180 réponses à ce sujet

[Cutlass Jack]

Dragoonlordz wrote...

DAO: You (the player) if human noble decided the fate of the person who killed your family at a later stage in game.
DA2: You (the player) has no choice what happens to the person who killed your family member.

Repeat this for around 1000 times at various stages of the game and there's the difference. You may prefer DA2, but I prefer DAO this reason and a truly vast amount more reasons. Such is life but there is a difference.

You must have played an entirely different version of DAO than I did. There was no choice not to kill Arl Howe. He met with a bloody end no matter what origin you played. (As did the one in DA2) Whether or not he killed your family had no bearing on that.

I will admit to great roleplaying satisfaction as to how Howe died though. I fed him to my dog and didn't lift a blade. But that wasn't half as ugly as what I did to the other guy.

Modifié par Cutlass Jack, 30 mars 2011 - 04:07 .

[cindercatz]

Cutlass Jack wrote...

The difference is there is no difference. You were not forced to any personality or position in DA2. You forced them on yourself. Your background is just a starting point. Same as Origins.

Does magic do nothing? Seems to me no matter how much you like the mage, all it takes is one small slip to become a monster. Just one. There were certainly enough examples of this throughout the story to make Hawke sympathetic to controlling the problem. Not to 'Tranquil solution' levels, of course. But he could see the need for the Templars without any break of character whatsoever.

Yes there were six different origins, but lets be honest here. Past Ostragar, the differences between them were minimal. Meanwhile Hawke has 3 different personality types that further vary by gender, class, game choices and friendship/rivalry status on an individual basis with every companion.

Thats quite a bit of room for variation and growth. But really both games were guilty of the same things you accuse this one of. You can either take your background as gospel and never vary from it or pick your own path. But if you can't see that, there's really no point in arguing it.

I do sympathize on the tap tap tap part though. I could never play these games on console.

I should say DA2 provides me with a choice, then, to roleplay or not. I can certainly build around that with things like the romances and the merc/smuggler choice, who I take to the Deep Roads, etc., but half the game is basically: Shall my character be consistent? Yes or no?

Seeing a need for the existence of the templars, sure, supporting their practices or the Qunari's, no, siding fully against mages in any conflict, no.

My characters were hugely different, in outlook, deed, and in demeanor. Granted that was up to the player more than any built in "personality" system. But that's why I propose the origins and wheel be integrated. I'm a big fan of both, and it's more than doable.

In Origins, you could treat your background as gospel *and* pick your own path, because the origins helped you to define whatever character you wanted to be. This system led to a far stronger connection to the PC on my part, never breaking immersion. I can comprehend any and everything, so that shouldn't even enter into discussion. I'm also not one to savage the game's writing.

Yeah, man, I got to the point where I just sat the game aside and stop by here every so often, every few days or so, just to see if a patch is ready yet. It's not so fun as is.

[SIx_Foot_Imp]

Visanideth wrote...

Because "Hawke" is the role, you're the actor. That is what roleplay in videogames can be.

Hawke is a character - he has a family, origin, and a set of events ahead of him.
We're like actors playing him.....

I think you hit the nail on the head. Hawke isnt our character, hes the role we get to play. The Big difference is that we arent proffessional actors being paid to act, and the only audience is us. Sure some people think that roleplaying is all about the challenge of acting out a character ( a few of my D&D friends love that ), however most people enjoy being writers instead of actors. They want to creat a character that they would actually like to play as, someone who hopefully reflects them or who they want to be.  while you can flesh out hawke's personality, as a character your'e railroaded. The different origins might not even make that big of a change in the plot but they let us have a sense of choice about more than just how are charcter talks.

Also conserning  this:

Cutlass Jack wrote...

I suppose what I loved about
DA2 is it had the one Origin I always felt was missing from Origins.
The Human commoner. That I really dove into the personality system and
ended up with a Hawke that was distincively mine sealed the deal. I
connected with him in a way I never did with my Warden and Shepard
(which is not to say I didn't like both)

I understand the argument but it is actually why so many people were disappointed in DA2,  in the magical world of thedas the human peasant is probably the least interesting person. We all play as human peasant looking to get rich in realiity. Why would we need to go to a magical world to do that again?  Even with the apostate father Hawke just seems too much a generic peasant, and most people want to play as somthing  different than thier real life. (Nobilty, other races, a mage).

