73 réponses à ce sujet

[Dansayshi]

7/10 for me. The bugs just drag it down.



Best part of it tho is definately the level design, it was great. Even the fade part this time round was tolerable.

[Murphys_Law]

kelsjet wrote...

Viglin wrote...

kelsjet wrote...

If we are to be completely honest here (a proposition that is hard to accept on DA:O's own forums, especially given the rabid fanbois about) I think we will all agree that if we really looked at Awakenings we would all say that it should not get any more than 75/100 at best.
...

Never speak for everyone.

I myself would rate it higher, but thats just me.

Too bad that you didn't bold and colorize the first part of my sentence in your fit of chest-beating, since it is far more pertinent to your post then anything else.

But lets move on to someone who is actually trying to contribute constructively to the discussion in an effort to move the conversation forward.

dbkkk wrote...
I tend to agree with a fair chunk of what you have been saying regarding a big gaming compnay bias, except for the idea that somehow subjective game reviews  will fix themselves with time. The idea that the game industry and reviewers will 'mature' in a symbiotic fashion that somehow avoids compliicty or collusion is a nice one but hardly guaranteed nor even necessarily likely. How will game reviewers of the future differ from modern entertainment / media pundits in other venues? Heck look at stock market analysts, there is a profession that has been around for eons yet has all sorts of credibilty issues and highly subjective appraisals. It would make more sense if there were more game reviewers that didn't have any skin in the game. i.e. had business models that were much less reliant on the gaming industry themselves. Like a New York Times or Time magazine that couldn't care one whit if the game succeeded or failed. But I wouldn't hold my breath for anything like that to arrive soon.

You make fair points and I would agree that you are totally right in your hesitation in thinking that the unprofessional state that the industry (both games and game reviews) are in may not ever change. To be fair, you are right, there is no guarantee that this issue will be resolved eventually. However, we do have precedence of how other, related industries have become more 'professional' when they have matured.

A key point you have touched on is that the industries are somewhat inexorably linked, due to the constant feedback loop of game creation -> game criticism -> game creation iteration (ME2 is a great example of this process at work, where the devs themselves stated that they made a concerted effort to respond to every single criticism made about ME1).

All this being said, the examples of precedence I talked about earlier come from the movie industry. As any good student of media history will tell you, the movie industry and the movie review industry were in a similar place as we are now in the late 40s and early 50s. The vast majority of films were formulaic and the major production houses had far too much interest in the review process. All this changed in the early 50s with not only the introduction of legendary directors (Kurosawa et al.) but a simultaneous birth of movie critics who came to light in an effort to truly appreciate these new movies being released.
This lead to movies being studied as an art form, which eventually lead to the introduction of actual professional, educated movie critics taking center stage in the discussion. This eventually lead to the situation which exists today where a real movie critic is not only a professional, but a highly educated individual who has not only just 'watched many movies' but studied movies at an academic level (individuals like Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune and A.O. Scott of the New York Times).

But the key take away from this is that both events need to happen somewhat simultaneously. Not only do we need professional and educated game critics, but we need a true "next generation game" to spark the engine of creating the need for these 'new breed of critics'.

Essentially, we need an Akira Kurosawa game designer.

My hope for the maturity of the games industry (and all related industries) is born from a belief that out there somewhere there is in fact a Kurosawa for games.

Interesting analysis, but it is a little more complex than that in my opinion.  You forgot to mention the most important part...the general public.  After all, you need to have a good amount of people to read the critic's review for it to even be published.  Every medium has a stage where it is not commonly accepted and just adopted by niche markets (i.e. early adopters, hardcore fans of it, etc.).  Really the video game industry is just starting to be more mainstream, but still has many hurdles to overcome.  After all, playing video games is still seen to be done by only fat greasy male nerds no matter how wrong that stereotype is.  This is slowly changing, as more people play video games, video games get more attention, and, as you say, video games grow in maturity/artistic integrity.  I think how society views the medium plays a much larger role than a certain "next-gen" developer, as I already believe we have had many developers that have pushed the boundaries.  Essentially, it just becomes a question of timing on which developer (or director, writer etc.) gets the credit, but really the great artists before him were just as important.

Modifié par Murphys_Law, 31 mars 2010 - 10:34 .

[UltimoCrofto]

kelsjet wrote...

