2797 réponses à ce sujet

[Tharion]

Fragmented story with loads of side quests makes a MMO, it makes a really poor solo rpg, lack of immersion takes away a feeling for the game and the toons you play/control.

Lack of custimization on your party might make it less of a hassle for those that just want action ... but playing a rpg just for action is kinda like getting a coke just for the ice cubes.

Gold in Barrels ... really, we still haven't abandoned this redicolous concept?

Longer dungeons and lot more dungeon crawling, personal preferrence, but I love that.

DA:O to me had great combat, could be polished, but DA2 was terrible. Hack and slash and waves of mobs is plain boring. Anyone that prefer that should really play fps instead or wait for Diablo 3, they will do it 10 times better.

Random furniture: Like a large magic tome on the kitchen floor. Chests and merchants in the middle of nowhere.

Flaws in story, Keeper getting possessed, she couldn't have told someone from the clan what she was up too? now one had two choices, and one leads to annihilation of her entire clan ... pretty bad.

Spiders dropping out of the sky from nowhere?

Fighting monsters and dark spawn >>> waves of humans



On the Plus side, I loved the grafic upgrade and the ability to call on Dog when in combat, so much better than to have hi fill up a spot of the players one control.

[darrylzero]

I've said this elsewhere, but I think one thing this game really needed was more options for criminality. As a penniless refugee trying to earn 50 sovereigns for the expedition, I think the options for turning to illicit/illegal methods are woefully insufficient.

I always enjoy burglary, but I think more smuggling options (particularly of lyrium) would have been more evocative. I'd like it if there were a fence you could build a relationship with. Obviously, fleshing out your options for dealing with Athenril would make the most sense, but the existence of a Coterie fence you could work with/for could also be really fun. Isn't the Coterie supposed to be a loose network? Why wouldn't they want what I have to offer?

I also think it would have made sense to pick up Act 1 during your last mission for Athenril, rather than after. There are hints that the relationship soured over a mission, and I think playing through a smuggling mission gone wrong would make the choice to work with her again or not a lot more interesting. I haven't played the mercenary side, but I have to imagine that could be equally true on the other side. DLC? Please?

Also, please allow more attempts to avoid combat (via stealth, running away, diplomacy). If those things fail, I don't mind fighting, but I have enormous trouble roleplaying a character for whom violence (particularly when it involves potentially risking his own life) is the first option. Watching Hawke stumble into the middle of a meeting he's supposed to be eavesdropping on just makes me want to vomit. I love aspects of this game, but that is a huge immersion-breaker for me.

[darrylzero]

Oops, double-post.

Modifié par darrylzero, 13 avril 2011 - 11:52 .

[MorrigansLove]

Origins is a better game because:

-The story is a lot more epic.
-Instead of being confined in and around a single city, you travel across the entire Kingdom of Ferelden.
-You make tons of choices in both games, but in Origins the choices actually make a difference in regard to the outcome of the story.
-You choose and play through your character's unique background. Dwarf (noble or commoner), Elf (city or Dalish), Human (noble), mage, warrior or rogue, it all effects the way people respond to you in the world as well.
-You can choose your companions clothes . Mage in heavy plate, anyone?
-It's much longer. One of my playthroughs was like 80 hours or something (including DLC).

I could go on for days...

Modifié par MorrigansLove, 14 avril 2011 - 12:32 .

[CARL_DF90]

There are a great many things that I could comment on, but that is for when I can dedicate an entire thread to the wall of text I have building in my head. The one thing I want to be done next time is to make my game transfers actually mean something. I was interested in DAII right from when the first trailer hit. When I heard that I could import DA:O save in to DAII I wnet out and bought DA:O just because of that and was disappointed at how little it effected things. Bioware, if nothing else please fix this in DA3. That would be greatly appreciated.

[craigdolphin]

Dragon Age 2: a Reckoning. As in: ‘I reckon’ about DA2.

WARNING: Wall of text follows. Sorry.

In the hope of achieving some catharsis, and perhaps helping Bioware make DA3+ better, I thought I’d write down my thoughts on DA2 in what I hope is a constructive manner. I’ve played through the demo several times testing out the different classes and options: 2h warrior, s&s warrior, dual wielding rogue, archer rogue, and mage. I have also completed the game on normal difficulty playing as a DW rogue. For reference, I’m talking about the PC version with the Hi-Res textures pack and DX11 enabled (using the second-best setting). My system specs: Core i5 @ 2.67, overclocked Radeon HD5770, 4GB ram, playing at 1920x1080 resolution.

Since I read John Epler’s suggestions for feedback: ie things you like, things you dislike, and reasons for those opinions, I’m going to attempt to model this post along those lines. I’m mainly going to focus on the ‘changes’ from DAO, but I’m also going to throw in a few extra things that tend to bug me about all Bioware games (much as I usually love them).

For context, DA:O is my favorite game to date. I would have rated DAO about 9/10, maybe even 9.5/10. Now that I’ve completed DA2, I feel that a fair score would be 7/10.

Graphical Quality
I liked:
• The hi-res texture pack
• Directx11 option
Why? Because the default textures were obvious when viewed adjacent to the better quality textures. The graphics were definitely less washed-out than in DA:O. And finally being able to use DirectX-11 helped mollify my inner geek.

