Dragoonlordz wrote...
For my £40 or $60 I want to feel epic and grand and a hero of the story by my own actions which all previous Bioware titles have managed to do. This one failed to do so for me.
Doesn't this lead to a streamlining of the games, tho?
You insist here and in other places how you felt that choice and consequence mattered more in DA:O, and frankly, it's not true in strict terms.
DA:O had "fire and forget" choices. You made some cosmic, worldshaping choice and then never really got to see the consequences (until the ending). DA2 has a very complex and innovative choice and consequence system that actually changes dialogue and cutscenes depending on how you play the game. Choice and conseguence is actually part of the gameplay.
What you call "choice and conseguence" is actually "power", as you outline here. You want the gratification of being told you're powerful enough to decide the
outcome of the events of the game, which is something that only really works when the author dumbs down the narrative enough to make sure the skeleton of the story can support all those "cosmic" choices.
There's nothing wrong in preferring this, in all honesty; if to you feeling empowered is important, that's absolutely fine. But you need to realize that what DA:O gave you was a huge CHOICE that lead to very tiny consequences. Sure, you could name the king of the dwarves... but what really changed in the game? Not even the troops you'd summon in the ending. You could kill the elves or the mages and get the templar or the werewolves and the grand impact of that was... a summoning spell.
You were shaping an amorphous world, that was so bland and hollow that it could support any of such cosmic choice at a time. What happened in Orzammar stayed in Orzammar, and nobody even knew that the Brecilian elves lived or died. All the stories and the choices you made were stuck in little boxes that weren't opened until the credits rolled. I understand the glorious feeling of empowerment that a game that keeps telling you you're a god among men gives, but there's literally nothing to do with that power.
In order to create a satisfying experience of that kind, you'd need to create 3-4 different stories, depending on how your choices interact with each other. Good luck with that; you'd get even more repetition than we're getting now. DA2 tried that, and succeeded in terms of roleplaying and character building, but forced you to relinquish some power in the breath of choices you had.
My personal perspective on this is that I hope for a middle ground solution. I much enjoyed DA2's story (massively more than DA:O's), but at the end of the game, you sort of feel cheated out of the power you've earned, and unless we get to see more of Hawke's story in the future, than it doesn't really make sense.
On the other hand, I tend to find the average WRPG story (DA:O being a particular offender) somewhat childish. The idea that you're given power of life or death over people, cities, kingdoms and civilizations because you're (insert title here) is downright offensive to me. These games even remove failure as an option; you can't really fail with dwarves or elves or mages, no matter how bad you screw up, you get your summoning spell. That's the most annoying element, and I much, much prefer a narrative that puts me in front of situations that I cannot fully conquer and challenges me with getting the most out of them, than DA:O's "you're the Warden and you're WINNING no matter what you do". That's the real loss of choice, because when every answer is equally good, none is the right one.
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The VTMBL LARPers here laugh at that game. Yes, it's that bad.
