206 réponses à ce sujet

[txgoldrush]

This narrative is astronomically better than the hideously cliched Origins, but I think its too dark for many gamers expecting an "epic" story. For me, its perfect, because I think "epic" is mostly overrated without substance (see God of War III).

I didn't hate Origins, the side stories were great as is some of the characters. Leliana, for example, was an amazing deep complex character that earned her DLC and her important DAII cameos. But Origins was so ridicolously cliched that it sucked the life out of the main story. I thought it along with Neverwinter Nights were Bioware's worst stories.

Boy did DAII shock me, I thought it would be just a warm up for The Witcher 2, but it ended up being one of the most thought provoking Bioware games to date, but one of the darkest.

1) The main theme of the game was how actions can escalate a violatle situation, even if you didn't intend to do so (or you did). This plays not only in the main quest with you and the NPCs committing actions that can inflame the situation, but most of the companion stories carry this theme as well, for example Aveline and Merrill. Even side stories unrelated to the plot carry this theme. Notice how the miners keep mining monster nests, with each incident getting worse until they are slaughtered by a High Dragon.

2) Uncertainty is also a major theme. The Qunari tried to believe in certainty in an uncertain world, the party members don't know what to do after their quests are resolved, and the ending itself brings uncertainty (thats why it works). Uncertainity can bring loss of control as well and thats what happened to Orsino.

3) Your companions can be villains to a degree as well...see Isabella, Merill, and especially Anders. This is also the most anti-heroic cast to date in a Bioware game. Even th epious Sebastian shows grave character flaws as he wants revenge for th emurder of his family. Huge step for Bioware and even the genre. Not many player companions in any RPGs pulls the crap that Anders did.

4) Unlike most WRPGs, the player is mostly not in control (although choices do very much matter). However, for a game with the themes it has, it works. Sometimes actions of others can have an influence on your life just as much as your own choices have on you and the people you affect. Most WRPGs, the player is almost always in control of what happens, this includes The Witcher....not here. Huge cliche break from Bioware here.

5) There are more tragic deaths and brutal killings here than any other Bioware game. Losing loved ones makes huge impacts here as well as mass deaths of innocents. I like how tragedy pulls Aveline and the Hawke family together as they both lose loved ones just minutes apart. And I thought, Jade Empire's Lotus Assassin's training facility was the darkest and sickest thing Bioware's ever done. Not every companion story thread has a happy ending either, actually, almost none of them do, except for maybe Aveline. Merrill's can end in complete tragedy,

6) Outside of Aveline, Bethany, and Leandra....there is no character I can really consider "good" although I do believe that Merrill has a good heart like Isabella says (making her even more tragic) and is sincere in helping her people. Everyone else is either an extreme fanatic, a flawed character, self serving, or even completely insane.

7) The Ending.....it does work, yes it is a true ending, yes, it makes sense. Thats just how the games themes come together eventually. This game is the complete opposite of Origins, or any Bioware game taking the "good" path...this is no hero tale, this is a tragic one, a descent into hell, and Bioware should be commending for the guts to make a story like this. Its like "No Country For Old Men"'s ending, not many people like it, it was dark and bleak, but it works when you think about it. And it won Best Picture.

This is Bioware's best written game since Baldur's Gate II and easily one of , if not the, most thought provoking and one of the most emotionally invoolving. There are some writing hiccups here and there (Grace in the quest "Best Served Cold" for example) but for 98% of it, its spot on. And Bioware's DA team can compete with Biowares main team in writing after all. Its too bad that this game was badly rushed and unpolished. It would have been one of Bioware's best.

[MortalEngines]

This definitely sums up the feelings I've had for the game. Fantastic story, let down by unpolished and rushed mechanics. People beat up the game for not feeling as 'epic' as Origins, but I love that, I'm tired of having the "started as nothing but became a hero!" story line.

I mean, I love my Warden, but I feel much more closer to Hawke. When I'm playing the Warden, I feel like some story book hero but when I play Hawke I feel like a PERSON.

Modifié par MortalEngines, 19 mars 2011 - 10:22 .

[Maria Caliban]

I rather agree.

[Phex]

I agree 100%! Definitely the boldest story BW has written with an exceptional cast of characters that are more than what meets the eye because of their actions, not just lengthy conversations in camp (not that I don't like lengthy conversations, I loved those in Origins). I think Anders' betrayal, whichever way you look at it, was even deeper if your character romanced him or was best friends with him. And there I was thinking Alistair dumping my city elf for the throne of Ferelden was bad... Think again.

