20 réponses à ce sujet

[Kreidian]

Just to be clear, I completely love this game. It is far above and beyond nearly all other games out there. No I'm not just saying that. This is definitely at the top of the cream of the crop. So why list all the things I don't like about it? Practicality one could say, it's far easier to describe the few things I didn't like about this game then the massive number of things I did like about the game. Plus this may prove most helpful to the developers to see how they can further improve the game and bring out something even better next time around. Hence the title, rest assured in the scheme of the game as a whole these things just don't hold a candle to how wonderful this game it. 

So without further ado, here are some problems that I found which could use some improvement.

1) Combat difficulty curve is way too steep.

It seems like almost all combat tends to fall into two catagories. Easy enough, and completely impossible. There are a few moderate challenges here and there but after a while it feels like you will either have no problem winning the battle, or no hope thereof. Eventually you can defeat all of the combats, but all too often you find yourself in a combat situation where you have to do everything perfectly or you will fail every time. Part of it is due to the style of combat, it's far more tactical requiring much more careful planning. That can be fun up to a point, but after a while it gets annoying and frustrating. Setting up the individual tactics  for your companions only goes so far since inevitably they'll end up doing something stupid regardless. And too often I find myself basically running the entire combat paused, with only tiny breaks to allow the action to progress, just so I can make sure that all of my companions do exactly I want them to do. Anything less just means death. This isn't much fun as you can imagine. Tactics are interesting only up to a point, after that I'd rather just get into the action and enjoy the fight. That said this form of tactical combat is one of the strengths of the game, but I still thing it needs some tweeking. Smoothing out the difficulty curve by toning down the effect second to second tactical changes would be a huge help. In other words, letting the companions own AI and tactical settings behave smarter and more effectively on their own.

2) Underwear? Really?

No I'm not some pervert looking for a cheap thrill, and I understand completely why underwear was used like it was, especially in the love scenes. Even in an M rated game there's only so much you can show before people get way too trigger happy about it. Honestly though, that's just f-ing stupid. I don't really fault Bioware on this one, but rather consider it more of a failure of society as a whole. It's a game clearly designed for adults, if adults can't handle it they shouldn't be playing it, end of story. Crying about nudity just makes you look like a moron at best. 
Still the underwear in this game annoyed me. In the end it just got completely in the way of the scene, completely breaking the immersion and making it obvious that this was a game that wasn't allowed to show anything more. A bit of a disappointment that. Particularly since some of the characters can wear surprisingly skimpy clothing already. Hell you get to see more of Morrigan when she's not actually having sex. It looks like she's putting on more clothes to sleep with you.

3) It's not just Dark, it's Darkity Darque Dark filled with Black Darkness and wrapped with more Dark.

I get it, it's a Dark Fantasy. And it is, truly. I like that there is a gritty darkness about the whole storyline, with terrible things happening that you are forced to deal with, and terrible desicions that you are forced to make. I like the fact that it's an Adult game because it doesn't treat you like a child and shows you real situations with real consequences. However none of this means it has to be some damn dark all the damn time. At some point this game just goes overboard on the darkness. At some point you find yourself thinking "Enough already!" One playthrough it literally got to the point where it seemed every other woman I met got raped. It was hugely impactful the first few times, the 30th time was more like "Seriously? ANOTHER rape victim?"
( And on a side note it was kind of wierd meeting someone who had just been beaten and raped, yet looked completely normal with all their clothes still on, clean and untorn. Kinda felt like saying, "Um ....,  not to be insensitive or anything like that, but are you sure you know what rape means?" At any rate, this is more related to point #2 )
Now it's true that a game filled with nothing but candy and sunshine would get boring very quickly. However the same can be said of the exact opposite. A game filled with nothing but horror and darkness and no hope or happiness quickly becomes nothing more then a depressing waste of time. I get that the game was fashioned after the dark ages, where such things were commonplace, but again this is a game, reality ultimately needs to take a back seat to entertainment. Again, I certainly don't want something that's lacking in all of the great meaningful and morally ambiguous situations that you find throughout the game. That and beheading your enemies in a fountain of blood is always fun to watch. People play games to entertain themselves and feel good, often to escape some of the annoying and sometimes depressing state of the real world. If all they get in a game is more of that crap then there's not much point in playing the game is there?
Interestingly I find that this is a mistake that people make all too often when trying to write or create what they consider a "dark" storyline. They are so focused on making sure it's dark they forget to make it entertaining first, and instead go overboard on the darkness for fear that any joy in their story might completely ruin the dark elements they're going for. The trick to making a good dark storyline is one where despite all the darkness you are still happy in the end. And that means not going overboard on the dark elements. The key to remember is to make sure the added darkness actually adds to the story in a meaningful way. Make no mistake the Dragonage storyline is a masterpeice and very well done. It's a tough balance to make sometimes, yet overall I find that Dragonage could have done better if they had pulled back on the darkness just a bit.