New Artistic Style

I liked:
• Qunari Retcon (although they did all look like clones to me)
• The color palette was nice in many areas
• Armor of the champion looked really nice!
Why? The qunari look bigger, tougher, bad-ass. It suits their reputation and history. And the colors seemed to be a bit more diverse than DA:O. So, that’s a plus.

I disliked hated:
• The Elven Retcon
• The Hurlock Retcon
I disliked:
• The bland exteriors and UI

Why? *sigh* Well, there’s a subjective gut reaction involved here. But if I were to try to rationalize it I think it harkens back to one of the main selling points for DAO: it was supposed to be a dark, gritty, mature fantasy world. That brings to mind GRRM’s Song of Ice & Fire novels. Maybe even a little LOTR. For me, the touchstone essence of Dragon Age is that mantra: mature, dark, gritty. Much of the new art-style seems to run counter to that critical tenet of the DA universe that I want to be involved with.

The elven retcon doesn’t fit my mental picture of a mature, dark, gritty fantasy world. When I read the Stolen Throne, I recall something about elves being especially attractive to humans. And the elves in DAO were generally pretty attractive. The elves of DA2, by contrast, appear to have been caught in a state of extreme neotany that I’d call ‘infantalism’. The term I’ve seen a lot of people bandy about for the elves, especially Merril, is ‘cute’. Cute like a baby is cute, perhaps. But hardly what I’d consider ‘desirable’ unless you happen to be a pedophile. The whole Merril as a romance option just gives me the creeps. To me, the elven ret-con falls into the same category of bad ideas that includes ‘Dobby’, ‘JarJar Binks’, and making Han Solo shoot second.

And the Hurlock retcon: well, you’ve seen the skeletor-redux comments before. They need fixed: badly. Evil monsters that elicit either snorts of hilarity or muttering grumbles of irritation do not belong in a dark, gritty, fantasy world IMO. They do look like they have a great dental plan though!
As for the bland, empty exteriors well, that’s falls foul of the concept of ‘selling the world’. DAO had lots of visual interest in the backgrounds: including the much maligned cheese wheels. DA2 looked like there’s an army of janitors that emerges the moment a scuff mark appears.

And the UI: too modernistic. Have you seen any medieval writings, architecture, or artwork? Medieval folks were not yet aware of the minimalist school of modern design. The UI of DAO had a more ‘period’ feel to it: ‘antique baroque’ someone called it on the forums and I think the term works well. The overly-spartan UI for DA2 is out of place in a medieval setting IMO.

I know BW wanted to stamp a new visual identity on DA: to separate it from other games. That may be advantageous in some respects. But IMO there’s a bloody good reason why so many rpg’s have converged on the ‘generic’ style: visual realism appeals to many gamers. I wish BW would return to that because I just don’t like the new vibe.

Animations:
I liked:
The walking and running animations of the character models seemed somewhat improved over DAO.
Why? More realistic maybe? Not sure on this.
I disliked:
The combat animations were frustrating. There are some that worked well for DW rogues. And some that were just bad. And I am neutral on the mage combat animations But for warriors I could not stand the extreme speed of their movements.

Why? Again, I refer back to my touchstone: dark, gritty, mature. Rogues are supposed to be light, quick, and fast-moving: so the pacing of their combat animations makes sense (even if it is still a bit faster than I would prefer). But seeing my rogue spinning cartwheels in-place just to move one or two paces as his enemy moves a bit is just daft. It is a completely impossible physical maneuver unless there happens to be a treadmill right there. Impossible physical activities that do not involve ‘magic’ do not fit with the dark, gritty concept IMO. And that’s also the issue with the warrior animations. Swords and heavy armor have a lot of inertia and slow folks down quite a bit. But the same mass that slows movement via inertia is what gives swords the momentum to do a TON of damage, and it is what allows armor to withstand damaging assaults. The animations in DA2 give the lie to the illusion that you’re wearing heavy armor, or swinging a massive chunk of sharpened steel. In short: fast is ok/good for rogues, but lame for warriors. DA2 makes no attempt to give a sense of heft or solidity about warriors: it feels more like a shallow attempt to make the combat more like FF than a western RPG.

Combat
I liked:
• Improved responsiveness
• The sense that it was real-time rather than turn-based
• Thank the maker for the pause function. I am not a twitch player.
Why? Being able to see an Ogre-charge coming and get out of the way was great. That was one of my few complaints about DAO.

I disliked:
• The excessive speed of the animations
• The whole-body ‘exploding’ enemies (a limb or a decapitation is ok)
• The general change of having many, many weak enemies rather than a few more resilient ones like in DAO. (The old way just felt more challenging for some reason.)
• The fact that the controlled character often stopped attacking when the enemy got knocked back any distance, or when the immediate minion foe died. Combined with the large numbers of foes made reacquiring targets a boring exercise in clicking.
• The difficulty placing AOE spells when the mouse pointer encountered an enemy. Either fix it so I can precisely place the AOE regardless of where enemies happen to be, or give me a detachable/tactical camera.