[mesmerizedish]

Maria Caliban wrote...

I rather agree.

God damn, God damn.

Also, this.

[Durgon Ironfist]

Origins had the evil bad guy like any good rpg but I loved the political side of it all. Dragon age II is almost all politics while foreshadowing something far worse than anything imaginable. Must also say Merrill's story was beyond tragic made her romance that much better.

[Lulia]

I couldn't disagree with you more.

I'm not arguing about the lack of a "hero" ending, but i think we went from hero to civil servant.

The whole mage vs templar scenario was a mistake because we ourselves can be mages and it just doesn't work. Why would everyone, including Meredith, turn a blind eye for us? They wouldn't.

The conflicting points of veiws and ulterior motives meant we couldn't connect with any of the other characters in any meaningful way.

Merrill was a nut. Who was she supposed to be helping? No one needed or asked for her help. I was never made aware of how she was gong to help someone... just that she insisted on "helping" by alienating herself and eventually killing her loved ones.

End game, we didn't impact the situation at all.

The Qunari were always going to attack, Anders was always going to blow up the chantry, Meredith was always goign to be possessed and the first enchanter was always going to be a blood mage.

None of it would have been any different if we hadn't been there.

It isn't particularly dark - it's controversial, but mundane. We were already aware of the templar/mage thing in DA1 and us taking sides doesn't make a blind bit of difference.

I enjoyed the game, but seriously - the story does nothing for me.

The best bit was Flemeth popping out of the amulet and getting one over on Morrigan. Oh and mother dying was sad too

I knew Anders was going to do something stupid, but i thought it would at least be for his cause. Blowing up the chantry, yes it was a shock moment - but it was only so out of the blue because it made no sense at all!

I've tried, but i just cannot comprehend any logic behind what Anders did. Blow up Meredith, yes, but up some old dear and loads of mages because they wouldn't take his side...

The only way to have made anything out of the story would have been to allow us to side with Thrask, but that wasn't an options.

The whole plot could have been summised at the end of DA1 - "Soon after the mages in Kirkwall rebelled against the Templars. The chantry was destroyed."

[Rykoth]

Lulia, I think one of the themes in Dragon Age II is infact, helplessness.

You enter Kirkwall, there is NO way to avoid being an indentured servant, your only choice is which bed you're going to lay in. Otherwise, tough luck.

Act 1. You NEED to go on the expedition, that is the ONLY way you'll move up in the world. Otherwise, you may as well join the Raiders or the Coterie. And when you go to the Expedition, again, a feeling of helplessness. You can't stop say, Carver from joining the Templars if you ditch him, or Bethany from being taken by the Circle if you leave her behind. Just like you cannot stop your sibling from getting the Taint if you bring them along. It is a feeling of hopelessness that goes through each act.

The point of the story, for me, is not that the inevitable will happen, but what you do as it comes crashing down. Are you the better person? Were you able to say, influence Isabela enough that she does the right thing? Do you decide to kill the Arishok right then and there, or will you have a chip on your shoulder and let him take her if she returns? Do you fight with honor against the Arishok, or do you give him a massive group beating?

Are you the better man going into the Qunari incident? Will you sympathize with the giants, thus making the need to kill them all that much more difficult, or will you believe in the Chantry's smear campaign, making yourself an equal monster?

And going into Act 3. If you aid Merrill, will you take reponsibility and save the Clan? Or will you take hand in a mass slaughter of an entire Clan of Dalish? Will you look at the Templar/Mage conflict with neutrality, and try to avoid it until the last moment? Will you side with the Templars or the Mages based on your personal views, or will you side with them out of rash anger?

The point IMO, is that inevitably, you will become Champion, and yet at the same time, you cannot truly CHANGE anything. One man cannot change everything let alone prevent mass war. But what you do during the inevitable is what shows you the kind of man (or woman) you are.

That is why I agree with the OP that this is Bioware's best/darkest story. I don't care that my choices were an illusion, because in the long run, that's what makes the story so great. Hawke, no matter what he does, is brought to his knees because he cannot save everything, and stop every bad thing. And on that merit, he rises and becomes the Champion of Kirkwall.

[TheBlackBaron]

Darkest? Yes. And I don't mind that at all.

Best? Hell no.

[count_4]

It is indeed one of the best stories told in an RPG. Not the usual 'epic hero stuff' but genuinely dark and authentic.
The only thing I don't feel comfortable with is the Anders twist. It felt a little forced and could have been solved better. Apart from this, the story is perfect, except of course that the glitches sometimes take a lot of the atmosphere. Especially with Merrill...

