279 réponses à ce sujet

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

Alistairlover94 wrote...

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Hey, I'm the expert on affecting impartiality around here.

Pffft, you wish!

Subjective opinion detected.

[upsettingshorts]

Ask around, it's practically my unofficial - and somewhat inconsistent - modus operandi !

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 10 mai 2011 - 11:59 .

[erynnar]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Hey, I'm the expert on affecting impartiality around here.

Alistairlover94 wrote...

mrcrusty wrote...

Alistairlover94 wrote...

Mr.House wrote...

Alistairlover94 wrote...

neppakyo wrote...

... I didn't mind the Mako..

Opinions are like testicles: Everyone has a pair(except for me), you kick them hard enough, it doesn't matter how many you got.

So you don't have opinions?

No. Only assumptions. On a good day, cold hard facts.

I bow to your constant impartiality.

Thank you kindly!

That's why I like you both! Well and the well reasoned, and lively debates you guys bring to the table. I seem to hit the snark option on my convo wheel a lot. So, I con't affect impartiality...just doofery?

[neppakyo]

Why is Ali always trying to kick my testicles? They're for cupping, not kicking.

[upsettingshorts]

How terrifying could man giraffe dog be if he's easily defeated by Adblock?

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 11 mai 2011 - 12:03 .

[Tommy6860]

Alistairlover94 wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Alistairlover94 wrote...

Really? BG1? I thought it would be BG2.

Not at all.

BG1 allowed far more freedom in designing the PC's personality, the quests were revealed far more organically, and the game allowed free exploration.  It also had a shallower power curve, which itself solved many of the exploration/scaling problems that plague modern games.

Not to mention that I think AD&D rules just work better at low levels.

On that open exploration, BG2 was the first BioWare game to establish the pattern of only letting the player go where the game thought he had a reason to go, and BG2 actually did it fairly badly.  NWN felt more open because there were in-setting reasons why you couldn't leave Neverwinter, and then when you did you could literally wander off in any direction.  But we didn't get back the ability to just take off somewhere for no reason at all until Mass Effect, which granted open exploration to and of the Uncharted Worlds.  Sadly, that "throw-back", as UpsettingShorts would call it, lasted just the one game.

Actually, now that I think about it, BG1 DID have more exploration than BG2. I forgot that. Guess it's because I haven't played either BG game(nor the expansions) since I was 19. And the Mako was terrible! Shame on you for liking it! I guess that's why they call you Sylvius the Mad.

I liked the Mako as well. many of the complaints about it were about the turret cannon and how it was awkward to use. Many people didn't figure out that it could zoom in and aim dead on its target. What I didn't like, was taht the planets were pretty boring, but I didn't mind the exploration finding elements and artifacts.

[DJ0000]

Story- 4 there were some great moments but it all seemed too disconnected. I often forgot who gave some quests and what their purpose was because there was no clear sense of direction. I also would have liked more options and for the world to react more to your actions. Having a whole act dedicated to doing side quests for cash was just mind numbingly dull.

Graphics- 7 they were improved, although still not great, but some design choices spoiled it. Like the lame looking darkspawn with no imposing presence.

Combat- 8 I liked the fast paced combat and would have given this a ten if it weren't for the waves of enemies that made combat extremely boring. I played the first playthrough without changing difficulty to prove to myself that I could and in the other 1 and a half playthroughs I often switched to casual because the wave system was extremely boring.

It is because of the boring wave system and non-interactive story that I played only 2 and about 2/3 of a playthrough of the sequal compared to about 12 full plays of Origins.

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

Alistairlover94 wrote...

@Ery: I don't think you've noticed but Shorts and everyone else are better diplomats than me.

Well if you did what nepp suggests, less kicking and more cupping, you'd be much better at being diplomatic.

[upsettingshorts]

Alistairlover94 wrote...
About as terrifying as a man when you have a tight grip around their "grapes".

