Yes, this is a Wall of Text, re-posted from the general disussion forum here for your reading/spamming/trolling pleasure. It contains most of the issues my friends and I have discussed since getting the game. If you can handle words with two or more syllables and don’t zone out after twelve lines of text then do read on and offer your opinions/agreement/disagreement. I'm keen to hear arguments for and against or discuss points that I may have missed.
Dragon Age 2, a very mediocre game at best, starting with one of the most unconvincing death scenes I’ve ever encountered in a game.
My sibling is dead, oh drat.
Terrible scene, just terrible. The voice actors could have at least tried to sound upset and perhaps some sad, string type music could have been added for effect. If you’re going to have some dramatic, sibling killing plot twist, then make it moving.
Also, if your mother is going to start irrationally blaming you for their death, it would be nice if one of the dialogue options (preferably the aggressive one) allows you to say something along the lines of “What the hell are you talking about woman? The ****ing ogre killed them, not me! I know you’re upset but how the hell is it my fault?” That sort of logic fail annoys me. The lack of adequate responses to it annoys me even more.
Dialogue = Lacking
Quite a number of posters mentioned they felt the dialogue options, the dialogue itself, as well as the delivery, to be lacking. I must say I agree. It often felt that the conversation wheel was a bit hit or miss and after choosing one option I felt myself regretting it. The idea of a conversation wheel is interesting and I personally think it was much more sucessfully employed in the Mass Effects. Perhaps the writers were on top form for those games where dialogue was concerned, but all in all it's still pretty hit and miss.
I'm sure the cost of hiring voice actors is quite substantial. Perhaps Bioware could look at returning to an "all-text dialogue" RPG in the future, with speech reserved for cut-scenes and such. A shift in focus towards quality of dialogue rather than spending cash on mediocre voice actors who deliver average dialogue would be a step in the right direction. Just a thought.
Kirkwall, the cleanest, most under populated poor refugee city ever!
One of my biggest gripes with the new game is the lack of immersion. In my opinion this is contributed to by a number of factors, one being the very empty, under populated, unimaginatively designed city of Kirkwall, where most of the action takes place. On first arriving to Kirkwall I was TOLD by the guard officials of all the dirty Fereldan refugees that were clamouring to get in. None to be seen though, apart from a small group of clean, healthy-looking, well fed and decently dressed people standing by the stairway. This small group of people aside, the Docks area where our ship sailed in was clean, tidy and suspiciously empty of people. No beggars harassing you for food, no refugee tents, no poor dirty sods curled up on threadbare pallets on the hard stone floor. Nothing.
Now it’s all very well and good for very few the NPCs I’m allowed to interact with to TELL me of the dire refugee situation, but if I don’t SEE anything at all to back this up, what’s the point? If DA2 was a text based MUD, then fine, TELL away, but it’s not. Graphics are something that most games developers spent lots of time and resources on, but the results are almost always underwhelming.
Re-cycling, great in the real world, totally teh suck in RPGs like DA2.
Yes, recycling is important. No, we do not want it in our games. Yes, lots of other games have done it in the past to a greater or lesser extent, but that does not make it acceptable.
I guess it comes down to the setting, really. I know there was re-cycling in the Mass Effects, but it not only made sense, it was expected. We're talking about pre-fabricated space stations here, I expect to see the same architecture and room structure because it fits wiht what I expect from a sci-fi environment. Re-cycling in a game like DA2? Very obvious and not consistent with the world or genre, where each cave/wilderness route/rambling unplanned slum section in Lowtown SHOULD be unique.
Apostate? Who cares, that’s just part of the back story.
Next up on my list of immersion breaking gripes is the whole Apostate/Templar issue. Now in the Dragon Age world, we are TOLD that all mages not officially under the watch of the Chantry are hunted down and put to death for being Apostate. Some wayward mages are also made tranquil. It’s supposedly quite a life or death situation. This is all very interesting and original, but unfortunately the Apostate/Templar/Chantry back story does not apply to Apostate mage Hawke, the Apostate sister or any of the Apostate companions in any way.
My character blatantly flung around magic all over the city with absolutely no repercussions. She has used magic in the chantry, killed off a squadron of Templar IN the Chantry, used magic INFRONT of a high-ranking Templar…So really, what is the point of TELLING us that mages supposedly have a hard time if there is absolutely no in game reaction/repercussions to this?
Teh evil blood mage
A lot of posters mentioned the caricature of the Eevul Blood Mage, and were tired of having countless blood mages thrown at them, or behind some dastardly plot, like Blood Magic was the rule, as opposed ot the exception.
