1306 réponses à ce sujet

[casamar]

Personally, I think the opinions on DAII are too varied to reach an acceptable consensus

[Das Tentakel]

casamar wrote...

Personally, I think the opinions on DAII are too varied to reach an acceptable consensus

Quite true, but I think that is because the game has many flaws, greater and smaller. Not every fan is bothered by every flaw in equal measure, or even notices them. But there are just too many of them and too noticeable, meaning that many fans WILL find things he or she objects to passionately.  And Hell Hath No Greater Fury Than Angered Fans.

From a certain point of view, Bioware is very lucky with the DA2 storm. It means they have a devoted, even driven fanbase. It's a boon, even if it's sometimes also a burden.

[eroeru]

^^
Good response...

[Yuqi]

Hmmn, I don't think wrong is the right word here. I think 'misjudged' is the more appropriate term.

[AudioEpics]

For me it evolved mostly in the right direction, even though in small ways it was sometimes the wrong one. The following is purely my personal opinion, of course!

Right direction:
Graphics: Everything looks much sharper, crisper and smoother on Xbox. It also handles very fluently.
Story: sorry guys, but I think the Dragon Age II story was much more involving, emotional and inspiring than Origins' (which I also liked).
Interface: again, I speak as an Xbox player, but they made it much more elegant, accessible and smooth in my opinion.
Combat: It's faster and more intense but still has the tactical depth and group dynamics
Crafting: Crafting was more enjoyable to me this time around, although it felt too limited.
Dialogue: The voiced protagonist was a big step forward, making the whole feel much more alive. I also thought the dialogue wheel was presented here at its very best (better even than Mass Effect). I loved the icons.
Companions: while you could not interact with them as often, I felt the characters in Dragon Age II were stronger, more relatable and better written.
Day/night choice: It was such a little thing but I loved that!
Quests: Dragon Age II had shorter quests, and I preferred that. It also felt to me like there were more little optional sidequests, which gave me a bit of an "Elder Scrolls" feeling which I loved. The fact that as Hawke you inhabit the city, your friends live there and you really build up a life felt very fresh and involving.

Wrong direction:
Atmosphere: Kirkwall is awesome in its own way but I do miss the more mysterious, grim and ancient feeling environments that were in Dragon Age Origins. Dragon Age II has an interesting and unique aesthetic but I miss the "old world" feel a bit.
Customization: While I don't mind having to play as a human, I do hope that future Dragon Age games return to a wider choice of races.
Origins: I understand that you are playing a slightly more defined character here, but still, the origins were a big thing that made Dragon Age special. Adding some more unique content based on early choices in whatever way would have been cool.
Quest log/journal/codex: I had the feeling this was all a lot deeper and better handled in Origins.
Lack of new environments: everyone has said this.

Overall, as I have said before, I think Dragon Age II was a more gripping, powerful and mesmerizing experience than its predecessor and I loved it.

For the future, I hope Bioware puts some of the customization back in Dragon Age III and that they introduce things like an actual day/night cycle, guilds or factions and gambling or similar minigames. I loved Pazaak in Kotor, for example.

Modifié par AudioEpics, 06 mars 2012 - 12:49 .

[Edhriano]

For the future I hope I will never ever see games such as


"Dragon Age : College Live"
or
"Dragon Age : Medieval"


I really hope Dragon Age : Kirkwall is a one time only.

[Dave Exclamation Mark Yognaut]

casamar wrote...

:ph34r:mod paraphrase- I didn't like it:ph34r:

So, uh, why do we have people messing with conversations on a forum again? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of having a forum?

[bEVEsthda]

casamar wrote...

Personally, I think the opinions on DAII are too varied to reach an acceptable consensus

I don't know where you're mind is, and consensus is a demanding word. But I disagree, nevertheless.

My impression is that there is a fair consensus about DA2. Not on this forum, mind you. But this forum is not representative. Jokingly I could say that we have all the world's DA2 fans here. Every one of them. But fact is, when I sampled other channels, I could almost always recognize the very few outspoken, hardline DA2-fans from our forum here. They were the same, few persons. Can't say that about the berserking hordes of DA2-haters.

Now, when you start to ask why people dislike DA2, things start to seem more complex and opinions may seem varied. I'm not so sure that things really are so complex as they may seem though. I think a great deal of that may just be because people react in different ways when they're asked to explain why. The whole thing may become even more convoluted when they're asked "to be constructive". (and it's further muddled, when one doesn't separate criticism from people who like DA2, from people who dislike DA2.)

