Everwarden wrote...
The goal was comic effect, and it fit for the analogy whether one likes Taco Bell or not.
You're not just arguing that DA2 was a different game from DA:O - you're arguing that it was a shift to a worse game.
Not much to debate there, really. You're just wrong. Objectively, in point of fact, you are incorrect in this assertion. Bioware, time and again, repeated that Dragon Age 2 would have all the depth and RPG elements of the first. Now one can debate whether or not that is true, but the claim was made repeatedly.
Bioware openly marketed the following:
1) Change in artstyle & animation
2) Single race PC and VO+dialogue wheel
3) Fixed and Unique Apperance for Companions
If you say 'depth and RPG' elements includes any of the above, and that Bioware somehow misled you on these features you're wrong, and it's your fault for not doing the research.
As for the combat, DA2's combat is not (mechanically) substantively simpler than DA:O's and involves the same gamebreaking exploits, errors, etc. etc.
DA:O was not a complex game when it came to its gameplay.
Not to say that Bioware did not have dishonest marketing, terrible features, and impossible to understand design choices we were never told about. But when it comes to how much of an RPG DA2 is, it's not any less so than KoTOR, the PC-ported console RPG.
Joy Divison wrote...
You're wrong here. They may have let it known they were experimenting with burgers but they made it clear that the good ol' tacos that we loved were still on the menu.
Bioware said DA2 looked different than DA:O but (especially on the PC) played like DA:O under the hood. Which it does.
If, again, you want to speak to features like race selection, dialogue wheel/VO or armour customization, Bioware did not keep these things secret.
They certainly misled about what DA2 was like, as I said above, but not how much RPG-like gameplay it had.