If we are to be completely honest here (a proposition that is hard to accept on DA:O's own forums, especially given the rabid fanbois about) I think we will all agree that if we really looked at Awakenings we would all say that it should not get any more than 75/100 at best.

Most review sites are giving it an extra (read: 'free') 10 or so points due to the "Bioware" splash-screen that we see when we load up the game.

An accurate way to look at the reviews is to normalize for the "splash-screen effect", which, in the case of Awakenings is to take whatever score you see and subtract anywhere between 5-10 points from it to get the 'real' score.

Remember, a name can carry A LOT of weight, especially in the somewhat unprofessional (due to its relative youth) 'games review' industry. After all, who would want to be the single reviewer giving a bad game with a big name a bad review when you know it would just end up out-casting you. Take that sentiment and multiply it across all the noteworthy review sites and you see why you get the kind of scores that you do.
Its the common fear of the conformist.

You've restored some of my faith in the gaming community; It's rare to see someone who can actually see through the utter bulls**t that is games reviewing.

If only there were more people like you reviewing games, and less people like Tom Bramwell on Eurogamer then the gaming world would be a much better - and informed - place.

Maybe one day.

[Sidney]

kelsjet wrote...

The fact of the matter is that Awakenings is an average expansion. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence across the internet that most players agree with this assertion. What this thread was looking into was the reason why games, like Awakening, can be rated highly even though they are average at best.

I'm not sure there is an "overhwleming amount of evidence" on the web this is "average". Not sure what that'd be anyways, other than tools on message boards whining. Metacritic has it at 82% (http://www.metacriti...riginsawakening) so the PC Gamer sounds like they are right in the zone with their review.
It isn't perfect but all it really is is all the good things about DAO just a bit less of all of them.

[fwc nightmare]

social.bioware.com/brc/1689039

[7th_Phoenix]

7/10 to me.



It was an okay game. Not good but not bad, worth the play, nothing spectacular. :|

[taine]

I'm sorry kelsjet but this needs to be said -- you are an insufferable egotistical jackass. And I agree with the majority of what you are saying.



I await your deconstruction of my irrelevant ad hominem attacks with much anticipation.

[kelsjet]

Ignus Burns wrote...

Ahh yes, the fanboy defense. "If you don't agree with me, you are a fanboy". How very mature of you.

Funnily enough, I haven't directly called anyone a 'fanboy' in this thread (or any other for a long time now), until now.

You, Ignus Burns, are a total Bioware fanboy. I have just spent the last 10 mins looking over your posting history (and I highly recommend the rest of you look at his posting history as well) and I can with certain confidence say that I could not find a single post of yours that was constructive, that wasn't belligerent and that was actually backed up with any kind of reasoning.
In fact, pretty much all your posts are just full of bombastic claims, accusations made calling the OP a "fanboy hater", with little substance whatsoever.
It seems you are the embodiment of exactly what you accuse everyone else to be. You feel that you have a license to say whatever you want (even when it is meaningless) and feel that when challenged you immediately play the "ZOMG YOU THINK ANYONE WHO DOESN'T AGREE WIT U IZ A FANBOI LOLOLO". And that's before you have actually even said anything of worth.

Actually, now that I think about it, you are not a fanboy. You are just another, run of the mill, average forum troll. So I will let you rot in your silly ways while I move on to more constructive issues.

SuperMedbh wrote...
At the risk of being called a "rabid fanboi" (fangirl, fwiw), I think you're being unfair to the DA design team.  The real question is whether or not the consumer base is ready to buy the game equivalent of Rashomon.  There are a few "art games" out there (if you haven't looked at The Path by Tale of Tales, do), but they can't command the budget or success of more traditional games.  They may get great reviews, but at the end of the day, the traditional gaming audience wants a traditional game.

And to me, that's the brilliance of DA.  It uses the standard FRPG medium, complete with the usual races/classes
and game mechanics (kill the monster, grab the loot, fight the boss, level up), and added a terrific story with large sections dedicated to such foreign concepts as character development.  It's the age old artistic need to be novel, but not so novel as to alienate the consumer base.   

Good post, but don't get me wrong. I am a very big fan of the original game. In fact, if you skim the DA:O forums you will see my posts praising what it has done for the RPG genre in general and I fully believe it to be the single best 'classic' RPG in recent memory.

