206 réponses à ce sujet

[neppakyo]

And look at all the people who pre-ordered/bought 1st day DA2 BECAUSE of DA:O? Thats cheap marketing for a game.

Now look how many people are saying if/when DA3 is released, they will wait and see before thinking of buying it.

*shrugs* My 2 cents.

[Pyrate_d]

I'm not sure. An overarching plot line doesn't have to be about pure evil. If they had introduced and characterized Meredith and Orsino before the last third of the game, it would have worked a lot better. People in this thread like that moron with the long name are not making a compelling argument because they're assuming that every overarching plot has to be about good vs. evil.

I would have liked to hear about how Meredith and Orsino got where they were in the city. I'm sure Bioware could have thought of some interesting background to make these characters more interesting.

Modifié par Pyrate_d, 29 mars 2011 - 02:39 .

[fn_outlaw]

Yeah, I'm not saying that there wasn't an Opportunity in DA2 (there were COUNTLESS opportunities), but they failed to capitalize on them all the while granting the illusion of choice. I think many of the Origins fans could have been satisfied if given a few minor caveats.

[Sidney]

Pyrate_d wrote...

I'm not sure. An overarching plot line doesn't have to be about pure evil. If they had introduced and characterized Meredith and Orsino before the last third of the game, it would have worked a lot better. People in this thread like that moron with the long name are not making a compelling argument because they're assuming that every overarching plot has to be about good vs. evil.

Yeah but at the same time you don't have to have a big blinkered sign saying "Plot Goes Here" to have a story. I mean they talked a lot about the Usual Suspects and what was the overarching plot there? The narrative structure (I hesitate to call it a plot) is "Tell me about Dean Keaton". That ride, that story is awfully compelling. Roshomon, to steal a Kurosawa refernce- doesn't have a "plot" in any really overarching way. It is nothing but the interplay between 3 different stories and that movie is light years better than, well, most anything.

DA2 is more of a biography than a novel and if you've read biographies they, well the good ones, aren't just brutal recounting of day to day mundanities but cover the highlights and defining moments of a life. Those books also don't have a plot but the narrative arc is the life being profiled. Same thing here.

There's a side of me that almost thinks they could have been more clever by releasing each "Act" as it's own DLC and really explore the concept of episodic gaming because in a lot of ways DA2 does play out like episodes and broken up that way people might have been more forgiving of the non-traditional structure.

[Pyrate_d]

Sidney wrote...
Yeah but at the same time you don't have to have a big blinkered sign saying "Plot Goes Here" to have a story. I mean they talked a lot about the Usual Suspects and what was the overarching plot there? The narrative structure (I hesitate to call it a plot) is "Tell me about Dean Keaton". That ride, that story is awfully compelling. Roshomon, to steal a Kurosawa refernce- doesn't have a "plot" in any really overarching way. It is nothing but the interplay between 3 different stories and that movie is light years better than, well, most anything.

I'd argue that both films have an overarching plot, or at least an overarching problem or message. In The Usual Suspects it's "who is Kaiser Soze?" In Rashomon it's more of a thesis, but is still constantly present. DA2 definitely tries something like this by making the mage vs. templar conflict visible throughout the game, but I didn't really care about it until the last third of the game, and that's a problem.

DA2 is more of a biography than a novel and if you've read biographies they, well the good ones, aren't just brutal recounting of day to day mundanities but cover the highlights and defining moments of a life. Those books also don't have a plot but the narrative arc is the life being profiled. Same thing here.

I just can't accept a biography if the characters are going to be so poorly characterized. Even if you can accept Hawke, you've got to admit that you don't know NEARLY enough about his family. How did they live in Lothering? What did they lose? I find it awfully hard to identify with their loss if I don't even see what they lost.

Modifié par Pyrate_d, 29 mars 2011 - 03:03 .

[BlackIce541]

Eh. DA:O's story was a bit too cliche.

Lets gather forces to combat a great evil...and all that.

Heard it many times before... putting it into a video game doesn't make it much more tolerable.

Well, for me anyways.

