Well, I'm going to give this a shot.
Disclaimer: I am not intending to use this post to bash Bioware, EA, the Dragon Age Franchise, or anyone elses opinions. All criticisms, things I enjoyed, nitpicks, and technical issues are soley based on my perception and
opinion.
Areas that are marked " *spoiler* " have been grayed out and can be viewed simply by selecting the area with your cursor/dragging to show the area. that ends with the " *end spoiler* "
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Let me start this by saying that I am a console player on the Xbox 360 who has been playing Bioware games for a little over a decade, my favorite being Dragon Age: Origins.
The Good.
The Art was improved on the asthetic sense in regards to the environs and *some* of the character models, and comparing the visuals of Hightown and Lowtown and Darktown was both a perfect way of showing just how different and varried the denizens of Kirkwall were and the type of life that thrived there.
The music, much like Dragon Age Origins, was also very good. I am particularly found of the music played inside The Hanged Man as well as the track Rogue Heart. The music tried and mostly succeeded
in giving an epic score to some very important crisis points in the game (Qunari Rising, for example)
The combat flowed very well, giving vigorous and fast paced battles (until the third or fourth wave in which it approached the realm of button mashing)
The Party Banter was, as always, particularly inspiring and funny, I was entertained just by walking through the areas of Kirkwall to hear all the different possible conversations.
The Inventory automatically sorting the "you can sell this!" to the junk section was nice, made shopping so much easier....
Varric- simply put, that Dwarf climbed through the hell of cynicism and is tied for the crown of my favorite RPG companion in any game, ever.
Act 2 was masterfully done. The All That Remains plot resolution (White Lily Killer) was the first moment in the game that evoked an emotional reaction and that made me go in my head "Yes... this *is* the Bioware game I prayed it would be. Thank you, Gaming Gods!". It only got better, with the rising tension between the City and the Qunari, the discovery of
just what Isabelas mysterious relic was, and of course the battle for Kirkwall. I ended that fight with a shout of "Hallelujah, Bioware has delivered!!!"
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Nit-picking
TheGeography of Ferelden - .... guys. You created this world. Hawke and his Family left Ferelden from Gwaren and apparently travelled north across the Waking Sea to get to Kirkwall..... Gwaren is in the south east of Ferelden near the edges of the Brecilian Forest. If anything they'd need to sail east out into the Frozen Sea before turning North and skirting along the coast of Ferelden on the Amaranthine Ocean before taking a trip West through the Waking Sea, by passing Ostwick infavor of Kirkwall. I understand that shortening it was better for dialogue,
but it was just so innacurate it made me stop the game and flee to the Dragon Age wiki to make sure I hadnt misheard.
The Cameos of Origin Companions - It was nice touch of fan service, a nod that the game we imported actually did happen, as it seemed that except for a few brief mentions (and even some of those mentions were bugged), the decisions in Origins didnt really have any sort of even minor or mentioned impact on the game.... but that's all they were. Fan service. They didn't serve any greater purpose, they didnt even really count as a mission. I spoke to King Alistair for all of a minute hearing about how, yet again, swooping is bad and a possible war with Orlais. I met Zevran on the run from some Antivan Crows. Nathaniel Howe is still with the Wardens doing missions in the Deep Roads (even though after I *killed* the Architect he left the Wardens forever.....) Leliana is now serving as the left dark hand of the Divine?!
For the most part, all of these cameos came off as shameless "Look at me, look at me! That game that you spent upwards of 250 hours on? Yeah, it DID happen!! See, and we even included the joke! Swooping guys! SWOOPING." If they had served a greater purpose, it would have been awesome, but they didnt so they fell flat and just made me wish I was playing Origins again.....
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Now, inevitably, I must go to the bad.
Blessed are those who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter.....
Bad.
The recycled use of the level designs. I know that this has been stated many times, but I cannot stress just how much it *kills* the immersion to realize that every mansion you walk into has the exact same stack of crates and barrels and rubble and crooked paintings as the last. Or how every cave is the exact same cave, but I can't walk through some doors even though the map acts like there's a whole new world on the other side that I just can't get to.. I laughed hysterically when I got the Spelunker achievement when in reality, I was in the same cave 10 times.
