124 réponses à ce sujet

[Auraad]

BG series has a lot more surprises! You basically know who the evil guy is, but not much else. Everything else is revealed very slowly.



In DA:O everything is pretty much predictable - no real story twists (the brood mother gave me the creeps, but it was expectable and straight in line of the linear story). There are the 4 areas you have to "collect" (add to your army, if you like) and then the arch demon to kill. That's pretty much it.



The arch demon doesn't - for example - get a sister who you also face. And it does NOT turn out, that the hero is a god-spawn, so to speak.

Even though the story is quite deep, it's very short - the story - compared to the BG series - is like 5 seconds vs. 1 hour (felt). Of course, the BG series has got a huge advantage: a complete layed out universe, so the developers could work on the story and did not have to worry about the back ground ...



Also, Loghain was absolutely bland ... so, he betrayed the king and tries to become king himself, but really, you don't see much of him until the Landthing - and until then the desicion has been made up already: no mercy.

Comparing him to Irenicus and/or Sarevok is comparing mice to wales.

(I'm only speaking of the game - forget the novel, where Loghain probably was some sort of hero - they did NOT bring this across in the game! so comparison including the novel is invalid)



Also, the religions in DA:O ... there might have been 3, the only one I really remember was the makers. Fully fleshed out? Must be kidding ... praying to a dragon would have been a mini-sidequest in the BG series not even worth mentioning ...



Again, the big advantage of BG was, that they had a HUUUUGE fantasy universy behind them (the biggest one ever created, with all advantages and disadvantages) - compared to that, DA:O is ... not even mediocre. It feels tiny, really really tiny.

[Vormaerin]

So... BG gets points for the FR books, but Dragon Age doesn't get credit for its non game based source material? BG also gets to count that it spends 2 games + 1 expansion on the story and DA doesn't?



I don't know about you, but not having read all the spoilers and watched the trailers before hand, I thought there was quite a bit that was surprising to the plot. I also don't know what's so surprising about Jon having a sister. Lots of people do... about the only "surprise" for me in BG was the bhaalspawn form and the fact that Jon boy was an elf.



Maybe its just me, but I thought Jon was one of the weak points of BG. Another boring old wizard with delusions of godhood. Whee, aren't those a dime a dozen at walmart? Dealing with Jon was the boring part of the game for me. Chapter 3 with all the quests was the good part.

[Kabraxal]

And guessing from some hints in DA, the sequel or DLC will probably have quite a few significant twists dealing with the taint, the Blight, the Old Gods, or any of the stuff with Morrigan. So this "there aren't many big twists" will probably seem like an extremely dumb complaint.



Anyway... I like BGII, but it doesn't even come close to DA in terms of overall quality. I prefer the story, the characters, and the music of DA over BGII. And although a bit clunky at times, I actually prefer the console gameplay of DA over both DA PC and BGII. While I like having the mods and less glitches in the PC version of DA, I prefer the style of the console version so much more that I have barely touched the PC version.



In the end though, I was just glad that Bioware delivered such a wonderful game. Most of my "fears" for the true gem of Bioware have now been alleviated... can't wait two more months for ME2.

[Suron]

Boeresmurf wrote...

so OP says he hates the mmo idea of needing tank/healer/ lockpicker etc.

its not a pure mmo thing.....every rpg game has these class combinations... and if i recall right i never let my evil mage in bg2 walk in front, but minsc on other hand was never in the back.

or do u think that being in dungeon with 4 archers.. all small corners/ magical traps and a power hungry ogre is a smart idea.
balance party is no mmo stuff its just smart.

and u dont need a tank in here.. ya can always run in cicles with ur mage

lol it's a concept since the first days of freaking PnP RPGs..they suggest taking a "balanced" party...a healer...fighters..utility..

and it's something I've done in games since before I ever even TOUCHED an MMO....use warrior guy with most armor/shield to "pull" with my healer to keep him alive while others just beat them down

[hawat333]

SheffSteel wrote...

I think that when they said "spiritual successor" they did not mean "it's a sequel with a different name name" but more "I am the ghost of rolepaying games past... woooooo".

Well said.

[OzgunRonin]

Although I also think the game hasnt the same spirit with Baldur's Gate, I cant see a problem with it.



BG is a great game, as we can see we are still remembering and arguing if the new game is as good as it, but DA is also a great game which we will argue about it 10 years later...

[Vansen Elamber]

The thing is though you are not saving "the world" its just a small part of the world, Ferelden. One country in a much larger world, I know it feels like you are saving the world but you are only saving your own country.

Modifié par Vansen Elamber, 02 décembre 2009 - 02:17 .

