I finished the game tonight, after about 38.5 hours. I was....maybe a little disappointed in that, since it took me about 70 to beat Origins. But at the same time, with so many games being ludicrously short these days (I was not impressed when I finished The Force Unleashed II in five hours), a replayable game in the neighbourhood of 40 hours is actually a pretty nice change of pace.
The story itself was a lot of fun. I very much enjoyed that Bioware was bold enough to step away from 'generic RPG hero saves world from apocalyptic threat x' and try something different. A multi-year story in the same setting, with unfolding stories and consequences for your actions within those confines is something relatively unseen the genre and I applaud Bioware's bravery in this respect. And though there seems to be an inordinate amount of whining on this forum, I think it was a pretty exciting story.
But to step out of my Bioware fanboi comfort zone, I think there are quite a number of things in DA2 which....well, demand improvement. A number of them are things that can (and very well may) be improved in patches, while others are design choices which I thought really just didn't work out and translated into some experiences less satisfying than their analogues in DAO/DAA. That's really the point of this post, so I'll get on with that rather than continuing to heap praise on Bioware:
Probably Patchable
"Press Any Key" -- This inexplicable screen that comes up when you first launch the game, why is it even there? It's kind of an absurd, unnecessary step before getting to the game's main menu that really accomplishes nothing. It's not even like it's a placeholder screen so you can quit without logging in or loading anything; pressing any key just goes to the main menu. There's just no reason for it.
Minimap Hover -- I like the in-game minimap, and I like how it has the indicators on it for missions. What I don't like, however, is that you can't hover over the indicators to find out which missions they are. Having to pop up the main map in order to do this is another unnecessary step in the game that I'd think would be quite easy to fix.
World Map Locations -- Why aren't all the locations you discover accessible from the World Map? I can understand wanting people to explore the main areas of Kirkwall, but that so many minor locations are added to it as you go along (obvious example: companion houses) really begs the question of why all the places you can get into aren't added to the world map (the Ferelden store, for example).
Sub-point #1 on this same topic: completed areas aren't on the World Map either. The Foundry and a number of other places just disappear, never to be accessible again once you're done with them. I found that it made things feel a bit restricted. Even if there's nothing to find, why can't I go back to (for example) the Foundry if I feel like it? And things like that aren't the only ones--why does Gemlen's house disappear from the world map after a while? If it was already on the World Map, and I can still access it the slow way, why take it completely off the World Map?
Sub-point #2 on this same topic: the Templar Hall. What the heck. It's a pretty important part of the game come Act 3, so what's with making me go for a jog through the Gallows to get to it? Couldn't it have just been added to the World Map, either as a 'main area' or an ancillary area a la The Hanged Man?
Enemy Targeting -- Good lord, how did this get past the game testing phase without anyone raising any red flags? In Origins, selecting a target was easy--just click anywhere on the target's model. In DA2 this seems to be no longer the case. For some reason you can't just click on the models anymore, in many cases you have to wander your mouse around the screen until you find the magic spot that the game has deemed the target visible. It's bizarre and, at times, incredibly frustrating.
Combat Actions -- Related to my previous point. But what's going on with the friendly AI in this game? People in your squad have a knack for deciding they're going to stand around and do nothing, should a friendly block their line of sight to the target. It doesn't happen all the time I'll admit, but it happens often enough that it's noticeable and a bit aggravating (particularly when fighting tougher enemies).
Isabela Bug in the Orsino Battle -- I have no idea what caused this, but I wanted to mention it anyway. There's a pretty big bug in the fight with demonized Orsino involving NPC-controlled Isabela. When I was doing it,something triggered either some corpses, her, or both to spawn in the foggy area way down below the platform, outside of the accessible area. My squad literally had to just wait around until she was able to kill them, before the scene could continue.
Banter Interrupts -- I like the banter between my squadmates. It's fun to hear what they have to say even when it isn't really affecting the game in any way. So as a habitual quick-saver, it bugs the living hell out of me that quicksaving stops the banter dialogue. It's annoying, it's jarring, and it really needs to be fixed. Oh, and having rogues get interrupted midway through telling you that opening a chest is easy, to open the chest....and then having the line continue after you've taken the items, is also really bizarre.
Questionable Design Choices --
The sort of things which probably aren't correctable shy of using a new engine.
Equipped Item Clipping/Bad Placement -- This is a problem that's by no means limited to Dragon Age; it's actually quite common in a great many titles. But I was still hoping to see it fixed here. I'm talking about strange, illusion-breaking problems like armour clipping through itself, swords clipping in characters' backs, that sort of thing. There's also some really strange ones that I can't figure how they got past QA, like Isabela's daggers floating 6 inches away from her back. I can't believe nobody noticed that.
Charm/Intimidate -- Hey! Where the hell did my Charm/Intimidate dialogue options go? They were a ton of fun in DAO/DAA and other titles like Mass Effect, and the last big Bioware title (ME2) even went so far as to introduce a conversation-interrupting variant on Charm/Intimidate. So where the hell is it in DA2? I really like the dialogue wheel, but that's no reason to limit my options to understanding, smartass, and a-hole.
Teleporting Magic-Users -- What. The. Hell. I'm pretty damn sure that one of the magic codex entries in DAO said that magic didn't enable anyone to instantly travel anywhere. So why are Qunari mages and Arcane Horrors teleporting around the battlefield during combat? This is not challenging, this is annoying. And on top of annoying, it defies a rule of the game universe that was established in the previous title.
General Oddities
Fenris' House -- Why is the place never cleaned up? Seriously....he's there for like 9 years, and he can't even be bothered to pick up a book that fell on the floor? To say nothing of the corpses that are still laying around after all that time!
Post-Dalish -- Nobody in Kirkwall seems to care after you've slaughtered the entire Dalish clan outside the city. I know Elves aren't well liked in this universe, but you'd think that somebody might be slightly concerned that a massacre happened so close to the city.
Merrill's Quest -- Unless I missed something entirely, this quest just ends with no resolution. She makes the mirror, gets the stuff for it, we go fight the demon so she can finish it and then....nothing? What kind of payoff is that?
Alistair and the Warden -- The save file I imported had made Alistair king in DAO, completed Awakening, and gone with Morrigan at the end of Witch Hunt. Why then does Alistair comment that he's due back in Ferelden soon? I'm willing to accept that it might be part of a larger story we haven't yet seen (given the ending of this game), but it was still eyebrow-raising.
Isabela and Hawke? -- I finished this game having romanced (and completed the romance with) Merrill. So in the end-game cutscene, why does Varric tell the nice Chantry lady (
) that everyone but Isabela left him in the eventually? Again, I can understand if this is part of the story still waiting to be told, but I found it really strange after getting the 'romance completed' achievement like 20 minutes before seeing this.
Modifié par DigiFluid, 14 mars 2011 - 05:00 .
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