A quick example of what I mean here. Sacrificing Isolde to save her son, using blood magic to save a life and the terrible sacrifice it requires, not to mention the consequences later on. That is a great use of darker elements in the story, and completely fitting for this Dark Fantasy. Then there's the other end of the spectrum. Speaking with the werewolves in the ruins, learning of the origins of their curse. The whole thing was already dark enough, then they talk about how they raped his daughter. That just really went too far for me, it completely took me out of the moment. It would have been just as effective to simply state that they killed his children. Ask any parent, having the children killed is more then enough to get the point across. Such terrible things might happen in real life, but for this game it just wasn't necessary. This was just going overboard on the darkness to the point that the scene ended up bordering absurdity rather then horror.

[sinosleep]

The God of War series has uncensored breasts, and that series seems to have done just fine in sales. I'm not expecting the ladies to be completely undressed when your switching armor out or whatever, but it really does take you out of it during a love scene when the characters are in their underwear.

[Fishy]

My big dissapointement was the *no option* for body when you create your character.Everyone's slim in dragon age and got a 6 pack and every woman got the same exact body .. unless they wear special equipement like morrigan (Her body shape completly change with that outfit)



Also i dislike and hate the pathing system for melee character in this game.It's unnacceptable to have such a system in 2009.That why range combat's often the best solution and another reason why mage are overpowered.



Also if they had to do such pathethic sex scene(The breast thing) .. don't show anything at all.Moriggan simply don't look like Morrigan lol when you have *sex* with her.

[Fishy]

I laughed when that girl said that commoner woman are raped by Knight in Orlais and that their privilege.Yet showing a pair of boob it's PERVERSION!

[kesayo2]

I agree with you on all counts.

I think the ability to queue up actions would have made things much better for me. I hate having to pause/unpause every second, it really breaks the immersion.

As far as underwear, yeah it looks kind of silly. I was actually kind of surprised with the lack of nudity given the M rating of the game.

The darkness didn't really bother me so much. But it would have been nice to have a few more light hearted scenes like in BG or NWN2.

[Brockololly]

I really don't care for nudity one way or the other- I think maybe why they didn't add it is because the character models seemed a little off- adding nudity to that may have been even more unintentionally hilarious than the sex scenes already were.



As far as nit picks I had, they would be the character models and faces in particular. Some of the animations were pretty stiff (running), the robes and cloth often looked glued onto the character ( I know a lot of games have this problem), some of the textures up close were rough, and I felt alot of the time the facial animations only involved simple frowns or eyebrow movement when the voice acting would make you think the NPC would be a bit more animated or nuanced.



The graphics were by no means bad (on PC) I just hope that in future sequels they keep refining the engine and can add in some more dynamic lighting and facial/ character models animations to keep the engine looking sharp ( not unlike Valve keeps tweaking the Source engine).

[marshalleck]

Kreidian wrote...

Interestingly I find that this is a mistake that people make all too often when trying to write or create what they consider a "dark" storyline. They are so focused on making sure it's dark they forget to make it entertaining first, and instead go overboard on the darkness for fear that any joy in their story might completely ruin the dark elements they're going for. The trick to making a good dark storyline is one where despite all the darkness you are still happy in the end.

Happy like "...and they lived happily ever after"?

That just sounds kinda...weak. If anything, I felt the game's darkness was half-hearted, at best. The so-called racial tensions were nothing more than "hey knife-ears!" most of the time, and rape victims? I can only think of...two. Not that I need more rape victims, really.

I dunno. I thought the mature themes were a bit underplayed, but better than past efforts from Bioware. I did really appreciate the ambiguity in most of the dialogue options. I also thought the novel The Road was a bit too unrealistically light-hearted, so maybe it's just my perspective that's ****ed up.

Modifié par marshalleck, 27 novembre 2009 - 05:15 .

[ComTrav]

I have to say, I almost certainly would've burst out laughing had I seen polygonal nekkid ******. Given the limitations of the graphics engine, it's better that everyone wears underwear.



I actually feel like the darkness didn't always live up to expectations because there's usually a "cheat" or third way out. Your example of killing Arlessa Isolde; it would be really dark if the option to go to the Circle Tower and do the ritual without killing anyone wasn't in the game. The elf section would be much darker if it was not possible to get Zathrian to (eventually) go willingly. There are a too few true someone-has-to-lose dilemmas in the game like the fate of Loghain or the Anvil of the Void.