However, this is not the forums for DA:O, it is the forums for DA:O Awakening, the expansion.

Now that that is cleared up, we can explore what I mean by "The games industry needs a Kurosawa".

To be frank, it had less to do with the exact nature of his movies and more to do with the impact his movies had on the film industry. His movies were, for the lack of a better phrase, a cognitive dissonance event for movies and moviegoers worldwide. Yes, the nature of the event was one of intense artistic layers, but the impact is what I feel was more important. Pretty much every single great director after the event had influences from Kurosawa.

It is this effect, of looking at movies in a whole new way, of appreciating them as more then just a form of entertainment and looking at them as a form of artistic impression as well as a viable method of exploring the human condition is what Kurosawa did for movies (above and beyond the sheer breadth and scope of the new methods he introduced which pretty much single-handedly revolutionized cinematography, the actual science of making movies).
We need something similar for games. Something that will fundamentally change our understanding of what games mean to society. A fundamental change in how they can serve us as more then "just entertainment". It doesn't even necessarily have to be another form of artistic impression. Games can add to society in other ways (maybe a conduit of new political thought? maybe a mechanism to fundamentally change how people interact? maybe a way to critically change how we view our social and educational development? etc etc who knows? I'm just throwing stuff out there).
In this way, games as a medium has to find its matured voice above and beyond just entertainment. Just as movies did back in the mid 50s.

Now, while the original DA:O was a fantastic game, does it do what I described above for gaming? I do not think so. At the end of the day, even with its polish and iteration, it still applies the core formula as you described (the formula that appeals to the 'traditional gamer' as you describe).
Again, I stress, this is not a 'bad' thing. It is just not what the industry requires, imho, for it to mature to the next phase in its life-cycle.

And it is my assertion that it is this next phase of its life-cycle where game critics will also fall in line, become more professional, and hence, more dependable.

[kelsjet]

Murphys_Law wrote...
Interesting analysis, but it is a little more complex than that in my opinion.  You forgot to mention the most important part...the general public.  After all, you need to have a good amount of people to read the critic's review for it to even be published.  Every medium has a stage where it is not commonly accepted and just adopted by niche markets (i.e. early adopters, hardcore fans of it, etc.).  Really the video game industry is just starting to be more mainstream, but still has many hurdles to overcome.  After all, playing video games is still seen to be done by only fat greasy male nerds no matter how wrong that stereotype is.  This is slowly changing, as more people play video games, video games get more attention, and, as you say, video games grow in maturity/artistic integrity.  I think how society views the medium plays a much larger role than a certain "next-gen" developer, as I already believe we have had many developers that have pushed the boundaries.  Essentially, it just becomes a question of timing on which developer (or director, writer etc.) gets the credit, but really the great artists before him were just as important.

This is fundamentally correct and is indeed a part of an extended analysis on the subject. The public's interaction with the critics is, as you say, a very important aspect of why this phenomena is still being perpetuated. To be honest, I didn't go into it in my earlier posts since while it is a part of the analysis, it is still, imho, at least one or two degrees of separation removed from the core issue, which is what I was trying to highlight.

One of the key points I want to extract from what you stated was the fact that there are developers out there trying to push the boundaries of what can be accomplished by games. Rightly so, these efforts will all play a major role if/when games do graduate to the next level. This, in the grand scheme of things, is a good sign, and is why I am hopeful that games will mature. But yes, as you say, games are only recently gaining a foothold on level 1, that being that they are somewhat penetrating mainstream society. The industry must complete this level with flying colors before it can move onto level 2, which is becoming a true art form in society.

Overall, I think you and I are in agreement.

[Saraiv]

IMO it's a 6/10, the most.



I totally agree with kelsjet, what he's saying is not only fact, but obvious, and totally comprehensive. Reviewers are humans, and in todays game industry, anything said in a Review may represent a huge prejudice for these big companies.

You don't need superpowers to read their minds. If you believe the Reviewer does not think on that when he's writing a review, then you are way too inocent.

[Murphys_Law]

kelsjet wrote...