Why? I already discussed my dislike of the speed of the combat animations. The whole exploding bad-guy idea falls foul of the sense of ‘realism’ I’m hoping for from combat. Humanoids do not generally explode when a sharp piece of metal hits them: they are not blood-filled water balloons. It just cheapens the feel of the combat IMO. I want more of a visceral feel to it. I think the best example of what I’m talking about is the mage battle in LOTR between Gandalf and Saruman. They could have gone all flashy and thrown in lightning bolts and exploding kittens, but it would have felt a bit cheesy. Instead, it felt brutal because it was flesh and bone of two old men being smashed into rock and stone. Now THAT’s what I’d like to feel in battle.

I hated having to click on dozens of mobs just to force my characters to do something after he killed mob#17 and was standing there getting hit by #18, #19, & #20. In the absence of orders from me, I wish he’d auto-acquire a new target when his current foe dies. If you insist of making me kill 35 mobs in a battle, don’t force me to micromanage the moron. Similarly, if my guy happens to knock skeletor # 85 on his backside several feet away, I’d appreciate it if he’d stop pausing to admire his handiwork and actually follow-up the advantage by continuing the fight without waiting for me to click him AGAIN.

The Companions

What/Who I liked:
• Varric
• Bethany
• Isabela * (Though not as a romance)
• Merril * (Though not as a romance)

What/Who I disliked:
• Fenris
• Anders
• Carver
• Aveline

Why?
Ye gads, it’s like a angsty angst festival with lashings of angst on the side. While I did like the characters of Merril and Isabela, and their banter was sometimes amusing, neither of them appeal to me much as romancible options. The one is excessively naïve and happens to look like an early-adolescent and I am not attracted to such. And the other is not of much interest because I actually don’t like being notch 176 on a gals bedpost. I mean, do they even have antibiotics in Thedas?

I have disliked Anders since I met him in Awakening. No change there except he’s become even more annoying as a zealot in DA2. THANK YOU Bioware, for giving me the option to kill the beggar. Same for Fenris. Just would have preferred it to have been available sooner! Don’t like zealots generally. Carver was annoying from the start. Not sorry to see him gone. That’s my only regret for playing a mage. Don’t want to have to put up with carver if I play through as a mage.

And Aveline. Uptight and lawful to a fault. Just got tired of her monologues and lecturing of anyone in earshot. The ‘dating donnic’ scenario was entertaining at first but it dragged on for a bit too long and became painful.
Varric grew on me over time. And Bethany was very likeable from the beginning. Would have been nice to have a romance option with a personality like hers. And I cannot tell you how irritated I was that you took away my favorite companion/mage for the majority for the game. Especially since Merril could not use heal.

Lack of Companion Armor Customization

I disliked this. There was no positive spin to it for me. Completely wasted so many items that were better than their gear because only Hawk could use it. Irritating as hell.

The Conversation System
I liked:
• Voiced protagonist (I think)
• Dialogue Wheel/Icon/Paraphrase System

I hated:
• Being unable to talk with companions except in their ‘quarters’

Why? Alright, I liked how the voiced protagonist did make the cutscenes more cinematic and movie like. It felt like Hawke was more a part of the conversation. But at the same time I am extremely conflicted about this. I don’t know if this makes sense but while I felt like Hawke was more a part of the conversation, I felt less a part of the conversation. I wonder if making the cutscenes more movie-like allowed me to sit back and watch rather than participate? I don’t know. I do know I felt far more removed from Hawke than I did from my warden. But there are multiple differences in the game that might have conbined to cause me to feel that way. I honestly can’t say if the voiced protagonist is the major factor in that.

I liked that it was possible to clearly identify and avoid romance lines with companions I was not interested in romancing.

On the other hand, it did remove much of the exploration from your conversations with the companions. There was no need to try different options to figure out what led to approval and what led to disapproval. Given that each companions dialogues were so limited, and occurred so infrequently (and only in one location usually), I really didn’t feel that they were conversations as much as very linear scripted speeches. I really, really, really think that the DAO conversations were much more immersive and felt more natural than the DA2 ones. I think this is one of the changes I feel most strongly about.

Cameos
I liked:
• The idea

I disliked:
• The execution

Why? Almost every returning character looked really bad in DA2 compared to DAO. Alistair looked weird. Way too old. Zevran looked liked Zevran’s third cousin twice removed after a lot of inbreeding took place. (ie he looked nothing like Zevran). Sandal? Potato-faced imposter! Even Leliana looked strange. (To say nothing of her new role seemingly flying in the face of my Warden’s epilogue ending). Honestly, it would have been better to not have them than to mangle their appearance and their history from DA:O. These are characters we know and feel strongly about. Do not change their appearance or their stories without realizing you’ll anger a bunch of people.

Friendship/Rivalry System
I like this overall. My only negative comment is that many times rivalry points occurred for reasons that were inexplicable to me. Especially with Carver.

Story
Here’s where my feedback structure breaks down. I didn’t love the story. I didn’t hate the story. By comparison to DAO, that’s a disappointing place to end up.

The framed narrative idea was interesting. But it felt jarring in each time jump. I felt like all the references to Kirkwall being ‘home’ were forced and hollow sounding. Similarly with each mention of the ‘missing years’. They didn’t sew things together, instead they just reminded me again of the gaping holes in my experience, and served to further alienate me from identifying with ‘Hawke’.