For example, this is IMO often the background when people list flaws, and then DA-fans triumphantly claims the same flaws were present already in DA:O. Yes, but they liked DA:O, so those flaws didn't really annoy them then.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 06 mars 2012 - 08:01 .

[schalafi]

What's really weird, I guess, is that I liked both games, played them many times, and didn't really get all bent out of shape at the flaws... and both games had flaws. Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever played a "perfect" game?

Modifié par schalafi, 06 mars 2012 - 08:01 .

[JeeWeeJ]

schalafi wrote...

What's really weird, I guess, is that I liked both games, played them many times, and didn't really get all bent out of shape at the flaws... and both games had flaws. Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever played a "perfect" game?

Pong! Great story about a ball and two bats... SUPERB multiplayer and replayability!
But no, there is no such thing as a "perfect" game. There are a lot of games which meet the expectations of the players though (and thus are at that moment near-perfect games, but expectations change each new generation of games), and that's where things went a bit wrong...ish for quite a few DA fans for various reasons.

[Pasquale1234]

bEVEsthda wrote...

Now, when you start to ask why people dislike DA2, things start to seem more complex and opinions may seem varied. I'm not so sure that things really are so complex as they may seem though. I think a great deal of that may just be because people react in different ways when they're asked to explain why. The whole thing may become even more convoluted when they're asked "to be constructive". (and it's further muddled, when one doesn't separate criticism from people who like DA2, from people who dislike DA2.)

For example, this is IMO often the background when people list flaws, and then DA-fans triumphantly claims the same flaws were present already in DA:O. Yes, but they liked DA:O, so those flaws didn't really annoy them then.

Good point.

I suspect it has a lot to do with how well a game meets a player's expectations and especially how they experience actually playing it.  I had way too much fun playing DAO to notice its flaws, even though they were there.  Even now, I'm not sure I would want to change it in any way - I just plain love it, warts and all.

After having left DA2 on the shelf for the last 7-8 months or so, I recently took it out for another spin - and even though I knew what to expect, I still find myself very frustrated at times.  More than anything else, it is because of its more cinematic, voiced protag nature - which requires a different playstyle from me.  The heavy use of cinematic sequences interjects a greater degree of developer control over the pacing of the game, and I'm still having trouble finding the motivation and characterization of a Hawke that won't be broken at some point by something she says/does without my input.  Because the game disappoints and frustrates me, I am much more aware of its every flaw.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Pasquale1234 wrote...

I'm still having trouble finding the motivation and characterization of a Hawke that won't be broken at some point by something she says/does without my input.

Or even whole quests in which your Hawke has no interest at all, but they're ineplicably (at the time) listed as main quests.

When I tried to play DA2 a second time, I adopted a playstyle I hoped would solve the problems you describe (I assumed that the specifics of Hawke's behaviour were simply embellishments or blatant lies told by Varric - I even turned around the serial killer plot so that Hawke was the killer), and while that worked to a degree, there were still so many quests in which I had no interest because they were not relevant to my character.

I didn't even finish Act I in my second attempt (my first attempt ended less than an hour into Act III).

[Pasquale1234]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

When I tried to play DA2 a second time, I adopted a playstyle I hoped would solve the problems you describe (I assumed that the specifics of Hawke's behaviour were simply embellishments or blatant lies told by Varric - I even turned around the serial killer plot so that Hawke was the killer), and while that worked to a degree, there were still so many quests in which I had no interest because they were not relevant to my character.

I didn't even finish Act I in my second attempt (my first attempt ended less than an hour into Act III).

Well, that's an idea I haven't tried... blame it all on Varric's storytelling.

I might give that a try - thanks.

I have been finding it difficult to continue playing - not only because Hawke is broken, but because so much of the game just seems like chores at this point (quests not relevant to my character).  From time to time, though, I am rewarded with the revelation of some new aspect of an NPC that I hadn't noticed before.  That may be the saving grace of this run - focusing interest on the NPCs instead of the protag.

[devSin]

I think the team's failing was not the direction they went but the car they chose to travel in.

I'm not sure DA2 as an overall game was a sufficient vehicle for the content and gameplay ideas that they wanted to convey in it. There is what feels like a collage of good elements, but it never seems to come together as a cohesive "experience".

So for me, it's easier to judge the game by its faults simply because there's so little holding everything together. It doesn't let itself be judged simply as one incredible game (even a game with many faults, like Origins); it presents a checklist of items to be judged separately, and the places that fail are clear failures, while the success is really isolated to only that specific content.