Murphys_Law wrote...
Interesting analysis, but it is a little more complex than that in my opinion.  You forgot to mention the most important part...the general public.  After all, you need to have a good amount of people to read the critic's review for it to even be published.  Every medium has a stage where it is not commonly accepted and just adopted by niche markets (i.e. early adopters, hardcore fans of it, etc.).  Really the video game industry is just starting to be more mainstream, but still has many hurdles to overcome.  After all, playing video games is still seen to be done by only fat greasy male nerds no matter how wrong that stereotype is.  This is slowly changing, as more people play video games, video games get more attention, and, as you say, video games grow in maturity/artistic integrity.  I think how society views the medium plays a much larger role than a certain "next-gen" developer, as I already believe we have had many developers that have pushed the boundaries.  Essentially, it just becomes a question of timing on which developer (or director, writer etc.) gets the credit, but really the great artists before him were just as important.

This is fundamentally correct and is indeed a part of an extended analysis on the subject. The public's interaction with the critics is, as you say, a very important aspect of why this phenomena is still being perpetuated. To be honest, I didn't go into it in my earlier posts since while it is a part of the analysis, it is still, imho, at least one or two degrees of separation removed from the core issue, which is what I was trying to highlight.

One of the key points I want to extract from what you stated was the fact that there are developers out there trying to push the boundaries of what can be accomplished by games. Rightly so, these efforts will all play a major role if/when games do graduate to the next level. This, in the grand scheme of things, is a good sign, and is why I am hopeful that games will mature. But yes, as you say, games are only recently gaining a foothold on level 1, that being that they are somewhat penetrating mainstream society. The industry must complete this level with flying colors before it can move onto level 2, which is becoming a true art form in society.

Overall, I think you and I are in agreement.

Well you are much more focused on what the industry is doing, but frankly I do not think it matters much.  The industry will push the boundaries no matter what happens.  The real advancement just comes with time...the more people are exposed with games the more they will be accepting of it as a legimate form of media.  While having great artists expediates the process, in the end it takes people adjusting to change before anything happens.  But for the most part we are in agreement, yes.

[mp84]

Someone mentioned earlier that PC Gamer's love Dragon Age, well love it? They gave it game of the year for 2009. So considering they gave Dragon Age Origins a 94% (UK) and 92%(US), plus Game of the Year Honors in 2009 (US). To give Awakenings a 81 (US, not sure what the UK score was) is actually pretty harsh, and a downgrade from the original game which a lot of people's opinions on this forums feel it is.



Personally, I enjoyed Awakenings, I luckily didn't encounter any bugs that people have talked about, and enjoyed the 18-19 hr romp I went through. My main complaint, which has been mentioned before by other people, is that Awakenings probably needed one more Main Quest with all your Party Numbers already recruited, just for more dialogue options and everything.



Also, saw the earlier comments about PC Gamer giving Awakenings an extra 10 points because it's from Bioware is really a load of crap, cause of that's the case, why did they give Return to Ostagar which they reviewed in that same issue a 35%? lol

[dbkkk]

kelsjet wrote...

dbkkk wrote...
I tend to agree with a fair chunk of what you have been saying regarding a big gaming compnay bias, except for the idea that somehow subjective game reviews  will fix themselves with time. The idea that the game industry and reviewers will 'mature' in a symbiotic fashion that somehow avoids compliicty or collusion is a nice one but hardly guaranteed nor even necessarily likely. How will game reviewers of the future differ from modern entertainment / media pundits in other venues? Heck look at stock market analysts, there is a profession that has been around for eons yet has all sorts of credibilty issues and highly subjective appraisals. It would make more sense if there were more game reviewers that didn't have any skin in the game. i.e. had business models that were much less reliant on the gaming industry themselves. Like a New York Times or Time magazine that couldn't care one whit if the game succeeded or failed. But I wouldn't hold my breath for anything like that to arrive soon.

You make fair points and I would agree that you are totally right in your hesitation in thinking that the unprofessional state that the industry (both games and game reviews) are in may not ever change. To be fair, you are right, there is no guarantee that this issue will be resolved eventually. However, we do have precedence of how other, related industries have become more 'professional' when they have matured.

A key point you have touched on is that the industries are somewhat inexorably linked, due to the constant feedback loop of game creation -> game criticism -> game creation iteration (ME2 is a great example of this process at work, where the devs themselves stated that they made a concerted effort to respond to every single criticism made about ME1).