Honestly, I don’t think the framed narrative concept works any better in DA2 than it did in Alpha Protocol.

And the whole mage-vs-templar thing was getting old long before the big finale. I enjoyed the mass murderer plotline, but was horribly let down when it turned out to be another blood mage. It felt like just about every single thing in the game was screaming blood mage vs templars. In a city, can’t crimes me committed by ordinary psychotics too? It just got boring after a while.

And where the heck were Kirkwall’s nobility in Act 3? And what was with the Dalish clan at the end of Merril’s quest? That was just confusing.

And I know many folks have mentioned how it all seemed disjointed for much of the game, so I won’t repeat that in detail except to say: Yep! It certainly did.

Copy/Paste levels:
I disliked:
• Copy paste levels
• Copy paste levels
• Copy paste levels
• Copy paste levels
• Copy paste levels
• Copy paste levels
• Copy paste levels
• Copy paste levels
• Copy paste levels
• Copy paste levels
• Copy paste levels

Why? It should be obvious. That Bioware didn’t even bother to try to hide it by reducing the minimap to show only the explorable parts is….boggling. (Not that it would have solved the problem, it just seems lame they didn’t even try putting lipstick on that particular pig).

Sex Scenes:
ME1 got it done ok. Bioware has just completely lost the plot ever since. Gritty. Dark. Fantasy. That’s the litmus test Bioware. Check out the HBO adaptation of a Song of Ice and Fire. Watch for the sex scenes. Take careful notes. That’s the vibe you should be going for. You only cause hilarity with the whole sex happens only when folks are fully clothed or wearing underwear theme. Not the ha-ha funny type of hilarity. More the ‘really Bioware? Sad.’ kind of hilarity.

Quests:
I disliked the ‘find an item, get the quest’ concept very much. It felt like you guys were just being too lazy to program a quest-giver and were giving us only half a quest. These should never happen again. Ever.

Unknowable Item Set Bonuses
So many times I tried to find out exactly what the bonus for a complete armor set was so that I could decide whether to break the set for a new shinier item, or not. I never found it. Please make the bonus stats accessible.

Game Length:
On principle I would have to say 50 hours is disappointingly short after DA:O. However, to be honest, I was just relieved that DA2 ended. I was tired of ‘watching’ Hawke and his story by then. I could have kept playing as the Warden in DAO forever. There’s a lesson there about player agency, but I’m not sure I have the correct usage of the jargon to argue much with Mike Laidlaw about definitions and such.

Some general thoughts:
Ok, so that’s the gist of my response to DA2. Overall, I often felt alienated from the main character, and saddled with too many companions that I just didn’t like or never felt a growing sense of relationship with thanks to the cumbersome new conversation system. And some cutscenes left me unable to exercise my desired option. Like telling Flemeth to naff off and MEAN it. Or actually attacking the templar when the dragged Bethany away. There were only a couple of them for crying out loud!

There are other aspects of Bioware games that irritate me that are not new to DA2.

Boring, static level design:
No one builds houses, repairs walls, eats lunch, sits down or stands up, carries goods, kisses their girlfriend, runs to catch up with their cousin, feeds the squirrels, rides a horse, digs a trench, or does much of anything except stand around gossiping. The levels don’t evolve over time. It would be nice to see someone building a house/wall and seeing it actually progress over time as you walk by.

To be fair: there were some small nods in DA2 towards this. The chantry sister asking for donations in the hightown market and the templar refusing, for example. It might have sold a bit better if I hadn’t seen the same pitch/response several times though. But overall, Kirkwall was bland and empty, and hardly a vibrant place where things happened.

And the lack of reaction to blatant magery in front of templars, or sudden combat in front of civilians, is really bad for making the game world feel realistic. Taking Morrigan into the circle tower in DA:O gave me lots of concern over what might happenwith the templars, and I was pretty let down that no one seemed to notice the ruddy big staff on her back. The same is true in DA2, except far more often throughout the game.

Navigation/Loading Screens:
When I’ve fully explored a map, why can’t I open the world map from wherever I am in the level? Why do I have to trek across half the level just to reach an exit point?

Actually, scratch that: why do I have to deal with loading screens at all? (Although I will say the loading screens for DA2 were VERY nicely done FWIW). Can’t you guys manage a dynamic loading system to give the illusion of a big seamless world like so many of your competitors?

Jumping/Wading/Swimming:
Would be nice.
Bowstrings, scabbards, and mounts.
Would also be nice, while we’re mentioning nice things.

Varying from small group combat?
How about letting us participate in a huge epic battle sometime? Or two even? Y’know, armies clashing, horns blowing, hundreds of friends and hundreds of enemies all at once. Responding to orders for army-scale strategy/tactics.

Ok, sorry for the wall of text. I hope the feedback is helpful for the devs. I tried to be as constructive as I could.

And as a note: multiplayer? Do not want it. I could tolerate local co-op, but I will not forgive any sacrifices to the single player campaign to make it happen. Right now, the DA franchise has lost a huge amount of credibility/interest for me. Bioware is going to have to markedly improve on this for me to consider buying DA3 at full price. I would consider multiplayer to be a ‘feature’ that has distinctly negative implications for the quality of the game.

