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[Therumancer]

 I've been seeing some posts on these subjects linked onto "The Escapist" (a website) which I frequent, and by the time I hear them it seems like the threads are locked usually because of someone trolling or getting personal. Please keep this polite if you must respond here, I wanted to give my thoughts on the subject.

 Truthfully, I think the problem with "Dragon Age 2" is that it was rushed. Bioware has a lot on it's plate in trying to maintain not one but TWO franchises, as well as develop what is apparently the most expensive MMORPG project in history (Old Republic Online). Despite where the names of various developers show up, I've be very surprised if most of them are not being made to make "Old Republic" their #1 priority because by all reports over 300 million dollars of EA's money are invested in that project. Bioware has increased it's staff apparently, but with increased staff does not nessicarly come the quality we had come to expect. 

 Professional companies rarely come out and actually say anything bad about themselves, or discuss the business aspects of things. The point I'm making is more along the lines that the company seems to be an in awkward situation and not able to invest the amount of quality into the games that they previously did. This isn't intended as an attack (even if you disagree with me) just an observation of all the balls being kept in the air at once, and of course the simple fact that if I was their bosses I'd definatly want their attention focused on that 300 million dollar project, even though I'd still be expecting them to keep the balls that are their other franchises in the air at the same time. 

 To be honest, I think this is at the root of a lot of the problems, ranging from the re-use of maps (mocked in various webcomics and certain less reverant reviews), to the way how you have monsters spawn in waves. Sometimes their spawning is a silly matter of a bunch of guys in plate mail jumping ninja-like off rooftops, sometimes they just pop out of thin air. My personal "favorite" is when you enter a spawn location and have one of those elephant-sized mini-boss spiders suddely pop into existances right on top of you.... and of course the storyline which is what this forum is for. Don't get me wrong, the game has it's moments of genius (this is still notably a Bioware game) but does fall far short of what we'd normally expect. 

 In terms of the Storyline, the idea of an epic RPG series where desicians made in one game have substantial impact on others has been a fanboy wet dream for a while. It's not an impossible thing to do, but DOES take a lot of work. Work which I don't think Bioware hasn't been able to put into this sequel. 

 Let's be honest, there is no excuse for why characters you killed in the first game are still alive in the second one, unless your being presented as an idiot who didn't bother to check such dangerous opponents to make sure they
were down. At least not from a writing perspective. 

 It's not a paticularly difficult thing to have multiple potential characters who could be "Agent Nightengale" for example, and to have each one have a couple of differant ways the conversation could go. This is fundementally no differant than the way the scene at the beginning of Awakening plays out where you meet the ruler you put into place and they referance your relationship to them. It does however take time. 

 Me, personally, I never killed Leliana (who is a popular example), but one of my characters was a mage who romanced her. As of last word, they were travelling the lands together. Even allowing for the mysterious disapperance of "The Warden" it seems unlikely given those developments that Leliana would be taking a hardcore "Right Of Annullment" stance even if she wound up fighting for The Chantry again. 

 On a connected note, the same character ALSO make their request of the king to be that mages be freed from the rulership of the Chantry. That seemed to be copped out on substantially, since you would expect things to either be very differant in Feralden as far as mages go (and world referances are made), or some kind of civil war of sorts to be taking place. 

 What's more, it seems like they got sloppy with the writing in pretty much having almost every single mage in Kirkwall become and abomination. Extreme situation aside, many mages DO resist, even under extreme duress, and we've seen that established during "Origins". I thought it was a bit ham fisted to move the plot along. Heck, technically not even using blood magic is supposed to make someone evil, it's just feared because of it's power. 

 The point is that I do think the storyline was pretty badly done in a lot of areas, and I suspect it's simply because it would have taken more work than Bioware was able to invest in the project. 

 Now these are just MY thoughts, and I don't mean this to be insulting, just to explain what I think the issue has been. I think Bioware can do better, and I will probably give them another chance. Overall Bioware has had alot more hits than misses with their products in general. 

 Honestly though, I can see where they were going with "Dragon Age II", but frankly I think they should have continued the storyline from the first game more directly. To be blunt I'm more interested in finding out what was supposed to be up with Morrigan, than trying to sort out conflicts between Templars and Mages where everyone on all sides of the thing seems to be a jerk.... and I think that's part of the problem with the writing as well. Part of setting up a good "ambigious conflict" is to have both sides be agreeable and more right than they are wrong. In this case all the major players seemed to be utterly bug nuts and rather than going "wow this is an awful situation, I kind of like and agree with both sides" I was pretty much thinking "wow, this is a stupid situation, I pretty much hate the major players on both sides, and yet have to pick one because I'm playing the game, and there is no option for "I take my fortune, sail away with my friends, and hope everyone annihilates each other, leaving less jerks in the world so we all win" ".

 





  




  

 



  

 



 

[Sabrestrikealpha]

1) As a general matter, I would not have had a problem with the loss of continuity if they hadn't made such a big deal of importing your save game from Origins. If Bioware had just said "We have a specific direction we want the DA universe to go. As such, any actions you took in Origins were non-canon. From now on, we are writing the games as if a default set of actions took place in Origins," I would have been fine with it.

The instant that they gave us a save game import option however, they got into trouble. The defining moment for me wasn't the appearance of Lelianna (who survived my Origins playthrough), it was when the game treated events as if The Architect from Awakening was still alive. Since I had literally played through Awakening just before starting to play DA2, and very definitely remember killing him, it was a bit jarring. It cheapened not only my DA2 experience, but devalued my Origins experience as well.

2) With regards to the specific DA2 story, I would really have liked the different parts of the game to tie together more. The events of one chapter were only tangentially related to the events of another. This made the game feel like a series of long, separate DLCs than one coherent story. It made it really hard for me to get involved with the idea of Hawke being a "Champion" as the way the story was structured made it seem like he/she was constantly reacting to events rather than actively shaping them, which doesn't really factor into my conception of a "Champion."

3) I very much agree with your final point. I liked the way the mage-templar thing was handled in Origins. You definitely felt for the mages, but could also see the need for the Templars too. It was helped by the fact that the reps of both sides, Irving and Gregoir seemed like generally decent people. In DA2, the Templars were a bunch of jackbooted a-holes who I immediately wanted to kill. The situation was definitely NOT helped by the heavy-handed writing that was so painfully obvious in trying to draw real-world analogies. When Anders started talking about the Templar's "Mage-solution," I think I actually rolled my eyes.

[Foolsfolly]

I believe the game has been rushed.

I've also been reading Mr. Gaider's posts around these boards over the last two days. I'm convinced there's a story purpose for Leliana's apparent resurrection. I'm willing to give them a benefit of a doubt since they're BioWare and a disappointing game, in my opinion, doesn't destroy the fact that they're one of the better developers out there.

It's a disappointing game but it's not a bad game, I just want to say that. It's firmly set in "alright game" territory.

So I don't believe it's fair to accuse them of anything just because Lil's alive again. They apparently have a story we haven't seen yet.

And Zev's apparently yet another bug in the game. There's many bugs, glitches, and general facepalm moments that could have been polished out had they had more time to test the game. It's a rather buggy game.

[Statulos]

I guess there are way too many untold stories that make (I hope!) the events in DA2 meaningful. However, instead of getting them via DLC´s, I´d rather had waited for six more months and get a juicier game than this one.

I really hope Bioware releases an expansion director´s cut style with content to better flesh out what is now in the game.