All this being said, the examples of precedence I talked about earlier come from the movie industry. As any good student of media history will tell you, the movie industry and the movie review industry were in a similar place as we are now in the late 40s and early 50s. The vast majority of films were formulaic and the major production houses had far too much interest in the review process. All this changed in the early 50s with not only the introduction of legendary directors (Kurosawa et al.) but a simultaneous birth of movie critics who came to light in an effort to truly appreciate these new movies being released.
This lead to movies being studied as an art form, which eventually lead to the introduction of actual professional, educated movie critics taking center stage in the discussion. This eventually lead to the situation which exists today where a real movie critic is not only a professional, but a highly educated individual who has not only just 'watched many movies' but studied movies at an academic level (individuals like Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune and A.O. Scott of the New York Times).

But the key take away from this is that both events need to happen somewhat simultaneously. Not only do we need professional and educated game critics, but we need a true "next generation game" to spark the engine of creating the need for these 'new breed of critics'.

Essentially, we need an Akira Kurosawa game designer.

My hope for the maturity of the games industry (and all related industries) is born from a belief that out there somewhere there is in fact a Kurosawa for games.

I agree with the movie industry analogy (which is why I didn't invoke it in my original quote) ... but only to a point. Let us not forget the many movie critics who give any Hollywood production 3 or 4 stars with bombastic reviews (just think of the critcs for the Today show or Good Morning America or similar ilk). Some are downright shills for Hollywood while some others base their reviews primarily on what sort of initial 'buzz' they have picked up from early screenings and other critics. Not to mention that while the awards nominations are often legitimate, the actual granting of the award is sometimes a glorified popularity contest mixed in with some internal movie industry behind-the-scenes politics.

But I grant that at least there a number of choices available who are professional and give you enough basis to make an informed decision about whether to see a movie or not. But I would argue most of those come from media outlets that have no significant stake in the movie industry and draw revenues irrespective of how well a movie performs.

Still being 'professional' and well-educated in your craft is not on its own sufficient to guarantee a 'mature' critical review process. Just look again at the stock market analysts analogy. In fact, let's consider an even more glaring example: bond rating agencies. If people think 'critical reviews' or ratings  in any industry do not affect them, then they would do well to learn more about the rating agencies' role in securitization of debt and the recent bank meltdown. Am I suggesting that gaming reviews will ever have such impact on society, by no means, but it should serve as a lesson about the pitfalls of 'critics'  who lack professional integrity and are often motivated by their own enlightened self-interest. I to think the gaming industry and game review process will evolve over time as the population produces more and more gamers across all age groups and segments of society. But I think it has more to do with breaking apart the tight symbiosis of the two at the level of the business model otherwise many critiques will be compromised in some fashion.

[SimoWilley]

I don't think PCGamer is all that biased. If you're quibbling about an 81 when you think it deserves a 70, that is at least in the same general ballpark. There will always be a bit of subjectivity involved so you can't expect total agreement. I am a regular reader of PCG and I certainly don't agree with all their reviews, but I do tend to rank games in a way that is comparable to their reviews and I think their reviews are generally insightful and well balanced. Any review needs to make a lot of compromises between how much to reward what they like and how much to knock off for problems. A recent example is Assassin Creed II where they really liked the game but wanted to take off some points for the associated DRM. Some would say they were overly generous, others might say that DRM shouldn't be considered at all. In my view, that's why you have to read the review and just take the overall score as a rough guideline. There are plenty of games that score 70 that I really enjoy. These are just games, after all, not MCAT scores.



Plus, consider that they gave Return to Ostagar a general thrashing and a score of 30. They certainly aren't shy about running something through the shredder no matter who published it.

[Ignus Burns]

kelsjet wrote...
Funnily enough, I haven't directly called anyone a 'fanboy' in this thread (or any other for a long time now), until now.

I'm sorry but you do realise that your first sentence in this topic is basically that anyone who doesn't agree with your 'we' is a fanboy. If you at least agree that you wrote that, I might take you a little more seriously. As for me being a fanboy, I've a pretty mediocre opinion of Bioware, I haven't even bothered to finish Origins (too much mindnumbing combat) but I thought Awakening was a good game. I would suppose that does make me a fanboy in your mind since I have a different opinion than you.

