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[Dean_the_Young]

For all the reviews that have been filling up the forums of late, most of them seem to be largely of the 'they did this bad' sort, as opposed 'they got this right.'

I realize the product review team's probably got their own list of complaints/praises going, but how about we just share what we felt they got right? Maybe not  the glamorous stuff, but things that you'd like to see repeated, as opposed to seeing the baby thrown out with the bath water.


TO MAKE CLEAR: This is not a thread about how you felt the game was terrible, there were no meaningful choices, you hated it, or whatever. This is a thread to focus on what went right, and what we would like to see again.


And do try and say why you felt something was good, or worked, and should be kept.


To give a few points of my own:


NPC interaction.

One area I've always prefered Dragon Age over Mass Effect in was the much greater inter-personal development between NPCs. Whether it was Alistair and Morrigan bickering, or Sten and Shale's peculiar relationship, Dragon Age wasn't just about having a cast of interesting characters: it was also about seeing those interesting characters talk and quibble and whatever else amongst themselves.

Dragon Age 2 excelled in the Companion dialogue, and would have been much the worse for the lack of it. Not only were there great amounts of it (helped by having separate conversations for each Act, as opposed to sharing most the same dialogue across the entire game), but companions intervened in each other's stories in ways that were completely missing before, both in Origins or Mass Effect. Whether Isabella and Aveline having a cat fight over The Long Walk, or Fenris/Anders tearing into Merrill in her own tragedy in the making, it emphasized that Hawke wasn't the only person in the world.

Other characters existed not only in relation to Hawke, but in relation to eachother. A definite sustain.


The Appearance of Relevance across time

While one of the more common complaints about the game has been the lack of big, world-shaping choices (pretty much only one faction-decision in the game), something that was always going to be enforced by the time-span of the narrative, what I did like was how smaller quests gave the appearance of mattering in the context of an unchanging plot line.

While you were always faced with such decisions as, say, the sibling always being separated from Hawke at the end of Act 1, the variation within such decisions was interesting at helping to mark the tone of what would occur later. When Bethany was taken away to the Circle, that ended up being the deciding factor in how my game progressed in terms of who I was inclined towards or not, and who I ultimately sided with. That Bethany could ultimately side with me regardless didn't matter: in the context of not viewing the other choices, it made for a natural, logical progression over time that helped the immerssion. So did hearing that the Magistrate I had helped with his mad, murdering son, how he had stepped in on my behalf when Bethany was found: though, as a player, I can 'know' that the game would hardly have ended had I not done him a favor, it gave a relevance to an otherwise unimportant side quest to the progression of my story.

To make it shorter, and clearer: I'm not saying that more 'big choices' wouldn't have been nice, but I did appreciate seeing the results of the little choices be woven into my own story. Not as some cameo down the line, but an actual relevant (if unnecessary) addition to how Hawke's tale unfolded. Better than emails, at least.




No Therapists Need Apply

If there's a single companion trait that seems to pop its head up time and time again, it's so often that your companions are 'broken' and need you to fix them in exchange for their loyalty. Mass Effect 2 was particularly eggregious with this, in how 'only Shepard could make them happy', but Origins dabbled in it as well: teaching Morrigan the meaning of friendship, hardening Alistair/Leliana, whatever else. Character progression often meant character fixing, and it was the player's job to help the companion get over whatever the problem was, and be a nicer/more pleasant/loyal person.

Dragon Age 2 seems to have largely kicked this habbit, in the teeth, hard, by changing Hawke from a Therapist-in-chief who will change their views to simply an opinion giver on already established positions and views. The one person who actually seeks you out for such a personality fix, Anders and his side quest to help rid him of Justice, actively subverts this trope: he uses you to be just like what he is.

Companion quests changed from 'change the person' to 'help the person without brainwashing them', and I appreciate that difference. You might have helped Merrill through a huge part of her life, but her character development was her own, as a consequence of her own views: there was no single choice to change everything. Aveline's companion quest may well be one of the best companion quests to date: entirely unconventional, flatly refusing Hawke as a love interest, and marked with both great humor and character progression without a single change of personality. Other characters fall in the veign as well.

Hawke helped his companions, but didn't change them from who they were. Even the end-game decision loyalties weren't about changing people to match your opinions, but rather playing their character to match yours. A Fenris who was your rival didn't change to love the mages, even if he might indeed fight for them.

A very nice change in concept, even for such a varying cast of characters.


Rivalry

Continuing on about the characters (A strong point of the game? Of course.), the rivalry system sets up a good model for non-static RPG characters. Unlike in Mass Effect, where all the cast loves and respects you no matter how much of an ass you were to them, so long as you hold the loyalty flag, it's possible to have relationships of varying strengths based on how close your ideals match up. And unlike Origins, there isn't simply one end of the spectrum being good and the other one being negative (or even harmful) for the game.

The Rivalry bar sets a good precedence for being able to disagree with a character without them necessarily working against you. While the 'we agree so much, I'll never betray you' idea has been around for awhile, seeing it from the other direction 'we are such epic rivals, I'll never betray you' opens up a lot more role playing opportunities without the players feeling that they're being 'punished' for not agreeing with companion enough. True, the system does suffer a bit of the Paragon/Renegade problem in Mass Effect: you might not be choosing your decisions in a true free-role playing sense of the moment, but rather gaming your choices for the points you need later. But this is offset by the relative unimportance of the points in general: pleasant but modest bonuses for maxing out either end of the spectrum won't be missed if you lack them (and good job not letting people drop away from a max-line: that really would force you to stay in the same mode), and the actual use for the points isn't necessary to 'win' the game, and only matters, at most, once per character. It isn't over used, and so doesn't matter so much for most of the game.

Rivalry is a pleasant alternative to simply the only-punishments of Origins' disapproval system: when companions would leave you, turn on you, have 'bad' endings, whichever. Rivalry allows another aspect of a positive/negative relationship, which allows everyone to benefit from anyone pretty much, even if they don't agree.

(And Rival Romances, it should be noted, offer that unconventional, alternative look at a romance. If only there were true Renegade Romances in Mass Effect!)