Modifié par SIx_Foot_Imp, 30 mars 2011 - 04:34 .

[Schurge]

EDIT: Disregard, post did not really contribute to the conversation.

Modifié par Schurge, 30 mars 2011 - 04:35 .

[Visanideth]

Dragoonlordz wrote...



DAO: You (the player) if human noble decided the fate of the person who killed your family at a later stage in game.
DA2: You (the player) has no choice what happens to the person who killed your family member.

Repeat this for around 1000 times at various stages of the game and there's the difference. You may prefer DA2, but I prefer DAO this reason and a truly vast amount more reasons. Such is life but there is a difference.

I think you're suffering from a massive rose-tinted-glasses syndrome here. I suggest you go replay DA:O.

Besides, the choices in DA:O were fire and forget. They could come up and tell you "and with that spell, the planet Astribal was disintegrated by accident" and that would have had the same weight as your "choices".

Once you're truly objective about it, you'll see that the only real choice DA:O gave you was being able to put your imprint on the exclusion of some piece of the game that was gonna disappear from the scene anyways. Few notable exceptions, all past the point of no return. Wonder why?

[Visanideth]

SIx_Foot_Imp wrote...

I think you hit the nail on the head. Hawke isnt our character, hes the role we get to play. The Big difference is that we arent proffessional actors being paid to act, and the only audience is us. Sure some people think that roleplaying is all about the challenge of acting out a character ( a few of my D&D friends love that ), however most people enjoy being writers instead of actors. They want to creat a character that they would actually like to play as, someone who hopefully reflects them or who they want to be.  while you can flesh out hawke's personality, as a character your'e railroaded. The different origins might not even make that big of a change in the plot but they let us have a sense of choice about more than just how are charcter talks.

It's a respectable approach, and I think it's the most common approach among WRPG players actually.

However, the bolded part bothers me. Created character don't allow you to write ANYTHING. You don't write a character, your character is removed from the game and you're told "We're gonna leave a hole where your character should be, now you can play pretend and fill it in your mind".

And it sort of worked, for dozens and dozens of games. It's a compromise. It's interesting you pointed out at D&D players. I'm one, and many of those I know are unsatisfied of most WRPGs because by removing the main character, you remove the most important thing from the game: the player. And once you tried playing pretend in a game that is fully shaped around what you're creating instead of being absolutely deaf to it, it's hard to settle down for the lesser version.

Once you've created your characters and played them in a PnP RPG, there's nothing more infuriating than playing a game and meeting a king, and noticing that whether you praise him, you play dumb or insult him his reaction is, ultimately, the same.


Besides, we're not given no power over Hawke. We can decide his gender, his class, his looks, his personality. We can't decide his motives or his background, and we're stuck with his voice.
But was Origins any better? You got 6 origin stories that ceased to matter 1 hour into the game and then...  you being who you were didn't matter, all that was important was WHAT  you were (the Warden) and you were railroaded on a quest where your motives or background didn't matter. Yes, we can't decide that Hawke doesn't care about his family or that he doesn't want to stay in Kirkwall, but at least he's a person, and we see him interact with the world around him, and we control how he interacts.
The Warden was a robot. There was nothing in his life except killing the Archdemon. We were shown no emotion, and nobody in the game actually cared about us. And we were still unable to choose whether to help the dwarves/elves/mages or not, so... what exactly was the gain?

[Dark83]

Mavkiel wrote...

Introducing characters with, "Remember me, we worked on job x together". Is also a big immersion killer. No, I dont remember them, because I never met the bloody person before. They pulled that at least three times.

This is essentially "In Medias Res", and will never go away if the protagonist is supposed to have a history, unless the game is poorly written.