The endless errand quests. It sometimes felt like I was in an MMO grinding at the beginning of every new area. The worst was every time I picked up a bottle or a trinket or, I kid you not, a *corpse* I was sent running
to go give it to some random NPC as if I had found their wallet.
One of the most recent Ctrl+Alt+Del comics says it perfectly. I understand that in Act 1 it was a easy way to help the player get the money needed for the expedition, but it bordered on the ridiculous at times. Including quests that gave higher rewards (and also served to introduce us better to the main conflicts ((ie. Quests with the Mages Circle or Templars)) ) would have been a more interesting way to connect us to the story and Kirkwall itself, while also cutting back on the slight MMO feel of the find and deliver quests. I mean honestly, you guys *mocked* MMOs during Sulchers Pass in DA:O, but some of these quests honestly felt like I was walking around in Azeroth rather than The Free Marches
The Button Mashing... I understand, that the faster combat itself allowed for better flow and made for a more epic type of battle. However, when you throw in the cooldown clock on lyrium/stamina potions, I'm left tapping the basic attack button to the point where I needed to take a break and massage my thumb or ice after a few hours of playing. I believe this could be rectified by either an auto-attack function, or a faster cooldown on potions.
The Ninja Waves of enemies. It was so incredibly annoying to be on the last enemy and suddenly have a group of 15 drop quite literally out of the sky like some bastardized version of The Foot. Infact, I'm going to tack on the general concept of 4-5 waves of enemy per fight as something that was incredibly annoying. I understand that it was basically XP cannon fodder, that it helped to extend fights and give us more room to practice the art of "Press a button and make something awesome happen" but there are good ways of allowing multiple waves to happen in a fight. Have them burst out of a house, or come up some stairs, or out of a cave. The enemies dropping from the sky like ninjas all across the area just made me facepalm and frantically tap the basic attack button until my lyrium potions clock allowed me to take some more of the stuff to spam the enemies with a firestorm and Fist of the Maker.
The Lack of Ability to Converse With My Companions Beyond Their Quests in ANY Meaningful Way -- It made me feel like by the end of Act 3 I hadnt even known some of these characters, because I only got to experience them at their crystalizing moments or moments of crisis. The thing that I so loved about Origins was being able to strike up a conversation with a character pretty much whenever and learn more about them. If you had kept that but restricted it to their home base, even that would have been adequate. It just made every companion that I didnt usually quest with beyond their companion quests feel shallow and barely capable of being called two dimensional.
Family Matters? --- For a game that was touted as wanting to focus on family, it didnt really do it very well in practice. Bethany died at the beginning. Apart from two mentions by Leandra and a comment by Carver that it was all my fault, it was never brought up after it actually happened in any cutscene dialogue. When All That Remains was resolved and Gamlen went to tell Carver, there was a literally *perfect* moment in which a brother confronts the other about the magic that he feels has ruined his life and quite literally destroyed their entire family, but that perfect moment never happened. She was never mentioned again unless you clicked on her door. I was more affected by the deaths of the Couslands or the leaving of the Mahariel clan in the first hour of playing Origins than I was in any of the character interactions with my family that I went through in 39 hours of playing Dragon Age 2.
The entire game taking place in Kirkwall -- This could have worked, had you actually fufilled the promise that we would see Kirkwall change as time went by and our decisions changed it. The only thing indicating the passage of time was that I found myself in a mansion wearing Hugh Hefners pjs and Varric told me so. Same environs,
same stores, same locations, same NPCs saying the same damn thing. Showing the changing seasons, or new buildings, or buildings being torn down, or changes in fashion, or just... anything to help show the passage of time would have not killed the Immersion for me as much as it did and made me believe that I had actually jumped forward in time and had not simply been stuck at an incredibly long loading screen (especially between Act 2-3)
The Bugs... between the import flags not flagging correctly, the constant jumping and skipping in graphics during the cutscenes whenever a character moved, the hanging eyeballs, the magical glowing effects putting glowy red or blue eyes on their cheeks, the disappearing companions, the invisible enemies that were on the map but were anywhere in the area, Merrills final cutscene for her big companion quest triggering before I even had the ability to do the quest, and a whole laundry list of other problems had me quite literally tearing my hair out and fighting with myself to keep playing. You simply cannot release a game with that many issues without having a first day patch planned. It made me skip cutscenes, rage quit, or threw me out of the brief moments of immersion I was getting, the few times where I actually thought to myself "my hawke" rather than the puppet I was poking in the back of the head.