[Dangerfoot]

Would have been way darker and better if your undead mother hadn't spoken. That totally killed what could have been a horrific and tragic moment.

[Rybciek]

Agree completely, I'm glad other people get this aspect of the game instead of focusing on the mechanics. The dark impactful story, the deep characters, the political agendas, the clashing of emotions... it's all impressively written for a video game. I'd call it a landmark (as DA:O was in the RPG mechanics) but DA:O fanboys would descend upon me. This is the best story and characters I've seen in a video game, book or movie, period.

[Lee337]

Rybciek wrote...

Agree completely, I'm glad other people get this aspect of the game instead of focusing on the mechanics. The dark impactful story, the deep characters, the political agendas, the clashing of emotions... it's all impressively written for a video game. I'd call it a landmark (as DA:O was in the RPG mechanics) but DA:O fanboys would descend upon me. This is the best story and characters I've seen in a video game, book or movie, period.

It's not just the mechanics, many people feel the exact opposite to you, including me, that the story was not really impactful or compelling, the characters are very shallow compared to Biowares usual standard and there were few points that were emotional.
And I really can't belive you think its the best story and characters especially including books and movies!

[CLime]

Dangerfoot wrote...

Would have been way darker and better if your undead mother hadn't spoken. That totally killed what could have been a horrific and tragic moment.

Indeed, I don't know why they decided to ruin all the atmosphere they had built up.  You get down to the guy's lair, see him talking to her, she's sitting with her back to you, and there's that moment of, "Wait... the stuff about... he didn't... oh dear sweet Jesus."  The wedding dress plus the stitches plus her unnatural jerky movements make for an incredibly disturbing scene.  She stumbles over to you, falls down as Hawke catches her.  I'm about ready to commend Bioware on the absolute creepiest resolution to a quest I've ever played, and then... she talks.

On the one hand, it's pretty twisted that she's still aware of her surroundings and whatnot.  On the other, it's her freaking head Frankensteined onto someone else's body.  That makes it almost darkly comedic, which could be fine if that was the tone they had been using throughout the whole episode, but it wasn't.  Stark shift in atmosphere, eyebrow raised, tension shattered.  I want to call the ending great, but with such an inexplicable shift in mood, I can't.  Very good will have to do, but I can get very good in other games as well.

[AntiChri5]

DA2 was an incredibly emotional experience for me. Definitely moreso then Origins or ME2.

When you strip out all of the mechanics, that is what matters.

[Darian Tylmare]

I agree that most characters aren't one dimensional, but for me, they aren't the best thing ever written. The writers did a good job, but mostly the characters are reletively easy to understand.
Take for example Isabela. Even before she says that she is sleeping around so much because she doesn't want to be loved it's painfully clear.
Anders was a straight example of a man gazing too much into the abyss.
The story had tragic points, but it never shows the real tragedy sourrended by the life of Hawke. That this person is a somehow tolerated mass murderer. Never is it not jokingly implied that Hawke butchered a great many of Kirkwalls citizens, even though most are thugs. There are never any repercussions for doing this or seeing those left behind by these men and women.
And never does the Hawke family encounter any real hardship. They are allowed to enter the city even though most of their fellow Fereldeners aren't. By their 4th year in Kirkwall they are rich and to some degree respected.
The family does crumble away to just Hawke, but your remaining sibling is going to life until the end. Over time it seems only your mother remembers the sibling that dies in the Wilds. And your mother has become some sort of political instrument and besides one measly enviromental dialogue inside your estate Hawke never seems to mourn her death.
This story is somehow tragic, but for me never is there real tragedy shown.
What I agree is that the story is dark, because there are no definite good or bad sides, but sadly they aren't flashed out as well either. Take for example the Templars. Besides some hints it is never really shown, what they really do suffer. It's all just told to you.
That you are somehow uconscious to the greater things around you is either great writting or railroading. And since in the end nothing changes whatever you do and in my oppinion Hawke is just the point of view character, I go for railroading.

[zombie fred]

Got to agree the game was rushed but I thought the story was a nice change of pace out of all the general RPG, Save the world, stories.

[Suron]

Other then being rather generic the Origins story was well told EXCEPT the Blight and Archdemon being shoved to the background for the political stuff. Which wouldn't have been a big deal if it didn't just turn out, in the end, to basically going "yay, we're united...now what..oh..crap..yah...there's this big corrupted dragon and it's army we have to kill..let's go do that."