Mass Effect 1 opened like that as well. It didn't start with "Hi Commander, I'm Captain Anderson, the guy you've been the XO for the last few weeks."

Edit: Or perhaps more accurately, it didn't open with "Hi, I'm Joker, the pilot of the ship you've been commander of for the last few weeks."

Modifié par Dark83, 30 mars 2011 - 05:48 .

[Persephone]

Dragoonlordz wrote...

Cutlass Jack wrote...

cindercatz wrote...

Sure there's evidence to both sides, but Hawke already knows what side he's on. Hawke shouldn't be surprised by anything, because Hawke's spent his/her entire life in an apostate family. Hawke should have the emotional weight of his family behind his convictions. Your Hawke could waver, but my Hawke can't flip without breaking the character. And what about the first half of the game?

The dwarven origins, on the other hand, provide you multiple paths each with different incentives to behave in different ways. I decided on my Dwarven noble that I would be sympathetic and a reformist, but also adhere to the dwarven sense of honor, so in the course of one dinner my Dwarven noble agreed to help the topsiders regain their names and then ended up exiled forever because the man he agreed to support had attempted to injure his family station and was publicly humiliated, and he later had to negotiate his son's future because of that roleplay decision. I played according to a personality and value system that I both chose and was encouraged by the game's reaction to my decisions. You could end up supporting Harrowmont, but what if you had earlier engaged in the same kind of byzantine politics yourself, as the game gave you ample opportunity to? You might decide differently.

The origins helped you define your character through roleplay, rather than defining him or her for you. This game defines Hawke for you and then allows you to fill in the gaps. It can be much improved through integration of origins.

There is really no difference whatsoever between the Dwarven backgrounds and Hawkes. Hawke has much emotional weight for being against magic based on what it did to his family. There is direct evidience for not supporting the mages directly within the story. You might have missed it, but I can't get into it based on the forum this is on unfortunately.  Especially in a non spoiler tagged topic.

It might break your character to go in that direction, but that doesn't mean that one character is the only way to go.

DAO: You (the player) if human noble decided the fate of the person who killed your family at a later stage in game.
DA2: You (the player) has no choice what happens to the person who killed your family member.

Repeat this for around 1000 times at various stages of the game and there's the difference. You may prefer DA2, but I prefer DAO this reason and a truly vast amount more reasons. Such is life but there is a difference.

Can I borrow you DAO copy please?

Because in mine I had no choice but to kill Howe.

[addu2urmanapool]

Then at least the illusion of choice as more persuasive and finally crafted in DA:O. And that matters.

[Persephone]

addu2urmanapool wrote...

Then at least the illusion of choice as more persuasive and finally crafted in DA:O. And that matters.

I disagree there as well. Bugged Epilogue Slides looking like MS Dos boxes? Cheap cop out telling of supposed consequences that don't matter anyway. Only consequences IN game were which character models will be your allies against Archie and a Companion Swap decision. Oh, and the Cliché Dark Magic Cop Out was added on top.

Let me try to explain:

My Warden agreed with Sten that the whole urn thing was a waste of (important) time. Yet the game forced me to go get it anyway.

She also did not want to be part of Eamon's OR Anora's schemes.

She wanted to smack them all over the head and then go find Archie & kill it. (The "allies" make little difference in that battle, yet the whole story is set around aquiring them........)

I LOVE DAO still. But the choices were momentary choices (No difference in a real sense IN game) and the Approval system.......I am actually hating that system now.

[randName]

To the OP. I prefer to be able to make my own character/role; so I had troubles with the male voice for Hawk, since it had too much of a character I normally don't go for, and I had no interest in going for. So I was unable to play a male Hawk; while the female Hawk was more neutral and thus I could make my characters come to life in her.

& I don't mind that the game lack Elves and Dwarves; or other races, nor if a game would lack face customization etc. since I just need to get the roles I want to play to work, and if they do there is no real problem at hand.

& as the poster above points out DA:O was very forced, and I should prefer a less restrictive story than DA:O and thus DA2, but in DA2 it was so badly written that nothing could save it.

Modifié par randName, 30 mars 2011 - 06:29 .

