131 réponses à ce sujet

[StElmo]

This is assuming ME3 is fixed, if not, no more BioWare game's for me.

Anyway, I'm playing DA2 at the moment (never got around to starting it until recently), these are two things that are GENIUS changes:

1) art style, SO MUCH BETTER - by this I mean the STYLE, not the overuse of assets or copy paste level design, JUST the style.

2) combat speed, SO MUCH SNAPPIER - Now, I'm not talking about camera view, tactical options or anything like that, simply the speed of the animation. MUCH better. It's way more satisfying to see yoiur tactics play out at a fast pace. What's a pause button for if your game is going to run as slow as age of empires 1? Snappy action is great.

This is not an endorsement of simplification of tactics or whatever, but the speed of this is much less tedius. You can plan your movements, unpause -> watch it play out in a second, then go back to pausing and redefining your power ques and all that.

Everything else? we'll talk. Happy for everything else to be changed, but I MUST have the above to be interested. DA:O was brilliant, but the animations were slow and the art style sucked (especially compared to nwer fantasy games).

Still playing DA2, but so far, these two changes are the ones I want to keep.

[seraphymon]

Have to fully disagree with you there on both accounts. I felt the style was much much worse. This applies to everything except for the arishock. it just looked way too cartoony, with the clay style hair, and just gets worse with the way the darkspawn and elves looked.

AS for combat speed, i felt that its too fast for its own good. Ignoring everything else except speed, on above difficultiesyou can find your self pausing every second almost, and creates problems for being tactful as well as unrealistic. not saying to go back to origins speed, but some middle ground would be better i think. The only improvement in combat i saw was the smoothness.

[Zubie]

No

[Sidney]

I've never liked the art style in DA* series with the makes no sense armor and the oversized weapons that sit are the core of things. There were things that got better - elves and dwarves not just looking like shorter humans for example - but in general I find a lot of the art style bothersome.

Combat speed, you are right. The fact that things actually react to your commands and don't have that "lag" between command and action is the right choice. A lot of the combat animations are goofy looking in an over the top way but the manner is which your party responds to what you want is the right way to handle things.

[Eternal Phoenix]

If by Dragon Age 2's artstyle you mean this:

 

 




 

Then no.

I'd much rather have Origins artstyle back:

 
 
 

The models look better, the faces look better and the colour looks better. Dragon Age 2 tried to have some sort of unique artstyle but it failed. There's nothing wrong with a realistic artstyle and it suits the Dragon Age universe.

[Eternal Phoenix]

Also:

Origins:

 

Dragon Age 2:

 

I'm sorry but there's nothing good about DA2's artstyle or engine. It looks inferior to Origins at times.

[Reznore57]

I agree with the OP.I'm trying to replay DAO , and characters don't look good.
If you paid attention , there's some pnj that looks a lot like Alistair and not just Cailan.
About the picture , yeah taking the worst looking characters sure helps defending the point of everyone ugly in DA:2.
They were some pretty elves (the keeper ,the one who lead the smugler guild when you arrived in Kirkwall) and some very ugly (the slave that became our servant)

But overall , I think the Qunari looked great , and the elves too (the only thing i didn't like is their woman looks really skinny in their wierd moulin rouge underwear);the dwarves too , Varric for example , too bad there were no female dwarf.

About combat i'm playing rogue right now , and it's really fun.Sure it's fast but the "ninja jumps" don't look stupid.
And i used to played mage and it's far better, in DA0 they looked like they put their staff up where the sun don't shine while fighting.

[cJohnOne]

Combat one of the only good points about DA2 and I really enjoy it.

[craigdolphin]

Regarding the art style: could not disagree more strongly.

Bioware needs to compare and contrast their product with the current competition. Tw2 and skyrim are both 'generic' but are both far better looking games than da2 (or dao for that matter). Graphics have never been Bioware's particular strength, but the gulf is widening now to the point where I'm not sure you can really call da2 a AAA game. Maybe AA, but it looks pretty shonky next to current generation AAA RPGs IMO. If the current engine can't deal with comparable graphical detail as these other games, then perhaps Bioware needs to bite the bullet and license or build a new engine that can. There's a reason bioware is relying more and more on cgi for game trailers instead of in-game footage. The in-game footage just isn't up to the standard set by the competition. Adopting a minimalist art style to mask the limitations of their engine does nothing to help IMO.

Also, combat animations were really daft in da2 (for rogues in particular). My most hated was the cartwheeling in-place for 10 seconds to move a grand total of 6 inches to the left before attacking, but the exploding blood balloon enemies was also pretty bad (thankfully much reduced now after the patch). Combat speed was too frenetic and hyperactive for my tastes but something in-between dao and da2 would probably be ok. I did like the ability to get out of the way of ogre charges in da2.

