Feedback for Dragon Age Legacy:
Seeing the many positive comments of Dragon Age Legacy, I bought it as well, looking forward to playing what many has hailed as the best DLC in the DA franchise. Coming from the skepticism and negativity having played DA2, I must say that I wasn't disappointed.
As a Bioware fan and their games, this is written here to give our developers inputs so that they can go on to create the very best story-based franchise, the never-ending quest to improve and excel on what is to become well-beloved game universe.
The good:
- Much improved, fresh and well-designed environments that are not repetitive even once. I like the way the whole tower that housed Corypheus was designed. You see a sight at the top of the tower at the beginning as you reach the Vimmark Mountains, fueling the curiosity of what manner of creature this grand tower could be housing. You then need to go down to the abyss to the tower's base, along the way finding out more clues and adding more intrigue to the story, and then finally reaching to top, where you saw at the very beginning, for the story's revealing conclusion. Fantastic.
- Variety of combat. Enemies don't spawn out of no where. More thought out combat scenarios integrated into the environments. Archers ambushing you atop balconies, brontos rampaging about in the open space below, carta dwarfs luring you into traps and disadvantageous combat positions, new creatures in the form of Genlock and Hurlock alphas that has their own unique behaviors, etc. The final boss fight was one of the best Bioware had done in a long fight. There was even a nice mix of puzzles within the tower.
- Dripping with lore. Honestly the real reason why I believe Legacy is a good DLC is because of the background story established way back in Origins and DA2 that builds up to the moment when it was revealed that Corypheus was in fact one of the 'you know who.' Not only does it confirms some of what the Chant of Light has been preaching all along, it was raised new questions of their accuracy and the very fabric that the DA universe is based upon. Even the high-level story arc of DA has progressed significantly due to this event - we now know that a powerful ancient evil is on the loose, a likely harbinger of no-good that is to come. Well, in order for the DLC to have such powerful story impact, the lore and high-level story itself must be built with this in mind, and therefore it is IMO a difficult quality to replicate for the other DLCs. This is not to mean that Bioware will never be able to reach a DLC of this quality, nor does it mean they shouldn't try to surpass it. It just means Bioware needs to push themselves that much harder to keep up with ever growing expectations for DA now that they have set a new standard of DA DLC.
- Nice party banters, nice conversations as always. Good humor and variety. Inclusive of all party members. Nice touch with the family connections. In a genre that's filled with cliches about ancient evil awakening and the protagonist trying to save the world, it's nice to see that Hawke's intentions isn't always about stopping evil but also about trying his best to live a normal life for himself and family, in a hard world.
- Well done characters - Larius and Corypheus.
The bad:
- This is a more of a problem with Dragon Age 2 itself, the combat animations are just too fast, 'actiony', acrobatic and broke the sense of immersion for me.
- While the environments are 100% fresh, some art assets remain noticeably repetitive. For example, the warden symbol/shield hung on every wall at every level of the tower, the same columns, the same etc etc. Here's hoping for more variety of assets, not in the high-level area design sense, but down to the individual art piece sense.
- Environment/art can be a wee bit too ... clean. It doesn't give an impression that this is a lived in, ancient place. The dark roads, the tower corridors etc are remarkably clean. Corypheus, however, looks pretty badass and beautifully detailed.
- While Larius was well-characterized, the same cannot be said for his counterpart rival Janeka. She's what I call the 'cookie-cutter' character who is just another copy-pasted person with typically sterile facial features and non-distinct characteristics. And we've seen many of those in DA and ME already.
All in all this is a good, solid DLC. Bioware had listened to their fans' complaints and deserves praise.
However, this cannot erase the debacle that is DA2 IMO. There's still A LOT that can be improved; there always is. Here's hoping the DA team never rest on their laurels one bit but forever give their very best to make better and better sequels/DLCs, never falter in this upward trend.
Retour en haut