[Dragoonlordz]

Visanideth wrote...

Dragoonlordz wrote...



DAO: You (the player) if human noble decided the fate of the person who killed your family at a later stage in game.
DA2: You (the player) has no choice what happens to the person who killed your family member.

Repeat this for around 1000 times at various stages of the game and there's the difference. You may prefer DA2, but I prefer DAO this reason and a truly vast amount more reasons. Such is life but there is a difference.

I think you're suffering from a massive rose-tinted-glasses syndrome here. I suggest you go replay DA:O.

Besides, the choices in DA:O were fire and forget. They could come up and tell you "and with that spell, the planet Astribal was disintegrated by accident" and that would have had the same weight as your "choices".

Once you're truly objective about it, you'll see that the only real choice DA:O gave you was being able to put your imprint on the exclusion of some piece of the game that was gonna disappear from the scene anyways. Few notable exceptions, all past the point of no return. Wonder why?

If you ever posted anything on these forums which wasn't passive/aggressive and argumentative from the offset in reply to everyone else's comments I would probably die of shock tbh. <_<

[Persephone]

randName wrote...

To the OP. I prefer to be able to make my own character/role; so I had troubles with the male voice for Hawk, since it had too much of a character I normally don't go for, and I had no interest in going for. So I was unable to play a male Hawk; while the female Hawk was more neutral and thus I could make my characters come to life in her.

& I don't mind that the game lack Elves and Dwarves; or other races, nor if a game would lack face customization etc. since I just need to get the roles I want to play to work, and if they do there is no real problem at hand.

& as the poster above points out DA:O was very forced, and I should prefer a less restrictive story than DA:O and thus DA2, but in DA2 it was so badly written that nothing could save it.

Understood re: What you said to OP. I have a preference for Lady Hawke as well.

Disagree about the writing in DA2 though. It's some of the best writing I have encountered in 20 years of video gaming. (In my opinion anyway) But writing is something where people often disagree.

[CloudOfShadows]

Ponendus wrote...

The thing that confuses me about DA2, is that it uses practically the same formula as Mass Effect, the cinematic, framed narrative, preset protagonist style. There is no doubt that Mass Effect was wildly popular with the RPG crowd and the sci-fi crowd (or at least I think it was).

So, assuming all this negativity on the forums is actually representative of how most people feel about the game, why didn't it work for DA2? Is it because those that are a fan of the 'fantasy' genre prefer to make their own character? Or because they prefer a more open world experience? Is it as simple as that? Does anyone else know why this formula may not have worked as well?

Nope. Honestly. Planescape: Torment is one of the best cRPGs for most people ever. And character customization? No way. I think you have more options to equip your characters and followers in DA2 than in PS:T. So it's most definitely not this - what you suppose makes DA 2 a less well received game.

I also happen to like DA2. Really like it.

[Dragoonlordz]

Persephone wrote...

Dragoonlordz wrote...

Cutlass Jack wrote...

cindercatz wrote...

Sure there's evidence to both sides, but Hawke already knows what side he's on. Hawke shouldn't be surprised by anything, because Hawke's spent his/her entire life in an apostate family. Hawke should have the emotional weight of his family behind his convictions. Your Hawke could waver, but my Hawke can't flip without breaking the character. And what about the first half of the game?

The dwarven origins, on the other hand, provide you multiple paths each with different incentives to behave in different ways. I decided on my Dwarven noble that I would be sympathetic and a reformist, but also adhere to the dwarven sense of honor, so in the course of one dinner my Dwarven noble agreed to help the topsiders regain their names and then ended up exiled forever because the man he agreed to support had attempted to injure his family station and was publicly humiliated, and he later had to negotiate his son's future because of that roleplay decision. I played according to a personality and value system that I both chose and was encouraged by the game's reaction to my decisions. You could end up supporting Harrowmont, but what if you had earlier engaged in the same kind of byzantine politics yourself, as the game gave you ample opportunity to? You might decide differently.

