! Let's make Anders a truly evil psychopath!

You'll forgive me but I don't buy it. I played DA:O as a rather nice and helpful Warden, righting wrongs and making the world a "better" place but it certainly didn't feel like it. If you help the were-wolves you find out they are still growing wild and murdering people. The Dwarves are still screwed regardless of who you put onto the throne. The only place that isn't totally ruined is Redcliff but it wasn't really the whole city but the Earl that was having issues. What has changed for the better of Fereldan? You either put a man on the throne who doesn't want the position against his will or a crazy woman who only desires power.

As for DA2...ya. Carver or...I forget the sisters name because I play a mage get the short end in the first ten minutes of the game depending on the class you choose. The other has a wide variety of options of what will happen to them either as a Gray Warden, Death or Circle Mage/Templar. Anders, if you Romance him, isn't nearly as bad as otherwise but it doesn't change the fact he murders a ton of innocent people. But hey. Anders is an Abomination. It was only a matter of time. Your brother or sister is their own person. That's the entire point of Carvers little temper tantrum when he runs off to the Templars. I haven't seen how the Sister plays out because again, I've only ever played the Mage, but I suppose this is a good point to bring this up. The story of Hawke isn't a story about a world saving character who supports his friends on his shoulders and is the bastion of strength the world can rally around. The story is about one character and his interactions with everyone around him. He's not a super hero. He's a man.

I can't decide if the writers truly thought this was a more "deep and meaningful" / "artsy" choice or if they just decided to troll DA:O players.

They've discussed this with several media outlets, if you're interested I'd suggest listening to the interviews. It's neither.

As I said, I don't play games to make myself feel bad. Quite the opposite.
(which btw is why I would never consider playing The Path, for example).

Neither do I? Does anyone? I didn't feel bad at the end of Dragon Age 2.

My point is that the graphics, as demanding as they are on your computer, sucks.

We'll have to disagree on this one. I rather like them.

And for the record the complaint is that the darkspawn (and most other enemies too) looks LESS scary. My first reaction when I saw the DA2 ogre was "OOO big teddy bear! Lets give it hugses!". Basically the DA2 graphics have a number of flaws:

I never found them scary. The Ogre's change reflects that they're created off of Qunari. I rather like the changes.

1. The over all style is far more cartoony. This is on purpose, however so I guess they succeeded with that.

Really? It's not WoW.

2. The armors look LESS realistic than in DA:O. They all look like they are made of plastic, to boot (something with the surface effects).

At least for the mages, armor hasn't changed a wink from DA:O. It must be a Warrior/Rogue thing.

3. The monster designs are disappointing, especially the darkspawn but also demons.

Demons haven't changed from DA:O so I don't know what you're talking about. Shades, Rage Demons, Desire Demons and Pride Demons like exactly as they did in DA:O. As do the corpses and Arcane Horrors.

4. The deliberately change of certain characters (Isabella went from "Awesome sexy caucasian rogue" to "Dark skinned porn star with piercings"

Maybe this is from DLC where she shows up more, wouldn't know, but looking at her picture from DA:O she's not Caucasian. (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Isabela). She looks like someone hit her in the face with a shovel.

5. The complete failure when it comes to make recurring NPC characters (Leliana, Alistair etc) look even remotely like their old selfs.

You'll have that when you change graphics. Faces in DA:O look like lumpy potatoes covered in play-dough. Any change is an improvement.

Now there is one good thing: The qunari looks good.

That they do. Was very happy about their change.

Beowulf DW

2012-11-16, 01:34 PM

As for DA2...ya. Carver or...I forget the sisters name because I play a mage get the short end in the first ten minutes of the game depending on the class you choose. The other has a wide variety of options of what will happen to them either as a Gray Warden, Death or Circle Mage/Templar. Anders, if you Romance him, isn't nearly as bad as otherwise but it doesn't change the fact he murders a ton of innocent people. But hey. Anders is an Abomination. It was only a matter of time. Your brother or sister is their own person. That's the entire point of Carvers little temper tantrum when he runs off to the Templars. I haven't seen how the Sister plays out because again, I've only ever played the Mage, but I suppose this is a good point to bring this up. The story of Hawke isn't a story about a world saving character who supports his friends on his shoulders and is the bastion of strength the world can rally around. The story is about one character and his interactions with everyone around him. He's not a super hero. He's a man.

To the first part: The sister's name is Bethany. I enjoy Rogue Hawke the most (I feel like Hawkeye and the Green Arrow, hehehe) so I'm more familiar with Bethany's story than Carver's. She doesn't have anywhere near the rivalry with Hawke that Carver does. None at all, actually. She submits to the Circle because she believes it's the only way for Hawke and their mother to live in freedom, without the fear of being condemned and executed for harboring an apostate. At any rate, each character has his or her own motivations, and will act on those motivations between acts or when Hawke isn't around. Their growth as characters doesn't simply stop when they're not in your party, and that is one of DA2's greatest strengths, in my opinion.

To the second part of your paragraph: Well, Hawke is a very extraordinary man/woman, but sometimes even that isn't enough to avert the inevitable. It was only a matter of time until the mages and templars came to blows. You can't keep people in what is at best benevolent slavery and expect them to stay that way forever. Especially when those people have that kind of power at their fingertips.

Tebryn

2012-11-16, 01:47 PM

To the first part: The sister's name is Bethany. I enjoy Rogue Hawke the most (I feel like Hawkeye and the Green Arrow, hehehe) so I'm more familiar with Bethany's story than Carver's. She doesn't have anywhere near the rivalry with Hawke that Carver does. None at all, actually. She submits to the Circle because she believes it's the only way for Hawke and their mother to live in freedom, without the fear of being condemned and executed for harboring an apostate. At any rate, each character has his or her own motivations, and will act on those motivations between acts or when Hawke isn't around. Their growth as characters doesn't simply stop when they're not in your party, and that is one of DA2's greatest strengths, in my opinion.

To the second part of your paragraph: Well, Hawke is a very extraordinary man/woman, but sometimes even that isn't enough to avert the inevitable. It was only a matter of time until the mages and templars came to blows. You can't keep people in what is at best benevolent slavery and expect them to stay that way forever. Especially when those people have that kind of power at their fingertips.

I agree with all of this really. My counter criticism to the people who dislike Dragon Age 2 is exactly these points. The game isn't about a super hero. It's about a man. I find it far more realistic. I also find the statements that DA:O was a "Happier" game to be utterly without merit or evidence.

Beowulf DW

2012-11-16, 02:11 PM

I agree with all of this really. My counter criticism to the people who dislike Dragon Age 2 is exactly these points. The game isn't about a super hero. It's about a man. I find it far more realistic. I also find the statements that DA:O was a "Happier" game to be utterly without merit or evidence.

Well, as for the "happy" part, the Warden certainly was able to improve the lot of many people. But nothing was ever completely fixed (except maybe for the dwarves if you choose to back the prince). I agree completely that Thedas is pretty close to a kind of hell (even their Maker is a huge jerk), but I also understand the desire of some people to have more of a positive impact on the setting.

All in all, I agree with you, Tebryn. But I do see how some people feel that DAO was happy relative to DA2. "It was happier" would be a more fitting way to describe it, I guess.

VanBuren

2012-11-16, 02:41 PM

Then what is it? Because if you're going to start writing-off works - that are generally classified as tragedy by people who accept that genres can diversify a bit after a couple of millennia - on the basis of what Aristotle had to say about the genre in his lifetime* the onus is kind of on you to explain what these works should actually be called.