Modifié par craigdolphin, 14 avril 2011 - 05:32 .

[Lumikki]

craigdolphin wrote...

*snip*

it was supposed to be a dark, gritty, mature fantasy world. That brings to mind GRRM’s Song of Ice & Fire novels. Maybe even a little LOTR. For me, the touchstone essence of Dragon Age is that mantra: mature, dark, gritty. Much of the new art-style seems to run counter to that critical tenet of the DA universe that I want to be involved with.

The elven retcon doesn’t fit my mental picture of a mature, dark, gritty fantasy world.

*snip*

They need fixed: badly. Evil monsters that elicit either snorts of hilarity or muttering grumbles of irritation do not belong in a dark, gritty, fantasy world IMO.

*snip*

Why? Again, I refer back to my touchstone: dark, gritty, mature. Rogues are supposed to be light, quick, and fast-moving: so the pacing of their combat animations makes sense (even if it is still a bit faster than I
would prefer).

I never did see any dark, gritty, mature, fantasy world in DAO. So, where is this comming?

I can understand someone liking dark fantasy, but how to hell mature did get on this. Dark fantasy is not any more mature than "good" fantasy.

Next is my own comments about the game.

Enemies: In general after playign alot DA2, I have to say, you need to re-think the enemies.

Normal enemies where only ones done right. They hole danger existed only as amount of them. They wheren't too hard to kill and you could use controls and strategy for them to avoid been over run of them.

Elites, some of them where fine and I think they where the real challenge in this game. How ever, one elite was not so good, even if I did like the idea. That's the assassin elite. Problem with it is this, it has alot more health than my tank, it can stealth and hit some companion back and there is nothing what player can do about it. Also when it hits, it hits exreme hard. None of these qualities are problem seperated, but as togather, they aren't so good. Why? Because they have no weakness. They health is high, they attack damage is high, they can stealth. They have all advances. Now to fix this, you need to lower one of them, so that players have better change. Example:

Assassin: Low health, stealth, high damage
Assassin: High health, stealth, low damage
Assassin: High health, no stealth, high damage.
Assassin: High health, stealth, high damage (This isn't good)

This way player can deal them better.  (Low here means half of they have now)

Bosses, where little booring, because they just had huge health and nothing more. I don't know how you can think killing same enemies with base attacks for 30-60minutes can be fun? it's just booooooooring.. How to fix them? Make them smart as support they miminions. Like heal other enemies or have some other specialities. Like call they miminions back to regroup. Think what player would do agaist players?

Modifié par Lumikki, 14 avril 2011 - 06:24 .

[Corto81]

I never did see any dark, gritty, mature, fantasy world in DAO. So, where is this comming?

I can understand someone liking dark fantasy, but how to hell mature did get on this. Dark fantasy is not any more mature than "good" fantasy.

"Mature" fantasy is what really went back on the map with GRRM's "A Song of Ice and Fire".
Since then, other great writers have popped up, Erikson, Bakker, Abercrombie, each with their own style, etc., but with one thing in common - a world where the people have real traits and flaws, and most people are capable of both good and bad things.

The "good" fantasy the guy you quoted was refering to (IMO) was LOTR and what came after it... including the whole sea of books which came from set world like Forgotten Realms.
Village farm boys becoming heroes, white vs black, etc etc.
Women don't get caught and raped, heroes don't get broken down into shells by sadistic torturers,
people don't swear, etc.
Not to mention your average "good" guys are capable of doing a some things Drizzt, Aragorn, etc. and the old school fantasy heroes would run away from.

DA:O did have a dark, gritty setting with nearly all the NPCs having depth to them and realistic reaction and cognitive processes (unlike DA II - Fenris, Anders, Seb, Merril are all either completly zealous, blinded idiots - who I have no idea why my character would spend 10 years with), it had people doing daily business and not just quest NPCs and two un-interactable NPCs that just gossip per level, it had more relistic violence, bad things happened in a way that was much more believable than in DA II, etc.

So yes, "dark" fantasy is way more "mature" than good fantasy.
And yes, DA:O is as about as dark, gritty and realistic fantasy RPG as there is out there, while DA II is a action-RPG that leans much more to a shooter than to the old BG school of tactical RPGs.

(it's a matter of personal preference, so that's only up for debate when you're speaking of personal taste.
What IS a fact though,  is that DA II does not feel anything remotely like DA:O and that it WAS a rushed, flawed product - and if not rushed, then just insultingly lazy).

[Lumikki]

BS, DAO was little childrens game. If you think other ways, I suggest opening eyes would help. Dark fantasy is for teens who think it's cool to be bad. That's not mature, that childish.

[Nightwriter]

Lumikki wrote...

BS, DAO was little childrens game. If you think other ways, I suggest opening eyes would help. Dark fantasy is for teens who think it's cool to be bad. That's not mature, that childish.

Of course. Darkness is, like, so childish.

That's why they play Blue Velvet and 30 Days of Night on Nickelodeon nonstop.

Modifié par Nightwriter, 14 avril 2011 - 10:18 .

[Zeevico]

Lumikki wrote...

