The Ethereal Writer Redux wrote...
well we would first have to find out what is the wrong direction, as that's said many times on here but never really clarified. This way, maybe Bioware would understand more of what we mean by that, though maybe the points I've made actually do clarify that enough.
Is the wrong direction only working on a game for 18 months while also trying to make a better engine? I'd say yes, as DAO did the same thing -- regarding the engine that is -- and was worked on for a few years, and then delayed to make it available for consoles.
Is the wrong direction not properly characterizing people? I'd say yes.
Is the wrong direction having marketing and the devs tell the players that the game will be one thing, and then the game turns out not to be that one thing? I'd say yes.
I don't think all of what DAII did is the wrong direction. I happen to think the general idea for the series is right, but like DAII the execution of it is horrible.
EDIT: Also, thanks for agreeing with me
I tend to think that people already know what I think is the wrong direction of DA2. You highlighted some of those in your post and I agree. To be sure I'll add the points I think are wrong with the game. Here we go.
One of the things I like to emphasize is that BW feels that it has to streamline features, use innovations from ME2, iconize companions and using over the top combat action to gather a target audience who may like that, but at the same time a lot of their old audience does not. In fact those moves push their original audience away. The game was bought by a lot of that old audience, because somehow they felt there was some of the original game left. I was one of them. The doctors even ensured that by stating that DA2 would keep the best of DA:O and it was supposed to be the primary mission statement for the dev team. I am fairly sure that a lot of the old fans think that streamlining, innovations and iconizing are just redefinitions of those terms created by marketing to sell what has been removed from the game. Mr Laidlaw and the Marketing also promised in one of the official podcasts and several other occasions that "decisions would shape the world". Hawke does not decide anything and decisions are wrapped back to the railroaded story as soon as they are made. Because there are no choices that matter in the game, the illusion of choice doesn't work either. Hawke only responds and is never pro-active.
I also feel that the streamlining is there just to shorten development time, the iconizing companions is there to solve technical problems on old tech consoles and the innovations and flashy combat are there to boot their old audience. Add the false "shape the world" promise to that and I certainly don't feel welcome anymore.
Another thing that is worrisome is the promise that DA3 will use the best of DA:O and DA2. Fact is that 1) the promise to use the best of DA:O has been made during development of DA2 as well; 2) BW does not want to commit itself to what the best of the two games actually consists of; 3) in the thread which discussed this and in previous public statements Mr Laidlaw clearly gave the impression that he felt that DA2's direction was the correct one and that fans not agreeing with that were afraid of change or had some other emotional or nostalgia problems; 4) promises were made before and BW did not keep their word; 5) BW is responding with damage control to save their public image, instead of actually making sure that critique is taken at heart.
You can see the above at work when you look at the DLCs.
One can think that two of the gripes people had with DA2 were dealt with in Legacy. Sure, there were no recycled environments anymore and there were no waves of ninja paratroopers. Think about this. Those changes are just things one can expect from a company creating quality games. They just did there work properly and as such those were not improvements. What could have been an improvement was to address the problem with the choices. However, they did no such thing. Like the main game decisions that would cause a story branch were wrapped back as soon as you made them. Again, you could take sites, but after a few minutes you still fought the same end boss. That is an example of what could have been changed, but was not. Apparently a railroaded story is seen as one of the things to keep in future games.
The story in DA2 was rather disappointing and the ending feels like a cliffhanger. The problem with that is that the game was introduced to be stand alone, and unlike Mass Effect, the franchise is no trilogy. Although I don't like the idea of using DLCs to get closure, no closure happened at all. In fact MotA had nothing to do with main story. And again, the decisions had no impact. Maybe to some the voice actress was icing on the cake, but no matter how good she was, it feels like giving the audience candy to keep them quiet. Nothing in this DLC shows improvement and if it was supposed to show the direction of DA3 then all we saw was that it is going in the DA2 direction.
Maybe DA2 sold well enough for the franchise to continue, but it certainly didn't sell better than DA:O and even if it did, that wouldn't be much more. So, if DA2 really or partially attracted a new audience then that must mean that they lost some of their old audience. That must be an indication for BW that something is very wrong here. But nooo. DA2 was presented as the best thing since sliced bread and DA:O was painted as a disaster that clearly needed improvement. The promises to keep the best of DA:O looks like damage control to keep those fans happy. I wouldn't be surprised when a lot of them already jumped ship.
There are also a couple of problems with the story. And that's sad, because that should be one of BW's strong points. They have the capability and many titles have shown that in the past.