*note that if you are following this route by adhering to the 'classical' model, the amount of tragic works you're going to have to re-classify will be fairly numerous, given that another core tenet of the classical model is that the protagonist has to be of high status or power.

It only 'doesn't fly' if you're applying some special significance to the classical world and (what we know of) it's approach to fiction*. To me this seems a rather bizarre decision given the vast chasm of time in between that period and ours, and the cultural and artistic shifts that have resulted from that. But ok, we'll run with that premise for now, so here's a comparison more suited to it. What you're doing with tragedy is akin to claiming that black/dark comedy isn't a type of comedy.

*in the same way as particularly obstinate music fans will argue that all varieties of a genre that weren't represented at the inception of said genre 'don't count' (e.g. old-school metal fans ranting on about how all this newfangled progressive-/industrial-/death-metal stuff isn't 'real' metal).

I'm just going to go ahead and concede the argument. I'm not that invested, and dissenting from GiantITP consensus almost always gets me into trouble somehow.

warty goblin

2012-11-16, 03:24 PM

Most of the time it's because people want MORE of the last game (game "N"). Not everyone finds enjoyment in replaying an old game indefinitely; sooner or later you want to move on. The problem is that if there is no game that caters to the "feeling" you got when playing game N, you are basically SOL.

To my mind the important distinction here is between being disappointed in a game because it isn't fun, and being disappointed in a game because it doesn't ape the previous game to a sufficient degree. That just tends to come off as a bit self-indulgent somehow, like the person didn't try to engage with what they were playing and instead stormed off in a fit of righteous nerd rage.

If there's one thing the internet does not need, it's more nerd rage.

And in this case it wasn't even like a lot of the things they changed were anything but well documented before release. There was even a pre-release demo I believe. If somebody doesn't pay attention to what the company is telling them about ther game, doesn't bother with the demo, the culprit of their subsequent unhappiness is pretty much entirely them.

The criticism against DA2 can be summarized in these points. Note that not all players agree on all points:

1. They changed the gameplay from DA:O, making it much more "console-y".
Changing gameplay in sequels is one of those things that happen. Not I think something unknown before release.

2. They removed the Origins, forcing you to play a human character with a specific origin.
Also well publicized beforehand. And since the origin stories were kinda Origins thing (being in the title and all) not terribly surprising either.

3. They introduced the dialogue wheel and a voiced main character.
Like in their other flagship RPG series over which fans and critics were drooling? Can't imagine why they did that. 'Cides which, anything that reduces the protagonist's uncanny resemblance to a fencepost can't be all bad.

4. They made the game extremely railroaded and made your choices irrelevant.
An actual criticism of the game.

5. They ruined Anders, making him one of the most hated characters ever in video game history.
Sucks when that happens.

6. The story is too depressing to be entertaining or even interesting.

Totally a matter of opinion. The best story I've played this year (or pretty much any year) is consistently and horrifically depressing. Being sad, unpleasant and generally a downer has no bearing on story quality or interest for a lot of people. Besides, if every single story has to end happily, the happiness gets a bit trite.

7. The story is too dependant on NPC Idiot Balls to work properly.
So, just like the moron infested first game then?

8. The changed graphics are worse than in the first game, and recurring characters looks nothing alike. (And the darkspawn looks like deranged cuddly toys).
Both games looked like crap as far as I could tell, both technically and artistically. They did chance crappy art styles from Origins to II, but this is really a case where pretty much everybody had to see it coming. I find it hard to drum up much respect for an argument that boils down to 'I looked at a bunch of screenshots and trailers and hated 'em, so I went out and bought it anyway. Now I'm angry the ugly thing I bought is ugly.

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-16, 03:27 PM

Well, as for the "happy" part, the Warden certainly was able to improve the lot of many people. But nothing was ever completely fixed (except maybe for the dwarves if you choose to back the prince).

Even that is hardly a perfect result. Bhelen may achieve a net positive result for his people, but it comes at the cost of the lives of nearly everyone in House Harrowmont. They were just innocent bystanders.

Beowulf DW

2012-11-16, 05:22 PM

GolemsVoice

2012-11-16, 06:03 PM

Also, house wars happen in Dwarven society, if I remember correctly, so it's more or less natural.

Kalmarvho

2012-11-16, 06:09 PM

Even that is hardly a perfect result. Bhelen may achieve a net positive result for his people, but it comes at the cost of the lives of nearly everyone in House Harrowmont. They were just innocent bystanders.

I think the whole point of the Orzammar sequence was to point out that sometimes, there are no innocent bystanders, and that sometimes the complete dickbag is the better choice.

If you're doing the good-guy path it's almost natural to side with Harrowmont over Aeducan, which is what makes the eventual result such a punch in the nads.

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-16, 06:21 PM

NeoVid

2012-11-16, 07:48 PM

5. They ruined Anders, making him one of the most hated characters ever in video game history.

I thought they did a brilliant job making me hate him that much.

Knight13

2012-11-16, 08:22 PM

I've been staying out of this thread up til now because I wasn't interested in getting into another argument about the merits of DA2, but I really feel the need to weigh in at this point.

To each his or her own. I didn't HATE the controls, but I did dislike them, and I hated the inferior camera. Of course I prefer old fashioned RPG controls, like in DA:O or BG.
I played both games on PC and found the controls and camera in 2 significantly superior.

It is not a hollow complaint if you do not like those kind of things. In fact the addition of the dialogue wheel and the voiced character is one of the MAJOR complaints against the game (I do not have a problem with it, as I said); many fans of BG and DA:O dubbed this game "Dragon Effect 2" due to this, for instance, and it was not a term of endearment.
Funny how people like this in ME, but not in DA2. Especially since one of the major complaints about Origins was the silent protagonist and how the origins had no impact on the main story. Bioware only had two options with the origins. Either expand the concept to have an actual effect on the story or remove it entirely in favor of a single well-developed protagonist with an actual personality. I can't fault them for choosing the latter.

Many people have expressed this complaint but it tend to be baked into the complaint regarding the railroading and the lack of meaningful choices. I broke the two appart in my list above but usually the complaint goes "No matter what I do everything goes to hell!".

I am comparing this game to the rest of the Bioware portfolio, and that includes DA:O. Origins was a MUCH happier game; you really felt like you were making a difference! (and that is the main difference!). Yes, the world is a dark and horrible place. But there is genuine hope; the warden is truly HELPING, and the choices you make can (unless you are a moron or a true bastard) really make Ferelden a better place. DA2 reeks of "Let's punch the player in the stommach as many times as we can! Let's make his brother die! Let's make his sister be caught by the templars! Let's make Anders a truly evil psychopath!
I can't decide if the writers truly thought this was a more "deep and meaningful" / "artsy" choice or if they just decided to troll DA:O players.

As I said, I don't play games to make myself feel bad. Quite the opposite.
(which btw is why I would never consider playing The Path, for example).
We've had this argument before, I'm not touching this.

My point is that the graphics, as demanding as they are on your computer, sucks. And for the record the complaint is that the darkspawn (and most other enemies too) looks LESS scary. My first reaction when I saw the DA2 ogre was "OOO big teddy bear! Lets give it hugses!". Basically the DA2 graphics have a number of flaws:

1. The over all style is far more cartoony. This is on purpose, however so I guess they succeeded with that.

2. The armors look LESS realistic than in DA:O. They all look like they are made of plastic, to boot (something with the surface effects).