[cutieyum]

DA: Origin is a different game than BG. And yes, BG was a superior game, the world felt organic and real. The environmental sounds in the Beggar's District, those voices yelling in the middle night, the place was scary at night. The large market place with specialized sellers, more than 3.Denerim is backwards and small compared to Athkathla. The random funny/violent scenes in the middle of the street, the burglar alarm that sounded when you sneaked into a place you were not supposed to be. The bad-ass random encounters triggered when you went into 'that house' you never explored before. Heck, even the NPC had better pathing and moved around more in the city. The night/day cycle and calendar-dependent events (and quests) made the D&D world of BG more real. Heck, the quests opportunities and battles around the city didn't wait or revolved around you. You want to save that slave (and the quest) that just passed you during the middle of the night, run to the slaver NPC leading the chain gang now. The amazing companion quests, you got 7 game days to save Jaheira; Nalia gets abducted after traveling with you for 14 game hours; Viconia changes alignment, after you ****** her off during the romance; did Minsc pick up a fight at the Tavern because someone slighted me? why is Anomen attacking Aerie? So many cool unexpected elements.



DA is fun, but it the world is not as 'alive'. And yes, Jon Irenicus was amazing.

[RunCDFirst]

I love when people complain that Dragon Age isn't as good as Baldur's Gate II. Or the Baldur's Gate Trilogy



You realize you're comparing the beginning of a franchise with a sequel/multiple games right? How about we compare DAO with BG? That's it. We can have DAO's excellent dialogue, companions and story and throw it up against endless Fed-Ex quests and a dime a dozen adventurers. Oh, and let us not forget the dungeons. Do you want to explore the mines, the forest, the mines, the basement, the wilderness, another basement or the caves?



In my humble opinion, Dragon Age is more alive than Baldur's Gate. And it's more fun. And it's more interesting. And it's villain is better conceived then generic evil 'I want the power of a god!' baddie with spiky armour.



Now, if Dragon Age has a sequel or even a third installment, then we can compare the finished product to the Baldur's Gate Trilogy.

[Niten Ryu]

Allattar1 wrote...

It would be interesting to allow someone to be chaotic stupid.
Then about the point you do go stupid, the game comes down on you with the proverbial ton of bricks.

"Haha I killed that peasant for looking in my direction, and to loot his shirt off his back."
"Woops there goes the Templar guard at the chantry, wheee bye bye revered mother lololol...
Only to find waiting for you 20+ templars, half the village that where waiting for you, and a cutscene of your pc's body as it jerks its last moments on the gallows.

That's actually very close how it goes in Baldur's Gate 2. You use magic like madman and Cowled Wizards try to stop you. They send even more powerful teams to kill you but in the end you'll kill some of their leaders (Irenicus kills deals with their most powerful leader unfortunately). After your reputation is low enough, you'll meet guards who try to kill you. They try and try but can't seem to be able to kill you. I think in last run I killed 29 guard groups. I was sure that there would be named guard group but unless it's only happens after 30+ group (or randomly), I didn't meet 'em. I did kill some named Knights, but i think they spawned for some other reason. Probably because I killed everyone in Knights hq (including my own companion, old paladin).

Both Baldur's Gates are great games for Chaotoc Stupid™ runs. I like sequel the better as in Baldur's Gate there's these annoying "summon guard" zones. Makes melee hazardous to use as there's no limit how many guard groups can spawn from single zone. In few secs (if you happens to fight in on top of the zone), you can spawn damn many groups. Not that they can kill you but it takes a lotta time to clean 'em up

In Dragon Age encounter against 20 templars would be fun.

[Alphram]

Allattar1 wrote...

It would be interesting to allow someone to be chaotic stupid.
Then about the point you do go stupid, the game comes down on you with the proverbial ton of bricks.

"Haha I killed that peasant for looking in my direction, and to loot his shirt off his back."
"Woops there goes the Templar guard at the chantry, wheee bye bye revered mother lololol...
Only to find waiting for you 20+ templars, half the village that where waiting for you, and a cutscene of your pc's body as it jerks its last moments on the gallows.

In a nod to yes, you can be an ass, but you will lose, and lose heavily if you do.

Isn't this basically what Loghain does?  Yet with the right choices you can not only recruit him, but make him the hero of the hour.  So he gets to do what you cannot?

Granted it would be hard to try to force someone who's playing "chaotic stupid" to do the right thing.  "I just cleared out a tower full of abominations, slayed a high dragon, wiped out a major criminal organization, destroyed a lair of werewolves, and your going to try to arrest me with your pitiful band of Templars?! Hah!"  Maybe they just need to bring back geases. 

BG did have the advantage of having the world and the lore already created for them, and I never thought the lore was all that great to begin with, I found it rather simplistic.  The lore they created for this, and there is a staggering amout, I think is amazing (I'm a sucker for lore).  It's deep, complex, and subtle at the same time, just look at the threads debating what the lore "really" means hehe.