The Voiced PC and the Dialogue Wheel -- it absolutely killed the immersion for me. What was miraculously nice about Kotor and DA:O was that I felt like I really was Revan or The Warden. I put my own thoughts, my own voice, the tone I would use or the actions I would take into those characters. They were me - I was no longer some guy
sitting in his crappy apartment, I was running around Tattooine or questing across Ferelden. The people, my companions, the entire country or galaxy mattered to *me* because *I* was apart of it. In Dragon Age 2, I felt like I was a puppet master controlling my puppet through a shock collar. I had three word summaries that turned into solliquoys. I had no idea what Hawke was going to say at any given time, and I honestly felt like I was playing a single player shooter (this as a mage was particularly tedious) with the option to talk to people. I didn't feel
like any of my decisions mattered, I didn't care about Kirkwall or the people I was questing with beyond Varric, and I felt disconnected from the entire game. It wasn't an RPG for me, I wasn't playing a role. I was controlling Hawke, a person with a set in stone set of circumstances where no matter what option I choose all roads seem to lead to the same path. There was no immersion in this game outside of the tail end of Act2 for me.
Which brings me to my biggest complaint....The main plot of Act 3....... I don't know what to say. To have gone from the gloriousness of Act 2, to the utter pointlessness of Act 3 was mind boggling. We were faced with a decision, to either support the mages, or support the templars. The decision was, in all seriousness, a choice between two piles of crap. One pile was hypocritical and insane, the other was self righteous and insane. The entire main plot frankly reaked of poor character and story development.
The reason to side with the mages: "We're not all evil, blood mages, insane, abominations, abominations waiting to happen, or murderous bastards." Yet.... nearly *every* single NPC mage in the game that you encounter is either evil, a blood mage, insane, a murderous bastard, an abomination, or an abomination waiting to happen. Hell, even your mage Companions fit that bill. In the end, they had no redeeming qualities for them in anything
beyond their conversations about how they can be good upstanding citizens, when the game mechanics forces them to become semi-big bads.. (and yes, I realize that they turned to blood magic or demons out of
fear of the Templars, but for gods sake you cannot claim that mages can be good people in conversation and then deny them that in game mechanics, it rips me from the games immersion into the story telling and makes me go "Huh... they're all either tossing around blood wound or turning into *pride* abominations and summoning demons. Dumb.") *spoiler*
ORISINO BECOMING A HARVESTER AND KILLING ALL OF THE MAGES IN A FIT OF "THEY WANT BLOOD MAGIC? FINE, THEY'LL HAVE IT!!" *end spoiler* This is not story telling, character development, or even good gameplay. This was shoe-horning in a big bad while trying to give you the message that you did indeed eff up by choosing who you did, since they werent going to bother with an epilogue screen that would tell us Orisino escaped only to lay waste to all the villages and dells north of the Free Marches.
The reason to side with the Templars: "We're doing what we must to protect the cityfrom Maleficar and apostates (though you yourself are one.... go figure) and demons!!" And yet...... the Templars are led by a paranoid
schizophrenic who quite literally turns Dragon Age 2 into Devil May Cry in her final fight with a hint of the Terminator big bad in ME. The point is made time and time again that Mages are turning to forbidden magicks because of the harsh reprisals that the Templars are coming up with. The Tranquil Solution (and I would like to say that I never before encountered such blatant N.azism in a video game not pretaining to the N.azis themselves), the forced tranquil branding of mages, the order to kill every mage you find.... these are not benevolent protectors. Every one of them except for Cullen, Thrask, and Keran come off as sadists who take too much joy in the power they have over the "evil cursed blights of the maker". That final fight with *spoilers*
Meredith .... *end spoilers*
I quite literally wanted to cry at how ridiculous it was.