3. The monster designs are disappointing, especially the darkspawn but also demons.

4. The deliberately change of certain characters (Isabella went from "Awesome sexy caucasian rogue" to "Dark skinned porn star with piercings"

5. The complete failure when it comes to make recurring NPC characters (Leliana, Alistair etc) look even remotely like their old selfs.

Now there is one good thing: The qunari looks good.
If you're going to complain about the game, at least don't make stuff up.

1. Nope.

2. Don't know what armors you were looking at. This wasn't true for any of the armors that I saw.

3. The ogre's design is almost identical to Origins, merely lacking the elongated snout and having a different skin color. The demons have exactly the same designs as they did in Origins.

4. So you're disappointed that Isabella actually has a unique character model instead of being Generic Female Rogue #7. I call that improvement.

5. Alistair and Leliana look the same as they did in Origins.

I thought they did a brilliant job making me hate him that much.
Thank you, NeoVid. It's nice to have the opinion of someone who actually played the whole game. :smallsmile:

GloatingSwine

2012-11-16, 08:34 PM

I thought they did a brilliant job making me hate him that much.

I think part of the problem is that in Awakening Anders wasn't a giant idiot like, well, every other mage ever. Cause I mean the whole thing with the mages is that they're trying to convince people that they can be trusted to live outside of a repressive cult structure and the way they intend to prove this is by turning into demons and eating people every single time.

And in this context Anders' original personality, where his greatest desire in life was to be lying on a beach somewhere being given drinks out of coconut shells by women in skimpy robes would have actually been interesting and validated some of what the mages were saying and given Hawke a reason to take his side in the matter.

Whereas in DA2 he is a giant idiot, and so is everyone else and Hawke's life, as well as the lives of everyone else in kirkwall, would be improved by him immediately murdering every party member upon joining so they couldn't do whatever enormously stupid thing they would do to generate drama for Hawke to solve. (which I actually did in one DA1 game).

warty goblin

2012-11-16, 08:40 PM

As I said DA:O was not roses and unicorns. But it was far Happier as pointed out above. Ending the blight, in itself, is itself proof of that.

Also, I know a lot of the things above was "well known beforehand" (the story was not, btw). People pre-ordered anyway, because they loved DA:O and Bioware and trusted them to make a fun game. Also many people who really didn't like these design decisions choose NOT to buy the game, but that also means they criticized that particular design decision (whichever they had a problem with)

Of course the story wasn't well known beforehand. What are they supposed to do, either set down in writing that they will tell guaranteed 95% the same story every single game and just file of the serial numbers? Or just leak the whole script?

Buying things always has the risk that you won't get what you thought you were getting. Buying things sight unseen months before they come out increases that risk substantially. If you don't like not getting what you expected, wait those extra what, three days tops, read some reviews, and make an informed decision. When I preorder a game and it sucks, it's my fault for not holding off and making a decision based on actual evidence. Sure the company produced a sucky game, and that isn't good, but the only person responsible for it ending up on my hard drive is me.

As for the argument that "People liked the voiced character / dialogue wheel in the ME series so there is nothing to complain about here"... It's just not a valid argument:

1. They are two different franchises, with two different play styles (old school RPG vs TPS Action RPG (or at least the first DA game was old school)).

2. Due to point 1, the fanbase is only overlapping to a certain degree. Many people who bought DA:O bought it because they wanted to go back to the roots of the genre, not because they liked ME. And even many of those who truly enjoy the ME games still wanted something completely different when they bought the DA games.
So what? The fans don't make the games, Bioware does. If Bioware decides to do voiced protagonists because they think people like it better or they're tired of trying to generate tension in a scenes which always star a lump of wood that is entirely their call. If Bioware decides not to slavishly recreate the same damn game from fifteen years ago over and over again until they all die of boredom, also totally their call.

If people don't like it, they don't have to buy it. If they don't like it, buy it anyways, and then whine endlessly about it, we're looking at another case of nerds raging over somebody having the gall to not pander to their every wish forever and ever until the end of time.

I'm not saying anybody has to like Dragon Age II. As I said, I got about ten minutes in before deciding I had no desire to play it ever again. But dislike it for what it is, not because it isn't a different game it never set out to be. Saying you don't like the story? Totally reasonable. Disliking the combat? Hey, I couldn't stand it either. Disliking the combat because it isn't identical to the last game's combat? Not a compelling argument. Saying it's the worst thing ever because Bioware didn't make Baulder's Gate 23? It makes the Han Shot First people look slightly reasonable.

Kalmarvho

2012-11-17, 12:49 AM

Whereas in DA2 he is a giant idiot, and so is everyone else and Hawke's life, as well as the lives of everyone else in kirkwall, would be improved by him immediately murdering every party member upon joining so they couldn't do whatever enormously stupid thing they would do to generate drama for Hawke to solve. (which I actually did in one DA1 game).

Now now, Aveline was quite sensible. And (much as I hate to say it) Fenris' only fault is that he's a murder-happy rage elf. Neither of them have anywhere near as much on their heads as, say, Anders and Isabela. Or Merril, but she doesn't really affect Kirkwall that much.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-11-17, 01:33 AM

Now now, Aveline was quite sensible. And (much as I hate to say it) Fenris' only fault is that he's a murder-happy rage elf. Neither of them have anywhere near as much on their heads as, say, Anders and Isabela. Or Merril, but she doesn't really affect Kirkwall that much.

Aveline... basically has no purpose except to nag you into following the rails after the whole thing with her and Donnic gets resolved.

Fenris... well, his anger is understandable, given his backstory. My bigger problem is the developers try way too hard to set him out as the woobie. If you're doing his romance sub-plot it's actually kindof adorable, but the problem is he acts like a clingy, vulnerable puppy toward you whether you're trying to get into his pants or not, and if you're not it just comes off as really, really creepy.

Merrill... okay, the whole Illuvian thing was kinda dumb, but how could you possibly be angry at her when she talks to you with that sexy welsh accent? Besides, the reason it was dumb wasn't her motives, but because there was a demon inside of it trying to trick her and somehow she, as the party's blood magic and demonology expert, never noticed this or tried to counteract the possibility in the slightest. I might argue she was the first character the developers put into the DA series that tried to directly show that blood magic and messing with demons isn't necessarily evil, but it's ruined by the mixed messages.

Isabella... she's a coward but that's not the same thing as being an idiot. The only thing she did you could argue was outright stupid was attempting to steal the Tome of Koslun in the first place, but we don't really know the context behind why the attempt was made or what the situation looked like from her point of view; All we have is the hindsight that she failed.

Anders... Anders is just a villain in disguise as a party member. That doesn't stop him from being a complete douchebag and a moron, but DA2's villains in general are douchebags and morons. Really, if DA2 has an Idiot Ball problem, it's with the villains, not so much with the heroes.

Aux-Ash

2012-11-17, 02:37 AM

Merrill... okay, the whole Illuvian thing was kinda dumb, but how could you possibly be angry at her when she talks to you with that sexy welsh accent? Besides, the reason it was dumb wasn't her motives, but because there was a demon inside of it trying to trick her and somehow she, as the party's blood magic and demonology expert, never noticed this or tried to counteract the possibility in the slightest. I might argue she was the first character the developers put into the DA series that tried to directly show that blood magic and messing with demons isn't necessarily evil, but it's ruined by the mixed messages.

Isabella... she's a coward but that's not the same thing as being an idiot. The only thing she did you could argue was outright stupid was attempting to steal the Tome of Koslun in the first place, but we don't really know the context behind why the attempt was made or what the situation looked like from her point of view; All we have is the hindsight that she failed.