I must admit I had always thought blood magic to be the exception too, and to find such a foul nest of Blood Mages within Kirkwall seemed a little unbelievable. Perhaps if the game was set in some remote location, where the reach of the Chantry was weak and Templars far and few between, I could understand a cabal of evil mages doing their thing. Kirkwall is supposed to be a bastion of the Chantry, though, where mages are kept under tight control, or made tranquil at the drop of a hat. I feel this to be another example of an internally inconsistent world and if there's one thing any story should have, whether its a book, movie or game, it's a consistent world.
Fearless Commoners
Just a small point on the Immersion gripe are the absolutely nonchalant and fearless commoners, who carry on idly standing by and chatting to their friends even through the most epic and dangerous of battles. Here I am
flinging around fireballs and the multiple waves of opponents are throwing miasmic flasks and the peasants carry on as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I mean come on, how hard would it have been to have them scream a little and run away? Or perhaps die in the cross-fire, with possible law-breaking repercussions for an extra dash of gritty realism?
The DA2 utopia, where there is no such thing as old, young, skinny or fat.
Either Hawkes mother has secretly been using magic to maintain her body from the face down, or there’s something in the Dragon Age water that just refuses to let supposedly ‘old’ people show the signs anywhere other than on their faces. Come on guys, old needs to look old, in texture and the model. You’re not going to lose market share if you actually make some believable old-looking women (or men) in the game. There’s plenty of T&A to keep the boys happy, and I’m sure they’d prefer a proper old looking mother anyway, not this weird pseudo old-faced woman on the body of a twenty year old. Gross.
This game is also in need of a few different body types. I mean come on, it’s supposedly an ex-slaver city that is now home to all types of folk, at least give us some skinny/fat/young/old people to back this up. I know a lot of games are lax and make use of homogenous models, BUT, just because it's sort of the norm, that doesn't mean it has to be. Developers will put the effort into creating a more believable, realistic populace for their games if ENOUGH people bring it up as an issue. We must realise that we as consumers have a fair amount of impact on what sort of product we receive. If we don't care, don't critique, don't offer feedback, then Producers will end up giving us poorer and poorer quality products. So speak up, even for the little things and lets try work towards better quality games, as opposed to settling for mediocre ones.
Streamlined Interface/System
There has been a lot of talk about how the game has been streamlined. All very well and good, however, the streamlining seems inconsistent to me. For instance, I find it an annoying timewaster having to shuffle companions in and out of my party just to be able to equip/un-equip their items. At least in DA1 I was able to access all of them from the camp area. The game has been abstracted to allow us to easily choose between night and day modes, why not allow us to easily select/interact with our companions?
As it is, the set up makes little sense to me. Your companions each have their ‘home base’ where we must go to talk to them. Realistic enough, but then there’s this magical sparkly horn thing that allows us to summon companions from across the city and dump others. Not realistic in the least. Make it one thing or the other guys. Either we can access them quickly and easily, or you go the realistic route and we have to take the time and trouble to go to the respective houses/locations to select companions or talk to them.
Also, I don’t see why they moved away from the interface system in DA1. Nice and easy, all I needed to do to get from my inventory or journal or character details was click the little icon on the top of the screen. I didn’t even need to close the menu I was in, I could just click from one to theother and see all the information I needed to see.
Now I need to escape into the character menu (which is separate from the journal and inventory) select the sub-menu I want, in the case of the Abilities menu, select the tree I want, then go back and back again to get to the game screen or access the journal/inventory. That’s six steps to get in and out of the Ability menu, as opposed to the two needed in DA1. How is six steps more ‘streamlined’ than two? And goodness knows why resistances were given a separate view. The interface is so sparse it’s not like they couldn’t fit the information in an existing section. And why, for the love of alternate weapon setups, can’t I quickly switch between two weapons? Big interface fail, that one.
The User Interface itself has had a few criticisms, namely that it feels unfinished, is too sparse and does not fit with the feel of the game. I agree on all points. The Dragon Age world is a rich, fantasy, medieval-esque world, and all elements of the game, especially the UI need to reflect this.
Thieving/Lockpicking/Traps/Rogue class
Gone are the days of the classic rogue, and what a pity too! About the only thing a rogue is useful for in DA2, outside of combat, is picking locked chests. Other than that, pickpocketing is gone and there is no need to be stealthy when taking from unlocked containers. I have looted stuff from chests right in front of the guard and nothing. No reaction whatsoever. So if there is no mechanism in the game that recognises/reacts to thievery of another’s belongings, what is the point of having locked chests? People don’t care if I take their stuff, so why would they bother locking some containers and not others? It seems like an unnecessary complication in a game that is supposedly going for ‘streamlined’.
