Now on to the topic.
One aspect that gets me hooked on RPGs is the sense of mystery, exploration and discovery. The sense of accomplishment when I discover something awesome that wasn't basically thrown at me by the game. Two examples off the top of my head: Modron Maze in Planescape. Or how you discover the military base in Fallout 2, lie or sneak your way in, and score the ultimate armor of the game.
Then there's Dragon Age II.
How do you get the Mantle of the Champion, i.e. the (to my knowledge) best armor in the game? By following the main quest.
That's right: you get the ultimate armor by doing exactly what the game prescribes (Apart from killing the dragon. However, that's also something which I'm certain 99% of all players will most definitely do in their first playthrough). That's not exactly fantastic in and of itself IMO, but I could deal with it if it came as a cool surprise.
Alas, not only is the armor in the faux prologue, it's also in every trailer, promo art, and even in the goddamn character selection menu. I ended up with exactly the equipment the developers obviously intended for pretty much every player to have. Way to make me feel accomplished.
I realize that's how games work, i.e. developers design them in a way that invites players to get the very best stuff at some point. But the art, imo, is to make it at least a little more subtle than "HEY LOOK, THIS IS HOW BADASS YOU (and everyone else) WILL BE IN THE END!" This is even worse than the Metroid cliche of "Whoops, looks like your Varia suit got gimped from godlike power to crap in the first 5 minutes of the game. Time to restore it for the next 15 hours." At least you usually end up with slightly different suits and powers by the end in those games.
This might look petty to you, but as I see it, it's just a symptom of a disease that has infested Dragon Age 2: lack of motivation. I do sidequest after sidequest and get crap like 2 gold, 3 gold, 5 gold. I loot every container in desperate hopes of cool rewards and get "Junk", "[Superior, Elven] [Whatever]", "[Ornate, Demonic, Whatever] [Belt, Ring, Amulet]" (which I don't even get to see outside of their generic icons).
And maybe the odd semi-cool item, although that's usually reserved for Main Story quests.
Oh wait, I can't use it because it's not for my class and/or it's armor, which companions don't want.
Where are the huge hoards of treasure? (Even the big bosses often drop generic crap, and not too much of it) Where are the mysterious ancient vaults? I could deal with mediocre loot if at least the story surrounding these quests were slightly more intriguing. But all I generally get is "kthxbye". 80% of this game's sidequests are literally a complete throwback to the atrocious cookie cutter planet missions of Mass Effect 1.
Now I realize this game is no Diablo, and it shouldn't try to be. It's not about the loot primarily. But there was seriously nothing motivating me to continue questing apart from the (ultimately futile) hope of discovering something, anything cool. It didn't feel like a journey, it didn't feel like an adventure, it felt like a grind.
Disclaimer: I've done every sidequest I could find in the game, amounting to roughly 40 hours of playtime. There might be a few I missed, but I have little doubt they would play out the exact same way.
Modifié par S_I_a_D, 18 mars 2011 - 12:47 .
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) the game is just a step below Oigins IMO. if origins is a 10/10 then DA2 is a 9.5 or so. 
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