I think the game has some wonderful elements. But simply all thrown together into a box, those elements aren't sufficient to make a wonderful game.

Modifié par devSin, 07 mars 2012 - 04:05 .

[schalafi]

JeeWeeJ wrote...

schalafi wrote...

What's really weird, I guess, is that I liked both games, played them many times, and didn't really get all bent out of shape at the flaws... and both games had flaws. Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever played a "perfect" game?

Pong! Great story about a ball and two bats... SUPERB multiplayer and replayability!
But no, there is no such thing as a "perfect" game. There are a lot of games which meet the expectations of the players though (and thus are at that moment near-perfect games, but expectations change each new generation of games), and that's where things went a bit wrong...ish for quite a few DA fans for various reasons.

Burger Time was pretty good too, all about chasing down your lettuce, tomatoes, mayo,etc. But even that had flaws,
No hot peppers! 

Seriously, though, I am of a commonly held opinion that the real thing that made DA2 less than excellent, was it was rushed. Most games Bioware made took several years to complete, but DA2 had so many things left out, IMO, that it just wasn't cohesive, and important choices weren't left for us to decide.

[Killjoy Cutter]

CrustyBot wrote...

No. It is generally accepted however, that Dragon Age 2 is taking BioWare in an innovative direction and that those who dislike it are just people who can't handle change or technological progress.

Inside Bioware's echo chamber, sure. 

Out here in the real world, that line of thinking is recognized as what Bioware keeps telling themselves and EA in order to not cry at night. 

Modifié par Killjoy Cutter, 07 mars 2012 - 04:47 .

[Killjoy Cutter]

Das Tentakel wrote...

Not just that, but I am reminded of what Swen Vincke, of Larian Studios (Divine Divinity, Dragon Knight Saga) wrote about sales guys...

We actually did make it to several green-light committees of top 10 publishers, I even sat in on a few of them to present my games,  but we never managed to sign with any of them, so obviously something went wrong. Other than occasionally having to deal with idiots, the biggest common hurdle I found has always been the marketing department. I’ve learnt that in general these people don’t like RPGs. They just don’t get it.

In general marketeers want a simple USP (unique selling proposition) that differentiates your game from the competition. That’s not rocket science, but it’s obviously something that’s very hard to define in a game where it’s all about the whole being larger than the sum of the individual features. That a lot of these individual smaller features are different doesn’t matter to them, they want something big, preferably something not done before. They also want stunning visuals & animation, which is again very hard, if only for the freedom and wealth of options you need to offer players in a RPG. One of the consequences of that is that is that you can’t use a whole bunch of the tricks available to FPS developers, and obviously the RPG suffers in visual comparison.

The reason marketeers want a strong USP and plenty of visual polish is obviously that they think that that’s what’s required to make good sales, and unfortunately (or actually fortunately) their imaginations weren’t triggered by the visions I tried to communicate to them. I’ve tried everything I could think of that by telling them that in a good RPG it’s the detail and the heart that’s put in that counts, and that if they were to sign on, we’d have the budget to put the polish in there that they were looking for, but to no avail. I tried the sales angle, showing them figures for Bioware & Bethesda RPGs, arguing that with our unique take on the genre and the same budgets we could give them stellar sales, but it just didn’t work..

Anyone who doesn't know Swen's excellent blog, it's here:
www.lar.net/

That quote rings so true for what we see happening to Bioware through the course of DA2 and ME3. 

[Killjoy Cutter]

FedericoV wrote...

batlin wrote...

I mean, selling half as many copies in the first 10 weeks as DA:O is pretty telling. And half of those copies were bought in only the first week, likely due to fans of DA:O not knowing what they were getting. Yeah, there are those that prefer DA2 over DA:O but it's pretty obvious these people are in the minority.

Last I heard, Bioware is getting inspiration from Skyrim for DA3. Has there been any other news of what they'll do with it? Because taking pages out of Bethesda's book would definitely be a good thing for DA.

DA3 will be a more polished and organic version of DA2 imho: that's what we should reasonably expect. They cannot return to the DA:O model anymore because the brillant mind of the marketing department (authors of memorable lines like "awesome and button combined in DA2") do not consider it a viable commercial choice. That's because the DA:O's model is not easy to implement correctly on the consolle medium where most of the money is made in those day and age. Simply put, you cannot play Baldur's Gate with a controller and ISO view do not coexist well with the Twilight cinematic approach of late Bioware's games. Don't forget the ceiling. Such wonderfull ceilings in DA2 .