Really, if DA2 has an Idiot Ball problem, it's with the villains, not so much with the heroes.

Just to adress these three points briefly.

Merill isn't there to show us the necessity of demonic magic. That lesson we learned in DAO if we wished. Merill is there to point out just how difficult it is dealing with demons. It is to show just how manipulative and deceptive demons can be.
The thing that people seem to be missing is that the demon isn't even hiding what it is or even what it does. It is blatantly obvious it wants into Merill's head, even Merill acknowledges it.
The trick is, it is luring Merill into thinking she got everything under control. It is at every turn reinforcing her belief that it is failing to manipulate her. It is never explicitely saying so. Instead it relies on other people questioning her ability to do so, thus coming across as patronizing her. Thus it has her wrapped around her finger, because frighteningly... the only thing in the game that gives of an air of recognices Merrill's ability... is the pride demon manipulating her. And Merill wants recognition above anything else.

It wasn't as well pulled off as it could have been, no. Especially the fade trip in Feynriel's quest jars a bit since it blatantly shows Merill that she couldn't resist a pride demon. But Merril stupid? I wouldn't go that far.
If everyone told me, at every turn, that my abilities, skills and control is worth nothing... I'd either end up depressed on stop listening to people as well... and that's what people ingame do to Merrill all the time. Especially Marethari and rival Hawke.

---

Isabela stole the tome because Castillion demanded it. She let his slaves go, and it was a lot of slaves, he found her and demanded she do that. Or he would kill her. Basically the same situation Han Solo is in ep 4 in Star Wars. Can't refuse or death.
He wanted it because it was worth -a lot- of money to Tevinter, which is where he trades slaves.

Castillion, being one of the leaders of the Felicima Armada, is pretty much king of the oceans and has massive ties to the Antivan Crows.

Not a person you refuse in other words.

---

As for Villains. I don't know... Meredith is the wrong person for her position and surrounded by definantely the wrong people. But she isn't really stupid as such. Tyrannical? Sure. Extremist? Certainly. But those aren't quite the same thing. Providing the protagonist with an obstacle isn't being stupid, no matter how annoying it can be. Labelling all mages as guilty in the end is perhaps the only thing that stands out. But that seemed to me be more of a case of the straw that broke the camel's back than stupidity...

Orsino was used in a stupid fashion though. His villainy comes completely out of nowhere. I mean... at least they could have him been the shadow villain in the background... having a hand in everything... just playing a very dangerous game to be rid of Meredith, leaving hints everywhere of his involvement. But nope... completely out of the blue.

The Arishok was awesome though. His actions make perfect sense for what basically is a fanatical warrior... which he is. No diplomats or priests to temper his actions present.

Petrice, me thinks, is also a rather good villain. Representing the politician, rather than the fighter. This is someone that fights with her social assets and is good at it. Playing all the angles and as the viscount points out... easily replaced by her backers. Arrogant though, very arrogant (her xenophobia probably extends to Fereldans as well as Qunari, me thinks. Not to the same degree of course).

Bartrand is just plain greedy and easily controlled by occult powers... not sure he counts.

So I don't really see any blatant stupidity among the villains as such. Disagreeability. Yes. Unsympathetic means. Definantely. But no real stupidity. Doing things that makes things difficult for the protagonist is not stupidity. Doing things that put themselves, their friends and/or everyone around them is not necessarily stupidity either.
I could discuss Anders' actions at length too... but I feel I have done so before and I don't really want to repeat myself or derail the topic more than I have already done.

Kalmarvho

2012-11-17, 03:12 AM

As for Villains. I don't know... Meredith is the wrong person for her position and surrounded by definantely the wrong people. But she isn't really stupid as such. Tyrannical? Sure. Extremist? Certainly. But those aren't quite the same thing. Providing the protagonist with an obstacle isn't being stupid, no matter how annoying it can be. Labelling all mages as guilty in the end is perhaps the only thing that stands out. But that seemed to me be more of a case of the straw that broke the camel's back than stupidity...

Well, speaking of Meredith...

Something people tend to forget about her is that during her first appearance in the story, she's pretty reasonable. She's intolerant and suspicious, but hell, she's Knight-Commander of the Kirkwall Templars, she has to be.

The thing that changes her - and turns Kirkwall into the mage-hell that it became - is Souledge the lyrium sword. The sword drives her mad like it did previously to Bartrand, when it was just a pretty statue. It makes her increasingly powerful - and increasingly paranoid, probably playing into the standard Templar lyrium addiction - and thus causes her to **** around with the mages. In the end, you're not really fighting Meredith, you're fighting Souledge the sword.

Orsino, though, can go die in a ditch.

Tebryn

2012-11-17, 03:36 AM

[spoiler]
The Arishok was awesome though. His actions make perfect sense for what basically is a fanatical warrior... which he is. No diplomats or priests to temper his actions present.

See, I never saw the Arishok as a villain. An -antagonist- sure but a Villain? Not at all. His rage is understandable for the most part. He's stuck in a city that hates him and goes totally counter to his own culture. He's pressed and prodded at ever turn and he's tasked with getting a holy relic back just so he can leave a place he hates utterly. His reaction...not good. But what do you expect? Frankly, while I as a person don't like the idea of a Caste System at the best of times, see some merit to his words at least for Thedas.

Petrice, me thinks, is also a rather good villain. Representing the politician, rather than the fighter. This is someone that fights with her social assets and is good at it. Playing all the angles and as the viscount points out... easily replaced by her backers. Arrogant though, very arrogant (her xenophobia probably extends to Fereldans as well as Qunari, me thinks. Not to the same degree of course).

She alludes to as much in Sheparding Wolves. She points out the only reason she picked you in one dialogue option is because you're a Fereldan and thus not someone anyone would notice.

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-17, 04:08 AM

I played both games on PC and found the controls and camera in 2 significantly superior.

...

Funny how people like this in ME, but not in DA2. Especially since one of the major complaints about Origins was the silent protagonist and how the origins had no impact on the main story. Bioware only had two options with the origins. Either expand the concept to have an actual effect on the story or remove it entirely in favor of a single well-developed protagonist with an actual personality. I can't fault them for choosing the latter.

...

1. Nope.

3. The ogre's design is almost identical to Origins, merely lacking the elongated snout and having a different skin color. The demons have exactly the same designs as they did in Origins.

4. So you're disappointed that Isabella actually has a unique character model instead of being Generic Female Rogue #7. I call that improvement.

Regarding the controls: I assume you played DA:O on a console then? I REALLY missed the ability to zoom all the way out for a tactical overview. SO did tons of other people. Because that was possible in DA:O on the PC.

As for ME vs DA2: Two different games. Two different FRANCHISES. As I have pointed out.

And about the choice... I, like a lot of WRPG players, prefer the "blank slate with a lot of options". However you missed the part where I, personally, did not list this as one of MY problems with DA2.

Armors: Heavy plate armors definitely looks much less realistic (yes, plate in DA:O is very unrealistic too, but at least seem to be grounded in reality). Also, I was playing it on PC with the HiRes DLC patch (official). Not only do the armors (especially leather and cloth) have an artificial shine to them, so does the faces. They all look like they dipped their faces in wax before talking to the camera.

Ogre design almost identical? One looks like a raging terrifying beast, the other looks like a huge bad-tempered teddy bear, almost failing to convey aggression at all. But as I said the Darkspawn design is just awful in DA2 in general, removing any kind of uniqueness about them and just turning them into generic-looking undead and orcs.