Break their nose.  Using either your hand or forehead.  They'll let go.  

[neppakyo]

Alistairlover94 wrote...

neppakyo wrote...

Why is Ali always trying to kick my testicles? They're for cupping, not kicking.

Because they're an easy target.(Do guys have any other weak spots? If so, i'd like to know).

Come to a fight naked, usually makes straight guys' brain freeze.

[Tommy6860]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

If it wants to tell a particular personal story - one written by the designers - then I agree.

However, having the game tell a story at you isn't fun gameplay.  It arguably isn't gamplay at all.

You seem to be implying that adhering to a predetermined story is somehow somehow mutually exclusive to gameplay.

I had a ton of fun playing games that did just that - Shadow of the Colossus, Portal, God of War, Call of Duty, and Uncharted all more-or-less forced me into following a predetermined path, but I still found them all to be enjoyable and fun games with terrific gameplay.

But those are specifically "action/shooter" games that are not bent on the PC making the story go. Those kinds of game are predetermined in their gameplay paths, nothing the PC can do changes that.

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

neppakyo wrote...

Alistairlover94 wrote...

neppakyo wrote...

Why is Ali always trying to kick my testicles? They're for cupping, not kicking.

Because they're an easy target.(Do guys have any other weak spots? If so, i'd like to know).

Come to a fight naked, usually makes straight guys' brain freeze.

Depends where the fight is.

[AtreiyaN7]

Story - 7.5
Graphics - 8
Combat - 8

[daemon1129]

Story - 3 At first I thought, "Hmm, this is kind of like GTA games, there are no obvious antagonist, and the missions and story are very personal and the scale generally start out small and you miss get to the top." Then after act 1, you would think the main plot would really start to kick into full gear. But once again. its just side quests style then 1 climax quest and your done with act 2. The writing is pretty good, as would be expected from a Bioware game, but the framed narrative is done badly. The get more money objective is silly compare to the epic of the first game.

Graphics - 4 Its an improvement to the first game, but it is still bad. I normally don't care about graphics all too much, but the engine is terrible. With their reason of why Kirkwall is so dead, it really shows how bad the optimization is. This game is harder to run than crysis 1 & 2. I had a hard time getting used to the art style, mainly because I prefer good looking characters with interesting designs, but this game has the ugliest elves in any game I have played. The other races aren't all that impressive either. I hardly see any improvement, they all still look like **** to me.

combat - 6 Probably one of DA2's redeeming changes, but only by a little. I hate the new hack and slash over the top style, but the combat is a lot smoother than DAO, which is great. The new spells and abilities are more action oriented, which is also great. The waves idea is terrible, and the guy who thought of it seriously need to play the game and see how silly he was. As much as the combat is more action heavy, it is still not that great. There are better ones out there, and this game ultimately is disappointing.

[Stejo]

Story - 2
It wasn't terrible but I found it bland and uninteresting, same as many others. Coupled with the fact that act 1 doesn't literally have any story and act 3 is extremely rushed, maybe 2 is even generous.

Graphics - 6
Things looked better generally. Armor designs were impressive compared to the clown suits of DA:O, but it lacked polish and artistic direction in many cases. Maybe I'd give a 7 here if darkspawn weren't so damn laughable. Or maybe it deserves a 1 for reused interiors which also fall under graphics.

Combat - 1
No isometric camera + constant waves takes away any kind of tactical gameplay. So in comparison to the original's solid tactical combat, which was not perfect, mind you, but thoroughly enjoyable for my taste at least, this one was a massive setback.

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

I'll post on topic.... for now.



So going by the scale of 1-10 where 1 = atrocious, 5 = equal to Origins or average and 10 = supreme, here's where I stand.

Story = 4

The concepts of the story were very nice. I liked the concept of Kirkwall. I liked the idea of moral ambiguity, that the story would be about people and groups of people. How they interact, their beliefs, their actions, etc.