I found the game incredibly engaging, and the characters fully fleshed out.  Yeah, some more inter-party friction and consequences might be nice, but that may be due to the small number of them.  Alistair is your only real tank (unless you get the DLC), and you're forced to keep him, would suck if friction between him and Morrigan reached a point that Morrigan would leave or something.  It's already possible to lose a number of character depending on your choices, having NPCs forcing others to leave could leave your camp pretty bare indeed hehe.

[smelph]

re: OP point number 6



I am currently playing mage/mage/mage/rogue and am enjoying it immensely. I do have a save where i have been sticking to the tank/dps/dps/healz MMO convention, but it was not quite as interesting tactically as what I'm playign now.

[FedericoV]

For me the BG series was superior for the aspect of tactical combat (maybe because there wasn't monster scaling if I remember correctly and the bestiary of D&D was richer... so every battle feels different and asks for different sinergy of powers while in DA:O the differences are more a question of aggro and positioning). It was even superior in terms of exploration. Sometimes DA:O's area feels very small, especially the elven alienage and dusk town (they're supposed to be claustrophobic but not small ).

For the rest, I think that DA:O is better under any other aspect (yes even calss balance even if the warrior need some kind of improvemente while mages and rogue are good as they are). I think that if the devs listen to the fans and make some correction here and there in the talent system, if they develop a richer bestiary and focus more on the variety of enemies and battles, if they scale the game a little less they will surpass BG II with the next DA's game.

Having said that: am I the only one that thinks that BGII was too long and that it could have been shorter? I prefer the lenght of BG I and DA:O

Modifié par FedericoV, 02 décembre 2009 - 05:14 .

[Malkut]

Auraad wrote...

Even though the story is quite deep, it's very short - the story - compared to the BG series - is like 5 seconds vs. 1 hour (felt).

You realize that BG1 had practically no character dialog beyond what was written on those notes you plucked off dead bosses, and TOB was basically a dungeon and boss fight gauntlet.

Also, Loghain was absolutely bland ...

So was Irenicus, really.  The VO actor just knocked it out of the park.

Also, the religions in DA:O ... there might have been 3, the only one I really remember was the makers.

The Dalish and Dwarven religions are a thousand times more facinating than any system of beliefs anywhere in the FR.

Again, the big advantage of BG was, that they had a HUUUUGE fantasy
universy behind them (the biggest one ever created, with all advantages
and disadvantages) - compared to that, DA:O is ... not even mediocre.
It feels tiny, really really tiny.

Thanks to the codex, there is tons more material about the setting in this game, than there was about the FR in BG.

[ChickenDownUnder]

I'm a bit on the fence with this.



For fair's sake if you compare Baldur's Gate I to Dragon Age, then Dragon Age is definitely superior in several ways... but it also falls short in others. While yes, there is more character interaction in Dragon Age, the characters themselves weren't as interesting as in Baldur's Gate. Nor is there was much character variety in DA. While I prefer the BGI method of banters, where the party characters once in awhile talk to each other, and don't leave it up to you to initiate everything, Dragon Age adopting the NWN2 method is something I can deal with.



The plot of Baldur's Gate was set up to make a player feel personally invested in stopping your half-brother, avenging Gorion, finding out who you are, and so on. Any personal investment for your character is pretty much treated as an after thought in DA. The origin stories are great and all, but after that first part of the game any uniqueness about your character's background disappears until the very end of the game. Helps that I tend to prefer personal quest type RPGs over the Stop Random Ancient Evil #345235423 in Land #67358736 as well, but there you go.



Plotwise, there isn't anything new about Dragon Age, even down to the Broodmother being a lot like the fat spider breeding lady in Baldur's Gate I, while at the time BG was something new.



I suppose what I am trying to say that while Dragon Age is a good game, and may indeed be a spiritual successer of BG, it's more like the stepsister that keeps stealing your clothes. Not unique, just placed on another body.

[Galad22]

RunCDFirst wrote...

I love when people complain that Dragon Age isn't as good as Baldur's Gate II. Or the Baldur's Gate Trilogy

You realize you're comparing the beginning of a franchise with a sequel/multiple games right? How about we compare DAO with BG? That's it. We can have DAO's excellent dialogue, companions and story and throw it up against endless Fed-Ex quests and a dime a dozen adventurers. Oh, and let us not forget the dungeons. Do you want to explore the mines, the forest, the mines, the basement, the wilderness, another basement or the caves?

In my humble opinion, Dragon Age is more alive than Baldur's Gate. And it's more fun. And it's more interesting. And it's villain is better conceived then generic evil 'I want the power of a god!' baddie with spiky armour.

Now, if Dragon Age has a sequel or even a third installment, then we can compare the finished product to the Baldur's Gate Trilogy.

Dragon age has been done much later than BG was, Bioware should know from the past how to make better game.

And how is DA:s villains better exactly? Loghain is a moron and he wants to be king and archdemon just wants to destroy the world, archdemon has an actual name who here can say they remember it? I remember that it started with A, I think.