[Sejborg]

I don't think I could disagree more with you OP.

[eroeru]

seraphymon wrote...

Have to fully disagree with you there on both accounts. I felt the style was much much worse. This applies to everything except for the arishock. it just looked way too cartoony, with the clay style hair, and just gets worse with the way the darkspawn and elves looked.

AS for combat speed, i felt that its too fast for its own good. Ignoring everything else except speed, on above difficultiesyou can find your self pausing every second almost, and creates problems for being tactful as well as unrealistic. not saying to go back to origins speed, but some middle ground would be better i think. The only improvement in combat i saw was the smoothness.

This.

And I know many a player who would agree with me.

[bEVEsthda]

 Seriously, If they keep DA2 art style and combat, then DA is dead, and quite possibly Bioware too.
Dear OP, lots of people HATE those two things with a passion. Maybe not combat system itself quite as much as the animations.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 02 mai 2012 - 09:53 .

[Eternal Phoenix]

Reznore57 wrote...

I agree with the OP.I'm trying to replay DAO , and characters don't look good.
If you paid attention , there's some pnj that looks a lot like Alistair and not just Cailan.
About the picture , yeah taking the worst looking characters sure helps defending the point of everyone ugly in DA:2.
They were some pretty elves (the keeper ,the one who lead the smugler guild when you arrived in Kirkwall) and some very ugly (the slave that became our servant)

But overall , I think the Qunari looked great , and the elves too (the only thing i didn't like is their woman looks really skinny in their wierd moulin rouge underwear);the dwarves too , Varric for example , too bad there were no female dwarf.

About combat i'm playing rogue right now , and it's really fun.Sure it's fast but the "ninja jumps" don't look stupid.
And i used to played mage and it's far better, in DA0 they looked like they put their staff up where the sun don't shine while fighting.

What you mean this woman:

 

???

Come along now, Origins has the better character faces and everyone knows it deep down.

 

Origins faces just look more realistic and detailed as opposed to DA2's smooth faces.

 

[eroeru]

This thread should be locked. There's another one already, with a less biased /false title and discussion to it.

[ReallyRue]

Elton John is dead wrote...

If by Dragon Age 2's artstyle you mean this:
*snip* 
*Carver pic*

Then no.

I'd much rather have Origins artstyle back:
*snip* 
*Oghren pic* 

The models look better, the faces look better and the colour looks better. Dragon Age 2 tried to have some sort of unique artstyle but it failed. There's nothing wrong with a realistic artstyle and it suits the Dragon Age universe.

Oghren is more aesthetically pleasing than Carver? 
I think the problem with many of the faces lacking good texture is because it's a rushed game, I don't think that's part of it's 'art style'. And there were a few characters with good textures, like the Arishok and Fenris.

Modifié par ReallyRue, 02 mai 2012 - 11:28 .

[eroeru]

^^ As for my honest opinion, Carver's (and any DA2's character, with a few exceptions) face lacks in very many ways. Oghren has lots of things playing for him - the colors for one thing.

Carver seems as if made out of paper - with the dull pale skin-tone, very basic contures (bones maybe playing a large role) and paper black hair painted with a saturated marker. Not to mention his skin looks like it's come straight off the default "brush"-like tool with a very basic color, maybe used for modelling ("it" resembles a mannequin). I.e. there's no detail nor work into it.

Edit: It also cannot be sold as "minimalist" or "lackonic" - there's too much of that bland-cornered "comic-book" look going on (which is intentional and by-art-style) - so it resembles art only as much as a mannequin with hyperrealistic puppy eyes (double-edit: sorry, that would be actual art ... my point is rather that as much as comics are awesome for their own neat cultural feeling, they don't go far in being artistically viable, especially in 3D - but it can work well as an excuse for a lack of effort put in).

Modifié par eroeru, 03 mai 2012 - 12:06 .

[ReallyRue]

eroeru wrote...

^^ As for my honest opinion, Carver's (and any DA2's character, with a few exceptions) face lacks in very many ways. Oghren has lots of things playing for him - the colors for one thing.

Carver seems as if made out of paper - with the dull pale skin-tone, very basic contures (bones maybe playing a large role) and paper black hair painted with a saturated marker. Not to mention his skin looks like it's come straight off the default "brush"-like tool with a very basic color, maybe used for modelling ("it" resembles a mannequin). I.e. there's no detail nor work into it.

I see what you mean. Though I still wouldn't call that an art style, more that not much effort has been put in there.

[Vicious]

The problem with DA:O's art style was it was extremely generic. All the armors were a palette swap. You could not look like the Warden in the trailer. Darkspawn looked like orks, the Ogres and the Genlocks being the main offenders to this. It looked like generic kinda-tolkien-but-not fantasy.