What we got in the end was lacklustre. Not only were most of the interesting groups in Kirkwall (Red Iron, Coterie, Nobles, Alienage, etc) shoehorned to make room for Templars and Mages, the Templars and Mages themeselves weren't done very well imo. There's the obvious disjointed nature of the story, the apparent lack of consequenecs to your choices, the static nature of Kirkwall and it's NPCs and gaffes where Templars don't notice a party of Blood Mages and Apostates unleash demonic hell on a group of bandits.

But even if we disregard all that, I just plain didn't like how the Templars and Mages were handled.

While I like the idea of making a moral decision not obvious, it feels like Dragon Age 2 took a cheap way to do it. It's a lesser of two evils choice (with no tangible consequence, lol), not because both of them have positives and negatives, with you deciding which side would be better overall but because both sides are outright insane. Maybe this was intentional on Bioware's part. Make both sides so thoroughly unredeemable, that it would be better if they all got the murder knife. If so, bravo. Mission accomplised, I'll double my score.

Because I hated the insanity of Kirkwall and everyone in it.

I wouldn't trust either the Mages or Templars with my car keys, let alone a whole city full of people. I really wish there was a choice to side with the Arishok and just raze Kirkwall to the ground.

That said, there were quite a few good quests when looked at in isolation, but I felt that too many quests did not link to other areas or have consequences like they could've/should've. I just didn't like the lack of cohesion between quests and stories, the lack of cohesion between narrative and gameplay and I didn't like the characterisation of the Mages and Templars (unless it was intentional). It's mostly my subjective opinion, but hey, it's my opinion.

Graphics = 6

For me, the story of Dragon Age 2's graphics is hit and miss. Some things I liked, others I didn't. From a technical standpoint, I'd say a lot of the game looks nicer than Origins, and a lot it doesn't. So really... hit and miss.

Combat = 4

A lot of good improvements, solid mechanics and interesting ideas utterly ruined by terrible encounter and enemy design.

If PC players got back the tactical camera, if the enemies had been stronger, more varied, with more abilities with less of them zerging you. No chunking, no beaming 101st Airborne drills, reinforcements used sparingly, cut down on the speed a tad and lose the JRPG-ish animations, I'd give combat an 8 or 8.5.

Dragon Age 2 added a lot to the combat aspect of things but for every improvement it made, I felt as if it did two things to ruin it.

----

As a whole, Dragon Age 2 is far from a bad game, it's okay. But it's not the kind of RPG that I enjoy, it's also not the kind of Action Adventure I'd enjoy. So really, while I accept that it's an okay game in it's own right, and that others really like the game, I cannot bring myself to like the game.

Modifié par mrcrusty, 11 mai 2011 - 01:12 .

[erynnar]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Alistairlover94 wrote...
About as terrifying as a man when you have a tight grip around their "grapes".

Break their nose.  Using either your hand or forehead.  They'll let go.  

Ouch! Annnnnd getting this back on topic before it becomes...end of the line and has it's nose or forehead broken:

In a 1-10 scale, how close did Bioware come in terms of improving these
elements and what will you suggest that Bioware do to improve those
three elements?

1-A massive step-back in terms of the original

5- Average- No change or difference made in terms of the original

10- Vast improvement in terms of the original.

Story: Loved the idea. Poor execution. It became a bunch of Fed ex quests, piddling around, trying to see who I could sleep with while Kirkwall burned. It was disjointed and confusing . Act 2 felt like it should have been Act 3.

I loved the characters and the glimpses I got of their stories, but it felt shallow because I couldn't talk to them more and had no freedom to do so even if they had allowed it. I couldn't bond with them just because of cute convos they had outside their homes with each other, or the few times they visited my hovel/mansion. Having the convos with them dependent on their quests made it feel more Fed ex and manipulative.

Which leads to Hawke having the ability to be epic like the story, but falling flat. She wound up (as someone else said) the most boring person in the room, even when it was empty. Hell, even the companions preferred the damn dog's company to Hawke. The dog got invited to the Hanged Man to play poker!