[Realmzmaster]

@Ignus Burns,
I assume you mean this statement by kelsjet:
If we are to be completely honest here (a proposition that is hard to accept on DA:O's own forums, especially given the rabid fanbois about) I think we will all agree that if we really looked at Awakenings we would all say that it should not get any more than 75/100 at best.

[Obtusifolius]

taine wrote...

I'm sorry kelsjet but this needs to be said -- you are an insufferable egotistical jackass.

I can suffer him. His posts are a pleasure to read

[ThePasserby]

Murphys_Law wrote...

kelsjet wrote...

Murphys_Law wrote...
Interesting analysis, but it is a little more complex than that in my opinion.  You forgot to mention the most important part...the general public.  After all, you need to have a good amount of people to read the critic's review for it to even be published.  Every medium has a stage where it is not commonly accepted and just adopted by niche markets (i.e. early adopters, hardcore fans of it, etc.).  Really the video game industry is just starting to be more mainstream, but still has many hurdles to overcome.  After all, playing video games is still seen to be done by only fat greasy male nerds no matter how wrong that stereotype is.  This is slowly changing, as more people play video games, video games get more attention, and, as you say, video games grow in maturity/artistic integrity.  I think how society views the medium plays a much larger role than a certain "next-gen" developer, as I already believe we have had many developers that have pushed the boundaries.  Essentially, it just becomes a question of timing on which developer (or director, writer etc.) gets the credit, but really the great artists before him were just as important.

This is fundamentally correct and is indeed a part of an extended analysis on the subject. The public's interaction with the critics is, as you say, a very important aspect of why this phenomena is still being perpetuated. To be honest, I didn't go into it in my earlier posts since while it is a part of the analysis, it is still, imho, at least one or two degrees of separation removed from the core issue, which is what I was trying to highlight.

One of the key points I want to extract from what you stated was the fact that there are developers out there trying to push the boundaries of what can be accomplished by games. Rightly so, these efforts will all play a major role if/when games do graduate to the next level. This, in the grand scheme of things, is a good sign, and is why I am hopeful that games will mature. But yes, as you say, games are only recently gaining a foothold on level 1, that being that they are somewhat penetrating mainstream society. The industry must complete this level with flying colors before it can move onto level 2, which is becoming a true art form in society.

Overall, I think you and I are in agreement.

Well you are much more focused on what the industry is doing, but frankly I do not think it matters much.  The industry will push the boundaries no matter what happens.  The real advancement just comes with time...the more people are exposed with games the more they will be accepting of it as a legimate form of media.  While having great artists expediates the process, in the end it takes people adjusting to change before anything happens.  But for the most part we are in agreement, yes.

Regarding the "Kurosawa event" in the movie industry, when new avenues of thought, expression and technique were taking place, did the people involved knew that something momentous was happening, or was it only known in hindsight, after a few years?

This leads me to the question of whether we ourselves would know if the "Kurosawa moment" has dawned in the video games industry, that it is actually happening around us? What would be the signs?

Modifié par ThePasserby, 05 avril 2010 - 03:12 .

[CybAnt1]

I think it is fair objective fact to state, even looking at "meta-critical" analysis of reviews, that reviewers found this to be a lower ranked title than the original game.



And I understand about what people are saying: that expansions are expansions, that by necessity expansions are shorter than sequels (but in the gray zone of being "bigger than mere DlCs"), but I don't think it's merely because of quantity of content that the review scores went down.



It's quality. It's the 800 lb. gorilla in the room but let me introduce you to it. Almost everyone perceives, however much they want to discuss it, a feeling that the quality went down a notch with this title -- now blame who you want to blame (is EA the one that unleashed the gorilla?, etc.) but I think everyone sees it.



And yes, when questions of quality come into the matter, than so also do questions of whether it was priced right for the quality delivered.

[Sidney]

CybAnt1 wrote...

It's quality. It's the 800 lb. gorilla in the room but let me introduce you to it. Almost everyone perceives, however much they want to discuss it, a feeling that the quality went down a notch with this title -- now blame who you want to blame (is EA the one that unleashed the gorilla?, etc.) but I think everyone sees it.

The quality went down, sure. I don't think the NPC's are as well developed and the "world" isn't as lively but most of that seems to be related to the length - there's no as much time to play out the NPC's nor enough time to have the number of side quest that made the world seem a bit more living.

