Companions:
- Too much predictability in reactions. (In DA:O you had to be really delicate with how you acted with some companions if you wanted a positive reaction, it made them seem more real).
- Having to travel across the map/sit through loading screens/rearrange your party every time you want to talk to a companian is a big step down from having them all on your ship or in a camp together.
- What are your companions motivations to stay with you over seven years?
- Not being able to talk to your companions except when they appear as a "quest" makes it hard to feel close to them
- You never have to defend your decisions to them.
- They don't grow (or seem to do much of anything) over the course of 7 years. (Fenris clean up your house!)
Hawke:
- The dialogue wheel removes a lot of control you had over your chracter's responses
- Hawke lacks the personality to be a Shepard and the customization for the player to create their own hero through Hawke. In trying to be both a distinct hero and a customizable one DA:II ends up with neither.
- Voice acting would have been tolerable if Hawke had an actual personality other than plummy saintly/snarky/brutish british person - As it was I would have prefered no voice acting, my characters responses never seemed to fit how I envisioned a character like Hawke acting - I felt like I was directing Hawke, not playing Hawke
- Hawke can be hard to like/relate to. I didn't feel any affinity for my character like I did for Shepard/or my warden in DA:O
- Lack of feeling of customization, didn't seem to matter whether you were a male or female, mage, rogue, or warrior. Everyone pretty much reacted to you the same way. Remember in DA:O how people would show subtle bias's or preferences based on your class/gender/race? It went a long way to making you feel like you were a unique character and emersing you in the world.
Non-Main Characters:
- Where are they quirky/cool non-main characters you find in all your other games? Emotional ties abound in DA:O but are really absent in DA:II. Remember Cullen in the mage origins? Or your parents in the nobel one? Heck even the dwarf girl who wanted to study with the mages...
- Pretty bad poly counts on all the background characters.
- No reaction from templars when your mages run through the streets blowing things up?
- No reaction from townspeople when huge battles take place with "ninja" guards right in front of them.
- No change in any characters of the 7 years of the story. Even in games like Legend of Zelda or Fable one of the best things about watching time pass is being able to re-explore past areas, talk to people and see how they've changed based on what's happened. Things like seeing little kids who were playing in the streets grow up, seeing merchants go under or flourish, or husbands and wives break up, make the game world seem more alive.
I play BioWare games because they have been able to create a highly emotional, interactive environment with the characters (companions, non-companions) in which you care about your actions and the world around you because you have strong feelings of love/compassion/hate/anger/frustration for those around you. The combat, the environments, the UI all are secondary to me with respect to the characters and the story - and that's where DA:II really dropped the ball.
Modifié par Katzen, 14 mars 2011 - 09:19 .
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