BS, DAO was little childrens game. If you think other ways, I suggest opening eyes would help. Dark fantasy is for teens who think it's cool to be bad. That's not mature, that childish.

Good fantasy, in my view, is fantasy where the characters react as people might react if they were faced with fantastic situations. It can be dark, or light.

[Perles75]

craigdolphin wrote...

Unknowable Item Set Bonuses
So many times I tried to find out exactly what the bonus for a complete armor set was so that I could decide whether to break the set for a new shinier item, or not. I never found it. Please make the bonus stats accessible.

You can find it in the talent/skills page.

[Perles75]

DAO has pretty gritty moments. Loghain's putsch and betrayal in the moment of greatest need, with the fragmentation of the nobles of Ferelden while the great threat of the Blight looms over the region, casts quite a depressive shadow on the story.
Several decisions you have to make are also not so obviously polarized in the good-evil range and backed by pretty ambiguous morality.

DA2, for its part, is more nuanced. There is no clear, save-the-world story direction, not to mention the fact that all the parts involved in the main storyline seem to have more faults than merits. For once, not Big Evil to deal with and taking parts is not easy. I appreciate the experiment.

[Zeevico]

Perles75 wrote...

DAO has pretty gritty moments. Loghain's putsch and betrayal in the moment of greatest need, with the fragmentation of the nobles of Ferelden while the great threat of the Blight looms over the region, casts quite a depressive shadow on the story.
Several decisions you have to make are also not so obviously polarized in the good-evil range and backed by pretty ambiguous morality.

DA2, for its part, is more nuanced. There is no clear, save-the-world story direction, not to mention the fact that all the parts involved in the main storyline seem to have more faults than merits. For once, not Big Evil to deal with and taking parts is not easy. I appreciate the experiment.

BG2 was mostly about rescuing Imoen. Avoiding the epic storyline isn't that uncommon.
DA2's storyline was poorer than it could have been because it didn't place events in context. In ME2 you're out for two years from the date of ME1, and it's more or less acceptable because it's placed in context. Yes, the Good/Medium/Renegade choice delineation is  irritating, but it's a solid game that puts everything together. DA2--love it or hate it--simply doesn't do that. Recycled storylines and rushed dialogue sequences make for a less than compelling setting and less than compelling story. It's a mistake to make a distinction between setting (looks and gameplay) and story. I personally can live with worse 'graphics', but better 'visuals.' DA2 has better graphics (maybe) but it has worse visuals by far than its predecessor. What genius thought of releasing a game like that?

Modifié par Zeevico, 14 avril 2011 - 12:50 .

[nekhbet]

I guess the real complaints I have are the reused maps and the junk items. I'd like to be able to use the junk items in some way, or anything that.. well, doesn't make them just junk you carry around.

Is there a reason the maps were recycled? Is it lack of time to make more maps or is it because more maps would have made the game too big etc.?

As for the storyline, the passing of time could have been handled better. Now it's not really clear that time has passed... you get told that it's been three years or one year, but it doesn't feel like it. More showing, less telling, please.

Same actually applies to a lot of the codex stuff. There's a LOT of stuff in the codex that makes the story so much richer and makes it make more sense... but again, it's easy to miss it if it's just a pop up line that flashes by at some point of the game. I missed a lot of that stuff on the first PT, and that's saying something considering what blood hound I usually am for lore bits. It doesn't need to be rubbed to the player's face or made too easy, just included in the "showing" part a bit more.

I guess that's it. Otherwise I enjoyed the game very much, both the combat and the story that wasn't all black and white.

[nightscrawl]

craigdolphin wrote...

Dragon Age 2: a Reckoning. As in: ‘I reckon’ about DA2.

WARNING: Wall of text follows. Sorry.

...

Unknowable Item Set Bonuses
So many times I tried to find out exactly what the bonus for a complete armor set was so that I could decide whether to break the set for a new shinier item, or not. I never found it. Please make the bonus stats accessible.

Game Length:
On principle I would have to say 50 hours is disappointingly short after DA:O.

This was fantastic commentary, the entire huge thing!

For these 2 points though:
- You can see your armor set bonus by going into the abilities screen. If you have an armor set on, you will see a little icon on the bottom that sort of looks like a golem. Click on that for details. I never did figure out how to see set bonuses in DAO however, I just looked at the wiki site lol.
- I agree with the time here, but I suppose that goes along with the lack of epicness? My DAO plays were usually a bit over 60 hours (and yes I'm a quest fanatic and try to do everything). By comparison, DA2 was just over 30 hours. I'm not sure how you managed to crank out 50 o.O.

[Cybermortis]

Lumikki wrote...

BS, DAO was little childrens game. If you think other ways, I suggest opening eyes would help. Dark fantasy is for teens who think it's cool to be bad. That's not mature, that childish.

DAO's rating is 18/Mature, and it is therefore not a childs game by definition.

'Dark' fantasy is probably the wrong term to use in any case - although I can understand why it is used.