Dragon age isn't bad game by all means I had fun, but it was just so much worse than bg was and they shouldn't have talked that this was some kind of spiritual successor to bg, boiware also advertised this game wrongly.

What annoys me most is that bg has bigger sidequest than some of this game army gathering quests and that is real shame, there really isn't any places to explore outside the main quests.

[Krigwin]

Malkut wrote...

Loghain is exactly the same as Irenicus: a bombastic, hammy speech delivering psychotic twit obsessed with revenge.  Written by the same person, even.  Only difference: the voice actor doesn't give us naughty dreams.

*wistful sigh*

Oh please. Like I said, you do not even get the full impact of Loghain if you have not read the book. Many people just think he's crazy. And it's not so much as how well-written or original the characters are, but how they are represented and built-up in game. No one did this better than Irenicus. By the time you were finally fighting him you were glad to get your ass kicked by him, he was that good.

See, this is where I think your major malfunction is.  This stuff?  Does NOT belong in a video game.  It belongs in a book detailing a PNP setting.  That's why it appeared in BG; because someone else had already written it.

No game company is ever going to set down and create a setting with as much meaingless crap as the Forgotten Realms, because they aren't trying to sell a new $30 book filled with worthless minute every three months.

Maybe we'll learn more, once they release the Dragon Age PNP game, and start milking it like the filthy cash cow that it shall no doubt be.

You're so right. You know what else doesn't belong in a video game? Cinematics. I mean, I'm trying to play a game here, not watch a movie. And other forms of reading are too much too, maybe we should eliminate all dialogue and just get straight to the point, your quest logs get updated as soon as you target quest NPCs. And voice acting, I mean it's nice, but it sure costs a lot, it might be too much to ask for game companies to set down and pay that much money to hire all these actors. And the Codex. I mean, what is up with that? I don't need these tomes of bore in my video games.

All of this stuff? Belongs in books and other things, not a video game. All WRPGs should just be one long dungeon grind. You're totally right, what was I thinking.

To a far, far lesser extent, yes.  There is still room for improvement.  Still, no Goodberries.  A step in the right direction, that is.

This is like saying checkers is a better game than chess because there are less pieces involved. DA:O is much more simplified and accessible, that doesn't necessarily mean it's more polished. The number of flaws in the class and talent system have gone down, but that's only because the class and talent systems themselves have gone down. It still have flaws, and in order to make this more simplified and accessible system, we've lost the player choice and intricacy of BG2. Too high of a price to pay, in my opinion.

Six player party limit says what?

Four player party limit? Also, way to miss my points.

. . . yeah, and they still do?

Uh, no they don't? A two-handed warrior can use a sword just as well as a mace and gets the same abilities (and somehow stuns enemies when using the sword too, that's pretty interesting), and a rogue is apparently a master of every weapon from axe to sword to mace and can backstab with them apparently, even though the longswords are like, two-handed weapon length in this game. There might as well only be two types of armor in the game: light and massive, there's no point for any of the other armor types, especially as for some insane reason rogues can wear massive armor.

Poisons, traps, grenades . . . .

Poisons are not quick-use items. Traps are, but how many people actually use traps? Grenades I'll give you.

But what I meant by quick-use items was all the fun stuff in BG2, golem manual, summoning figurines, bard instruments, etc.

As opposed to bag of holding?

As opposed to using the console to give yourself infinite inventory space? I mean, if we're going to cheat here let's go all the way.

There actually is an item progression.

Alistair in my games goes straight from Oathkeeper to Keening Blade, and straight from Heavy Chainmail to Wade's Superior Dragonbone Armor. Zevran goes straight from Warden's Longsword or something similar to Veshialle. When you start factoring in DLC, then you can just get Starfang, Helm of Honnleath, Warden's Commander Armor, and other endgame quality items as soon as you leave Lothering!

I'm glad though that all you did was make a blanket statement without any actual ingame evidence to back up your point, that sure showed me.

Yeah, FR's religious system is way more original than any of the three fully fleshed out religions in this game.

"Shar is evil and dark, because she is dark and evil and wants to destroy the world.  Her followers believe in being mean. She is also Ed Greenwood's Mary Sue, just like all the other gods, and the Seven Sisters, and Elminster, and that faux-Galadriel chick that runs Silverymoon.  You know, the one Greenwood plays at cons, and uses to get other plays to have live, in-person phone sex with him across the table.  That one.  Turns out, she's kind of a skank."

Forgotten Realms has a lot of subplots and irrelevant characters stacked on top of each other, but it really only has one overarching plot that ties into the entire setting: the gods are either stupid or inept or evil, and because of that, the world is going to explode, and it's up to you to save it.

Hence, Baldur's Gate.