Don't get me wrong, saving the world is all good and fine. But again there are way to many 'saving the world' games.

DA2 is a refreshing change simply because you pretty much do the exact opposite.

Not gonna go much farther than that because it's a non-spoiler section.

[Pyrate_d]

Scatcat101 wrote...

Eh. DA:O's story was a bit too cliche.

Lets gather forces to combat a great evil...and all that.

Heard it many times before... putting it into a video game doesn't make it much more tolerable.

Well, for me anyways.

Don't get me wrong, saving the world is all good and fine. But again there are way to many 'saving the world' games.

DA2 is a refreshing change simply because you pretty much do the exact opposite.

Not gonna go much farther than that because it's a non-spoiler section.

The compelling part of DAO's plot was about Loghain. The blight is definitely a cliche, and it's just there to give motivations to more interesting characters.

[ZombiePowered]

erynnar wrote...

Not everyone is a hater for not liking DA2, I don't think people are haters for not liking or being lukewarm about DAO either. Grow up.

And you felt DAO was on a rail? Well I feel like DA2 is in a tunnel. Yeah I knew the ending of DAO and the journey to get there was rich, varied and fun with errands thrown in (but at least they had stories instead of returning some dwarf's torn knickers for a gold and a one sentence comment). DA2 Act1 be a slave for a year, run around collecting money for a larger quest. Act 2 bad juju with one of the factions but you kill him...nothing really hinted at again. Run errands, big show at end of Act 2 with the title we all know Hawke gets so that's not a spoiler. No real hints to the supposed "real" story of this game, really, until Act 3. DAO was at least woven together. DA2 and its stories feel disjointed and not really tied together except in the thinnest of ways. I don't need the kill the big baddie of DAO. But I just felt like some unifying thing was left out of DA2.

DAO had many unifying things Blight, kill big baddie, gather armies, oust Loghain, build allies for the PC. Hell even my Warden was a unifying element to the story. If my Hawke is supposed to be that unifying theme, then it really fell flat. Because Hawke just being the Champion doesn't cut it.

The common thread is Hawke. The game is about Hawke. Bioware said the game would follows Hawke's rise to power. People keep looking for an external thread to all the plots of the game, but while many of the quests are tied together with the Qunari or Mage issues, the ultimate connections between all these events is that Hawke was at the center of it all. That is why Pentaghast is looking for you: you were involved in all of these events. This is all blatantly stated in the story. How people manage to miss it is beyond me.

Those small quests where you hand someone an item and get a sentence in response are precisely what Origins had. They were called the Chanters board, Mage's Collective, and Blackstone Irregulars. You would kill someone/something or collect some items and return for some cash and an indescript line thanking you. Same thing in DA2.

Also, once again I see someone state that the first act was just running around and collecting money, which means you somehow missed or are choosing to ignore the fact that all the main plot quests introduce you to important conflicts that flare up later in the story, and the side quests tend to lead to future quests as well, depending on your choices in those quests. And as for act 3 being the "main" story, that is a blatantly false oversimplification. As I stated earlier, Hawke is the story. So every part of the game is the part of the main story.

[Sidney]

Pyrate_d wrote...

I'd argue that both films have an overarching plot, or at least an overarching problem or message. In The Usual Suspects it's "who is Kaiser Soze?" In Rashomon it's more of a thesis, but is still constantly present. DA2 definitely tries something like this by making the mage vs. templar conflict visible throughout the game, but I didn't really care about it until the last third of the game, and that's a problem.

Well "Who is Kaiser Soze" doesn't appear until what, about 1/3 of the film is gone - maybe more since you have all the set up, the taxi service and Redfoot stuff before that? At first the question is why are there all these dead bodies in the harbor and what happened to Dean Keaton. Id' say it shifts gears.

Roshomon there is a theme clearly but as far as a overarching narrative it doesn't have one becuase the theme is about how there is no clear narrative.

Don't get me wrong, DA2 doesn't do a perfect job with the approach they took but they do layout most of the major conflicts early on: mages vs templars is right after you get off the boat and the Qunari is Act I as well and as sort of a nobody it doesn't make a ton of sense for you to be at the epi-center of these conflicts early on.