[Boeresmurf]

the game is played around a major event which can lead to the doom of mankind ( that might explain the dark anture of it ) , but there are enough options and paths u can walk to enlight the world with freedom, passion, friendship, honor and bla di bla di bla paladin stuff.



i didnt got the feeling that the game was too dark.



i do hoped that the combat system was just 1 thing more like KOTOR. (being able to set up 5 actions would make stuff go so much easier) but the tactic system for partymembers is really great, if set up properly )



nudity and games..... neutral on that point. if u play a rpg for the nudity / or u got a dissapointed feeling towards the game because of the type/quality and/or ammount nudity. then ur playing the wrong kinda game

[Daedalus1773]

Agreed with everything the OP said. LOVED the game. Combat was either too easy or too unforgiving if you had the "wrong" party or hero build. Lack of nudity in an M game loaded with mature themes like child rape, etc? Really? I know, it's the country we live in.... And the darkness was overdone ... By the time I did the elven alienage (slavery + the haunted orphanage), I was completely innured. I realized this *should* have been creepy and/or disturbing, but ... meh, not really. I mostly just rolled my eyes a bit & pushed through it with a, "yeah yeah I get it..." running through my mind.  I was "disturbed-out" after the Mage tower, Orzammar & Redcliff.

The only other thing I'd really add is the finale assault on Denerim. I spent something like 85% of my gametime accumulating all these NPC armies so they could ... help me fight a handful of level 10 darkspawn? Whaa-?? Really? I mowed through them like an epic level D&D party would mow through a level 3 kobold dungeon. I didn't even come marginally close to ever needing any of the armies on the radial dial. That was a big letdown for me. I expected I would have some sort of meeting with the King/Queen and Eamon & perhaps a general from each faction to assign them basic battle plans, and that would go off & run itself while I looked for the archdemon, with consequences for my decisions affecting my search and/or the epilogue. Instead I learned that the entire Blight quest line to gather allies with the Treaties was entirely just busy-work to level me up to get to the archdemon. All I really needed to beat the Blight was a magic XP box in camp, a handful of guys to take some gates, and knowledge of the archdemons location. Meh, I found the fight through Denerim very anti-climactic. Now, the actual archdemon fight and its complete/consequences were EXTREMELY well done, I have no complaints there.

Modifié par Daedalus1773, 27 novembre 2009 - 06:29 .

[slackbheep]

I enjoyed the level of maturity that was written into the game especially as it's pretty rare especially in RPGs, as well as the strong themes of sacrifice and so on. The only thing that really seemed over empathized was racism against elves, as even in your (human noble) supposedly progressive house, the elven servants were still treated like verbal punching bags.

The underwear thing didn't bother me so much as amuse me, but it did seem out of place given the rest of the games content. I would have liked to have little more ability to fine tune tactics, but i can live with what we have.

[Kreidian]

I can think of two other rape victims in the game besides the city elf origin and the keeper's daughter. In fact the keeper's apprentice, if you listen to her story, clearly alludes to the abuse she took at the hands of bandits, which explains why said keeper so violently went to defend her. Also Leliana describes her troubles that caused her to leave Orlei. She was framed for treason and endured a "traitor's punishment" being abused by the Orleisian guard. While she doesn't specifically mention rape it is definitely hinted at, particularly when you consider the Orleisian shop owner in the Denerim Market that describes how she had to leave for Ferelden because a Cheviler took an interest in her, it's made quite clear that these knights are allowed to rape common women in that country.



I do think there's plenty of funny wonderful experiences in the game, that's one of the many things I love about this game. It doesn't change the way many of the darker elements were added to the game. Perhaps part of the problem is how some of these elements were used as opposed to just their existence. Many of these instances are just done with a heavy hand which makes them seem ill fitting at best.



One other point, regarding the final battle for Denerim. I think the idea to keep in mind is that the battle is not just you against the Archdemon, it's you against an entire blight. I think the level difference with all those darkspawn is made intentionally so you can get a sense of having truly grown and become more powerful during your adventures. Such that creatures that once were a serious concern are not nothing more the speed bumps to their master. But the thing to remember is that this is not all that there is of the darkspawn. In fact there is a massive horde all over the city and outside of it. A horde that even your character would not be able to stand up to, especially if they hope to defeat the archdemon as well. This is why you need to gather allies for your armies. They're the ones battling the mass of darkspawn keeping them from overwhelming you while you go off to kill their Archdemon.

[Daedalus1773]

Kreidian wrote...