The cameos of other characters (save Merrill and Isabela) were unnecessary. And yes, I have mega problems with the the zombie characters that BioWare just decided to bring back because. And lobotomized Anders shaves two points alone for Justice I can't jump into any other bodies, Anders timeline and isn't he supposed to be in Amaranthine still?

And the Thaig that was not like other thaigs...I thought we'd get to play archeologist while trying to escape it. Get more clues...yeah...about that.

Points deducted for more holes in the plot than the Blooming Rose and The Pearl combined. Especially for the mage story (Cullen just ignoring that my Hawke was a mage was immersion breaking to the point of ridiculous, as was everyone else's ignoring same).

More points for breaking the rich and luscious lore that DAO gave us. I understand changes, but when you twist the previously established lore until it screams or you just trash it all together from a success? Well that's just called a reboot, and not just a we wanted to tell a different story...so that is crappy story telling.

And lets use this anacronym...IATCS. It's about the choices, stupid. Nothing we did made a difference except in the companions and not really that much with them. You want the ending you wrote, fine by me. I had to kill the Archdemon, same diff. But DAO gave me the luscious illusion of choice (which was promptly taken away in DA2 both in DAO decision's carry over and the sequel itsself).

Quest arrows...instead of actually enjoying the quests, I just ran from arrow to arrow. Returning someone's pants or sister's remains just becaues of an arrow and Hawke's psychic ability for items but not knowing certain NPC's were going to screw over Hawke, Kirkwall, freak out, or whatever was immersion breaking.  Seriously, I knew some dwarf wanted his torn knickers back and I knew to whom they belonged?

I kept seeing how epic this could have been, and how shallow it really wound up being. Which makes me really sad panda.  Score-3 (would have been higher, I really like the idead, but the execution was so damn poor I can't go higher than that) Lucky it isn't a 2 for that slap in the face of MAKE A CHOICE RIGHT NOW! That was as useful as ****** on a boar hog.

Graphics: Again, this is where I liked some things but the bad outweighed the good in the end. I liked the new Arishok and the new Qunari, until I got bored of seeing the cardboard cutouts used as furniture. Which is just as bad as the gray furniture people sprinkled throughout Kirkwall.  What made them even more jarring was their mixing the muddy, badly drawn people with the detailed ones. I liked Kirkwall at first, and still. But it really needed to change. I liked some of the colors, but it wound up being too cartoony. Psst...BioWare, drop the anime cartoon crap (especially those big stupid ugly swords) and spend a little more time on the daggers and wands would ya? I wanted a set of Isabela shaped daggers soooo bad. I loved the Deep Roads feeling in DAO. It was creepy, with sudden turns and you really felt for the dwarves and their citties of grandeur now reduced to hollow darkspawn filled ghost towns.

I liked the weird thaig, so it not being as...sad as the ones a few levels above it I could understand in a way. But it wound up being so garish it looked like Disney World threw up on it. I kept expecting little darkspawn dolls to start singing, "It's a Blighted World After All."  There were parts I liked, and parts I didn't. Love the archtecture and the wizard looking statues. Would have liked to see more of it.

The armor and weapons, meh. And Andraste's knicker weasels, please make more variety in mage clothes...pants would not be out of order, and not something that looks like a flak jacket and camo pants (those were more tolerable to the same robes used over and over).

Speaking of over and over....yeah, wait for it....reused dungeons, cut and past areas, cut and paste people, cut and paste Qunari.

And I don't mind the elves looking different than humans, but they are supposed to be attractive. Zev even managed to get run over by the wagon o' ugly. That went for every elf but Fenris, Merrill, the Keeper, and Orsino looked like Avatar rejects that had been given WoW Night Elf donkey ears, Bajoran nose brows, and beaten with a whole forest of ugly trees. 