But The art style is moving along, and eventually Bioware will figure out that zombified monster DA:O Darkspawn = cooler, Orks = not cool,  and nobody really likes Mages wearing robes anymore.



That said, I think the only thing that they guaranteed would return in DA3 would be the voiced protagonist.

But I highly doubt they'll go back to the DA:O days of art style. Hopefully they just keep progressing.

[eroeru]

Vicious wrote...

But The art style is moving along, and eventually Bioware will figure out that zombified monster DA:O Darkspawn = cooler, Orks = not cool

Zombified monster DA:O Darkspawn = DA2 darkspawn?
In that case, hell no.

Vicious wrote...

But I highly doubt they'll go back to the DA:O days of art style. Hopefully they just keep progressing.

I agree, but would change the last bit into "hopefully they just start progressing".

[Blastback]

Hated the art shift. I'm fine with combat being faster than Origins, but in my opinion it was to fast in DA2.

[tishyw]

You see, now the cartoony art-style and the ninjas on speed combat were two of the things I disliked most about DA2.

[bEVEsthda]

Vicious wrote...

The problem with DA:O's art style was it was extremely generic. All the armors were a palette swap. You could not look like the Warden in the trailer. Darkspawn looked like orks, the Ogres and the Genlocks being the main offenders to this. It looked like generic kinda-tolkien-but-not fantasy.

Flush down that EA-marketing trailer in the toilet. I suspect much of the worst that was done to DA2 is because some figured it would be great if it was more like that trailer.

There was no problem. Also, there wouldn't have been a problem, even if what you claim had been completely true, which it isn't.

I reject the notion that 'generic' can be used for anything believable. This is parroting the nonsense we got from Bioware themselves, as excuse for introducing that insulting, juvenile crap that is what separates DA2 design from DA:O. It was supposed to be "unique and distinguishable as DA". - Blah! DA:O had that, DA2 does not. There's no other game that looks like DA:O. Six of seven looks just like DA2, the same moronic art style, because the artists are inspired by the same world of inbred horns-spikes-feathers-jaggy-edges-aesthetics. And you are too! You say "kinda-tolkien-but-not fantasy" . There we have it!
 
In any way which "generic" can be used as something bad, - well, then it's DA2 that is generic, not DA:O.

“All the armors were a palette swap”. That's always true and not really so problematic. Most periods have pretty identical patterns for armor suits, wether it's medieval Europe or Samurai Japan. TES gets away with much, much more, as they have to, to manage resources. DA:O armors are mostly practical and believable, and 'genuine' constructions. Every suit DA2 introduced is cartoonish nonsense, which immediately becomes idiocy in any setting which would claim to have an air of realism, for purpose of immersion.

Modifié par bEVEsthda, 03 mai 2012 - 11:34 .

[whykikyouwhy]

bEVEsthda wrote...

“All the armors were a palette swap”. That's always true and not really so problematic. Most periods have pretty identical patterns for armor suits, wether it's medieval Europe of Samurai Japan. TES gets away with much, much more, as they have to, to manage resources. DA:O armors are mostly practical and believable, and 'genuine' constructions. Every suit DA2 introduced is cartoonish nonsense, which immediately becomes idiocy in any setting which would claim to have an air of realism, for purpose of immersion.

What you may feel about the artistic style of DA2 is your opinion of course, but I find the constant generalizations and assertations of "every" and "all" to be unfair.

Did you find these armors so very unrealistic? 

Regalia of Weisshaupt

The Last Descent

Armor of the Fallen

[bEVEsthda]

whykikyouwhy wrote...
What you may feel about the artistic style of DA2 is your opinion of course, but I find the constant generalizations and assertations of "every" and "all" to be unfair.

Did you find these armors so very unrealistic? 

Regalia of Weisshaupt

The Last Descent

Armor of the Fallen

You have a point. I only played DA2 once.

None of them are like really realistic. But you can't demand that from a game. And I'm not going to either.

The armor of the fallen has problems. Because what has been done to it, in order to distinguish it, are those angular pieces of arc-welded 3/8 inch, rolled steel plate. Why would anyone build pieces of armor like that?

Regalia comes from Legacy dlc, looks somewhat ridiculous to me (very heavy but segmented breast plate?), but I would accept it's thick-plated overweight as part of a cartoonish style game. My opinion is that changing style to cartoonish, just to do a variety of fanciful, thick-plated, 300lbs armor patterns is not well motivated. The situation has not improved. I'd much rather have less patterns, with differences in decoration. (A situation which is also realistic btw.)

The last descent looks reasonable. But looks like it would impede movements of arms very much. We can choose to ignore that though.