Ah, I'm starting to see what your problem is. You hate D&D and the FR and apparently somehow that makes BG2 a bad game, or at least worse than DA:O, which is not D&D and set in the FR and therefore better by default.

Well, if you're going to be like that, as well as ignore my points and nitpick miniscule parts of the game like bags of holding, then there really is no point for anyone to talk to you. At this point all you're doing is sniping, seemingly unable to comprehend why anyone could possibly have enjoyed BG2 more. I know this might sound really strange to you, but some of us liked the depth of detail and lore in the BG games and the organic feel they provided for the games.

Honestly it just seems like too many gamers are jaded over the D&D system and the overused FR setting, and eager for any new game to come along that's original. DA:O is new, and therefore everyone is blown away and it doesn't matter how bland and generic the lore is, it's original! I'm telling ya, once the glamour fades you'll realize DA:O isn't nearly as polished as it first appears. All of the flaws in the Infinity Engine games are still present in DA:O, and they've cut away almost everything from DA:O that made BG2 such a great game to begin with - the dynamic parties, the myriad of sidequests, the colossal amount of stuff, the depth of the classes and character system, etc.

Now, all of these things might return in full force in DA2. Maybe DA:O is really just another BG. I don't know, but I'm certainly up for being surprised. That's why the two shouldn't be compared.

[RunCDFirst]

Galad22 wrote...
Dragon age has been done much later than BG was, Bioware should know from the past how to make better game.

And how is DA:s villains better exactly? Loghain is a moron and he wants to be king and archdemon just wants to destroy the world, archdemon has an actual name who here can say they remember it? I remember that it started with A, I think.

Dragon age isn't bad game by all means I had fun, but it was just so much worse than bg was and they shouldn't have talked that this was some kind of spiritual successor to bg, boiware also advertised this game wrongly.

What annoys me most is that bg has bigger sidequest than some of this game army gathering quests and that is real shame, there really isn't any places to explore outside the main quests.

I think some people are still wearing their rose tinted glasses.

Sarevok was nothing but your standard Grade A cliched villain in Baldur's Gate. He got more depth as the series went on, but he was a one trick pony in the initial game. Also, his plans made about as much sense as Loghain's. Loghain, on the other hand, is a much more developed character. There really is no comparison between BG1 Sarevok and Loghain.

And... honestly, Dragon Age is a spiritual successor. It has many shared elements. Spiritual successor does not imply copy or direct sequel. Obviously it's going to be different than the original. Unless you think long sidequests is the 'soul' of Baldur's Gate, I don't know how one can argue Dragon Age is anything else.

[Malkut]

Krigwin wrote...

All WRPGs should just be one long dungeon grind. You're totally right, what was I thinking.

Why are you beating up that strawman?  What did it ever do to you?

Have you ever heard of Skülljagger?  Probably not.  Rare, obscure little game.  Came out in the mid-90's.  It was an action game with an 80-page manual that built up the entire world that the game took place in . . . which you never got to see, because it was still a subpar 2d-platformer.

Worldbuilding should not be the #1 priority of the developers.  Do you know what world building is?  It's the stage dressing for a play.  It's scenery.  It exists to set the scene.  That's all.  Other than that, it's not important to the action, or the plot, or the characterization.

FR has been building this stuff for 30 years.  You can't reasonably ask any origianl IP to compete with it.

The number of flaws in the class and talent system have gone down, but that's only because the class and talent systems themselves have gone down.

Except really, it hasn't.  Most of the stuff that was cut was redundant.  There was really only ever one way to melee; why have four classes for it with minor variations?

What Dragon Age did was create one class, and then let you pick which set of variations you wanted.  There isn't a thing about any of those four fighting classes that you miss so much that can't be precicely replicated in this system as a warrior specialization.

Spells are even worse, as the great majority of them were almost completely pointless.  There are more spells I would actually use on a regular basis in Dragon Age, than there ever were in BG2.

Is it still a bit sparse?  Yeah.  It's the first one.  BG1 didn't exactly have a huge breadth of useful abilities, either.  Kits and such were added in BG2.

Uh, no they don't?

Yes, there are.  Items have stat requirements, and do damage based on different things.  An archer built for crossbows won't do as much damage with a longbow.  Aside from that, many of your best combat talents are dependent on what you have equipped.  A guy who used two daggers for the whole game can't just pick up a greatsword and be as good as a guy with greatsword talents.

The 2.0e method of just not allowing certain classes to use certain weapons under any circumstances was silly.  Why exactly should a cleric's hands fall off if he tries to pick up a longsword?  That's why 3.0 edition did away with it via weapon feats.

Alistair in my games goes straight from Oathkeeper to Keening Blade, and straight from Heavy Chainmail to Wade's Superior Dragonbone Armor.

So?  I wore the same Ring of Wizardry throughout BG1.  I usually just went and got Celestial Fury and used that for most of the game in BG2.  This is what happens when you already know where the good items are.  Short of making the game dreadfully linear, I don't see what you can do about it.

