I had recently created one of these threads over on the [H]ard forums, but I hadn't finished the game when I wrote my thoughts. I figured I'd post here; largely for discussion purposes and partially in hopes that Bioware might see some feedback (though I'm sure it's nothing new for them.) Hope I don't seem to ramble too much or step on any toes (after taking a while to type this up...heh)
Story:
The story felt largely aimless to start with. I think that what was really missing was the drive that you saw from DA) and DAOA - fighting the darkspawn, saving the world and all that. In DAO, there is a clear sense of what is going on; challenging Loghain, finding a new ruler, uniting the allies of Ferelden and finally ending the blight.
In DA2 we're totally missing that drive. Act 1 is simply "where's some coin?" wandering aimlessly around. The game at this point really just felt like an MMO: Go over to the badlands and get 15 spider stingers and 10 thingy carapaces and report back to me. Yes, there was the expedition...but you rarely hear anything of it. You're largely left on your own with no guidance and you just take quest after quest.
I think that tying in more to do with Bethany might have helped, and while I see that we're being slowly introduced to the Templars vs Mages battle, it doesn't do enough to add any amount of drive or feeling. I'm not sure how I would have added something - rather I think the Hawke story is just a little flawed in this regard. Even in Act 2 you're left to wander a bit aimlessly, though the Qunari add some amount of feeling and purpose, though still not enough to compare to stuff like DAO and other recent Bioware games (ME1 and 2 come to mind as well.) Only in the third act do we suddenly start to focus on the main purpose of the game (mages vs templars, and the war/uprising that ensues.)
Setting:
I think that games can successfully stay in one location and be enjoyable. For example, look at Arkam Asylum - it remains on the Island for the whole story, and still has a massive feeling to it; but to navigate an entire section of the island takes an hour or more. To navigate all of darktown takes me 5 minutes or less. To navigate all of Kirkwall, without any cutscenes, likely takes 15 minutes or less. I think that to make it work, Kirkwall should have been made a free roam city, much like what we see with games such as Just Cause 2 where you can quick travel, but otherwise roaming the world has no loading screens. I'll also mention that the repeating dungeons were a pain point (and I know Bioware has talked about this in an interview already. Why not address this with a patch and add a few more dungeons, if possible?)
All in all, Kirkwall felt small and underwhelming when compared to ME and DAO (DAO Awakening itself also felt a little small, but not as small as DA2 - certainly a little more acceptable given that Awakening was an expansion.)
Characters:
Frankly, I'm not sure if I like the new approval system. If you're going to have an approval system, I think that to make it in any way successful you need to be able to have companions leave you mid game like you have in DAO; at the same time I'd love to see the pool of possible companions grow. Meaning, you have some possible companions that like mages and hate the law; some that like mages and obey the law; some that hate mages and hate the law, and so forth. Make the possible pool of companions grow to more than double what you see now....and each player will gravitate to a party that aligns with their ideals.
As it stands, the idea that a rivalry means a friend will remain almost feels like a sham. There are people I know in life that I do not agree with on things. They vote a different way than I. They dislike something I like. For example, I own guns. Some people therefore think I'm a total waste of space...and so I don't bother with them. Some dislike it, but there is enough common ground to be found elsewhere between us that we are friends regardless, we just don't talk about the subject (I don't walk up to them and relate to them how I went to the range or the new gun I bought. We just don't go there.) Why not see something similar? If the PC and the companion disagree on how you handle apostates, but otherwise agree completely, they stay. If you're 100% opposites, they leave and you just find a different companion more aligned to you.
Bugs:
I hit enough bugs that this HAS to be mentioned: they were so numerous that I cannot name them all, though if I'd had a bug database open, I could easily have filed upwards towards 100 bugs with good repro steps, I think (a solid 75...) The very fact that I needed to go into the developer debug console to access the Howe quest was, while interesting to see the debug console, a pain and something that someone shouldn't have to do. I remember seeing bugs in DAO, but certainly not this many, and certainly FAR less of a polished feeling than what is present in ME1 and 2. It's pretty disappointing to see, given the high bar that Bioware has set for itself.
Items:
Much like DAO and ME1, I think that I'm pretty tired of systems where you get 70 items over a single quest, many of which are rings and other trinkets which when examined are pretty similar in their attributes ("Ugh, I finished another quest. Time to sell the 15x Cryo ammo level 3 I just found.") The number of amulets with +2 health or mana regen on them was staggering. I don't think removing all of the inventory like ME2 did is quite the right solution, but certainly getting so many items that are essentially duplicates cannot be the answer. Also, why even bother with the junk items? Just to have the feel that you're picking things up like any good RPG would have you do? It doesn't feel right. If you're going to make it junk and segregate it, why even have it in the first place? I'd swear all of the junk in the game added up cannot be worth more than 5 gold.
On the flip side, I'm happy to not deal with companion armor, for the most part. I do however wish that adding amulets, belts and rings would have affected the companion appearance to some degree, while leaving their armor alone in looks.