[erynnar]

Actually, I think this fourmite hit it on the head...warning there are spoilers!

http://social.biowar...09086/1#6810092

[Pyrate_d]

I want to emphasize that DA2 could have worked if they had done their plot correctly. They don't need to reuse the same plot structure every single game. I think that the idea of the mage vs. templar conflict always being in the background and slowly building up is a good one--and I definitely think that's what Bioware was going for. The problem is that they just did a bad job. They failed to make it work.

The linked post above me is a really good criticism of the specifics.

[Kusy]

Pyrate_d wrote...
I would have liked to hear about how Meredith and Orsino got where they were in the city. I'm sure Bioware could have thought of some interesting background to make these characters more interesting.

Well it's a) no they couldn't or yes they could but somehow failed to see that it would make the final product better. I don't know which one would be worse.

Modifié par Mr.Kusy, 29 mars 2011 - 03:55 .

[Abispa]

I'm not saying that Bioware was entirely successful, but I'm happy to see them try to take a different approach to the Champion's story. Instead of an epic quest turning a nobody into a legend (something that has been done since, well, forever), they decided to make a game where the Champion builds up his/her reputation so that s/he is sought out to solve the big problems.

I don't mind doing the side quests in DA:O, but you have to admit that it seems silly for a tiny group of heroes to take time out of their world-saving mission to get a guy a sword to help his self-esteem, or taking time out to help a dwarf go to magic school. It's a staple of traditional RPGs that I don't even think about while I'm playing them, but I appreciate Bioware trying something different.

I hope they keep experimenting till they get it right, and not let the bed-wetting of RPG "purists" keep them trapped in the same formula.

[Sidney]

Abispa wrote...

I don't mind doing the side quests in DA:O, but you have to admit that it seems silly for a tiny group of heroes to take time out of their world-saving mission to get a guy a sword to help his self-esteem, or taking time out to help a dwarf go to magic school. It's a staple of traditional RPGs that I don't even think about while I'm playing them, but I appreciate Bioware trying something different.

Well and DA2 and ME2 both do a much better job of making those side quests feel less 100% stupid than they did in DAO and ME1 for just the reasons you said. You are not in a race vs time vs the world killing baddie. In DA2 there is literally no rush and in ME2 with the "breaks" while you wait for the next attack/intel you might have time to solve someone's problems. I think that change is great because the "looking for a lost caravan" while Ferelden burns make 0 sense - oh wait I should use the words of Fundies - it isn't very immersive!

[Hatchetman77]

I hope they stick with this and just improve it.  The biggest mistake was that they decided to try something new yet gave an incredably small timeline to have the game finished.  New ideas need time to develope.  If you want it done fast and cheap, stick with what you know and what's worked in the past.  If you want to try something new, don't set yourself up for failure by not giving the writers and devs time to make it work.

Modifié par Hatchetman77, 29 mars 2011 - 04:53 .

[AkiKishi]

Hatchetman77 wrote...

I hope they stick with this and just improve it.  The biggest mistake was that they decided to try something new yet gave an incredably small timeline to have the game finished.  New ideas need time to develope.  If you want it done fast and cheap, stick with what you know and what's worked in the past.  If you want to try something new, don't set yourself up for failure by not giving the writers and devs time to make it work.

It's hardly a new idea, it might be something different from Bioware. But the whole nobody becomes somebody plot is almost as cliche as the stopping the big bad destroyer of the world plot.

Nothing really wrong with the concept. It's the implementation that failed. Takes far too many liberties with what is supposed to be your character (IE You) to tell the story.

The icing on the cake is all this is after what they said about Final Fantasy games (JRPGs) being linear and having only one outcome regardless of your choice

[fn_outlaw]

BobSmith101 wrote...

It's hardly a new idea, it might be something different from Bioware. But the whole nobody becomes somebody plot is almost as cliche as the stopping the big bad destroyer of the world plot.