You hate D&D and the FR and apparently somehow that makes BG2 a bad game, or at least worse than DA:O, which is not D&D and set in the FR and therefore better by default.

Actually, I like D&D well enough, and the FR is a ridiculous, paper-thin contrivance full of Mary Sue characters and ludicrous metagame concepts.  So, that makes the setting of Dragon Age better, in my opinion, than the setting of Baldur's Gate. 

Which is inordinately important to you, since you're the one who brought the setting up in the first place.

I know this might sound really strange to you, but some of us liked the depth of detail and lore in the BG games and the organic feel they provided for the games.

Again, there is more lore actually present in this game via the codex than there ever was in BG1.

Modifié par Malkut, 02 décembre 2009 - 10:03 .

[Bibdy]

Wissenschaft wrote...

No, because it would cost to much to make a game with as much content as BG. Thats why a game so big will never be made again.

Truer words were never spoken. Too many people in here pining for the good old days of 'retarded amounts of content'. Little do they recall how bad the graphics were and that one guy could pump out a whole new boss bad guy model, completely with scripting, balancing and dialogue in a day. Now it takes entire teams of people weeks to produce the same amount of content to keep your average video game player occupied for the same amount of time, not to mention that the more complex everything gets, the more bugs there are and the more manpower is spent stopping what they're currently working on to go fix them, only to be interrupted again and again by new bugs that crop up.

A game of the scale of BG2 just isn't going to happen in this day and age. At least not produced by a western developer...Asian development companies, paying their employees an even lower salary than what Western developers live with, with more manpower at their disposal than the Egyptian Pyramid architects, could probably pull it off.

The larger they made DA:O, the more risky the project would have been. What if DA:O had twice as much content, but took another say, 3 years to make? Would you have bought it? It would be pretty outdated by then. Would they have made a much larger number of sales, purely because of extra content over what they would sell today to make up for the extra 3 years they spent paying their development staff to add more content to the game?

Games are becoming exponentially more expensive to make, and exponentially HARDER to make, all because technology keeps advancing and it requires more resources to make use of it, and keep developing something compelling and original that people actually WANT to purchase, and within a time frame that the technology hasn't become utterly obsolete.

[Krigwin]

Malkut wrote...

Why are you beating up that strawman?  What did it ever do to you?

My point is, it's not up to you or I to decide what apparently "belongs" in a game. I miss those things, and instead of saying "yeah, you're right, DA:O doesn't really have that" you're saying "it's okay for DA:O to not have those because they don't belong in a video game". Do you see the fallacy there?

Except really, it hasn't.  Most of the stuff that was cut was redundant.  There was really only ever one way to melee; why have four classes for it with minor variations?

You know what else is redundant? Weapons. There's really only one way to whack things with pointy objects, why have all these different weapons with different stats like "armor penetration", whatever the hell that is.

Simplification to the point of oversimplification is not good for a game. You argue that making the game more streamlined and accessible reduces the number and impact of its flaws. I am arguing that making the game more streamlined and accessible also reduces the intricacy and player choice that many players, such as I, happened to enjoy.

What Dragon Age did was create one class, and then let you pick which set of variations you wanted.  There isn't a thing about any of those four fighting classes that you miss so much that can't be precicely replicated in this system as a warrior specialization.

This is just so totally wrong I don't know where to begin. Let's start with berserkers for instance, DA:O's berserkers get a flat stat boost and an execution ability. The BG2 berserkers had that same stat boost but also immunities and more health. Then there's barbarians! And let's not even get started on things like paladins, monks, kensais, etc.

The depth of the D&D class system is unparalleled. You are arguing hypotheticals at this point. Could they be precisely replicated? Possibly. Have they been precisely replicated? No, they have not. Let's wait until they do before we start drawing comparisons.

Spells are even worse, as the great majority of them were almost completely pointless.  There are more spells I would actually use on a regular basis in Dragon Age, than there ever were in BG2.

Really? This is a pure playstyle thing so I can't presume to judge your spell selection, but force fielding a tank and then casting Storm of the Century, man that's a whole lot of fancy spellwork there!

Yes, there are.  Items have stat requirements, and do damage based on different things.  An archer built for crossbows won't do as much damage with a longbow.  Aside from that, many of your best combat talents are dependent on what you have equipped.  A guy who used two daggers for the whole game can't just pick up a greatsword and be as good as a guy with greatsword talents.

You missed the point yet again. I was referring to weapon types, not weapon styles. As in, this warrior is a grandmaster in swords and doesn't do that well with a mace. It adds depth to a game. Pointless depth, as I'm sure you're going to argue.

Actually, I like D&D well enough, and the FR is a ridiculous, paper-thin contrivance full of Mary Sue characters and ludicrous metagame concepts.  So, that makes the setting of Dragon Age better, in my opinion, than the setting of Baldur's Gate. 