The origins helped you define your character through roleplay, rather than defining him or her for you. This game defines Hawke for you and then allows you to fill in the gaps. It can be much improved through integration of origins.

There is really no difference whatsoever between the Dwarven backgrounds and Hawkes. Hawke has much emotional weight for being against magic based on what it did to his family. There is direct evidience for not supporting the mages directly within the story. You might have missed it, but I can't get into it based on the forum this is on unfortunately.  Especially in a non spoiler tagged topic.

It might break your character to go in that direction, but that doesn't mean that one character is the only way to go.

DAO: You (the player) if human noble decided the fate of the person who killed your family at a later stage in game.
DA2: You (the player) has no choice what happens to the person who killed your family member.

Repeat this for around 1000 times at various stages of the game and there's the difference. You may prefer DA2, but I prefer DAO this reason and a truly vast amount more reasons. Such is life but there is a difference.

Can I borrow you DAO copy please?

Because in mine I had no choice but to kill Howe.

hell no! ...Mines special and ye may not haveth. lol 

[Persephone]

Dragoonlordz wrote...

Persephone wrote...

Dragoonlordz wrote...

Cutlass Jack wrote...

cindercatz wrote...

Sure there's evidence to both sides, but Hawke already knows what side he's on. Hawke shouldn't be surprised by anything, because Hawke's spent his/her entire life in an apostate family. Hawke should have the emotional weight of his family behind his convictions. Your Hawke could waver, but my Hawke can't flip without breaking the character. And what about the first half of the game?

The dwarven origins, on the other hand, provide you multiple paths each with different incentives to behave in different ways. I decided on my Dwarven noble that I would be sympathetic and a reformist, but also adhere to the dwarven sense of honor, so in the course of one dinner my Dwarven noble agreed to help the topsiders regain their names and then ended up exiled forever because the man he agreed to support had attempted to injure his family station and was publicly humiliated, and he later had to negotiate his son's future because of that roleplay decision. I played according to a personality and value system that I both chose and was encouraged by the game's reaction to my decisions. You could end up supporting Harrowmont, but what if you had earlier engaged in the same kind of byzantine politics yourself, as the game gave you ample opportunity to? You might decide differently.

The origins helped you define your character through roleplay, rather than defining him or her for you. This game defines Hawke for you and then allows you to fill in the gaps. It can be much improved through integration of origins.

There is really no difference whatsoever between the Dwarven backgrounds and Hawkes. Hawke has much emotional weight for being against magic based on what it did to his family. There is direct evidience for not supporting the mages directly within the story. You might have missed it, but I can't get into it based on the forum this is on unfortunately.  Especially in a non spoiler tagged topic.

It might break your character to go in that direction, but that doesn't mean that one character is the only way to go.

DAO: You (the player) if human noble decided the fate of the person who killed your family at a later stage in game.
DA2: You (the player) has no choice what happens to the person who killed your family member.

Repeat this for around 1000 times at various stages of the game and there's the difference. You may prefer DA2, but I prefer DAO this reason and a truly vast amount more reasons. Such is life but there is a difference.

Can I borrow you DAO copy please?

Because in mine I had no choice but to kill Howe.

hell no! ...Mines special and ye may not haveth. lol 

*Goes into stealth* Must have DragoonLordz's DAO copy! 

[lobi]

One word, Shepard.

[Dragoonlordz]

Persephone wrote...

*Goes into stealth* Must have DragoonLordz's DAO copy! 

[fchopin]

Doesn't matter if you can create your own character or have a set character in the game, the only thing that matters is what choices you have in the game.

[planed scaped]

The first thing I do when I play Mass effect 1/2 and the first thing I am going to do when I play ME3 is max out both my Paragon and Renegade scores from the start by using a save game editor or the console. I like to pick whatever dialog choices I want without getting screwed/penalized.

I do the same thing in DA2, I pick a different line of dialog all the time. My hawke almost always endous up being sarcastic or good though. good one is hard to tell since it's utterly generic.

[Dark83]

planed scaped wrote...