Nothing really wrong with the concept. It's the implementation that failed. Takes far too many liberties with what is supposed to be your character (IE You) to tell the story.

The icing on the cake is all this is after what they said about Final Fantasy games (JRPGs) being linear and having only one outcome regardless of your choice

This.  100%.

[LanatirDragon]

Funny how people pretend that this whole 'nobody becomes somebody' is 'new' and 'refreshing'. I could name quite a few games off the top of my hat where this is the main focus, and all of them did it a LOT better then DA2. I know, most of you kids are too old to remember, but play Ultima IV for a while. And this game is from the 80's. Talk about fresh and new idea, huh.

[Artoz96]

Fanboys just dont understand the difference. Thet think it is all about good and evil. But OP says about plot of the story that keeps all parts of the game together. Get money, ok I have it. Fight qunary. What for? You need to protect the City! AAhhh and why do I need it? Just do it! Ok ok done. Now chose your side. What side? Mages or templars. Sorry who? Mages or templars. Look man, I just wanna leave, I have money, friends, I dont need this boring city! DO IT! OH FU,, ok ok. I chose mages. Kill them all. WHAAT? I said kill them all...

[neppakyo]

Artoz96 wrote...

Fanboys just dont understand the difference. Thet think it is all about good and evil. But OP says about plot of the story that keeps all parts of the game together. Get money, ok I have it. Fight qunary. What for? You need to protect the City! AAhhh and why do I need it? Just do it! Ok ok done. Now chose your side. What side? Mages or templars. Sorry who? Mages or templars. Look man, I just wanna leave, I have money, friends, I dont need this boring city! DO IT! OH FU,, ok ok. I chose mages. Kill them all. WHAAT? I said kill them all...

Thats DA2 in a nutshell.

[fchopin]

The story was good but it was very badly implemented.

The game needs a patch to join the different chapters together to make more sense.

[Zmajc]

DA2 's problem compared to DA:O is that the story just isn't long enough nor is it interesting to the audience who wants majestic fantasy stories.

A story about a casual guy wanting to make a living who gets mixed up in a political conflict he can't really control nor change the outcome of? Story that happens in one not really interesting city you never really leave?

It's too much like real life. People want grand stories on a massive scale, they want to journey to strange ancient, scary fantasy places. People want adventure not a pure political conflict with 1 short repeating "dungeon" thrown in.

Even the Deep roads "expedition" is just a tiny cave filled with 3 bosses, that's it.


In these troubled times we live in most just want to escape the everyday frustration. We don't want to play a political TV drama that simulates real life political conflicts. There's just nothing epic or interesting about it. 

Even ME has a  very interesting story that takes you to strage majestic and epic places.

Modifié par Zmajc, 29 mars 2011 - 10:56 .

[Aargh12]

Rockpopple wrote...

Cuz it's a game about choices, not against taking out some all-out evil force.

And there's only one MAJOR choice during the entire game.

[Lumikki]

Artoz96 wrote...

Fanboys just dont understand the difference. Thet think it is all about good and evil. But OP says about plot of the story that keeps all parts of the game together. Get money, ok I have it. Fight qunary. What for? You need to protect the City! AAhhh and why do I need it? Just do it! Ok ok done. Now chose your side. What side? Mages or templars. Sorry who? Mages or templars. Look man, I just wanna leave, I have money, friends, I dont need this boring city! DO IT! OH FU,, ok ok. I chose mages. Kill them all. WHAAT? I said kill them all...

Yeah, this is also how I see it.

After you have played hole game, it's easy to see Hawke's story as what is was about. How ever, when new player is playing, they gonna ask questions like why I'm actually doing this what I'm doing?

Point is that without looking quest journal to see you main plot quests, it would be very hard to even know what's the purpose in the three story parts. The purpose of every story parts is introdused at the beging of every act, but player may feel like why would I do that. There is no real good motive to drive player to do what's part of story is about. They feels more like doing random quest without any goal.

Modifié par Lumikki, 29 mars 2011 - 11:11 .

[Rykoth]

Why is it that the people who don't like the game feel the need to insult those that do?

Grow up.