Okay, I know, long post... take it as a sign I like the game, to spend this long writing about it?
Bugs/release schedule: Please, hold on to a game longer if it needs it.
1.00/1.01 was in pretty bad shape. It only takes one bug to ruin a game, as long as it's bad enough, and 1.00/1.01 had several that I think would qualify, from the Isabella slo-mo, to importing problems and some quests not firing correctly. The console folks not getting auto-attack was pretty bad for them too. It was disappointing to see some of these bugs after getting excited about the ramp up to release and buying it full price. I actually put it away until 1.02 after reading about some of the problems. Maybe some of these truly didn't come up in QA, but it felt like the game needed another month of polish.
ME2's bugs were light enough that I felt rewarded for buying on release and satisfying my desire to play on day one, and that's part of what got me to do the same with DA2. But with DA2 I ended up feeling it was a mistake.
Dungeons: Yeah, map re-use was just too high. It's fine when it's
fictionally the same location. But there's a disconnect when I'm supposed to think "this is a cave/mansion/sewer that is fictionally new" and yet it is clearly the same level design I've seen many times before. I won't harp any longer on a common subject.
Art Style: In general, I liked the new art direction.
Please consider toning down the geysers of blood. It doesn't really add anything, and when blood is so constantly turned up to maximum intensity, it makes all the combat moves blend together. When I first tried Merrill's Blood of the First power, my reaction was, "that's it?" She was ripping the blood straight out of people, that should have been dramatic. But the results looked very similar to other powers, because practically everything but a standard attack produces a cloud of red.
Combat: Better. DAO had too many tweaky bits for my taste, e.g. backstabbing angles. I would agree with people who say combat seems less complex in DA2,
and I say that's a
good thing. I do want to have to think through strategy, and leveling and tactics certainly presented some interesting chocies. I prefer not to have to tweak second-to-second, however, and I was able to rely on the tactics more often than in tweaky ol' DAO.
I join the complaints about enemies popping up/dropping in from everywhere, emphasis on the "everywhere." When they come from all around the perimeter, strategic formations aren't that meaningful, especially considering the faster speed of combat. Managing threat/enemy attention to make the enemy come to your tanks becomes the only way to manage combat, as it's just not possible to put the melee fighters "in front" - what front? - and have them go to the enemy.
Perhaps I would have cared more about placement on Hard/Nightmare with friendly fire on. But if that's the case, I'd imagine battles on those difficulties are about running around in circles a lot, trying to sift friends and foes back apart.
I could see the case for using the circum-perimeter drop-ins in special occasions, for "oh &@*! we're surrounded!" moments. In DA2, though, being surrounded isn't special, it's just the norm. I'm okay with waves (though I'm not against toning them down), but please be a bit more careful about limiting and perhaps even signposting spawn points.
Inventory and Items: Much better than DAO, thank you!
Junking and auto-selling Junk is great.
It felt like there were fewer items overall (though maybe that's just because of the junk system) and that was good.
I know there are people who weren't happy with the inventory changes, but if you were to design your next game only for me, I would advise you not to listen to them.
Fetch quests: The pick-up-and-drop-off sidequests are bad. I didn't even understand what they were the first few times until I started looking in the journal. (Can't say I'm in the habit of going to the journal as soon as I pick up a quest - usually I expect to understand them from dialogue.) These quests cluttered up the world map and made it difficult to find the real quests. The only way to distinguish one type from another on the map was to commit the quest names to memory, ESC out of the travel map, hit J to open the journal, and then open each Quests sub-heading to look for those quest names.
In the end I did almost all of these quests that I found, because it was less annoying to just get them out of the way than to keep bumping in to them on the world map. So, yes, my OCD means that my metrics will have shown I did most of them, but that does not mean I liked them. Please bury these. Preferably someplace no one can find them again.
Conversations: I liked the tone system. For my money it's Bioware's best take yet on an alignment system. Although I did have a consistently dominant tone (witty/purple), I was always thinking my options through and sometimes selecting the other two tones. I never fell to the danger of auto-piloting along one tone. I can't say if implementing the tones to the depth they were in DA2 is worth the resources required, but I didn't feel they were hurting anything else by their presence, which for me is a first for Bioware alignment systems.
The use of icons for extra context was a good call given the abbreviated text for dialogue choices, and much more informative than ME's text-alone. I hope the ME team stole that one.
Like Mass Effect, the abbreviated text is great when it works, but is never going to be 100%. My problems with dialogue choices were usually related to the "Decision" branching icon (the one with multiple arrows).
Firstly, it didn't seem consistently applied. I thought it was supposed to mean "there is a story branch right here, watch your step." But it seemed to me it was also used to punt on assigning other icons to complex but not story-altering choices. Further, there were quite a few true decision points that didn't get this icon.
Regardless, even where it did indicate an important choice, it supercedes meaningful information. Wherever the branching icon is used, it meant I
didn't get to see a more informative icon, and had to rely solely on the text - often for some of the most important dialogues in the game.
In the future, perhaps find the resources to have not just tone-based icons, but plot-based icons for decision points? For instance, if there had been "Pro-Mage" and "Pro-Templar" icons to clarify the decisions in the scene at the beginning of Act 3, that might have saved me a goof where I accidentally had my Hawke support Meredith on one point. ("Let the people decide" sounded anti-Meredith in my head, then Hawke went in the opposite direction.)