*spoilers*
And let's not forget, that the *entire* mess happened because Meredith decided to Anull the Circle due to an apostate mage blowing up the Chantry. An apostate mage who was, quite literally, within arms reach. I understand she was being driven insane by the lyrium idol (which is the biggest piece of unexplainable tripe ever to be brought into a bioware game.....) but for the love of the Maker, even the insane would
go "So.. you blew up the Chantry? *stab*"
The act ends with me just walking away... apparently an Exalted March is in order, the Templars are now headless, every mage in Kirkwall has been slaughtered, and I was left adrift without any of my companions
except Isabela (even though I romanced Merrill?). The whole world is going to hell, my Warden is being mentioned as lip service to the fact that the game I loved actually happened, and apparently the character
that I just spent 39 hours playing will be needed again in what will no doubt be expensive and pointless DLC.*end spoilers*
There was no classic Bioware ambiguity. It was two choices of "Eat Sh!t and die" for Hawke, and it was all so trivial and meaningless. There was no grand lead up to the conflict, there was no real reason to side with either of them. I was hoping for the third Cartman esque option of "Screw you guys, I'm
going home." but I ended up deciding that since I was playing a mage, the character I just spent 39 hours directing to get sovereigns and reply either olive branch or comedy theater face would probably be killed by Meredith "just to make sure" if I picked the Templar option soI went with the Mages.
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I feel confused, betrayed, unfinished, and mostly just stupefied by how this game ended.
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Conclusion
This game, as much as it hurts me to say it, was disappointing. I waited eagerly for months since the announcement, pre-ordered 6 months before release, and waited anxiously, ignoring the cynical little voice in my
head that kept adding doubts every time information was released. I kept hoping that Bioware would deliver a game like they always had previously - a game where I could get into the story, immerse myself in a wonderful new world, and live a life in which I experienced wonders and trials that I would never get to face in my real life.
Never before in my life had I played through a game to the finale, put my controller down, and asked myself "What was the point?". And then I played Dragon Age 2, and that's exactly what happened.And the sad thing is, is that there were ways to make this game all that you hoped it would be.
1)Even if it's just the illusion of choice, GIVE IT TO US! Regardless of what we did in Origins, the Archdemon was going to end up dead. But there were so many different story effecting options inbetween points A and Z that I truly felt like I was effecting the world and taking divergent paths. It seemed that no matter what you did in DA2, there was one linear reused path that brought us to the same conclusion, and my only option was to be Nice, Snarky, or Rude about it.
2) Don't advertise the game as one where when we import our decisions they have an effect 'like ME2s system' when in reality, the only reason I knew what my Warden did was because I myself did it and saw a Harrowmont on the lam and met my Swooping King in the game.
3) The emotional engagement that was given to us in so many Bioware titles was possible, had you simply allowed more interaction to allow that engagement to grow. Like I said, I felt more attached to the Couslands after an hour of playing Origins than I felt attached to the Hawke Family 39 hours into the game when I beat it and I was certainly more attached to the companions in Origins than I was in 2, simply because the option existed to talk to them and learn about them outside of crisis moments.
4) Drop the "Hit a button and something awesome happens" ideal and realize that something awesome *did* happen before we had spinny combat animations and fast and furious combat. The amount of copies of DA:O sold should tell you that.
5) If a game is going to be toted for the passage of time and the epic quest happening over a decade *cough*sevenyears*cough*, show that passage of time beyond a codex entry and Varric telling us just before the new cutscene starts. Kirkwall could have been an amazing environment if it had actually changed. There are people *STILL* waiting to meet with the Viscount in Act 3 that have been waiting since Act 1. The only difference was instead of being called Serrah I was called Champion. *shrugs*
I guess that's it... I'm gonna go back to DA:O now.
Modifié par Glorfindel709, 21 mars 2011 - 08:20 .
), it was actually even a little longer than this: 
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this market as one example could have grown into something more grand or perhaps floundered depending on what Hawke had been up to through his/her years... but instead it's just exactly the same.. the whole city could have been like this