DA2 on the other hand...is relatively good as well. But it falls apart towards the end. They go too far trying to blur the lines between both sides. 99% of the mages do in fact resort to bloodmagic/demons..reinforcing Meredith...even though a LARGE portion of even the Templars show support for the Mages in that Meredith is going way too far and needs to be removed...Whom the mages turn on as well.

Then you have Ander's little stunt...again just reinforcing WHY mages are held on a leash.

Not to mention at least in Origins you could get some real different outcomes, even if small...and the story played out somewhat differently depending on the race you chose...far far far FAAAAAAAAAAAAR above what DA2 does.

DA2 is far too linear and shoe-horns you far too much.

In the end..I really like DA2's story because it's a nice change from "omg only YOU can save the ENTIRE WORLD" to you feeling more like a citizen living in the world...yes you're above average..but your accomplishments honestly feel like they aren't so far and above ANYTHING ANYONE could accomplish...which I vastly enjoyed.

But there really wasn't much you could do to change ANYTHING. At least in Origins you could, for example, kill conner, save conner, deal with the demon, sacrifice Isolde, make Isolde kill her own son, etc...while it didn't change the story much OVERALL..it added enough variance to add more replayability to the game then DA2 could EVER muster...because almost all dialogue choices lead to the SAME EXACT OUTCOME. You can't stop Anders, you can't become amicable with Meredith, you can't keep Orsino from becoming an Abomination, you can't stop/save your mother..etc.

Darkest? maybe, but only because it's FORCED and there's no variance. Origins could become darker via your choices (killing conner, making deal with demon, exiling Alistair or executing him, etc.)

Whereas no matter if you play a saint, a joker, or a ****** Hawke the outcome is ALWAYS the SAME.

[Hobosapien]

I like how this game played out. That certain events were unavoidable no matter how you played your Hawke. You get swept up in these huge events, and Varric is telling your tale years later. I felt a greater connection to Hawke than my warden.

[Norskatt]

I agree. The ending for DA II had me stunned.

[Rm80]

the Da2 story, Da2 companions and the narrative is great, I agree one of the best in bioware history
not to shabby considering I find Bioware the best storytellers out there

[Aeowyn]

AntiChri5 wrote...

DA2 was an incredibly emotional experience for me. Definitely moreso then Origins or ME2.

When you strip out all of the mechanics, that is what matters.

I agree with this. IMO one of the best stories for a BioWare game. 

f

[solstickan]

txgoldrush wrote...
Snip

Aaand you just put my feelings into words.

DA2 is not a happy story, nor does it give you a sense of epicness, but still it deeply moved me. I don't think anything in a game has hurt me so much as seeing Fenris's defeated composure as I handed him over to Danarius (needless to say, I reloaded a save and tried to forget all about it). And the poisones party banter in Act 3 literally stunned me at times, to be honest. The escalation into madness and the final, uncertain ending left me in awe. 

Sure, DA2 had its flaws, but I'll be damned if it didn't leave an emotional impact on me. Huzzah, BioWare!

[frylock23]

I also like how the story played out. I wish that the really good writing of Act II had continued on Act III, though. For example, who didn't realize what Anders was going to do when he started asking your help to find bomb components and then started giving up his dearest personal artifacts to his closest friends. The only surprise there is that Anders didn't actually blow himself up as well. I was thinking a suicide bombing of either the Chantry or the Templars, and I wasn't disappointed in a bad way.

And, as mentioned, there is the heavy-handed effort to make either choice of Templar or Mage seems to plausible. To that end, they wrote most every mage in the game as a blood mage, used blood magic to murder your mother in a horrific way, and in short made just about everything having to do with magic make you feel dirty if you side with it. Just about the only mage in the game that doesn't do something bad is an ineffective, drunken sot. I think it was a little too heavy handed.

And, as I've said before, they showed wonderful development in Aveline's story to make her seem to be growing in a realistic way, but it's a ball they dropped with most of the other companions. When do we see them grow over a seven year period? For the most part we don't. Isabela spends a long time just hanging out in a bar with nothing better to do. Fenris could have cleaned up at least parts of his mansion and learned to read. And, how long does it take Merril to work on a single mirror?

I don't mind that we felt out of control. The story was intended to be you surviving a situation that is clearly out of control. And, you're right, in a larger context, history won't remember the personal parts of your story, but it will shape the character you wind up being later on in the series. I think that's what matters.

[Wintermist]

Not to say anything bad about Dragon Age 2 but I hope Dragon Age 3 is more like Dragon Age 1.