Put another way, extract 15 - 20 hours from DAO and compare to DAA and did the quality get a lot worse really? To me, no. DAA is < DAO simply because it is less of it.

[CybAnt1]

It's NOT just related only to length, or even deliberate design decisions.



I mean, the two sides of this "debate" seem to not be getting what the other is saying.



#1, the thing is plagued by bugs and glitches. NO, IT IS NOT JUST BECAUSE PEOPLE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH RAM OR ARE USING MODS. The expansion IS BUGGY.



#2, this is hard to nail down with as much specificity, but ... doesn't it seem to you like there are parts of the game that are rough around the edges ... feel rushed ... feel unfinished? I know I had "WTF" moments like that playing the end of KOTOR 2 and I know why ... because the end of KOTOR 2 got rushed out the door without them finishing it! Like there's things missing that should be there?



With #2 I'm not just saying that the game is shorter. Of course it is. It's an expansion. But doesn't it even seem like within the smaller world that constitutes the expansion ... things are ... missing? Like ... they just didn't have time to finish it up? I think this is why people are saying the feel like EA rushed this out the door.

[TessaTee01]

I did not read the forum or the reviews before I purchased and played Awakening. I was extremely excited to get the game and immersed myself in it ( as much as one can ) the moment I got it on my computer.



I am extremely disappointed. I feel I have wasted the money spent on this gravely lacking expansion. I won't even get into the irritating glitches and bugginess. The part that bothers me most and what made the first game highly enjoyable is GONE, initiating chat with your party members as your adventuring, or in camp . The examinable items in the game that will trigger a small cut scene and chat options are okay but nothing to rant about. Even the side conversations you hear from your group members as you adventure are unimaginative and often repetitive.



I also miss the relationship options that were available in the first game. These things added a bit more to the game than just fighting and winning. You grew to care about your party and were truly concerned how your choices would affect them. In this expansion you never truly get the opportunity to "know" your "friends"



It took me a week to beat the first game and I was eager to create new characters and follow their story. This is largely because I immersed myself in my party and the story line. I beat this game the same day I put it on my computer, expecting more the whole time and feeling completely cheated when I finished with no desire to play through again.

[Mikka-chan]

I like the writing in Awakenings.



I miss being able to talk to my companions straight out (I do not think romance is necessary and I think down-rating on that is silly, but the inability to communicate directly with one's companions is somewhat troublesome), and I didn't always like the characters (Oghran's sense of humor did not appeal to me, as it didn't in the original game, although I thought he had gotten even more obnoxious), but I do not have problems with the writing. Nate, for instance, was both deep and interesting enough that I wish he had been in the original game. The conversations one could have with companions by using environmental objects were quite similar to ones you could have in the original game and I enjoyed that bit of interaction. I also thought the plot was interesting enough, although I certainly wished for more focus on the Arch, who I think was a much more interesting antagonist then the Mother. I liked some of the decisions I had to make, and I liked some of the consequences for them.



On the other side, the game is buggy as anything. The complete lack of acknowledgment when it comes to these bugs (I mean, come on, even the most crappy Sony run MMO has a few poor sod's running around their forums going 'oops, yeah, we've got that') is disappointing. The game-play tended straight towards ridiculously easy, and that's coming from someone who doesn't consider herself all that good at the game: even so, you were so overpowered that one's character could basically walk through everything on autopilot. Playing through, I was also often left with the impression that my companions had become close friends and I still remained a distance away: lack of heart-to-heart conversation's or even group chats made me sort of sad. There also seems to occasionally be minor plot holes, and much of what I did in Origins seems to have been hushed up under a table somewhere. Oghran's going a complete 360 back to the beginning despite how he may have been at the end of Awakenings was just depressing.



I don't know, though: would I give the game a seven out of ten or a eight out of ten? One or the other, I guess, and I can certainly see why a reviewer would do either. I don't think 'I believe the game deserves an 81/100' is automatically 'omg their on EA's payroll!111'.

[Harcken]

I never got the whole fad with game "critics," to be honest. Like several posters have been saying, games with big names to support them guarantee good scores *cough* Modern Warfare 2 *cough*. Honestly, if MW2 came out of some small startup dev, the scores probably would have been in the 7-8 range.



Anyway, does taking on the mantle of "game critic" automatically award said person +10 taste; I really don't think so.