'Grey' fantasy might be a better term for 'adult' (or at least mature) RPG's in which characters can have flaws and depth. The problem, of course, is that care needs to be taken not to overdo such flaws or you end up with characters just as annoying and predictable as any 'white' fantasy character. Logain is a good example of a grey character, in that while he fills the role of the sterotypical 'bad guy' at first glance. However if you get to know the character within the game you realise things aren't that straightforward. The same holds for many (although far from all) the characters in DAO, in that while they may fall into a particular role of 'good' or 'bad' from a distance. Closer in you realise that they are really grey to some degree - even Duncan, who is portrayed as a sterotypical 'good' guy shows he is quite capable of being as ruthless as your average 'bad' guy if he has to be.

Bioware used to be very good at writing characters like this - although as someone pointed out they have a nasty habit of using the same templates from one game to the next. Here we don't have the same amount of depth, and characters who have a set personality/belief never change or moderate those views. Fenris, for example, will continue to moan about mages endlessly even if Hawke is a mage. Yes there are people who's views never change, but it seems like this applies to my entire party and more importantly if some companions views were not moderated in the slightest it raises the question as to why they are still talking to Hawke, let alone in his/hers party. Again, if Fenris is so anti-mage why would he happily travel with a Mage Hawke for years?


I know I posted this elsewhere, but I'm not sure if I posted it here. So I'll write it again.

The problem with the story/plot as is boils down to a lack of an adversary. The typical 'save the world' RPG story requires an opponent for the protaganist to search out and defeat. Where things have gone wrong here is in the writers thinking that if you get rid of the 'save the world' plot you also have to get rid of the adversary. 

An opponent doesn't have to be someone you have to fight, nor do they have to be responsable for all the problems the protaganist encounters. Rather their role is to try and hamper the hero, annoy them and give them something to focus on - you don't even need to have an individual for this. A group can work, just as well.

Having someone to overcome helps focus the story, and motivate the hero even if the plot itself otherwise has nothing to do with the adversary directly. They are also useful in explaining why the hero is willing to do quests that they should otherwise turn down.

In DA2 there is no adversary helping tie the acts together. But imagine if there had been.

Imagine if one of the older Kirkwall families were not happy at the Hawkes - their old rivals - had returned to the city. In act one they might have been doing everything they could to get rid of them, up to and including hiring thugs to attack Hawke. Maybe the 'fall' of the Hawke family in the city was down to them being able to play the political game better than your uncle. This would explain why Hawke wanted to go into the Deep Roads, and why Hawke was willing to do all those otherwise pointless quests. Hawke could be trying to get revenge on that family, or Hawke could simply be trying to reclaim some of the families old power so the family would be too powerful to attack directly.

In acts two and three this family would have moved on to striking against Hawke indirectly, frustrating plans from a distance and pushing for Hawke to deal with situations in the hopes that he/she would fail. In the end Hawke could deal with this family buy either convincing them that he/she was never interested in destroying them, convincing them he/she is far too powerful to challenge or by wiping them out. Heck, a character from this family could have been introduced as a companion and possible romance, giving the option to settle the rivalry through marriage.

None of this would have required the main story (such as it is) to be changed significantly, but would have allowed the acts to be tied together better.

[Bhaal-Azalan]

The constant re-use of maps was annoying to say the least. You go into a mountain cave and there's wooden steps and doors etc in it!!! Why? I accept that map re-use is common place but in DA2 it just look like lazy programming to me. How can all these areas look the same for goodness sake?

The looks of some of the armours, especially the rogue, was very disappointing.

The voice acting was very by-the-numbers as a whole, with a few exceptions (Isabela, Fenris, female Hawke)

The Final Act was a BIG disappointment

[Laraine]

Wow, so many quality posts in here its hard to think of what hasn't been covered, but I want to add my two cents! Because Origins was so very plot driven I did find myself floundering a bit in the beginning, trying to figure out where this was all heading. I think that the above comment re: lack of a unifying adversary was spot on as well. In Origins you were always aware that there was an archdemon looming out there somewhere, which created its own sense of urgency that helped drive the plot. He was big, bad and ugly... DA2 we get small, pedantic and fragmented (except for a brief moment when Ms. Glowy red sword soars into the air in a superman-esque leap that made me actually laugh out loud.)

Combat-wise I loved that they got rid of the shuffle, shuffle swipe, and the combat animation for the rogue in particular was much improved. I didn't find rogue enemies overpowered as some have said; yes that one dps burst after stealth was brutal, but if you paused and shield slammed the buggers they were pretty much at your mercy if you were fast with the follow-through. I agree also that the phased-in enemy reinforcements were a bit lame, particularly fighting random thugs in the streets at night. Increasing the difficulty of the game shouldn't just mean throwing 20 more mobs at me after phasing them through the wall at a dead end. Just how big is Kirkwall anyways? I must have killed half the population just dealing with street gangs.

Characterization: considering how the Hawke character was the one constant thread throughout, I thought the character was well done. It has to be difficult to have a single voice actor follow the entire thread through three different acts and still be able to portray all the variations available, so kudos, that was ambitious and imo it worked (sure here and there it could have been tweaked, male Hawke in particular but overall I enjoyed it.) As for the others... they really were very preachy. I could have cheerfully strangled Anders in Act 1 (and I liked him in Awakenings!), Sebastian got left in the chantry a lot (I only took him out on Sunday mornings when I felt a jolt of religious fervour was due), Fenris was delightfully bitter at first until his lines started repeating themselves (yeah yeah we get it, magic burned into your skin and very soul), and Carver well, Carver was cheerfully sacrificed in the opening act every chance I got. I understand that Bioware was trying to create dueling factions, but by the end I honestly didn't care who was right or wrong as long as they shut up already. Having said that, I did like the lighter moments of party banter that didn't involve preachy agendas, and I wish there were more of them. I won't even touch on the romance since enough has been said to fill a book already, except to say the clarity of the dialogue options is appreciated since I can skip the romance altogether if I choose without accidentally flirting as was possible in Origins.