AI:
I have to say, the number of times I found myself fighting the AI was pretty high. Having access to the tactics of companions can be nice, but it can also be overload. There are times when I want to meddle with tactics, and there are times where I just want the game to be a bit more intelligent. Often, the game just gravitated towards certain spells and totally ignored others. In fact, a story is worthwhile here:
To all who played Black & White, you probably can sympathize and guess where I am going. To those who did not, let me explain a little. In B&W, you are a god who can cast spells and command villagers around. You also have a pet - and animal of some kind and of your choosing. You can generally align as being a good god, or a bad god (remember the title - good, evil; black, white) and your animal can be kind or hateful. Now, you could teach your animal spells. Rain was great for helping crops grow and all that...but it took me FOREVER to teach my pet tiger to do the fireball. But once I did teach him that...well, he dicided to light EVERYTHING on fire. Including villagers and the village itself. But it was all good because he would then use the rain spell to put everything out. He thought he was being kind...and I, not seeing the bug in it's entirety, punished him every time he did it. This all ends with the animal thinking me evil and....casting fireball to punish the village. But no rain. I never finished the game for this simple reason.
Why do I tell that? In DAO, too often would a mage light up a cone of fire. With me and all companions in the middle of it. There was no way for the tactics to account for the idea of "Use spell if friendlies are in the clear" - in DA2...the auto tactics didn't even bother to USE the spell. It's like the pendulum swung the other way and totally missed the balance that could work. (Yes, on nightmare, FF can happen. Otherwise, it cannot.)
Other instances of fighting the AI: Micromanaging the companions when some massively painful AOE spell was caste...instead of running away like a smart companion would, they'd stand up to it (the spell the pride demons drop which can paralyze comes to mind, as does some blood magic) I'd pause, order them to move away, and they'd turn right back around and run in, and proceed to die. Frustrating? Very much so. And putting them on hold was the only option in such instances. Put them on hold, wait for the enemy to move, or the AOE spell to time out. It got to be pretty frustrating. I don't mind managing companions - I want to. But micromanaging them due to the poor logic in the friendly AI proved to be too much.
Player customization:
Like always, I enjoyed the ability to customize my character. I will say though, that I missed the various origin stories; Hawke's story may not lend itself well to that, but it is something I missed regardless. Further, I did not like the fact that you lose a sibling depending on the class you choose. I'm no fan of Carver, and would rather have just kept Bethany all of the time...or both. I honestly feel slightly less inclined to go mage for the simple reason that I know I'll have to deal with Carver by doing so.
I also wish that Bethany had more time in the game. The overall feeling of the Hawke family/story is one of "the world kicks you when you're down" between one sibling dying, the other dying/being stuck in the Wardens/being hauled off/deserting you to spite you/dying for lack of Anders being there....then your mother dying, your Uncle being a (nearly) complete failure who has nothing good to say to you...and none of it being in your control. In the end Bethany felt so shallow...simply because she was present long enough for me to be interested in seeing where her story would go...to only find her totally gone for the duration of the game, save the final fight. Heck, even being able to visit her later in the game once the Hawke name means something would have been an improvement (I mean, the various apostates that are captured show up in the courtyard, yet one of their better mages who is well behaved and liked remains locked away? How does THAT make sense?!)
Overall thoughts:
Did I enjoy the game? Yes and no. I had preordered the signature edition; I played the demo and hated it. If you look up my history on the [H] forums I overreacted a bit, thinking the game not worth any of my time...and so it sat, in it's shrink wrap until this month. I think that time has perhaps helped the game along from the changelogs I see and the texture package (I'm on PC, and have the hardware to have DX11 turned on.) I do like the new animations; I think the zoom is OK; I like that things now seem to have impact to them. The graphics ARE better (though, as far as PC games go, still behind the pack.) - though Tesselation making everyone's feet sink into the ground/not have the height adjusted so the raised textures wouldn't overlap their feet was irksome. Will I play it a second time? Likely.
But on the flip side, the whole game feels rushed to me; between it lacking an overall drive in the story that most games have and many components just seeming to be missing, the game is diminshed some amount. The city seems too small for an entire game to take place within and so forth. I walk away from the game thinking that most of the characters are a little bit shallow - even the Sebastion DLC seems lacking; Sebastion in my opinion felt like the weakest character of them all, frankly.
All in all, the game just feels like a let down. Had I known all of this before I preoreder, would I have still pre-ordered? Doubtful. Would I still have bought the game though? On sale, at half off, sure. But this wasn't worth the full price, even with free DLC in my book (and the very idea that Bioware is charging for DLC when the base game just feels lacking is in of itself disappointing. I wish Bioware/EA would step up and say "We missed the mark, we're sorry. People who pre-ordered or registered within a month of buying the game get all DLC for free..." To me, that on it's own would make me think so much more of Bioware and EA's actual care for the consumer, and I imagine many people would feel that way. It'd help build a positive community and silence the worst critics - or at least temper them.) If I seem a little light on the praise for the game, there is no lack of praise; I enjoyed the 45 hours I put into a single playthrough (45...wow) and I do have praise that I hope to add in to this or a later post.
Either way, I look forward to the next chapter in Dragon Age, as well as Mass Effect 3, despite the doubts that DA2 may have put into my head regarding the quality of upcoming titles...and I cannot wait for the Old Republic to be available (since I cannot seem to secure a test account ;-)
Modifié par RampantAndroid, 25 juillet 2011 - 11:36 .
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you don't like, and c) you don't need, are actually slim to zero (depending on which characters we're talking about). I suppose it's a bit unrealistic given the amount of dialogue each character has, but at the very least, Bioware needs to understand that players don't need their hands held. If you back yourself into a corner and wind up with an "imbalanced" party, it's something you should have to deal with. I mean hell, the game isn't even that difficult, and if it is, you can just play on Casual difficulty... so why implement this idiotic fool-proof party-balancing system?