The first thing I do when I play Mass effect 1/2 and the first thing I am going to do when I play ME3 is max out both my Paragon and Renegade scores from the start by using a save game editor or the console. I like to pick whatever dialog choices I want without getting screwed/penalized.

I do the same thing in DA2, I pick a different line of dialog all the time. My hawke almost always endous up being sarcastic or good though. good one is hard to tell since it's utterly generic.

I do that in ME, too!

DA2 I noticed a huge difference in Diplomatic to Sarcastic, though. The tone of certain conversations are different.

[AkiKishi]

Dark83 wrote...
This is essentially "In Medias Res", and will never go away if the protagonist is supposed to have a history, unless the game is poorly written.

Mass Effect 1 opened like that as well. It didn't start with "Hi Commander, I'm Captain Anderson, the guy you've been the XO for the last few weeks."

Edit: Or perhaps more accurately, it didn't open with "Hi, I'm Joker, the pilot of the ship you've been commander of for the last few weeks."

Which is why TNO had amnesia. Still seems to be the only worthwhile way to play a pre-generated character.

The choices in Bioware games are now getting to the point where they would gain more just having a single narrative path.

People like their stories, that will get you the best story without having failed illusions of choice like in DA2.

[Oloria]

Visanideth wrote...

I think it's an issue of accessibility and gratification.

Let's make a quick comparison:

- DA:O allowed you to create your character
- Once your character was created, the dialogue options in the entire game were "fixed" (the way you played the game, aside from stacking points in Persuasion, didn't alter your options)
- you could go from ruthless to clowny in the same dialogue with no consequence or continuity
- the only factor influencing dialogue was your Origin story, ie character generation

DA2 has:

- dynamic conversations that evolve depending on how you play your character
- different events depending on the personality you developed for him
- different lines of conversation triggered by the same wheel entry depending on how you played your character till then (same dialogue, aggressive option, an aggressive character may get a different answer from a sarcastic one


Now, it's obvious that in terms of roleplay integration DA2 is miles ahead, not only DA:O but also the competition. The personality you give your character is completely woven in the narrative and gameplay.
Still people feel "chained" by playing Hawke and not "their" character.

The problem is that even if DA2 gives you more freedom and a much, much deeper system of roleplay interaction with characters and events, most players aren't willing to sink that deep. It's a too complex system for most, and it's actually a lot more immediate and acceptable to them to have a character the world doesn't react to, because it allows them to make him exactly what they want.

Basically, the Warden didn't exist in the game. Aside from his race, every NPC in the game reacted to all Wardens across thousands of different playthrough in the same way. By not existing, it could be anything the player wanted.

I think in the mind of many it's a case of "less is more". I violently disagree, and think that the "Hawke system" is the best thing Bioware did in years, but on this point I think I'm in the minority. It's a lot of effort and quality programming that is gonna be wasted on a huge part of the fanbase because they would rather not have a main character and play pretend with their fantasy than having an entire game working around the idea of roleplaying a character they didn't generate.

Have to quote this because I agree with just about everything. I had been wondering the same thing recently - whether Bioware shot themselves in the foot by making DA2 too complex at the expense of the length of a single playthrough.

People have frequently complained DA2 has less content than Origins. I agree that DA2 is shorter when you are comparing them start to finish, but when a significant percentage of quests can play out with different dialog, different results, even different cutscenes, all depending on Hawke's personality, his friendship/rivalry level with a companion, his conversation choices (most common being whether he's pro-mage or pro-templar), then I have to wonder whether DA2 actually has more content than DAO (areas excluded). The downside to this approach is that you'll only ever get to see a small portion of it on a single playthrough: game complexity comes at the expense of game length.

I've read many complaints about the companions feeling shallow in comparison to DA:O, and I think this is probably a symptom of the same trade-off. Reading these forums gives you the impression that players, in general, would have preferred the Origins approach to companion dialog, where conversation choices are simply unlocked by gaining approval, rather than being (in some cases entirely) different depending on their opinion of you. The advantage of Origins was that you could explore almost all of the conversation simply by giving your companions enough gifts, whereas in DA2 you'll only get 50-60% of it in a playthrough. That's a lot of resources spent by Bioware for content that some players might never even see.