And yet console players don't understand why PC players often have negative impressions of the console medium. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

Pasquale1234 wrote...

I have been finding it difficult to continue playing - not only because Hawke is broken, but because so much of the game just seems like chores at this point (quests not relevant to my character).

That's ultimately the problem.  No matter what I do, the game isn't ever fun.  DA2 simply isn't a game I enjoy playing, and I don't want to play it anymore.

So I don't.  I've uninstalled it.

[Killjoy Cutter]

This was about ME3, but I think it applies here too:

http://social.biowar...34/blog/211602/

Modifié par Killjoy Cutter, 07 mars 2012 - 06:16 .

[ckriley]

I just completed a nightmare mode playthrough and it made me wonder if the developers actually played their game.

One of the worst gaming experiences of my life. And I always end up playing BW games on the hardest modes after a couple playthroughs. The combat mechanics were just atrocious. And what was up with the constant "explosions" that would one-shot me repeatedly. At first I thought it was friendly fire, but it happened even when I changed everyone's tactics and micromanaged them.

I'd be fighting and then POOF! Dead. 100-0 in a split second. I'd hear this exploding sound and I'd be dead. It happened ALL the time.

[Darth Death]

devSin wrote...

I think the team's failing was not the direction they went but the car they chose to travel in.

That's a very interesting way of putting it. Something to think about.

[JeeWeeJ]

Killjoy Cutter wrote...

This was about ME3, but I think it applies here too:

http://social.biowar...34/blog/211602/

Nice blog mate, totally agree with you!

[jbrand2002uk]

While DAO is fairly well put together looking at it objectively its nowhere near as good as it should have been considering it was 4yrs in development its playable but DA2 is just alot more fun to play. because in the case of DAO the story may be a good one even if it is very generic but alas the poor combat mechanics especially the very sedate pace of the combat really lets the side down for DAO.

I have found during my time on the forums that what one of the previous posters rings true DA2's flaws were all present and accounted for in DAO also but alas most fans remain blinded to them by there passion for the game resulting in a culture of "double standards" by criticizing the 2nd game for flaws while remaining blatently oblivious to those same faults that appear in the 1st game.

However its can be also said that fans of both games can be OTT when it comes to slinging mud at one another, hopefully this will stop because otherwise with the new BSN policy the forum will become a very silent place.

Just to clarify I do heartedly enjoy DAO its a enjoyable however I find DA2 to be more enjoyable on the whole

[JeeWeeJ]

jbrand2002uk wrote...

While DAO is fairly well put together looking at it objectively its nowhere near as good as it should have been considering it was 4yrs in development its playable but DA2 is just alot more fun to play. because in the case of DAO the story may be a good one even if it is very generic but alas the poor combat mechanics especially the very sedate pace of the combat really lets the side down for DAO.

I have found during my time on the forums that what one of the previous posters rings true DA2's flaws were all present and accounted for in DAO also but alas most fans remain blinded to them by there passion for the game resulting in a culture of "double standards" by criticizing the 2nd game for flaws while remaining blatently oblivious to those same faults that appear in the 1st game.

However its can be also said that fans of both games can be OTT when it comes to slinging mud at one another, hopefully this will stop because otherwise with the new BSN policy the forum will become a very silent place.

Just to clarify I do heartedly enjoy DAO its a enjoyable however I find DA2 to be more enjoyable on the whole

Well, I do not fully agree with the  "double standards" part. The thing is, for every flaw Origins had, it had something good that made up for it. Therefore the flaws could be (mostly) ignored. Does that make it a perfect game? Hell no! But the OVERALL experience was a lot better. Because if I speak for myself, for every flaw I saw in DA2, I could not find something that made up for it.

To take an example: you say that combat in Origins was boring. Sure, it was slower, but it had a much bigger tactical element to it and lets not forget those awesome finishing moves! In DA2 the combat was in my opinion over-the-top-fast with moves not misplaced in a cartoon with spawns and buttonbash-like action. I hated it. But even when I fought a dragon there was no satisfaction to be found in the way of a nice finisher or something. And that's what -at least for me- made the difference! And comparisons like this go for a lot of things between these two games.

Sure, the opinions differ per person who thinks what is good or not (between both games) but I dont think fans of Origins are really blinded to the flaws of that game.