Either all the containers are unlocked and free to be looted, or some containers are locked, requiring stealth and skill to get their contents, but with a price of you are caught. Anything in-between is a waste of time. And speaking of wastes of time, a number of posters have mentioned that if you're going to have them go through the trouble of keeping a rogue to unlock chests, at least make what's inside worthwhile!
Also, a rogues ability to disarm traps is mostly a waste of time, because all of the traps I’ve encountered so far, bar one, I have come across outside combat. So any damage incurred from stumbling through a trap is healed almost instantly.
Enemy Deployment
One word: tiresome. No combat can ever be taken at face value due to the poorly thought out and tiresome enemy deployment used throughout the game. Expect 3-5 waves of additional enemies to magically appear around you and your party/fall from the sky/run up behind you from a blind alley. Expect the Leader Enemy to have more hit points and damage output than your tank and two-hander put together, even if it’s a supposedly ‘soft’ nobleman like Friedrich.
Repeat this pattern of surprise ‘wave’ ambushes over and over again and there’s combat, on hard, in DA2. It doesn’t make sense from an environmental or logistical point of view (I’ve killed more raiders, sharp mercenaries, false guards, than the entire visible population of Kirkwall), it’s repetitive, and considering the crap loot and relatively small xp gain, just doesn’t seem worth all the effort.
Someonestolemyname has put together a very well written post concering this, here:
social.bioware.com/forum/Dragon-Age-II/Dragon-Age-II-Official-Campaign-Quests-and-Story-SPOILERS/Hard-and-nightmare-mode-Why-higher-difficulty-fails-being-a-fun-challenge-in-DA2-6530823-1.html
Loot
I thought the loot in DA1 was pretty uninspired, but they’ve managed to make it even more underwhelming in
the sequel and it seems that even those posters who enjoyed the game over-all, all agreed on the loot issue.
After fighting your way through waves and waves of enemies, using up costly potions and injury kits, your grand reward is perhaps a couple of silver and coppers, an unimaginatively named item such as ‘belt’ or ‘ring’ (which can be sold for a couple of silver or coppers if you’re lucky) and stuff that falls into the ‘junk’ category.
Seriously, could they have made the loot any crappier? Not only do we not get to see what the items look like in our inventory (just simple icons and generic descriptor like ‘robe’, ‘belt’ or ‘ring’), they actually labelled an entire section of Loot as ‘Junk’, complete with a little trash icon for those items. It’s like they’ve done everything possible to make the loot feel worthless. Psychologically, how much more excited/gratified would you feel to get something labelled treasure, perhaps it’s a gem of sorts, and instead of some ****ty text description like ‘Empty Stained Bottle’ along with the trash can icon, you get a ‘Blue Faceted Gem’, complete with a little blue sparkly gem graphic in your inventory.
End note concerning criticism, quality and what we're prepared to accept as consumers.
A fair number of posters (some here, and plenty in other threads) seem to feel that because the game has some good points, that it's uneccessarily negative to criticize or forus on the bad points. So somehting along the lines of enjoy the game or stop being a whiny negative bastard.
I have to disagree with this attitude because I think it's important to discuss, critique and offer sugestions so that a better product may be released in the future. Some people may be happy to accept something that's 'just good enough', I personally expcet more form the creative team at Bioware. The purpose of this thread is not to stir up a bunch of hate and
negativity. I think DA2 could have been a much better game, and by saying what's on my mind, and generating discussion around it, there is the possibility that DA3 might be a better game because of it.
I know that NPC models are often homogenised. I know that a lot of other games have had poor voice acting. I know that there are other RPG's with sparesly populated, unrealistic cities. But just because it's easy to leave these things out, just because 'other developers do it', does not make it okay. How do you think norms are established? How do you think quality levels become acceptable? It all comes down to what we, as a game playing and purchasing community are prepared to accept. If nobody kicks up a fuss when something else is skimped on, then come the next set of games, that will be the standard. Re-cycled environments? If no one complains then the devs will do it again and again until it becomes the norm.
RPG's have so much creative potential, both in terms of the world we're shown and the story we follow. Through my criticism, I hope to let Bioware know that I DON'T think it's acceptable for them to skimp/overlook the things mentioned here. So what if other games do it? I don't have to accept that? How is the quality of RPG's going to get any better if we just lie down and accept what's given to us, focussing only on the good things and trying our best to ignore the bad. I expect better from them. They can do much more as creatives and I'm not going to be shy or feel awkward about letting them know.
Modifié par bobo_minky, 17 mars 2011 - 05:01 .
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