And eye colors can be exotic without looking like cartoons. There were several shades of blue that were just gallingly ugly and weird. Trying to stare at someone on my screne with them was...disturbing. Also variety would be good. Fenris and Merill and many elves had that beautiful green color...but too many of them had that pretty green color. Humans can have more than blue or that caramel brown color too.

And speaking of being hit with the forest of ugly...Alistair, Teagan, Zev, and poor Sandal....GOOD GRIEF!!! Lobotomized Anders had this weird eyebrow looking like a stye over his eye when he's wrinkle his brow. Isabela's ass kept showing throw her cover and not in hot good way. Just brown patches every now and then when she'd move.

I personally liked Kirkwall. I didn't mind the sandstone, reminded me of Star Wars and the wretched hive of scum and villany. So, flame away those that hated it. Do I think it could use more variety? Oh hell yeah! And changing it more than the banners in some places over time would have helped.  

Often your graphics changes were too subtle...the companions (Isabela gets an arm armor and a sash on her waist? I almost missed it), the city, the outside enviornments.

The Wounded Coast, the coast of deep hurting. The first time, beautiful. Gorgeous sky, loved the look. Then it felt dead. No animal life. Began to wonder if the whole place was poisoned or irradiated. And filling in the same damn map every friggin' act....*gets rope and hangs self*

New Cullen, Isabela, Merrill, and the Keeper looked great, I thought.

Loved Varric...it is the chest hair.

Despite these complaints...score: 5. They weren't game breakers, just annoyances and tedium.

Combat: It was like combat on crack (as Yahtzee guys said). It was tweaking...erm tweaked all right. I didn't like the waves, the teleporting mages (sorry they teleport not stealth, or my rogue should have been able to see them since she does it) and that is lore breaking. Full plate warrirors doing backflips and disappearring. Friggin' waves. I hate the no overhead camera. I hate the spiders that spawn from a clear blue sky and the smooth ceiling of a cave. I hate the bad guys spawing from the blue sky, or walls of buildings, or the inside ceilings of buildings. Waves, did I mention those? The full plate warriors dropping from five story buildings that don't break their bones.

Cool downs are annoying as hell. Hate boss fights so unbalanced I wind up running around the room screaming while waiting for my cooldowns and playing the Benny Hill theme song in my head whilst I do it. Yakkity saks is funny the first time, not the 6th. I felt like I was playing an MMORPG.

High **** Dragon fight, she hits me with fire balls from a distance while I take care of the hundreds of waves of her kids and yet she is "too far away" for me to hit her with spells or my archer? BULL****! That is not fun, just stupid and adds to the length and tedium.  

If I wanted to play an MMORPG I would reinstate my WoW account and start playing again.

What I did like? New rogue and mage animations! Especially the mage. Reminded me of Morrigan in the trailer for DAO.  Liked it speeded up, but it was was too much. A medium between DAO and DA2 would be good, maybe 70% DAO and 30% DA2 speed.

Score 4

edited to apologize for my lengthy response
YOU DON"T HAVE TO READ THIS LONG THING UNLESS YOU ARE REALLY REALLY BORED! SORRY! And to add...I loved some things, liked other things, some was meh, and some I hated. The meh, and bad outweighed the good and love parts.

Modifié par erynnar, 11 mai 2011 - 02:14 .

[sonsonthebia07]

I won't go into it but,

Story - 4 (huge potential, but it fell short and the ending was terrible.)

Graphics - 7 (I like the new graphics and designs a lot. My favorite was the change to the qunari, I thought they were excellent, But they went overboard on the elves - they just didn't really work out for me. Kirkwall also felt lifeless and empty and there were more thugs than citizens wandering about.)

Combat - 8 (If it had been a tinge more tactical with smarter enemy AI in place of the waves for every fight and if enemies did not disintegrate every time they died I would have given this a 9-10. I personally have a lot more fun during combat in Dragon Age 2 then I did in Origins. I only play on Nightmare so I can't comment on other difficulties.)