So I wonder what Bioware will do for DA3. Personally, I will be a little sad if they end up returning to favouring quantity over complexity, but I would understand why. If you've put content into a game, you obviously want people to experience it and to feel like they've had their money's worth. If the overall feeling to DA2 is that it's "half a game", "Hawke is shallow", etc, then they can only assume that complexity (or dialog/cutscene variability between different playthroughs) is not as important as the quantity of cutscenes/conversations in a single playthrough. And maybe they'll have a point - surely the more conversations and cutscenes you experience with a character throughout the telling of a story, the easier it is for the players to get to know them.

[FedericoV]

Ponendus wrote...

The thing that confuses me about DA2, is that it uses practically the same formula as Mass Effect, the cinematic, framed narrative, preset protagonist style. There is no doubt that Mass Effect was wildly popular with the RPG crowd and the sci-fi crowd (or at least I think it was).

So, assuming all this negativity on the forums is actually representative of how most people feel about the game, why didn't it work for DA2? Is it because those that are a fan of the 'fantasy' genre prefer to make their own character? Or because they prefer a more open world experience? Is it as simple as that? Does anyone else know why this formula may not have worked as well?

No, it's a question of polish, time and resources invested in those game.

ME was allready a very good and solid game. ME2 worked a lot on existing feature to bring a better shooting experience and a more cinematic RP experience. Some people disagree, but the game was a critical and economical success. Just look at ME2 DLC and confront them with DA:O's ones and honestly you can tell the difference in term of budget. ME2 is a very coherent and refined gaming experience.

DA2 was more... a reboot of the franchise and many have not understood the choice because they loved DA:O's features. Budget and time were clearly... limited. And... the game does not feel really complete. Honestly, it feel rushed and with too many "cut corners" not to notice. For me DA:O was less fun overall, but I have to admit that it was the more refined and complete game between the two. To the problems of time, budget and heavy changes to the way the game was presented, you have to add an issue of overall identity of the franchise too.   

What do they want to do with the DA franchise? A party based (then tactical) RPG? A button masher action RPG? Do they want to focus on the main protagonist or in the party? And what works best with the kind of cinematic storytelling they decided to use to bring a more "modern" experience? Mind, DA:O has the same issues (imho) and I understand why they tried to change the formula. Only, they do not have the time and the resources to make everything work together in the correct way.

So, I do not agree. People like Bethesda's Fallout wich is sci-fi and where the protagonist is not voiced and not fixed. People like TW wich is fantasy and where the protagonist is voiced and defined. It's not a question of genre and formula. It's all about how the various features work together overall and about the level of polish and attention to details you invest in a game, imho.

Modifié par FedericoV, 30 mars 2011 - 09:07 .

[Abispa]

I am an RPG fan who doesn't demand that Bioware keep producing the same game over and over. I enjoyed DA2, and I am willing to continue supporting it, but I'd never say it was perfect. I loved DA:O, but I've beaten it twice and trying to restart it again is, quite frankly, painful. I've happily played through DA2 four times now and am waiting for the DLCs.

The structure of DA2 using episodes like a television show (this week our hero tries to get Avaline a date even though he's in love with her), is interesting and a fascinating change, but is, at times, handled awkwardly (waiting three seasons before seeing the "main" villain, allowing the second season villain to upstage her). The movie feel of the first game was well done, though more of the same from Bioware. I LOVE it when Bioware tries something different, but don't call me close-minded when I pointed out that it could have been done better.

I understand there are a lot of fans who hated it long before it even came out, so DA2 support was crippled at the start, but the usual level of quality that Bioware puts into their games made the graphics and level-design short cuts impossible to ignore (apparently casting fireballs is detrimental to female mages' hands).

I hope that Bioware does take the criticism to heart and improves future releases without retreating to standard RPG formulas (a nobody destined to be a hero fighting an incredible evil that threatens the world because, uh, because it... it's EVIL, I guess, whenever he isn't standing around being exposed to tons of exposition around a campfire).