And finally yes, because I favor CONSISTENCY. The change in look for Isabella not only completely remakes the character (it's like Black Widow in Avengers 2 being played by say Halle Barry in a nightshirt (and nothing else) instead of Scarlett Johansson in her uniform, and nobody pointing the difference out. Just create a NEW character instead, will you?

I think part of the problem is that in Awakening Anders wasn't a giant idiot like, well, every other mage ever. Cause I mean the whole thing with the mages is that they're trying to convince people that they can be trusted to live outside of a repressive cult structure and the way they intend to prove this is by turning into demons and eating people every single time.

And in this context Anders' original personality, where his greatest desire in life was to be lying on a beach somewhere being given drinks out of coconut shells by women in skimpy robes would have actually been interesting and validated some of what the mages were saying and given Hawke a reason to take his side in the matter.

Whereas in DA2 he is a giant idiot, and so is everyone else and Hawke's life, as well as the lives of everyone else in kirkwall, would be improved by him immediately murdering every party member upon joining so they couldn't do whatever enormously stupid thing they would do to generate drama for Hawke to solve. (which I actually did in one DA1 game).

THANK YOU. This is EXACTLY my biggest problem with the mages in the game, the people you can pick up in the game, and Anders and Merril in particular. Bioware failed EPICALLY at all these points. In fact, I would say that except Aveline and my sister, I would never let any of them into my group at all, if I had a choice in the matter (which you don't). They really SHOULD be killed on sight since the just make the world a worse place by simply existing.

Tebryn

2012-11-17, 04:53 AM

Regarding the controls: I assume you played DA:O on a console then? I REALLY missed the ability to zoom all the way out for a tactical overview. SO did tons of other people. Because that was possible in DA:O on the PC.

He distinctly stayed he played both on PC. As did I. Love DA2 controls. DA:O was abysmal.

As for ME vs DA2: Two different games. Two different FRANCHISES. As I have pointed out.

Not a valid counter argument. It doesn't matter. We can actually go and look at who bought both games. Criticizing one game for something you don't have a problem with in another isn't a very sound way to argue. Doesn't matter if they're different games. Doesn't matter if they're different franchises. People don't want a boring blank slate. Bioware game the people what they wanted and they got complained at. They could have kept it the same and got complained at by the people who said the Origins part of Origins wasn't all that deep for the story. I agree with that criticism, I find DA:O to be a far weaker game in Story through out in fact.

And about the choice... I, like a lot of WRPG players, prefer the "blank slate with a lot of options". However you missed the part where I, personally, did not list this as one of MY problems with DA2.

And a lot don't. Hence the change. Doesn't matter if you didn't list it as one of your problems, we're not just talking about you. We're talking about the criticisms lobbed at the game over all. If you don't want to have this as part of the discussion, don't keep responding to it or using it as a problem the game has.

Armors: Heavy plate armors definitely looks much less realistic (yes, plate in DA:O is very unrealistic too, but at least seem to be grounded in reality). Also, I was playing it on PC with the HiRes DLC patch (official). Not only do the armors (especially leather and cloth) have an artificial shine to them, so does the faces. They all look like they dipped their faces in wax before talking to the camera.

So what? You're not playing the game for realism. Armor is shiney, oh well.

Ogre design almost identical? One looks like a raging terrifying beast, the other looks like a huge bad-tempered teddy bear, almost failing to convey aggression at all. But as I said the Darkspawn design is just awful in DA2 in general, removing any kind of uniqueness about them and just turning them into generic-looking undead and orcs.

Well, the pictures from the game once again seem to contridict your over all impressions of the Graphics Change.

Here's an Ogre. (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Ogre) Bottom is where the pictures are. Look pretty much the same to me.

Here's a Hurlok (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Hurlocks), the only Darkspawn you encounter other than Ogres and Emissaries (Who weren't in DA:O). Once again, they look rather similar really.

And finally yes, because I favor CONSISTENCY. The change in look for Isabella not only completely remakes the character (it's like Black Widow in Avengers 2 being played by say Halle Barry in a nightshirt (and nothing else) instead of Scarlett Johansson in her uniform, and nobody pointing the difference out. Just create a NEW character instead, will you?

Except it's not quite like that. It'd be like taking a side character played by a nameless actress or actor and then replacing them with a big named starlet or star. Maybe you're forgetting this but Isabella wasn't all that big a player in Dragon Age Origins. Heck, once you learned Duelist she didn't even talk to you any more. Oh, and the chance to sex her up a little of camera. So from day one she's a harlot. It's not like they changed her character. They expanded on it. And they changed her model because she went from Bit Player 1020305 to Important Plot Character from Game 1 to game 2. I really hate when they give characters more depth, shallow though it may be.

Craft (Cheese)

2012-11-17, 05:41 AM

The trick is, it is luring Merill into thinking she got everything under control. It is at every turn reinforcing her belief that it is failing to manipulate her. It is never explicitely saying so. Instead it relies on other people questioning her ability to do so, thus coming across as patronizing her. Thus it has her wrapped around her finger, because frighteningly... the only thing in the game that gives of an air of recognices Merrill's ability... is the pride demon manipulating her. And Merill wants recognition above anything else.

That's... actually, I never really thought of it that way. It's pretty clever... so clever, I strongly suspect that's not what the writers originally intended but eh, death of the author and all that.

Still though, if lack of confidence were really Merrill's problem, you'd think that being Friendly!Hawke and supporting her whenever you possibly can would, you know, help with that? Instead it just seems to make her doubt herself even more.

Aux-Ash

2012-11-17, 06:04 AM

That's... actually, I never really thought of it that way. It's pretty clever... so clever, I strongly suspect that's not what the writers originally intended but eh, death of the author and all that.

Still though, if lack of confidence were really Merrill's problem, you'd think that being Friendly!Hawke and supporting her whenever you possibly can would, you know, help with that? Instead it just seems to make her doubt herself even more.

Yes. Rival Hawke has the same effect on her as Marethari. Just another person she feels she must prove herself before. She feels she must show these people that she can handle herself. She has a desire to be seen as very grown up, ready to take on the mantle and protect her people and friends.

Friend Hawke, however, trusts her. Supports her. That brings us to another problem. Merril knows what she does is dangerous...but now she has someone who cares for her and believes in her. So she has someone she must show she can handle it before (Marethari) and someone that she risks hurting a lot if she fails (Hawke). At the same time she must show her friend he/she was right in trusting her.

Where Rival Hawke motivates her... Friend Hawke makes her question if it is worth it. Ultimately... she must prove herself before "mom" (Marethari) and herself though.

Merill's plot probably needs more nuance than the friend/rival system could simulate, and definantely needed to be more developed overall. But it's not a bad story in my meaning.

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-17, 07:21 AM

Well, the pictures from the game once again seem to contridict your over all impressions of the Graphics Change.

Here's an Ogre. (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Ogre) Bottom is where the pictures are. Look pretty much the same to me.

Here's a Hurlok (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Hurlocks), the only Darkspawn you encounter other than Ogres and Emissaries (Who weren't in DA:O). Once again, they look rather similar really.

Funny, the pictures shows exactly what I am talking about. Remember, before the game was released there were even people questioning if the demo actually had the finished graphics, because it was so much worse than Origins.
Anyway, your link above (especially the Hurlock) shows EXACTLY what I am talking about. The original design was a monster with huge mouth and sharp teeth. The redesign looks like a generic undead from any video game ever made. Not only are they looking completely different (and generic, as I said), but they are also animated like monkeys. Basically they move like the Moria orcs from the LOTR movie, while the original Hurlocks were tall and proud.