And I disagree. Just because X setting is bad doesn't make Y setting better, and I find the Thedas setting pretty boring, albeit with plenty of potential. It's not that important to me actually, I'm more of an ingame plot kind of guy.

Which is inordinately important to you, since you're the one who brought the setting up in the first place.

No I didn't. You did.

Right here:
"Set in the nonsensical framework of the Forgotten Realms: AKA the worst setting of all."

Apparently the person that the setting is important to is you. I don't really care about the setting at all as long as they put the work into it, I was just explaining how Thedas, while original and certainly not overused, isn't necessarily better than the FR.

Again, there is more lore actually present in this game via the codex than there ever was in BG1.

Short of actually going through the entire Codex and making a side-by-side comparison, I'm not sure how you expect anyone to argue with such a statement... especially as you've already admitted the lost of things like class and faction lore.

But again, there's no point in arguing with someone as biased and jaded as you, especially as you once again simply ignore the majority of my points and the nitpick the most inconsequential things possible. If all you're going to do is ramble on about how terrible the FR are and then ignore all of my posts explaining in detail the myriad of ways DA:O has been grossly oversimplified and thus lost many key WRPG features (in my opinion, anyways) and why it would be unfair to draw the comparison between the two, at least for the time being, then ramble on against someone else.

[Ormguard]

Having played BG, BG2, NWN, NWN2, Mass Effect (And both KOTOR games) and DA:O. I think DA:O is a natural progression of game development, I does have a few funny BG moments that made me smile while playing. I never felt it was a "spiritual successor" of BG much. My memories of BG are of several of us sitting around playing BG with our PC's daisy chained up with TCP cables, great fun. As soon as they made DA:O single player only it became more like KOTOR 1/2 to me, which is fine, I love these games and DA:O was just awesome to play through, but really not a BG by any means.

[Fadook]

Having said that: am I the only one that thinks that BGII was too long and that it could have been shorter? I prefer the lenght of BG I and DA:O

You're not the only one. You're in a minority who'll say that BG2 went past the point where it should have ended and really dragged.

I personally found the combat in DA:O quite tactical and challenging when my party was in the lower levels. Unfortunately, you gain access to such powerful abilities as you level up that the difficulty drops dramatically. That said, people seem to forget that a lot of the difficulty in BG2 was just damn cheap. Loads of monsters with insta-kill abilities, others who could instantly remove a party member from your party, this stuff was silly. Kagnaxx was one of the worst offenders; you needed to use equally cheap tactics to beat him. As far as tactical combat goes, Icewind Dale 2 remains the king imho, constantly facing you with tough, but not cheap, fights. DnD is not a holy grail - the 3.5 rules were massively exploitable, enabling the creation of godlike characters.

I think DA:O has the potential to offer really fun, challenging combat throughout the game with just a few tweaks. There's been plenty of discussion about how overpowered particular mage spells are; we all know which ones need to be toned down. The good thing about DA being BW's own intellectual property is that they can freely change things without needed sign-off from anyone else. And even if they don't, there's always the community.

[Ulysseslotro]

lorderon99999 wrote...
1- Story:
Let look at the story of DA:O: Save the World....Mmmmm where did I see that? You have that typical bad guy in black armor and the good guy with blond hair and shiny armor (the king)...Mmmmmm where did I see that? Do I get personnaly involved in there story? No.... Do I feel like that typical 'Only Hope of humanity guy' once again? Yes...

Games are like movies, not everyone is going to like the story.  What we do know is that your in the minority.  Most like the fairy tale stories.  Most fantasies are based around Knights in Shining Armor whom go off to save the Princess from Dragons in a Tower.  Your character is the the Knight and he goes to save the Land (Princess) from the Dragon (Archdemon).  So it is a slightly different story, it is the same though.

If your looking for dark fantasies, zombie fests of gothic galore, you have come to the wrong Fantasy place.  I think your category is Zombie, Vampires or Ghouls.  Look for titles with those names in it. 

As for the BG Saga....Personnel goal? Yes...and for me that makes it very interesting and involving (Think Planescape Torment)....are you the center of the universe in game (excluding TOB)....No...because absolutely no one knows you and you are just trying to understand who you are and who are you'Re ennemies...no story elements are thrown at you....you ahve to discover evrything...you start as an unknown dude and you are thrown in a big world full of excitement and lore (yah DA:O had that 2 but still...)

Ok so you just said DA:O has the immersion you were looking for?  Yeah and you are still complaining

2- Sense of progression:
In DA:O you start the game not very strong and at the end you finish up killing archdemons and dragons....What a great sense of progression....

In BG you start not even able to beat up a wolf (at the end of BG1 a pack of dire wolf could still be hard) and only at the end of BGII could you even think of fighting a Dragon and relloading 30x times....What I mean here is that you feel that the progress to power is really really long and that you deserve to be strong...