Companions:One improvement I noticed was their interaction with each other. Checking in on companions in their bases and finding them already talking with one another was great. And it felt like they more often took part in conversations, either automatically, or by special dialogue options. Both things made them seem like a part of the world, and fit in with the idea that Hawke is just their friend, not their commander. (Since writing this I came across a post stating this was indeed how companion dialogue was "budgeted." Dialogue well spent IMO.)
I feel there may be a better way to do the pacing and notification of companion dialogues. In DAO I didn't feel like I had to exhaust conversations with party members, because there was never an indication they had more to say until you re-opened dialogue, and there would always be another camp. In DA2, I did appreciate having journal entries pop up to remind me to talk to them - however, both the markers and the necessity to travel to their base to talk often compelled to keep clicking on the companion until the marker over their head went away. This resulted in some conversations taking place back-to-back in my playthrough, sometimes to weird effect.
The Friendship/Rivalry alternate Approval paths are also an improvement, but also someplace that I feel something better might be done. The system worked for the most part. many of the companions I spent time with went to one extreme (all Friendship, as it turned out). Whereas Fenris, who I neglected, stayed in the middle, never brought up sidequests, and did not stick by me in the end. All that seemed appropriate.
Isabella was the one who didn't work for me. I had her in my party for some of the first act and the majority of the second act. My Hawke spent a lot of time with her and I began to imagine they had a rapport developing. Mathematically, however, the mix of decisions my Hawke made in conversation with and in front of Isabella kept her swinging between Friendship and Rivalry, never ending up with a great deal of either, and therefore not even triggering her sidequest. As a result, she didn't return at the end of Act 2, even though my Hawke pursued options to befriend her. When I found out it was possible for Isabella to return out of loyalty to Hawke, even on a Rivalry path, it just felt odd that she hadn't in my game. That she might have, had my Hawke been at even greater loggerheads with her rather than gaining the occasional Friendship points alongside their disagreements, just doesn't make much sense to me.
I like where the Approval system is going with the Rivalry option, so that it's no longer necessarily about playing
to them, but it's still not quite right. There remains the possibility of an NPC being an important part of the team, someone the player character spends a lot of time with, yet the relationship is regarded as distant by the game because the player is friendly to them only
some of the time. Whereas the tone system does a good job of providing an extra gameplay mechanic without it leading to extremes and auto-pilot play, the Approval system is still going the other way, encouraging consistency and punishing attempts at up-and-down relationships with the party members. I'm not sure what should be done instead, but perhaps something more like the tone system, with separate "stacks" that do not actually substract from each other, would be better.
Story:I have my issues with it, but on the whole, I was impressed. You folks did some things I wasn't expecting. DA2 has some big flaws, but it also has some big successes.
If there are things from this post I hope make it on to post-mortem memos, it is these: Thank you for surprising me. Thank you for taking some risks with the story. Thank you for not having the player save the world. Please keep surprising me.
ComplaintsI have one big pet peeve: the idol in general, and the idol-sword specifically. For most of the game, Meredith seemed like a thoroughly human villain. She could have stayed that way, but instead it felt like she was suddenly freed of at least some responsibility.
I suppose this is an odd thing to complain about in a story full of possessions. The best I can distinguish the idol is that it is presented - to the degree that it is explained at all - as something that just befalls people. Whereas in the cases of other spirits/demons that people make deals with, the human is generally shown to have some idea of what they're getting in to, even if they may still misjudge the consequences.
I have to wonder if a need to kill Meredith in all versions of the ending is why the idol came along? It just seems unnecessary.
Mage recognition needs work.
Bioware games have always had something of a curtain between combat and everything else. In games like Jade Empire or Mass Effect, where there is little plot-related difference between fighting styles, that's not really a problem. In games like KOTOR or the DAs, though, it can create weird situations. In DA2, one of the bigger ones was Cullen being apparently unphased by Merrill using blood magic. I'm not sure if that particular example is fixable without thoroughly overhauling the combat to be more integrated into the plot. Still, this issue also seemed to receive uneven writing. For instance, my Hawke, given the option, was supportive of Merrill's use of blood magic (and of course, a Mage Hawke can use it themselves). My Hawke was willing to hear demons out when given the option, even if the deals usually weren't tempting enough. Yet at other times, Hawke automatically condemns both practices. If players are going to be given leeway to have our character hold an open-minded view of either practice, I'd like it to be consistent. Otherwise, better to just take those decisions away entirely and always force the player character to condemn them, IMO.
AdorationYes, the story's largely on rails, but so was DAO. At least this time it more often felt like my character had no choice, rather than me having no choice in a situation where my character really should. In general, DA2's story seems to try to integrate rather than obscure its rails. I think it worked well.
Loved the villains. Characters like the Ari'shok and Orsino were miles better than an "it's just evil" Archdemon and a faceless horde of Darkspawn. (Would have included Meredith in that list, but see my rant above...)
The game's time-lapses improved a lot of quests. Many quests had memorable moments (the kidnapped Elven girl grows up, the killer goes after Leandra, Alain tries to do right) that were memorable because they only came after some time, both in-game and in playtime. Having repercussions or follow-ups turn up after I've put a quest out of mind is rewarding and helps keep the world immersive. Please, more of those kinds of delayed pay-offs and continuing quests.
Complaints aside, the story and world are what I really liked about DA2. I got a kind of story I'm not used to getting from Bioware, and my biggest hope for the next game is that I'm surprised again.
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