As for my invalid argument... Really? We can't prefer different things in different games?

He distinctly stayed he played both on PC. As did I. Love DA2 controls. DA:O was abysmal.

Well I stand corrected then. But I definitely disagree. The camera was definitely better (you could zoom out much further) and the controls... I loved them.

Morty

2012-11-17, 12:07 PM

Well, speaking of Meredith...

Something people tend to forget about her is that during her first appearance in the story, she's pretty reasonable. She's intolerant and suspicious, but hell, she's Knight-Commander of the Kirkwall Templars, she has to be.

The thing that changes her - and turns Kirkwall into the mage-hell that it became - is Souledge the lyrium sword. The sword drives her mad like it did previously to Bartrand, when it was just a pretty statue. It makes her increasingly powerful - and increasingly paranoid, probably playing into the standard Templar lyrium addiction - and thus causes her to **** around with the mages. In the end, you're not really fighting Meredith, you're fighting Souledge the sword.

Orsino, though, can go die in a ditch.

The bolded part what I disliked about Meredith - the lyrium sword. It weakens her as an antagonist because not only does it push her own paranoia out of focus, but we have no reason to believe Gamlen couldn't pick up the sword and do the same crazy stuff she did in the final battle.

Tebryn

2012-11-17, 02:29 PM

Funny, the pictures shows exactly what I am talking about. Remember, before the game was released there were even people questioning if the demo actually had the finished graphics, because it was so much worse than Origins.

I don't. It's a valid question for the demo however.

Anyway, your link above (especially the Hurlock) shows EXACTLY what I am talking about. The original design was a monster with huge mouth and sharp teeth. The redesign looks like a generic undead from any video game ever made. Not only are they looking completely different (and generic, as I said), but they are also animated like monkeys. Basically they move like the Moria orcs from the LOTR movie, while the original Hurlocks were tall and proud.

The new hurlok looks less undead than the first one. They just made them less undeady. I agree with their movement changing but there's a reason for the change explained in game. The Archfiend is dead. It's control that bolstered the Dark Spawn and made them an actual threat instead of shambling frenzied beasts is gone. It's in the lore in several places.

I know they move like that when it's technically still alive but do you want the Developers to make two models when it's cheaper and easier to animate one? Especially when we already know that an -actual- fault for the game was that it was rushed out.

I'm not saying that they haven't changed but they've not changed much. Same with the Ogre. You brought up the demons and as I and others have pointed out those models haven't even changed. The Dark Spawn look a little less rotting. Oh. Well. They now look less like generic undead which they weren't even supposed to be and more like the corrupted species of what they were intended to be.

As for my invalid argument... Really? We can't prefer different things in different games?

Of course you can, you can have what ever preferences you like. No one is telling you you're preference is bad. We're saying that it's not an argument for the -game- being -bad- or inferior than a game that came before. There's a couple things here that make it an actual invalid argument, most of us have raised them but there's the big one.

1. If someone said "I like the steak at Resturant X but not at Resturant Y even though their made the same way." isn't an argument for why Resturant Y is bad. It's just why you prefer one over the other. It comes down to preference, just like your complains about the story being sad or the graphics being worse.

2. We knew Hawke, a voiced protagonist, was going to be the main character of Dragon Age 2 since before the last DLC for DA:O was out. If you bought the game anyway then you only have yourself to blame. If you don't like voiced protagonists with dialogue wheels and you then bought a game with a voiced protagonist with a dialogue wheel with full knowledge it was what you were getting then complaining it's a bad part of the game isn't valid. Don't buy a game you know you're not going to enjoy. Or if you do, don't blame the game makers for not catering to your tastes when you had full knowledge that they weren't in the first place.

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-17, 10:44 PM

The bolded part what I disliked about Meredith - the lyrium sword. It weakens her as an antagonist because not only does it push her own paranoia out of focus, but we have no reason to believe Gamlen couldn't pick up the sword and do the same crazy stuff she did in the final battle.

The thing is, you can't say with absolute certainty that the lyrium idol drove Meredith crazy. It certainly drove Bartrand mad and had an effect on Varric, but perhaps it affects dwarves differently. You'll note that Meredith never starts forcing people to eat lyrium or hearing voices. She's very paranoid, but no more so than a lot of nutbar rulers in our own history. And she's paranoid for good reason; while the Circle wasn't as far gone as she believed, there WERE maleficarum operating within their ranks.

In the end, the lyrium idol did elevate Meredith to final boss-material. But with the idol in hand, she's on par with the Archdemon in terms of power. Meredith without the idol = curiously hot older chick with a sword. Meredith with the idol = God of the New World.

Morty

2012-11-18, 01:12 PM

The thing is, you can't say with absolute certainty that the lyrium idol drove Meredith crazy. It certainly drove Bartrand mad and had an effect on Varric, but perhaps it affects dwarves differently. You'll note that Meredith never starts forcing people to eat lyrium or hearing voices. She's very paranoid, but no more so than a lot of nutbar rulers in our own history. And she's paranoid for good reason; while the Circle wasn't as far gone as she believed, there WERE maleficarum operating within their ranks.

In the end, the lyrium idol did elevate Meredith to final boss-material. But with the idol in hand, she's on par with the Archdemon in terms of power. Meredith without the idol = curiously hot older chick with a sword. Meredith with the idol = God of the New World.

Varric says that "she's losing it just like Bartrand". Still, even if it didn't drive her crazy, it gave her powers, which I don't like either. It reeks of a contrived way of making her into a "cool" boss fight. Which, of course, wasn't cool but ridiculous. What was wrong with a veteran Templar with a powerful magic weapon and a cadre of Templars behind her? Mind you, I think that you shouldn't fight her if you side with the Templars, but that's another story.

Rake21

2012-11-18, 03:06 PM

Varric says that "she's losing it just like Bartrand". Still, even if it didn't drive her crazy, it gave her powers, which I don't like either. It reeks of a contrived way of making her into a "cool" boss fight. Which, of course, wasn't cool but ridiculous. What was wrong with a veteran Templar with a powerful magic weapon and a cadre of Templars behind her? Mind you, I think that you shouldn't fight her if you side with the Templars, but that's another story.

The power thing never really bothered me too much.

When Hawke and crew go to Bartand's mansion again in Act 3, a piece of the idol tears open a tear to the Fade to defends itself. I always figured it did the same during the Merideth fight. It seems like the thing is focusing a tear into the Fade through her, letting her call up spirits to take over the statues and giving her DBZ powers.

Morty

2012-11-19, 07:54 AM

The power thing never really bothered me too much.

When Hawke and crew go to Bartand's mansion again in Act 3, a piece of the idol tears open a tear to the Fade to defends itself. I always figured it did the same during the Merideth fight. It seems like the thing is focusing a tear into the Fade through her, letting her call up spirits to take over the statues and giving her DBZ powers.

That's my point, though. Even if we accept the incredible power of this red lyrium, we don't actually fight Meredith - we fight the lyrium sword. Like I said, it might as well have been Gamlen taking that sword and animating statues.

mangosta71

2012-11-19, 01:30 PM

Not a valid counter argument. It doesn't matter. We can actually go and look at who bought both games. Criticizing one game for something you don't have a problem with in another isn't a very sound way to argue. Doesn't matter if they're different games. Doesn't matter if they're different franchises. People don't want a boring blank slate. Bioware game the people what they wanted and they got complained at. They could have kept it the same and got complained at by the people who said the Origins part of Origins wasn't all that deep for the story. I agree with that criticism, I find DA:O to be a far weaker game in Story through out in fact.
It could be argued that DA:O and ME had different target audiences. The target audience that bought DA:O wanted a blank slate character. The target audience that bought ME didn't. DA2 was targeted more toward the audience that bought ME than the audience that bought DA:O. Not a fault of the game itself, but generally, sequels in a franchise have the same target audience as the original entry.