To conclude: I have played through 5 times now, because the OVERALL game is a good one, and my overall experience has been positive, despite what I have said above. The quality of some of the voice actors makes up for the grating content in many respects (Fenris, Merril and Varric are my favs with female Hawke tagging along) and the storyline overall is interesting enough to suck me into it for hours.

[Killer3000ad]

Bad stuff
-Recycled maps
-No overhead camera. There were many times I was fighting in cramped areas and wished I could pull the camera up to better target or get a better view. Plz we need it
-No companion outfit inventory.FACEPALM, pure laziness Bioware, a character shouldn't be defined by what he/she wears, it's their story and interaction. DA:O companions all had their own unique character despite what they wore. Also what's the point of dropping all these other armor types when Hawke can't wear it???
-Lack of choices or more accurately your choices have no discernible affect
-Waves, seriously...... take it out
-Hurlock and elf redesign, BIG THUMBS DOWN!
-Time skips, what the hell? All those big time skips especially between Act 2 and 3, no chance to stop the mage vs templar war
-Final villain disappointing, only revealed at the very end and hardly interesting
-Assassins, who designed the enemy encounters?? THese guys are annoying, their stealth is on a shorter cooldown, their stealth is practically uninterruptible, their backstab is brokenly overpowered. THe only way I can beat them is build my mages with heavy CC just to chain disable ONE assassin.
-Romances are rushed, I enjoyed taking time to talk to my companions in DA:O. With DA2 it's just a few HEART options and poof.. it's on.... disappointing
-WHY GIVE ONLY ONE HEALER???
-Soundtrack is grossly inferior to DA:O. Either that or your sound editor didn't make proper use of Inon Zur's work.

Good stuff
-Skill redesign in probably the only good thing
-Combat was acceptable but could be a tad slower

Bottomline
I have four playthroughs of DA:O, but I only have made 2 of DA2, the second one i haven't finished cause it's god awful. I feel no qualms about making a new char on DAO but the mere thought of making a new Hawke in DA2 just puts me off even booting the game.

Modifié par Killer3000ad, 14 avril 2011 - 07:02 .

[Corto81]

Lumikki wrote...

BS, DAO was little childrens game. If you think other ways, I suggest opening eyes would help. Dark fantasy is for teens who think it's cool to be bad. That's not mature, that childish.

I think you're completely the missing the point here.

"Dark" fantasy, as you call it, is more like "realistic" fantasy in the way people behave and react.
It's not some sort of "emo" fantasy with "emo" haired teens slitting wrists and moaning about boobs.
Noone thinks "it's cool to be bad", but I do think it's rather cool to have well-developed believable characters.
Nothing is white and black, everything is grey.
Much like real life.

DA:O had a bunch of those said characters, Loghain perhaps the most clear example.

DA II on the other hand throws at you a bunch of immatures, zealots or lunatics, who harp their own tune no matter what happens around them.
There's no grey area for nearly any of them, which is unrealistic and makes me (at least) not feel there's any depth to them (companions and other NPCs included).

[Maria Caliban]

Dark fantasy is noir. It's not 'realistic,' though it's can be psychologically sophisticated in a way much epic heroic fantasy is not.

Dark fantasy can be emo. Young adult dark fantasy can certainly be emo. There's nothing that prevents it save the skill with which the author handles the subject matter. The Dusk/Dawn duology, for example, is ridiculously melodramatic in its darkness.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 14 avril 2011 - 08:19 .

[Mr.BlazenGlazen]

Constructive criticism?

BSN actually knows the real definition of that term? Because all I saw for the past month was "BIOWARE SUCKS I HOPE ALL THEIR GAMES FAIL!"

[strinder]

 Rather than post a wall of text I'll just link my problems here.

Combat/Camera:
social.bioware.com/mechronicles.com/forums/forum/1/topic/141/index/6528101/1

Inventory:
social.bioware.com/forum/Dragon-Age-II/Dragon-Age-II-General-Discussion-No-Spoilers-allowed-here/My-Reason-2-Inventory-management-6540891-1.html

Modifié par strinder, 14 avril 2011 - 08:25 .

[Perles75]

nekhbet wrote...

I guess the real complaints I have are the reused maps and the junk items. I'd like to be able to use the junk items in some way, or anything that.. well, doesn't make them just junk you carry around.
.

Regarding the junk items, I don't find this solution so bad... after all, items that are just useful to get money always existed in every RPG, at least here we don't have the usual gems everywhere.
I think the main problem about the recycled maps is the message they convey, that one of a game which was unnecessarily rushed. And of course, if they rushed in the maps, one is justified to think it was rushed in general. I really cannot believe ANY excuse to recycle maps and interiors.