One other point, regarding the final battle for Denerim. I think the idea to keep in mind is that the battle is not just you against the Archdemon, it's you against an entire blight. I think the level difference with all those darkspawn is made intentionally so you can get a sense of having truly grown and become more powerful during your adventures. Such that creatures that once were a serious concern are not nothing more the speed bumps to their master. But the thing to remember is that this is not all that there is of the darkspawn. In fact there is a massive horde all over the city and outside of it. A horde that even your character would not be able to stand up to, especially if they hope to defeat the archdemon as well. This is why you need to gather allies for your armies. They're the ones battling the mass of darkspawn keeping them from overwhelming you while you go off to kill their Archdemon.

I get all that, and you're right.  I just really didn't have the feel of it though.  Your "grand coalition" never really made an actual appearance.  Maybe there is a massive darkspawn army around the city, but ... you never have to go through it to get there.  Maybe your armies you gathered got you to the gates?  If so, I find that anticlimactic & a let-down.

Modifié par Daedalus1773, 27 novembre 2009 - 07:23 .

[John987654]

 By the time you get to the end game, all the Darkspawn are pathetic (not that they're ever that hard), most of them were going down with one hit.

 Alister is just annoying, and he kept dieing.

  No alignment system.  You could do what ever you wanted and the companions didn't care, NPCs showed no difference.  
 
 The post dragon battle (by far the best fight in the game dispite the camera) ending was weak, particularly all the hard to read text blobs.
 
 

[Daedalus1773]

John987654 wrote...
 By the time you get to the end game, all the Darkspawn are pathetic (not that they're ever that hard), most of them were going down with one hit. 

Pre-Landsmeet, all the Darkspawn you fight are 1-3 levels below you (15-19 for me).  Post-Landsmeet, all the white-difficulty darkspawn are instantly ... level 10?  What?  The yellow Lieutenants are harder, and the Orange Captains/Bosses take a few whacks to bring down, but still.... I know my guys are badass.  I didn't need a line of paper-mache' darkspawn who die in 1 hit to make me feel artificially badass right at the end.

Modifié par Daedalus1773, 27 novembre 2009 - 07:39 .

[fkirenicus]

I don't like being locked to a class - if my human noble suddenly finds out that she wants to study magic, she should be able to (perhaps as an apostate - we need a path for such mages in its own right, I think. Get rid of the completely useless Shapeshifter and bring in Apostate instead ).
I know - it collides with the concept of origins stories. But I guess I'm too used to (and fond of) the NWN system where one can create a truly unique path for each character.

Modifié par fkirenicus, 27 novembre 2009 - 08:50 .

[Riot Inducer]

John987654 wrote...
 No alignment system.  You could do what ever you wanted and the companions didn't care, NPCs showed no difference.  
 

*cough* umm I'm sorry but I find the approval system to be far superior to any previous alignment system; sacrificing innocents to gain a superior army doesn't cause horns to sprout from your forehead nor does saving children from a burning orphanage cause a glowing halo to hover over you. Instead those party members that disagree with your choices will let your know they don't like it up to the point that they will actually leave because they can't stand how you're doing things (hell in some situations they'll turn on you completely for what you're doing). 

But on my nit picks I really wished there was more varieties of armor and weapon styles. I also really wish there was a way to upgrade armor and ranged weapons, all lore states that at the very least armor should be able to be enchanted as well as weapons (including bows). 

[Endurium]

The Fade is too bright; what do spirits need with light? And isn't the central city black? I think the Fade would look and feel awesome if it were something akin to MotB's shadow plane. And get rid of that heat wave effect!

[dannythefool]

The fade is what you think it is. Since you can only play creatures that are accustomed to having light sources around, it's bright.

[Kreidian]

I think another valid nitpick I wanted to bring up. Overall it's not as significant enough to be in the main post but it's come up several times enough that I thought it should be mentioned.



Some of the canned animations just don't work properly all the time. Now by and large this is a valid and understandable development decision on the part of Bioware. There is ALOT to this game and if they didn't take advantage of shared assets in different areas then the game never would have come out, not for another few years at least. Some people still complain about these things, as is the case for the final bed scene with morrigan for the dark ritual. But for the most part it works and it's completely understandable, it's not big deal by and large.



However on occasion these canned sequences just fail to work with your own character, and cause a major break in the immersion. This is particularly obvious in cases where your character does something completely at odds with the character. Killing logaihn is the best example, particularly since it's so short a sequence that it should have been better thought out. The actual execution that takes place involves you using a very large sword to decapitate him. It's great if you're playing any sort of warrior, but it just looks wrong if you're playing a rogue, or even worse as a mage. For such a short sequence they should have at least considered making something that fit the different types of classes.