Ok so have you played Nightmare?  Have you downloaded the Nightmare +++ mods that make that even more difficult?  Grabbed the Archer buffs too.  Now, you wont  have difficulty  to complain about.

1- I can't kill anything I want...and for me that is taking the RPG backwards...What if I want to be a psycho with and be wanted in all towns? Nope not in DA:O Npc are protected by a stupide 'I have a quest to give you so i cannot die' or 'plot immunity'...I loved being an inquisitor and doing evil detection on people to know if they were evil and know who i can trust or not and then take them down because they are evil....I miss  that element really bad...

In BG you could be evil.  In Dragon Age you can't be evil.  You are a Grey Warden, an elite order of Knights sent to keep your homeland free from constant invasion of the evil Darkspawn.  What you want to do is break the roleplaying of a Knight of this elite order and make him do something that is uncharacteristic. 

If you were thrown in the movie A Knight's Tale, would you 1.  Go kill an innocent peason of the street? or 2.  Go Joust in the Arena to try and win the lovely maidens heart? 

Serously, if your not playing for Chivalry your in the wrong fantasy.  There wasn't as much Authorianism in BG as there is in Dragon Age: Origins.  So if your not into Aurhoian legend, Charlemagne, Chivalry and Courtly Love then what are you doing here?

2- Death element: I loved the fact that in BG you'Re caracter could be wiped out by a death spell or a hard melee hit...it added a fear element...always playing with our emotions....in DA:O youR'e dudes can fall as many times as they want and just come back up and you use one of the multiples first aid kit.......super funnnn...

Just cast Revive on anyone fallen and pretend it is Resurrection?

3- Living element: In BG: the cities and the wold felt alive (I don'T know if it the number of NPC walking around...the sounds or the music but the element was there....I was feeling like a nobody in a huge living world)....In DA:O I fell no life...I only feel that the only person living in the owlrd are the people that are in relation with the story, merchants...and that its....

If they added 100 NPCs that did nothing but double the PC requirements to use the game they would make less money.  I'm ok with less fluff, that can be added with mods.  At anyrate I stole from like 30 or more useless NPCs in Lothering.  Is that enough useless NPCs in one town?

4- Level scalling: Even if it WAY better than Oblivion Fallout 3 and more THEY STILL WANT TO KEEP IT...WHy? why is level scalling to freaking important in games today? Plz someone anwser this....

Seriously, when I play games I like to have opponents that are moderately challenging instead of pushovers.  Scalling helps boost the challenge that is all it does.  Weren't you just complaining about lack of difficulty earlier?

5- Characters: Jon Irenicus...that it

Loghain reminds me of Maligant or Mordred more so than Jon Irenicus who reminds me of Hellraiser.  Anything more Authorian is a big plus in my book.

6- Party of 4: THis buzz me a lot....you are stuck (if playing on harder diff) to use a mage, healer, tank....I hate this whole MMO formula....

You can break the party limit with console cheats.  You can have pets.  You can have more than 4 on your team.  I run with 1 Undead +  Wolf + the others.  That is 6 controllable members. 

7- Factions: Why the hell to the guards don't help me when I am chades by Darkspawn...or why do thief and darkspawn don'T attack each other but only me? Welll I guess only games 10 years old could do that

 

I use waking nightmare so they attack each other all the time.

[Malkut]

Krigwin wrote...

Simplification to the point of oversimplification is not good for a game. You argue that making the game more streamlined and accessible reduces the number and impact of its flaws. I am arguing that making the game more streamlined and accessible also reduces the intricacy and player choice that many players, such as I, happened to enjoy.

I'm not arguing for simplicty for simplicty's sake.  I'm arguing against meaningless overcomplication for "complexity's" sake.

Weapon styles?  Just flat bonuses.  Replaced with actual combat styles with actual active abilities that actually do things to make melee more fun in DA.

Weapon selection?  You're going to be taking katanas, longswords, or 2h swords (maybe axes), because those are the only ones that actually matter and because those are the types best represented in the loot found in the game.  Truncated for space in DA.

A thousand separate classes and kits?  Most of them are near identical to each other; now they're specializations.

A huge spell list?  Enjoy casting "Chill Touch" on a dragon, I'll be over here still getting good use out of the spells I picked up at level one for the entire game.

It's all a bunch of scatterbrained gameplay detritus that exists to fool you into thinking that it's more sophisticated than it actually is.  Pretty much nothing of actual substance was lost after BG went away.

Short of actually going through the entire Codex and making a side-by-side comparison, I'm not sure how you expect anyone to argue with such a statement... especially as you've already admitted the lost of things like class and faction lore.

Well for starters, there's so much lore in DA that there exists a a system for handling and archiving it, whereas in BG . . . .