After playing trough the ME3 EC, and looking back at the entire ME series, I think my main gripes with DA2 are as follows:
- Attachment / Investment into the main character.
In the ME series and DA:O I had an attachement, and emotional investment to my character, that was my character, my Shepard, my Warden, me.
I never had that with Hawke, not at one single point in the game, I felt more attached to some of my companions rather then Hawke.
And I think that, at least for me, this has to do with the initial character creation limitations.
In ME1, at character creation, I could choose two critical moments of her past to help shape her, her origin, and her military history, I chose Earthborn, an orphan who survived on the streets and ran with gangs as origin, and Sole Survivor, she was the only survivor of a Threshermaw attack on Akuze, as military background.
That imediatly helped shape the character in my head, she came from nothing, she had to fight for everything, she went trough hell and back, she's tough as nails, and still humble, and probably has a bit survivors guilt.
And all this before the actual gameplay starts.
In DA:O this appeared in the form of the racial origins, and again you can choose your background, and you can elaborate upon it with the initial origin prologue before Duncan picks you up.
In DA2, there is no such thing, there is one origin, there is little background given, and you're pretty much thrust straight into the fight saving your own family, whom you barely know anything about.
There is nothing there to shape my view of this character, who was she before I took control of her, what is her disposition?
I think that for that reason I probably gave Hawke the default female Hawke face, while I made a custom face for my Shepard, and for my Warden (profile picture on the left)
- Cohesion of the story
The three acts felt very disconected from one another, and the ending felt very unsatisfactory, what ever you choose you end up fighting both bosses, the war still happens on the same terms, Hawke leaves.
The brewing discontent that leads to the final battle is only very vaguely hinted at during Act 1 and 2, the dwarven expedition at the end of Act 1 feels out of place.
Act 2 was indeed the best written, and executed, but that's just it, the best part is in de the middle of the game.
Also the progress felt very forced liniar, you need to got A then B then C then D before you can progress to the next act, in ME games you could chose were to go first, A, B or C, completing them in what ever order you pleased before progressing to the next act, and the acts felt like part of the big whole.
In DA:O there were no real acts to speak of, once I was done in Lotheringen I could go to Redcliffe, or the Circle Tower, or Orzammar, or the Brellican Forest, and decide yourself in what sequence to do these before progressing the story after they all are done.
I play RPG's like this mostly for a good combo of action and story, and DA2's story is poor, very poor.
- The ending
As I mentioned in the previous post the ending is pretty much crap, what ever side you side with, which ever alignment you took, good or evil, it doesn't matter, the outcome is pretty much the same you fight Orsino and Meredith, and Hawke leaves, it almost comes out of nowhere, hits you in the face, and dissapears again, with the new EC for ME3 it's far far worse then it's ending, since with with the EC the endings are actually very different.
DA2 epiloge is poor too, if you compare it to the epiloge slides from both ME3:EC and DA:O, it's basically, they all left.
All in all I think DA2 is a poor game compared to DA:O, and to the ME series on which most of it's inner workings seem to be based.
To me DA2 is much worse then ME3, especially now with the EC, ME3's original ending ruined the game true, but DA2 dissapoints on nearly all fronts, while ME3 was 95% a great game before the EC, and now, for me at least, with the EC a 100% great game.
After finishing it once, I have not yet replayed DA2, while I replayed ME1 and 2 several times now, as I have DA:O, and in that I ran all the origin stories as well.
I think that my message to Bioware would be, the fix for ME3 was the EC, and it was done well in my opinion, the fix for DA2 will be DA3, and you need to make one hell of a good game out of it, make us feel invested in our character, make the story flow well, make it a continues whole, not three seperate acts seperated by several years, don't cop out on the ending, if it's the end of that characters story, give us clear epilogues about what happened to them and their companions
Retour en haut
.I wanted scenes about what happened to all the people Hawke helped,Varric drinikng with Fenris in a bar.Anders running away from the templars,Merill stoping cutting her hands as usual and coming back to her clan and her clan forgiving her.Aveline and her Husband habing a familly dinner with Isabella.Isabella with Hawke on her ship...I would be so happy if i saw that, but Bioware said NO,instead we are just going to end it with more questions!.The ending was interesting and somewhat closed the plot but still it lacked closure...