As for a fully-voiced character, I wish Bioware had used a blend of the two dialog systems (for both games). Show the full lines of dialog, as in DA:O, but have the option selected by the player read aloud by a voice actor. They could even keep the icons to indicate tone.

Well, the pictures from the game once again seem to contridict your over all impressions of the Graphics Change.

Here's an Ogre. (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Ogre) Bottom is where the pictures are. Look pretty much the same to me.

Here's a Hurlok (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Hurlocks), the only Darkspawn you encounter other than Ogres and Emissaries (Who weren't in DA:O). Once again, they look rather similar really.
First off, those don't look anything alike to me. Second, there are lots of emissaries in DA:O. They aren't their own race; they're just the hurlocks and genlocks that can cast spells.

Except it's not quite like that. It'd be like taking a side character played by a nameless actress or actor and then replacing them with a big named starlet or star. Maybe you're forgetting this but Isabella wasn't all that big a player in Dragon Age Origins. Heck, once you learned Duelist she didn't even talk to you any more. Oh, and the chance to sex her up a little of camera. So from day one she's a harlot. It's not like they changed her character. They expanded on it. And they changed her model because she went from Bit Player 1020305 to Important Plot Character from Game 1 to game 2. I really hate when they give characters more depth, shallow though it may be.
This is a video game. There was no reason to change the character model - it's not like the actress refused the part or they wanted a bigger-name starlet. She's not even the same ethnicity between games - she's white in DA:O and looks like a Pacific Islander in DA2.

The new hurlok looks less undead than the first one. They just made them less undeady. I agree with their movement changing but there's a reason for the change explained in game. The Archfiend is dead. It's control that bolstered the Dark Spawn and made them an actual threat instead of shambling frenzied beasts is gone. It's in the lore in several places.
I haven't played 2 (apart from the demo), so correct me if I'm wrong, but... Doesn't it start with Hawke fleeing Lothering? Because the archdemon was definitely still alive when Lothering got wiped off the map. Which means that it was still around and in control when Hawke encountered darkspawn on the road out of there.

Tebryn

2012-11-19, 02:59 PM

It could be argued that DA:O and ME had different target audiences. The target audience that bought DA:O wanted a blank slate character. The target audience that bought ME didn't. DA2 was targeted more toward the audience that bought ME than the audience that bought DA:O. Not a fault of the game itself, but generally, sequels in a franchise have the same target audience as the original entry.

Except thanks to Bioware's social network thing we can see who bought which or both and the demographics overlap. It wasn't so wrong of them to make a conclusion that people liked voiced protagonists when a major complaint was the character in DA:O wasn't very engaging.

As for a fully-voiced character, I wish Bioware had used a blend of the two dialog systems (for both games). Show the full lines of dialog, as in DA:O, but have the option selected by the player read aloud by a voice actor. They could even keep the icons to indicate tone.

They didn't though.

First off, those don't look anything alike to me. Second, there are lots of emissaries in DA:O. They aren't their own race; they're just the hurlocks and genlocks that can cast spells.

I meant seperate character models. And I suppose it's a matter of artistic taste, I don't really see much difference.

This is a video game. There was no reason to change the character model - it's not like the actress refused the part or they wanted a bigger-name starlet. She's not even the same ethnicity between games - she's white in DA:O and looks like a Pacific Islander in DA2.

She's got a generic character model in DA:O. Her character hasn't changed, they just made her fit her design and story more because she's not a third rung character. Isabella was there to give you a spec for your characters in DA:O. That's it. Her role expanded in DA:2. Is it so terribly wrong to make a character who is important -not- look generic?

I haven't played 2 (apart from the demo), so correct me if I'm wrong, but... Doesn't it start with Hawke fleeing Lothering? Because the archdemon was definitely still alive when Lothering got wiped off the map. Which means that it was still around and in control when Hawke encountered darkspawn on the road out of there.

Ya it is, but if you'd quoted the whole thing

I know they move like that when it's technically still alive but do you want the Developers to make two models when it's cheaper and easier to animate one? Especially when we already know that an -actual- fault for the game was that it was rushed out.

I do actually point that out.

Rake21

2012-11-19, 03:25 PM

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-19, 03:52 PM

That's my point, though. Even if we accept the incredible power of this red lyrium, we don't actually fight Meredith - we fight the lyrium sword. Like I said, it might as well have been Gamlen taking that sword and animating statues.

I don't think he could. Meredith is a templar, and templars drink lyrium to gain their powers. She knows how to use lyrium as a weapon. In anyone else's hands, I don't think the sword would have been that effective.

To your other point, I would note that I spent half the game chopping through highly-skilled templars and their squads. Very unimpressive as a final boss, especially given the line-up of giant monsters Hawke has already hacked to pieces.

It's the same reason why Batman fights Clayface at the end of Arkham City and not the Joker. The former is a shapeshifting juggernaut that can produce smaller copies of himself, and the latter is a cancer patient with a personality disorder.

MountainKing

2012-11-19, 04:36 PM

I haven't actually played any of the games in the series but they have been recommended to me. I have limited time and money so if I could only play one game in the series which one would that have to be? However if I did happen to buy the whole series in which order should they be played? (I own a PS3)

For me, the negative aspects of Origins boil down to "Play a mage. Win. Make your mage an arcane warrior. Win harder.", and the negative aspects of DA2 boil down to "I got sick of tapping A after 3 hours."

I played Origins vanilla with absolutely no DLC, so I have no idea if any of the DLC actually did something to make the game balanced and enjoyable, but for me, I tried all three classes, and I came away from the game with a very strong feeling that the only way to get anything done was to play a mage. The warrior and thief classes were junk by comparison.

I'm not sure exactly what happened when I played DA2. I got to the city, and was inundated with all kinds of treasure and weapons that I couldn't actually use once I finally got to owning a house. Apparently it was carried over from my friend's previous play through? No idea, but it was pretty much the deathblow to what I felt was already a lackluster experience. "Oh look, what amounts to basically all the magic loot in the world. Nothing to do here."

At the end of the day, I had fun with Origins, but I got tired of the repetitive nature of the enemies after about 36 hours of gameplay (grand total; my mage had about 24 hours in, my thief about 3 and my warrior about 9).

Kalmarvho

2012-11-19, 04:38 PM

The warrior and thief classes were junk by comparison

That's more a problem of the source material, really. Bioware didn't seem to bother balancing mages at all.

GloatingSwine

2012-11-19, 06:11 PM

For me, the negative aspects of Origins boil down to "Play a mage. Win. Make your mage an arcane warrior. Win harder.", and the negative aspects of DA2 boil down to "I got sick of tapping A after 3 hours."

Oh god, I did a mage-arcane warrior to fight The Harvester on hard (basically had to solo tank him and all his minions, pew pewing him with staff attacks). When I took the same character into Witch Hunt literally nothing could hurt me.

Such a broken class, especially with Awakening.

But yeah, mages ruled all the things and were better at everything than anyone else, archers could be mega powerful as well, mind.