One problem is the railroaded story. Such a story is fine, but in that case one should not promise that the PC can "shape the world" when he or she can't. That leads to disappointment. The illusion of choice is a mechanism that can be used effectively when there are also real choices to be made. But if saying "no" to do a quest results in that you have to do it anyway then something is clearly wrong. Especially when that happens nearly everywhere in the game. No matter what side you select or what choice you make, you still visit the same locations, solve the same stuff, and fight the same bosses. That leads to a very disappointing end.
Another problem with the story is that it tries to keep track of what choices you make in order to get a more consistent intonation and dialogue. At first that looks great, but because all options lead to the same results these have to be rationalizations. And because no choices lead to anything substantial everything feels like rationalizations. Instead of becoming a great addition to the PC's acting the tracking system harms it by emphasizing the feeling that the results are rationalizations.
Recycling environments is a major problem as well, because it gives me a constant feeling of déjà vu. Didn't I visit this place before? Didn't I do this quest before? Why is this entrance blocked all of a sudden?
Consistency is another problem with DA2. Not only did a lot of the races look totally alien, but there were several situations in which characters could not appear in DA2 and yet they did. If BW does not want to honor player decisions then that is fine, but in that case it shouldn't allow importing saved games from a previous title. It is not about what characters and situations fall under that, though. If there are unclear situations like that then something is wrong with the story. Especially if it was planned that way. If we see closure in a DLC then that's fine, but booboos like that should not be made in the future. I expect the game, especially because it was not marketed as being a prelude to another one, to be self contained, though.
The above mechanisms and problems hurt the image of BW. These directly undermine the strength of the company: Storytelling.
I think the problem also has to do with love and attention for the game. The game feels rushed. Don't get me wrong. I don't think the devs are lazy. I have the impression that they really love their jobs and love working on the games. They work their ass off. I can only conclude that management and a short development time are the problems here. Management seem to have cool ideas, but the team seems incapable of realizing them, most likely because of that short development time.
It feels that instead of listening to their customers BW feels that introducing elements of other games and game genres enlarge their potential market. It's not bad to do that, but not at the cost of losing the game's identity. Also, adding a feature because it looks great on the back of the package doesn't work either. Too much stuff has been used from Mass Effect. The streamlining, the iconizing, more flashy combat, voiced PC, the dialogue wheel, the cameos, the e-mails to the Normandy/Hawke Estate, all feel that way. I wonder why that happened, though. Mass Effect didn't outsell DA:O by a large margin. I can remember reports that DA:O even outsold ME2. Whatever the truth, both titles sold about the same. And because of that there was no reason to use ME-elements. It only resulted in the game losing its identity.
The introduction of the voiced PC is another interesting point. No matter how hard gamers responded that they didn't want that and its dialogue wheel, BW insisted it would go that route. What is even more that BW insulted those gamers by painting them as not willing to accept their wonderful innovations. My personal preference is a voiced PC, BTW, but the way BW treated the opposition didn't show good taste. It's also interesting that the most successful RPG to date (Skyrim with 10 million copies) is using a voiceless PC and it still sold very well. It doesn't matter if it sold because of despite that. What remains is that it sold well with that feature. Considering their attitude, one cannot expect an apology, so I don't expect one, nor do I claim to be entitled to one. It's stored somewhere in the back of my head, though.
Again, it is OK that BW looks at how the competition is doing and recently it came to our attention that they may use elements of Skyrim, like a more open world, in DA3. That boggles my mind a bit. A lot of Skyrim's features used to be present in BW games and DA:O. So why the sudden interest?
The open world would be great, but that's not a feature you implement overnight to be able to print it on the back of the package. Such a feature is a core design element and cannot be implemented as an afterthought. Still, more exploration would be a good thing, though. I think that if BW needs to look at features from other games then maybe they should look first at the great games they have produced themselves. DA:O is one of them.
What DA:O emphasized and what DA2 downplayed was tactical gameplay. In DA2 foes and companions jump all over the place which makes any tactical gameplay hard. Omitting the tactical view doesn't help either. I am a PC gamer, but I like to urge BW to even implement this feature on the consoles. One cannot convince me that there is a technical limitation. Let's show some real innovation then. BW mentioned that it was cut from DA2, because making the game look good from tactical view required more attention and was too costly. So what? Attention is what is missing here. And it is not about looking good. It is about a key gameplay feature. If you mess with that then you mess with the core of the game. About the cost. DA:O was a bigger game and did have the feature. It's a good thing that DA:O's developers had that eye for detail and had a bigger budget. Ghehe.
I am sure that everyone at BW believes that market research, telemetry, marketing, monetizing, etc., are important tools to create games and sell their products, but none of those have to do with creativity and none have to do with the most important factor in games: Fun. And that's what is missing.
Modifié par AngryFrozenWater, 22 décembre 2011 - 03:32 .
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