Avilan the Grey

2012-11-20, 02:21 AM

MountainKing

2012-11-20, 09:31 AM

Oh god, I did a mage-arcane warrior to fight The Harvester on hard (basically had to solo tank him and all his minions, pew pewing him with staff attacks). When I took the same character into Witch Hunt literally nothing could hurt me.

Such a broken class, especially with Awakening.

But yeah, mages ruled all the things and were better at everything than anyone else, archers could be mega powerful as well, mind.

In the experience I had, which sounds somewhat different from yours (sounds like DLCs), archers are not powerful because archers go squish. But then again, anything that isn't an arcane warrior goes squish in Origins.

Not sure why you had to do it with a staff, though, since one of the AW's abilities was that you made weapon attacks using Magic instead of your Strength. My arcane warriors would drop a few area spells, then switch to sword and board to mop up, because mages dressed up in more armor than Templars are for winners. :3

Aux-Ash

2012-11-20, 11:31 AM

. Wynne uses the same female body model as everyone else, with an unique face. Just like Isabella.

Actually, all the companions plus special npc (such as Flemeth and Loghain) uses custom faces. But Isabela uses a normal npc face created in the normal facial generator. It is entirely possible to look identical to Isabela, but rather difficult to approximate the companions.

(I can't remember all the settings... but it did involve the second or third darkest complexion)

I think that's what he meant with generic. Isabela's face is unique only by merit of noone else using the exact same facial code. Much like every other named npc in the game. But unlike the companions, it was not custom made by Bioware.

You're correct regarding the bodies though. There's no custom bodies in DAO.

mangosta71

2012-11-20, 12:05 PM

She's got a generic character model in DA:O. Her character hasn't changed, they just made her fit her design and story more because she's not a third rung character. Isabella was there to give you a spec for your characters in DA:O. That's it. Her role expanded in DA:2. Is it so terribly wrong to make a character who is important -not- look generic?
If the point of DA2 is that it's a group of regular guys getting caught up in events, then it could be argued that the character models should be generic. Or, if they wanted her to look unique, they could have simply not used the character model they used for her for any other NPCs. Failing that, they could have at least left her skin, hair, and eyes the same color. Or just made up an entirely new NPC instead of reusing one that was already established in the setting.

There were lots of better ways to handle the situation. It's frankly ridiculous that they chose the approach they did.

In the experience I had, which sounds somewhat different from yours (sounds like DLCs), archers are not powerful because archers go squish. But then again, anything that isn't an arcane warrior goes squish in Origins.
Archers got crazy powerful in Awakening. There were also mods on DA Nexus that rebalanced the classes (basically they buffed warriors and rogues so that mages weren't so ridiculously powerful by comparison).

Tebryn

2012-11-20, 12:26 PM

If the point of DA2 is that it's a group of regular guys getting caught up in events, then it could be argued that the character models should be generic. Or, if they wanted her to look unique, they could have simply not used the character model they used for her for any other NPCs. Failing that, they could have at least left her skin, hair, and eyes the same color. Or just made up an entirely new NPC instead of reusing one that was already established in the setting.

There were lots of better ways to handle the situation. It's frankly ridiculous that they chose the approach they did.

Well yes, they could have done a lot of things. But you're now criticizing a company for wanting to make the important characters more distinct then the rest of the cast across the board, something that's happened in RPG's since time bloody immemorial. It boils down to the fact you don't like how they changed Isabella, a minor character from the first game whose sole purpose was to dole out a class specialization and a threesome. Her character has stayed the same which I think is the most important part of bringing a totally optional encounter to a main role. She's always been "Queen of the Eastern Seas and the sharpest blade in Llomerryn". I don't know where this idea of a "pale" character comes from but all the pictures I can find have her skin fairly dark. Not as dark as it is now but hey, people tan when they're out on boats in the blistering sun. As for Biowares offical Answer to this.

We considered keeping her looking as she did, but considering she was a pretty minor character in DAO it seems a bit self-limiting to keep her with the same look when we could do amazing things with a redesign. I think she looks great (and she was always Rivaini and dark-skinned, as I recall the lighting in the Pearl just made it difficult to tell).

As for the voice, it's a different voice actress but she sounds much the same as she did.

I guess the question would be: why not make it a whole new character, then? I suppose it's because we like Isabela, and we like the story that her being that Isabela brings into the mix. At any rate, Sheryl did a pretty awesome job on her.

And a picture shows she does in fact have fairly dark skin.

http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u131/Tebryn_Cabal/10dth8h.jpg

How you think that's "pale" is beyond me.

Morty

2012-11-20, 01:20 PM

I don't think he could. Meredith is a templar, and templars drink lyrium to gain their powers. She knows how to use lyrium as a weapon. In anyone else's hands, I don't think the sword would have been that effective.

To your other point, I would note that I spent half the game chopping through highly-skilled templars and their squads. Very unimpressive as a final boss, especially given the line-up of giant monsters Hawke has already hacked to pieces.

It's the same reason why Batman fights Clayface at the end of Arkham City and not the Joker. The former is a shapeshifting juggernaut that can produce smaller copies of himself, and the latter is a cancer patient with a personality disorder.

Yes, well, this sort of touches my deeper concerns with DA2 model of combat, namely throwing waves of enemies at you and needlessly overblown "cool" boss fights. Not that DA2 is alone in this, mind you.

Rake21

2012-11-20, 01:59 PM

Yes, well, this sort of touches my deeper concerns with DA2 model of combat, namely throwing waves of enemies at you and needlessly overblown "cool" boss fights. Not that DA2 is alone in this, mind you.

I never had much of a problem with the big, "cool" boss fights in DA2, to tell the truth.

The Rock Wraith was pretty damn fun and required some quick maneuvering of your party, and it looked awesome to boot. The Dragon fight, while a little long, still had that epic feeling I got in the fist game.

The DLCs also had some rocking boss fights. Corypheus, with his crazy attacks and environmental effects, felt like an unimaginably powerful mage, and you feel pretty good when you take him down. The final fight with Prophet and Leopold is incredibly enjoyable, and probably my favorite fight in the series. It's because these boss fights go all out, and require more than a HP slug-fest, that makes them more than a little fun for me.

Compare those to the fight with the Arishok. He is easily the most compelling antagonist in the game, and I enjoy every scene with him. But his boss fight? It mainly consists of Hawke throwing a few shots, drinking health potions, and running away. Not the most enjoyable fight.

Giggling Ghast

2012-11-20, 02:12 PM

I never had much of a problem with the big, "cool" boss fights in DA2, to tell the truth.

The Rock Wraith was pretty damn fun and required some quick maneuvering of your party, and it looked awesome to boot. The Dragon fight, while a little long, still had that epic feeling I got in the fist game.

The DLCs also had some rocking boss fights. Corypheus, with his crazy attacks and environmental effects, felt like an unimaginably powerful mage, and you feel pretty good when you take him down. The final fight with Prophet and Leopold is incredibly enjoyable, and probably my favorite fight in the series. It's because these boss fights go all out, and require more than a HP slug-fest, that makes them more than a little fun for me.

Compare those to the fight with the Arishok. He is easily the most compelling antagonist in the game, and I enjoy every scene with him. But his boss fight? It mainly consists of Hawke throwing a few shots, drinking health potions, and running away. Not the most enjoyable fight.

Bioware just loves effing duels. I don't really understand it myself, as this is a team-based combat system. I got through the Arishok duel with some well-timed use of various bombs.

The fight against Prosper and Leopold is very well-designed. The battle with Corypheus suffers because it's so hard to navigate your characters through that rock maze. Still, it feels suitably "epic."